The new Home Office minister for refugees, Richard Harrington, has repeatedly refused to disclose to MPs how many vulnerable Syrians have been brought to the UK since the prime minister made his pledge to bring 20,000 to Britain over the next five years.
Harrington told MPs he was not “providing a running commentary” on numbers when he was asked no fewer than seven times at the Commons home affairs select committee how many have come.
His refusal exasperated the chairman of the committee, Keith Vaz, who observed that since the answer now appeared to have the status of a “state secret” he would appeal to David Cameron himself to find out what was going on.
“We will have to write to the prime minister now and tell him that we need this figure because, frankly, I think it is unsatisfactory for you to come before this committee and not have the numbers. The public is very interested in this,” Vaz told him.
The Home Office minister, who has been in the job only four weeks, insisted the existing Syrian vulnerable persons scheme, under which only 216 people have arrived in the UK in the past year, was now being “hugely increased”. Those that have come have gone to “three or four different local authorities” to be resettled.
Harrington said: “I would say the pace of people arriving is much the same as it has been over the last few months and it is now gathering traction.
“I am sure in the new year, or whenever it might be in the future, if I were asked to come back you would be very impressed. I’ve been doing this job for four weeks.” The first official figures will be published at the end of November with the other quarterly migration statistics, he added.
Yvette Cooper, the chair of Labour’s refugee taskforce, shared Vaz’s exasperation: “This shoddy failure to disclose the number of refugees that have come to our country since the prime minister expanded the vulnerable persons relocation scheme is totally unacceptable.
“Millions of people signed petitions urging the government to act to help resolve the refugee crisis, thousands have donated clothes and other material and almost 5,000 have offered space in their own home. It was this outpouring of support that forced David Cameron into action in the first place,” said Cooper.
“But people will start losing confidence in the government’s ability – and indeed willingness – to deliver on its promise if it does not come clean on the number of refugees that have arrived so far and how many more will have arrived by the end of the year. David Cameron should rectify his minister’s mistake and publish these figures immediately,” she added.
