The home secretary has ignored pleas from charities, as refugees already accepted to join family in the UK are trapped in travel chaos
Priti Patel has refused pleas to accept more unaccompanied children from the notoriously overcrowded refugee camps on the Greek islands amid dire warnings of an impending humanitarian catastrophe.
The charity Médecins Sans Frontières wrote to the home secretary on 13 March asking her to “significantly increase” the number of child refugees transferred to the UK as well as “facilitate the urgent evacuation” of those with chronic and complex health conditions.
Patel did not respond. Instead the Foreign Office replied on 31 March, saying the UK would continue to support the implementation of the EU-Turkey deal, which for the past four years has aimed to prevent asylum seekers from travelling to Europe.
Vickie Hawkins, executive director of MSF UK, described the response as “shameful”, arguing that the deal was ostensibly a containment policy and an abandonment of the EU’s responsibilities towards refugees. “This cynical deal traps thousands of people – many of them children or deeply vulnerable – in squalid conditions on the Greek islands,” she said.
“The UK government must stop sacrificing basic refugee rights for the sake of its migration agenda.”
