Britain | Syrian refugees
A hasty change of heart
A meagre plan to take more refugees is cobbled together
EUROPE is facing its gravest refugee crisis since the second world war. While Germany has shouldered the heaviest burden, Britain's government, mindful of anti-immigrant feeling at home, has looked on. Yet public opinion seems to have shifted: since the publication of harrowing photographs of a Syrian boy found drowned on a beach in Turkey, even right-wing tabloids such as the Sun have called for more help for refugees. Meanwhile, nudges from the rest of Europe have grown less subtle: Germany's best-selling newspaper, Bild, has dubbed Britons "the slackers of Europe". So on September 7th David Cameron, the prime minister, announced a new plan. Britain would take more Syrian refugees: 20,000 by the end of the parliament, in 2020.
The belated promise looks to many like a feeble concession: Britain's commitment to accept the equivalent of 4,000 Syrians a year is 0.8% of the annual number that Germany's vice-chancellor has said his country could accommodate. About as many refugees were welcomed by Germany on a single recent weekend than Britain has agreed to take in the next five years. And the plan to take refugees directly from camps in Syria, instead of helping to lighten Europe's load, will lose Mr Cameron goodwill as he seeks to renegotiate the terms of Britain's EU membership ahead of an in/out referendum next year.
The government proposes to cover the cost of housing and looking after refugees with money from the foreign-aid budget, which is Europe's largest. Although this has stirred controversy, the idea is not new: most countries use some foreign aid to provide for their refugees, and Britain spent £100m ($154m) in this way in 2014. But diverting aid to the home front undermines Mr Cameron's argument that the refugee crisis should be tackled at its source, rather than in Britain (see article).
And the money may not be available for long. If it is to count towards the 0.7% of GDP Britain has pledged in foreign aid, the money can be used to help refugees only during their first year in the country. Local authorities usually pick up the slack where refugees are concerned. But with their spending power reduced by one-quarter since 2010, and further cuts ahead, councils have little cash to spare. Because the prime minister plans to prioritise children, especially orphans, the cost will be particularly high and unlikely to fall after just one year.
The Home Office intends to accommodate the new refugees around the country, rather than sending them to the west London boroughs and large northern cities where asylum-seekers are usually placed. Tony Travers of the London School of Economics points out that big cities have both the infrastructure and the political climate to absorb incomers, in a way that other parts of the country may not. It all smacks, he says, of "policy made on the hoof".
Only this year the government cut support for asylum-seekers with children, and in August Theresa May, the home secretary, promised a tough new approach to immigration. The U-turn on the Syrian crisis has been rapid, and the new proposals are inconsequential compared with the bold measures taken in Germany. Mr Cameron may calculate that it will not be long before British opinion shifts again, and that he will need to shift with it. That is a sad reflection on him, and on Britain.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "A hasty change of heart"
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