Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans she has to expand safe routes for refugees to travel to the UK.

The UK welcomes refugees and people in need of protection through a range of resettlement schemes. These include the UK Resettlement Scheme, Community Sponsorship, Mandate Resettlement Scheme, the Afghanistan Citizens Resettlement Scheme and the Afghanistan Relocations and Assistance Policy.

These schemes have provided safe and legal routes for tens of thousands of people to start new lives in the UK. We have resettled more than 27,000 refugees across all schemes since 2015 directly from regions of conflict and instability – around half of whom were children.

In addition to our refugee resettlement schemes, family reunion policy allows a spouse/partner and children under 18 of those granted protection in the UK to join them here if they formed part of the family unit before the sponsor fled their country.

There are currently no plans to expand the existing safe and legal routes we already provide.