Stuart McDonald – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stuart McDonald on 2015-11-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many Syrian refugees selected for resettlement from UN camps to the UK had previously been selected for resettlement in the US.

Richard Harrington

The Government has committed to resettling 20,000 Syrian refugees in the lifetime of this Parliament. The Prime Minister has said that we want to see 1,000 Syrian refugees brought to the UK by Christmas. We use the established UNHCR process for identifying and resettling refugees and have been working closely with them to achieve a significant uplift in the scheme.

The UK collaborates closely with the major countries involved in resettlement, notably the US, Australia and Canada. In the expansion of the UK Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme we have worked with the US Government to take 500 people from the UNHCR’s pool of registered refugees that might otherwise have been passed to the US for consideration. No refugee actually selected for resettlement in the US has been passed to the UK; and all refugees being resettled in the UK have opted for this route.