Yvette Cooper challenges government plan to use aid budget to resettle Syrian refugees

Yvette Cooper has challenged the government’s plans to use the aid budget to help resettle Syrian refugees in the UK. Speaking on the Today programme, the Shadow Home Secretary said that the government’s reserves should be used to help council house people not money from the international development budget.

Cooper’s comments come ahead of David Cameron’s statement to parliament this afternoon, the Prime Minister will explain how the Government is going to respond to the refugee crisis. He is expected to say the UK will accept over 10,000 refugees, but only from the camps around Syria, not from the thousands of people who are already in the European Union.

The Chancellor George Osborne said yesterday that money from the internal aid budget would be diverted to help local authorities house the refugees. Cooper said this morning that she had questions about this, as “what you can’t do is do this at the expense of support in the region.”

“One of the things driving the exodus from the region have been the reduction in rations in the (refugee) camps and the fact that many children in the camps are not getting schooling,” she said.

“Britain has a great record of putting a lot of support into the refugee camps that are immediately around Syria. So clearly nobody would want that to be reduced. I hope that’s not what they’ll (the government) will be saying today.”

“There is a question of why they’re not taking this funding from the reserves, which I think is what has happened previously. The reserve is created to provide support when extreme things happen.”

Cooper also criticised the government’s plan to take refugees only from the camps around Syria. “It is really important we take people from Europe not just from Syria,” she said.

But she was less categorical about whether Labour would back military intervention in Syria to create safe havens or target Isis. “I think with something as serious as military intervention you have to see what the government is proposing.”

Cooper said that Britain had a history of past military interventions that have been well intentioned but without clear objectives. She called on the government to clarify what its military objectives are and whether its actions would be legal.