I welcome the speech made by the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) and pay tribute to the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips), whose powerful speech must have been difficult to make. It was a great pleasure, too, to hear the voice of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) back in the Chamber this evening.
I shall focus my remarks on amendment 87, proposed in the House of Lords by Lord Alf Dubs. Some 95,000 children and teenagers are alone in Europe as a result of the refugee crisis—four times more than Save the Children thought the figure was for unaccompanied child refugees. This amendment asks Britain to help only 3,000 of them; and that is all. It will not solve the problem, but it will mean we are doing our bit. That is why I think the Government are so wrong to say no. We should do our bit just as we did 70 years ago when Britain supported the Kindertransport that brought Lord Alf Dubs to Britain and saved his life. It had cross-party support at that time. Those survivors of the Kindertransport are asking us to help child refugees again today.
The reason why this amendment is needed is that there are so many children who are disappearing, suffering and dying on our continent today, and that other countries do not have the capacity to cope with that alone. This House has the power in its hands to vote for this amendment today.
We should be clear that we all support what the Government have done in providing aid for the region. We all support the 0.7% of GDP that goes in aid, and we also support how much has been done to help the areas affected by the Syrian refugee crisis in particular. We know, too, however, that aid in the regions is not enough, particularly when people are fleeing and need sanctuary, and it is not enough when we need to help children. The lone child and teenage refugees are hugely vulnerable. Thousands are sleeping rough in Europe tonight because there are simply not the places, the sanctuaries and the children’s centres that we need to give them shelter.