Asylum: Syria

(asked on 18th November 2014) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the answer by Lord Bates on 11 November (HL Deb, col 122), how many people have been resettled under the Syrian resettlement programme; and what steps are being taken to increase that number.


Answered by
Lord Bates Portrait
Lord Bates
This question was answered on 27th November 2014

Fifty people were relocated to the UK under the scheme between the first group of arrivals on 25 March and the end of June. (This is the latest publicly available figure, as numbers are released as part of the publication of Home Office official statistics each quarter; the number of arrivals under the scheme up to September 2014 will be published on 27 November.) Groups are arriving in the UK on a regular basis, and we continue to work closely with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to identify Syrian refugees who are most at risk.

The scheme is designed to complement our humanitarian aid efforts and is based on need rather than fulfilling a quota; however, we have said we expect it to help several hundred people over three years, and we remain on track to deliver that commitment. This is in addition to our consideration of asylum claims lodged in the UK under our normal rules. However, we strongly believe that we should continue to focus on aid rather than resettlement as the best way for the UK to maximise our impact, and we therefore have no current plans to expand the scheme.

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