West Norfolk Lib Dems appalled by shameful vote to deny safe passage to child refugees

We in West Norfolk Liberal Democrats are appalled that both our local Conservative MPs Henry Bellingham and Liz Truss have voted to ends the Dubs scheme allowing unaccompanied child refugees from Syria safe passage to the U.K. The humanitarian scheme was set up under David Cameron's premiership, allowing 3000 displaced victims of the civil war refuge in our country. Instead Conservative and Unionist MPs, with only a few honourable exceptions, have voted to ditch the scheme. Now only 350 children will be permitted entry.

Make no mistake, these unaccompanied children have been brutally forced out of their homeland and away from their parents, many of whom may well be dead. Bellingham and Truss and all those in West Norfolk who support them in this act of needless nastiness towards defenceless children should be ashamed of themselves.

It is ironic that as a direct consequence of the government's dogmatic pursuit of hard Brexit, all the frontrunners in the French presidential elections have now said that they will move UK border control back from Calais to Dover. At that point as many refugees as wish to, including of course these children, will be able to travel to Britain anyway. They should know that at least some of us here in West Norfolk will be ready to treat them with the tolerance, compassion and human decency which their dreadful plight deserves.