Rupa Huq
Main Page: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)Department Debates - View all Rupa Huq's debates with the Home Office
(7 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Goodwill
I pay tribute to local authorities such as Cambridgeshire that not only take in children under the national transfer scheme but make families welcome under our scheme for the 20,000 children and their families coming from the camps around Syria and the 3,000 children and their families from the wider middle east and north Africa area.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
On Holocaust Memorial Day, Michael Brown movingly described his experiences as a child refugee fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939 and advocated the need for Britain to be open to children from Europe fleeing atrocities today. Numerous local authorities, such as Ealing, Hammersmith, and even Hastings—the Home Secretary’s backyard—are willing to take more, so why are the Government pulling the plug on the world’s most vulnerable by closing the Dubs scheme?
Mr Goodwill
If any parallels are to be drawn between Nazi Germany and the situation nowadays, they would be in the situation in Syria, not in our European neighbours and partners. I point out for the record that of the 750 children we took from Calais under both Dubs and Dublin fewer than 10 were actually from Syria. We should concentrate on the children and their families most in need, and they are the ones in the refugee camps in the region.