WHY WE MUST GIVE THESE CHILDREN SANCTUARY

TONIGHT, as for many months past, thousands of unaccompanied child refugees from war zones, some just six years old or even younger, will be sleeping in appalling squalor on the streets or in the makeshift camps of supposedly prosperous and civilised Europe. Many will be cold, hungry and frightened. As the victims of people traffickers who have them at their mercy, all will be hugely vulnerable to sexual abuse and other forms of vile exploitation.

Indeed, the conditions in which they subsist are a stain on our European partner nations, which have shirked their treaty obligations to process asylum claimants at their point of entry into the EU, accept responsibility for those who qualify and deport those who do not.

It cannot be stressed too strongly that, under international law, the UK has no duty to these children, however wretched or desperate they may be. For this reason, and for others besides, this paper fully understands ministers’ reluctance to open the doors of these overcrowded islands to those who have no legal right to our hospitality. Equally, we recognise why on Monday night, the Commons voted by a majority of 18 to reject a Labour proposal that Britain should offer a welcome to 3,000 of these children travelling alone. But while we understand the arguments for hardening our hearts, we believe that in the exceptional circumstances of this crisis, it would be wrong to do so. True, we have no legal or treaty obligation to lift a finger to help. But our moral and humanitarian duty cannot so easily be shrugged off.

Let the Mail be absolutely clear. Nobody has been more robust than this paper in giving voice to public concerns over the impact of mass, unrestricted immigration on the social fabric of this country. For our pains, we have been viciously attacked as ‘racist’ by a

bien pensant liberal elite, cocooned in their prosperous postal districts, who have never had to compete for low-paid jobs, affordable housing, school places or hospital beds with migrants who have arrived in unprecedented numbers since Tony Blair threw open our borders.

Indeed, mass migration has been nothing but a bonus for our sneering critics, parading their right- on consciences while they enjoy all the benefits of cheap nannies, plumbers and office cleaners.

So, no, nobody appreciates better than the Mail why so many decent people in this country believe we simply cannot take more immigrants, no matter how young or vulnerable. Nor for one moment do we question the motives of David Cameron and those MPs who joined him in rejecting the Opposition’s plan. Still less do we endorse yesterday’s intemperate attack on the Prime Minister by Labour’s Yvette Cooper, who accused him of ‘putting this House and this country to shame’. On the contrary, Mr Cameron has nothing whatever to be ashamed of. In his approach to this crisis, he has repeatedly shown himself anxious to offer the most practical help possible, while he and British taxpayers have devoted more resources to saving and improving war refugees’ lives than almost all our partners put together.

In particular, the Prime Minister has been careful to avoid the catastrophic mistake made by Angela Merkel, when she recklessly promised homes in Germany to 800,000 migrants.

Her motives may have been at least partially selfless (though Germany, unlike Britain, suffers an acute labour shortage). But the effects of her open invitation were as tragic as they were predictable.

In the inevitable stampede to enter Europe from Africa and the Middle East, countless men, women and children drowned in people traffickers’ unseaworthy boats. It is a harsh judgment, but nonetheless true, that Mrs Merkel’s misguided benevolence has left her with blood on her hands.

Clearly, Mr Cameron fears that if Britain were to promise a welcome to thousands of unaccompanied children, this would have similar unintended consequences.

The risk is that many more desperate parents would send their young to make the dangerous journey alone, in the hope of claiming their human right to join them later. Hence, the Prime Minister’s insistence that we should limit our offer of asylum to refugees in camps adjoining war zones (indeed, it is much to his credit that he is investing so much in improving conditions in those camps — at last, a respectable use for Britain’s bloated overseas aid budget).

But while the Mail respects his argument, we believe that the plight of these unaccompanied children now in Europe — hundreds of them on our very doorstep in the Channel ports of France — has become so harrowing that we simply cannot turn our backs.

It is not their fault, after all, that they’ve been sent halfway round the world alone to search for a better life, often after seeing family members slaughtered.

As Tory MP Stephen Phillips put it so movingly in the Commons, before joining four of his party colleagues in voting for Labour’s motion: ‘These children are already in Europe, and they are at risk as I stand here and speak to the House.

‘They are alone and far from their families. They are frequently without help or access to those who might help or protect them. Their lives are miserable and brutish, and at least half of them have experienced or seen violence that we can only dream of in our nightmares — or rather, hope that we do not.’

Every instinct of our hearts must surely be to play our part, looking after at least some of these neglected children until, God willing, conditions become safe enough to return them to their families in their homelands.

As for the danger of encouraging more refugees to send their children on the perilous journey alone, the Mail sees why Mr Cameron is worried. But with the right safeguards in place, and rigorously adhered to, it’s a danger that can and must be surmounted.

First, it is essential that any offer of asylum to unaccompanied children in the Channel coast camps, many of whom have relatives in Britain, must be a one-off amnesty. A limit must be set on numbers, and stuck to.

To avoid cruelly raising false hopes, it must also be spelt out with absolute clarity that the offer is restricted to children who have already journeyed across Europe, and it will not be repeated or kept open.

Clearly, strict checks must also be made to establish that those granted asylum are genuine refugees from war zones, and really the age they claim to be. Meanwhile, the ultimate aim — again, to be spelt out clearly — must be to return the great majority to their home countries.

This is why the priority must remain for the EU to follow Britain’s example and redouble its efforts to build civilised refugee camps in the Middle East, as close to displaced families’ homes as safety allows. This paper knows that Mr Cameron is a proud and often stubborn politician, who doesn’t like to be seen to change his mind.

But on Tuesday night, the House of Lords offered him a painless opportunity to have second thoughts, when it voted by a majority of 107 to amend the Government’s proposals. Under the Lords’ admirable and moral compromise, the UK would agree to accept unaccompanied child refugees already in Europe, with the numbers and other details of the scheme to be fixed by the Home Secretary. This paper hopes the Prime Minister will accept the amendment without further argument.

True, the pressures of our relentless population growth mean he cannot afford to make more than a gesture — accepting perhaps a few hundred of the most vulnerable lone children from the camps of Calais and Dunkirk. But every sinew of our hearts tells us it’s a gesture that must be made — while every child we take will mean a life of hope in place of despair.

Mr Cameron should consider that of all the countries in the Europe, Britain has the longest established tradition of offering sanctuary to refugees from war and oppression.

He may also care to reflect on the deep irony that nothing makes it harder for us to honour that noble tradition than our membership of the EU. For the rules of free movement have obliged us to give homes to millions of settlers from the safe countries of Europe, leaving precious little room for those in real need of our compassion.

But that is an argument for another day. For the moment, frightened children are suffering in the squalid camps of France. And they need what help we can give.