Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of why the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has referred so few Christians, Yazidis and other Syrian religious minorities for resettlement in the UK; whether any members of those minorities were resettled in the UK in the first quarter of 2018; and if not, why not.

In resettlement, the UK works according to the humanitarian principles of impartiality and neutrality which means that we do not take into consideration the ethno-religious origins of people requiring assistance as we resettle solely on the basis of needs, identified by UNHCR through their established submission categories.

We believe that one way to protect the privacy of those being resettled and ensure their recovery and integration is to limit the amount of information about them that we make publicly available. We therefore do not believe it is appropriate to publish a religious and ethnic breakdown of those who have been resettled.