Prime minister maintains hardline position despite pressure for UK to do more to help amid outcry over pictures of drowned refugee child in Turkey

David Cameron faced accusations of heartlessness after he insisted Britain should not take any further refugees from the war-torn Middle East, as community groups prepared to show that councils in the UK are willing to take thousands more.

The prime minister knows he and the home secretary, Theresa May, will be pressured over the migration issue when parliament returns next week, but some senior Tory backbenchers said they expected Cameron to shift his ground after distressing pictures of a drowned child, who had been found washed up on a beach in Turkey, went viral.

Cameron insisted the best solution to the crisis was to bring peace and stability to the Middle East. During a visit to Northamptonshire, he said: “We have taken a number of genuine asylum seekers from Syrian refugee camps and we keep that under review, but we think the most important thing is to try to bring peace and stability to that part of the world.

“I don’t think there is an answer that can be achieved simply by taking more and more refugees.”

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But in a sign that the political temperature on the issue was rising, Cameron faced calls to do more from both the Catholic church and two of the Labour leadership contenders.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the head of the Catholic church in England and Wales, said: “This is a disgrace. That we are letting people die and seeing dead bodies on the beaches, when together, Europe is such a wealthy place. We should be able to fashion a short-term response, not just a long-term response.

“It is no longer an abstract problem of people on the scrounge. It’s not. It’s people who are desperate for the sake of their families, their elderly, their youngsters, their children. And the more we see that the more the opportunity for a political response that is a bit more generous, is growing. What is screaming out is the human tragedy of this problem, to which we can be more generous.”

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary and Labour leadership candidate, accused the prime minister of turning his back on the worst migration crisis since the second world war.

“When mothers are desperately trying to stop their babies from drowning when their boat has capsized, when people are being left to suffocate in the backs of lorries by evil gangs of traffickers and when children’s bodies are being washed to shore, Britain needs to act.

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“It is heartbreaking what is happening on our continent. We cannot keep turning our backs on this. We can – and must – do more. If every area in the UK took just 10 families, we could offer sanctuary to 10,000 refugees. Let’s not look back with shame at our inaction.”

Cooper urged May to convene a conference of council leaders to discover how many refugees local authorities are prepared to take. The task of organising a conference is being handed to Citizens UK, the community campaign group, and there are signs that some Conservative-led councils are likely to offer help.

The Conservative leader of Kingston upon Thames council, Kevin Davis, has already written to 50 Tory-led councils asking them to become involved in a scheme run by UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, to help find private housing for refugees for a year.

Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary and another Labour leadership contender has demanded that the government make a Commons statement next week. He said the response of Cameron and his ministers had veered from the inadequate to the misjudged and was a stain on the nation’s conscience.



“Many of these refugees are children, fleeing the violence and horrors of war. The images we have seen of children washed up on beaches will leave no person unmoved. When Parliament returns next week, MPs must be given an opportunity to debate the Government’s handling of the crisis and the chance to make a judgement on whether Britain should accept a share of refugees,” he said.



Cameron does not want to join any Europe-wide resettlement programme for refugees, believing that if the UK became involved in a large-scale scheme, it would act as a magnet for other migrants and it would be impossible to distinguish economic migrants from refugees.

The prime minister said Britain was focused on stabilising and improving the countries where migrants and refugees came from and highlighted action the government was taking to improve security at the French port of Calais.



He said: “We are taking action right across the board, helping countries from which these people are coming, stabilising them and trying to make sure there are worthwhile jobs and stronger economies there.

“We are obviously taking action at Calais and the Channel, there’s more that we need to do and we are working together with our European partners as well. These are big challenges but we will meet them.”

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Citizens UK, the community organising group, the Refugee Council and council leaders – including some from Conservative-run councils – are pressing ahead with holding a pledging conference about taking refugees fleeing the instability in the Middle East.

Neil Jameson, executive director of Citizens UK, said: “We are delighted Cooper has made her intervention, but this should not be a party-political issue. We think civil society can show there is a generosity in the British people, and with the help of churches, mosques and synagogues we can identify empty property in which refugees can be housed. The housing must not be public-sector housing because that would not be politically tenable.”



Citizens UK had been lobbying the government for more than a year to take more people under an EU-funded scheme that allowed refugees to be taken from UN camps and to be housed in the UK for a year.

Cooper has suggested a target of 10,000 refugees being taken by the UK – a figure endorsed by Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary and her rival for the Labour leadership. She also won the support of the Welsh first minister, Carwyn Jones, who said Wales “stands ready to play its full part”.