Yvette Cooper: UK should take in 10,000 Middle East refugees 

Yvette Cooper has urged the UK political class to take greater responsibility for thousands of refugees crossing into Eastern Europe, Greece and Italy, saying Britain had to be true to its values and history by taking up to 10,000 people fleeing the political turmoil in the Middle East.
“Britain has to respond to a humanitarian crisis on a scale we have not seen on our continent since the second world war,” the shadow home secretary said, breaking the apparent political taboo on the UK’s response to the European-wide migration crisis.
Cooper said Theresa May, the home secretary, should end the paralysis and convene an urgent special conference with local councils to discuss how many refugees each town and city could take.
Her plan would require extra central government funding. The cash-strapped Local Government Association refused to comment on her plan, saying it was part of the Labour leadership contest, but Cooper said she will open talks with Labour councils herself if necessary to show May there is a willingness among local authorities to help – if funding is provided.

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She suggested that if each town housed 10 refugee families, Britain could take in as many as 10,000 people in one month, not just from Syria, but also from Iraq and Libya. The UK government has so far taken only 200 refugees from Syria, although it has promised to a take a few hundred more as well as fund refugee settlements on the Syrian border.
Cooper’s call, which is likely to be politically unpopular, was echoed by the other Labour leadership candidates in a Channel 4 hustings, but none put a specific number on those Britain should welcome. Cooper said British people would respond if the government disentangled the issue of immigration from asylum, and pointed out that Germany was taking more refugees in a month than Britain accepts in a year.
Speaking at the Centre for European Reform on Tuesday, Cooper said Britain was “stuck in political cowardice that assumes British voters’ unease about immigration means they will not forgive anyone who calls for sanctuary – even though our nation has given shelter to the persecuted for centuries, and sometimes moral leadership is needed”.
In contrast to the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, who said many fleeing the Middle East were not refugees, she said: “Hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing from a new totalitarianism and Europe has to help – just as we did in generations past. We cannot carry on like this. It’s immoral, it’s cowardly and it’s not the British way.”