After an incredibly strong public response to David Cameron’s earlier assertion that the UK will not be letting in any more Syrian refugees, the Prime Minister has altered his position and is believed to, later today, announce that Britain is to accept more refugees.
Pressure mounted earlier this week when pictures of a three-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi, having drowned in an attempt to cross the border by boat, were published. And with the news that, since 2014, the UK has only accepted 214 Syrian refugees in total: an amount that would barely fill a London Underground tube train.
According to reports by the BBC, David Cameron hasn’t changed his position, but has noted the huge amount of public pressure – a petition calling for the UK to accept more refugees has got over three times the 100,000 signatures needed for it to be considered for debate in Parliament – and is believed to make a statement announcing plans to accept thousands more refugees.
‘Resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees would bring the UK in line with other European countries who have already shown leadership in offering a haven to vulnerable refugees,’ Mark Goldring, the chief executive of Oxfam, told the BBC.
Nope, it’s not the tens of thousands that some would like and no, there won’t be any specific targets agreed as of now but the point is that he’s set to move from his ‘absolutely no way’ (amid concerns of it increasing the amount of people wanting to get into the country and encouraging people traffickers) to ‘oh alright go on then’. And that's, at least, something.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.