Bid to help refugees voted down in the Commons

A CLAUSE to a bill which would have put pressure on the government to bring more refugee children to the UK has been voted down in the House of Commons, by 287-267.

In February, the government halted the transfer of young children to the UK which it had previously agreed to under the so-called “Dubs Amendment”, a measure put forward by Jewish peer Lord Dubs, who arrived in the UK on the Kindertransport as a child refugee from the Nazis.

The government said there were not enough spaces in councils across Britain to accommodate the children. Of the approximately 3,000 young refugees that would have been taken, only 350 were allowed into the country.

The clause, proposed by Heidi Allen, a Conservative MP, to the Children and Social Work bill, would have made it compulsory for local authorities to declare if they had room to take refugee children.