Syrian orphans to be offered help

Syrian orphans to be offered help as Cameron promises Britain will be a safe haven for thousands from refugee camps

• Prime Minister to give Commons statement on the UK's new aid effort
• Expectations that he will announce as many as 10,000 will be resettled
• Cameron will against help acting as a 'magnet' to trafficking gangs
• UK aid budget will be used to pay for housing refugees for up to a year 

By Matt Chorley, Political Editor for MailOnline

Published: 08:03 GMT, 7 September 2015 | Updated: 08:11 GMT, 7 September 2015

David Cameron will today promise orphaned children living in Syrian refugee camps a safe haven in Britain as he announces plans for an escalation in the UK's humanitarian effort.

Expectations are growing that the Prime Minister will announce that as many as 10,000 people will be resettled across the UK using money from the foreign aid budget.

In a statement to MPs, Mr Cameron will insist that the UK stands ready to help those fleeing for their lives from the Assad regime and barbaric ISIS militants.

But he will reject calls from Brussels for Britain to accept a share of the tens of thousands of people already on European soil, warning any offer of help should not act as a 'magnet' for more to make the perilous sea crossing to reach safety.

David Cameron will today announce details of a plan for Britain to take thousands of Syrian refugees living in makeshift camps in north Africa

In less than a week Downing Street has been forced into a major policy u-turn, after repeatedly refusing to drop its opposition to large numbers of people being given refuge in the UK.

The harrowing images of three-year-old Ayan Kurdi's body on a Turkish beach last week triggered a major public outcry and forced Mr Cameron into retreat.

Senior politicians including Labour's Yvette Cooper, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Green leader Natalie Bennett joined singer and campaigner Bob Geldof in offering to put up refugees in their own homes.

Some 2,000 people have said they would be willing to house Syrians in spare bedrooms, but council leaders have dismissed the idea as 'pie in the sky', insisting town halls need extra government funding to cope with any influx.

MPs return to the House of Commons for the first time after their summer break today, with the issue set to dominate. 

Mr Cameron has vowed to stand by his commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on international aid.

But he is expected to tell MPs that the budget can be used to help with the housing and living costs of refugees for their first year in Britain.

It will mean that the UK can increase its offer to the humanitarian effort without having to make cuts to domestic budgets at a time when Chancellor George Osborne is demanding reductions of up to 40 per cent in some budgets.

The Prime Minister will make clear that refugees given help under the expanded resettlement scheme will come directly from camps in Syria and neighbouring countries, and not those who have already crossed into the European Union.

Mr Cameron and other senior ministers are concerned that signing up to an EU plan to disperse 160,000 people across the continent will encourage more people to attempt to make the perilous journey in dangerous boats. 

Migrants walk along a dirt road after crossing the Macedonian-Greek border near Gevgelija, Macedonia

Migrants board a train after crossing the Macedonian-Greek border near Gevgelija, Macedonia, yesterday

LOCAL COUNCILS DISMISS CALLS TO HOUSE REFUGEES IN PEOPLE'S HOMES AS 'PIE IN THE SKY'

Well-meaning Britons offering to house refugees should be prepared to put them up for years, a leading local authority boss has warned.

Politicians and celebrities have led a campaign to offer homes to refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria. Hundreds of ordinary Britons claim they will also take in migrants.

Sir Bob Geldof has also said he would put up four refugee families in his luxury London flat and Kent mansion.

Labour leadership contender Yvette Cooper said she and her husband Ed Balls would take in a Syrian refugee, while Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said ‘of course’ she would open up her home to a migrant. But Councillor David Simmonds, Tory chairman of the Local Government Association, warned those who made the offer would have to be in it for the long run because of the huge housing waiting lists and the time it takes to process asylum applications.

He also called for more money from Whitehall to ease the impact on communities.

Mr Simmonds said: ‘The cost of providing the services we would need to provide is clearly very significant.

‘Generous offers are very good, but if it takes several years to process somebody’s asylum application that person is not allowed to work. Are those people who are opening those homes genuinely willing to have a stranger from a war-torn country living in their house potentially for three or four years while a decision is made about whether they will be allowed to stay?’

Councils in England already take 2,000 unaccompanied refugee children a year at a cost of £50,000 a year for every youngster.

They spent a further £150million on families whose asylum claims had been turned down but who remained in the UK.

Mr Simmonds said: ‘If we are going to scale those numbers up significantly we need to make sure that those kinds of resources are available to England’s councils and also other public services to make sure that we have what is required in terms of school places, hospital beds, GPs that sort of thing.’

Miss Cooper, whose campaign for the Labour leadership gathered momentum last week, called for each local authority to take ten refugee families. The Shadow Home Secretary said she would ‘of course’ shelter refugees if ‘that’s what was needed’.

The First Minister of Scotland also said she would take in a refugee, fuelling speculation that they could be housed in her official residence of Bute House in Edinburgh.

Labour leadership hopefuls Jeremy Corbyn and Andy Burnham have also suggested they would take in refugees. An online database of ordinary Britons offering to house refugees attracted 2,000 volunteers in just three days.

Under the Brussels plan, migrants stranded in Italy, Greece and Hungary will be transferred to countries across the EU based on their population and economic wealth.

It will see Germany granting asylum to 35,000 refugees, France accepting 26,000 and Spain 16,000.

Even poverty-stricken Bulgaria and Romania will be expected to take thousands of families.

But Britain will use an opt-out to refuse to accept the forecast 17,000 it would be obliged to accept, instead offering to help those in camps.

A survey showed the public’s lack of enthusiasm for thousands more coming in. 

The Mail on Sunday poll found nearly one in three people said Britain should not accept any Syrian migrants on top of existing asylum seekers. 

One in six said Britain should take less than 1,000.

Mr Osborne has ordered a fundamental rethink of the way Britain's aid budget is used, shifting away from alleviating poverty to trying to bring stability to the Middle East. 

He told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show: ‘In the short-term we’re going to take more refugees, but not in a way that encourages them on to these dangerous boats.

‘In the longer term, I think we need a fundamental rethink of our aid policy, so yes, we support reducing poverty but we also direct our additional aid spending to these failed states, to this refugee crisis, to the big threats facing Britain.

‘So the question in the spending review is not just how does our aid budget help the rest of the world, but how does it help Britain’s national interest.’

Revelations about wasteful aid projects, corruption, donation to countries with their own aid budgets and even space programmes have increased public opposition to growing aid spending at a time of cuts at home.

Officials said all the additional spending over the coming years will be ringfenced for use on ‘global challenges’ such as the Syrian refugee crisis.

That could means some £1billion diverted to responding to major international crises by the end of the decade.

Britain is already the biggest donor of humanitarian aid to the Syria crisis in the EU, second only to the United States globally.

On Friday Mr Cameron announced an extra £100million on top of £920million committed to date, meaning the UK has contributed more than Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy, Hungary, Austria and Poland combined.

Today a United Nations commissioner has said its humanitarian agencies are 'financially broke' as the organisation attempts to provide aid for tens of thousands of people fleeing war.

UN high commissioner for refugees Antonio Guterres said basic needs are not being fulfilled as he called for EU member states to fund aid in the same way they fund UN peacekeeping operations.

He warned agencies like UNHCR and Unicef could become bankrupt as they are struggling to keep up with the basic needs of millions of people who have fled Syria and are travelling towards Europe. 

Mr Guterres said the number of people displaced by conflict each day has risen by 31,000 in a four-year period, placing a greater strain on resources to provide refugees with the things they need.

He told the Guardian: 'If you look at those displaced by conflict per day, in 2010 it was 11,000; last year there were 42,000. 

'This means a dramatic increase in need, from shelter to water and sanitation, food, medical assistance, education.

'The budgets cannot be compared with the growth in need. Our income in 2015 will be around 10 per cent less than in 2014. 

'The global humanitarian community is not broken - as a whole they are more effective than ever before. But we are financially broke.'

He said the crisis which has arisen out of Syria, where people are fleeing both President Assad's regime and Islamic State forces, must be recognised as an emergency and the aid effort funded as by assessed rather than just voluntary contributions.

Tory MP Andrew Mitchell, a former International Development Secretary, called for a 'massive effort from the international community'.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'We need to create safe havens. I think there should be one on the Turkish border at Idlib and another one on the border of Jordan.

‘We need a serious effort to protect the millions of people in what is now a second world country.

‘We need to be involved in putting troops on the ground. This is a humanitarian effort. It’s important for the UN to help. We have a responsibility to protect these people.'

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