Source: www.huffingtonpost.co.uk - Friday, October 30, 2015 The British Government has been urged to harness the "huge support" for refugees fleeing conflict as MPs warned the country will struggle to cope with 20,000 people re-settling in the next five years. The Home Affairs Select Committee of MPs has today warned of the "huge change in the scale" in the number of refugees the UK is accommodating. Chairman Keith Vaz points out the 4,000 refugees per year is in stark contrast to 1,039, the highest annual number resettled in the last ten years. Ministers have so far refused to say how many people have already arrived in the UK - though Mr Cameron said he hoped 1,000 would arrive by the end of the year - leading to fears about its action plan. The MPs call on ministers to think again about rejecting the offer from thousands of members of the public to put refugees up in their homes . "At no point in the recent past has the UK come near to resettling 4,000 refugees in one year," the committee's report says. Labour MP, Yvette Cooper, who chairs Labour's refugee taskforce, told The Huffington Post UK the Government can do better, arguing Britain accepted 4,000 Bosnian refugees in 1992 within weeks of them being displaced by the conflict in the Balkans. Yvette Cooper in Lesbos: "The refugee crisis is getting worse not better." Ms Cooper, former Shadow Home Secretary who has just returned from the Greek island of Lesbos where thousands of refugees Syrian and Iraqi refugees are holed up, has ca All Related
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