Jeremy Hunt’s revelation that he is in discussion with the Department for International Development (DfID) to find a way for UK officials to bring home the children of British fighters in Syria represents a reverse of the hardline policy adopted by the Home Office.

The foreign secretary, speaking on BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show, revealed he was talking to the international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt, on how to bring them home. The death of Shamima Begum’s three-week-old son was obviously a catalyst, but the Foreign Office had never been happy with the headline-driven policy adopted by the home secretary, Sajid Javid.

Rescuing Begum's baby would have been too dangerous, says Hunt Read more

The initial government position was that British citizens backing Islamic State in Syria had only themselves to blame for going to fight for a terrorist group. The UK could not under international law readily declare them as stateless, but would act as if they were.

If UK women or their children needed help, Foreign Office officials were not going to enter a war zone and risk their lives to extricate them from a crisis of their own making. The women could take their chances by travelling to a nearby British embassy such as the one in Ankara.

It seemed a surefire policy to capture the public mood. But its flaws – including claims that Begum could seek citizenship in Bangladesh, a country with which she had only remote connections – showed a slapdash approach.

Bangladesh’s firm rejection of the proposal suggested Whitehall reaction was poorly coordinated. Tabloid headlines and international law are rarely a good mix.

Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, said Javid had a moral responsibility for the baby, adding that he “behaved shamefully”. Anna Soubry, who left the Conservatives to join the Independent Group, said fighters’ children needed to be brought home.

Moreover the argument that UK officials would be risking their lives by going to the refugee camps appears unconvincing, given the number of foreign journalists that seem quite able to visit the camps and freely interview figures such as Begum.

Syria is indeed a dangerous place, with bombing under way again in Idlib, but the children are being held by Britain’s allies in camps run by the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces. The SDF are hardly likely to attack UK Foreign Office officials trying to help extricate children from overcrowded camps the Kurds can ill-afford to run.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former British soldier and director of the NGO Doctors Under Fire, said: “There is good reason we should be helping the children of Isis people who are British citizens. They are the innocents. I agree their parents should not be allowed back to the UK, but the children should be if that is what the parents want and there are relatives in this country ready to take them on.

“There is no reason that DfID personnel should not go to refugee camps in north Syria controlled by the Syrian Kurds and other allies. The media seem to get there with no problem and I would be more than happy to go on DfID’s behalf if none of their people are. You cannot do this sort of negotiation and effort through proxies or at arm’s length – this is the job of DfID and the Foreign Office and they should front up.”

Javid had said: “Children should not suffer, so if a parent does lose their British citizenship, it does not affect the rights of their child.” But the difficulty was that no means existed to protect those rights.

Misty Buswell, the International Rescue Committee’s Middle East advocacy director, said: “No one could have guessed that such a large number of women and children were still living in Baghuz.

“We have seen a staggering number of children die on the journey to al-Hol camp due to a combination of malnutrition and hypothermia. Unfortunately, this figure could be the tip of the iceberg as we’ve been told some children also died as people crossed the desert to escape Baghuz and were buried before they even began the journey to al-Hol.”

In the face of such reports Whitehall can hardly turn its back.