UK to use foreign aid for Syrians
Print Edition
BRITAIN will use part of its foreign aid budget to help meet the costs of accommodating refugees from Syria, its finance minister said yesterday, in a bid to head off concerns over the impact on local services.
George Osborne said Britain would use part of its foreign aid budget, equivalent to 0.7 percent of gross domestic product, to help local authorities meet the costs of helping new arrivals.
“The foreign aid we have ... can provide the support in the first year for these refugees, could help the local councils with things like housing costs,” Osborne told the BBC.
Prime Minister David Cameron said on Friday that Britain would welcome “thousands more” Syrian refugees, after previously refusing to commit Britain to taking in more.
Cameron did not say how many refugees would be welcomed, but a un refugee agency spokeswoman said Britain would take in 4,000.
Britain has taken in just 216 Syrian refugees under a un-backed relocation scheme since the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011. About 5,000 other Syrians who made their own way to Britain have been granted asylum.
Osborne said that instead of being part of a proposed quota system to allocate refugees between eu nations, Britain saw the ultimate solution as deterring people from making the journey to europe.
He also hinted that Britain could spend more of its 12 billion pound (uS$18 billion) aid budget on looking after refugees in countries neighboring Syria.
Britain’s government is keen to avoid fueling debate over immigration ahead of a referendum on whether the country stays in the eu, due by the end of 2017.
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