The prime minister bowed to the threat of defeat. Some lone child refugees will be given a domestic in the UK. It is a welcome concession,but not nearly enoughDavid Cameron has bowed to backbench pressure as well as something like national moral anguish, and announced that Britain will acquire in some unaccompanied child refugees. It is a welcome and long-overdue concession. But the policy shift is hedged about with restrictions that may mean it turns out to be worth less than meets the eye. And in an equal and opposite hump, or moments after the prime minister’s announcement,the domestic office minister James Brokenshire came to the House of Commons to tell MPs that Britain would play no section in any recent EU proposal to penalise countries that did not acquire a proportion of the refugees arriving on the continent. Regrettably, Mr Cameron’s concession on child refugees does not signal anything like a rethink of refugee policy.
The recent approach to children is a minimalist, and pragmatic response to overwhelming pressure. That is typical of most of the government’s attitude to the refugee crisis. Every concession,even when protecting vulnerable children has been the aim, has been wrung from it. The emphasis has been on the obstacles in the path of success. This instinct might usefully be applied to other government projects. But it is stony-hearted when applied to desperate and traumatised people fleeing a war zone.
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Source: theguardian.com