British prime minister David Cameron has responded to growing pressure for Britain to take more refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war and other conflicts by saying that the UK would fulfil its moral responsibilities.
In a marked shift of tone, as Europe’s human-rights watchdog criticised Britain for failing to offer shelter, Mr Cameron spoke of how moved he was by the picture of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body was washed up on a Turkish beach.
Speaking at a Hitachi train plant in Co Durham, the prime minister said: “Anyone who saw those pictures overnight could not help but be moved and, as a father, I felt deeply moved by the sight of that young boy on a beach in Turkey. Britain is a moral nation and we will fulfil our moral responsibilities. We are taking thousands of people, and we will take thousands of people.”
His remarks stopped short, however, of specific commitments. Mr Cameron said he would keep the issue under review, a stance that gives Whitehall time to work out a scheme with the Home Office, local councils and international agencies.
Mr Cameron stressed that Britain had already stepped up to meet the challenge of the refugee crisis facing Europe by assisting in the rescue mission in the Mediterranean, spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on international aid and donating money to fund Syrian refugee camps in the Middle East.
He insisted, however, that taking more refugees was not the only answer to the problem. “We need a comprehensive solution, a new government in Libya. We need to deal with the problems in Syria.
“I would say the people responsible for these terrible scenes we see, the people most responsible, are President Assad in Syria and the butchers of Isil [Islamic State] and the criminal gangs that are running this terrible trade in people. ”
The British prime minister’s intervention came as he faced growing domestic and international pressure, including from his own party, to start taking the numbers already being taken elsewhere in Europe.
The Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, accused him of adopting a "walk on by on the other side" approach after he said on Wednesday that the UK would not take any extra refugees.
Interim Labour leader Harriet Harman has called on Mr Cameron to convene a meeting of the Cobra cabinet committee to coordinate the government response.
The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, stepped up her criticism of his refusal to accept more than a few hundred refugees.
“It is shameful, utterly shameful, that our prime minister is just turning his back,” she said. “My problem with the prime minister’s response is that he only wants to talk about the things that he will do to help far away, but he won’t actually do anything here at home. We have a responsibility to act.”– (Guardian service)