Humza Yousaf, the Scottish minister for Europe and international development, confirmed that the Scottish government would help house 10% of the total number of refugees accepted by the UK after Labour urged him to increase an initial offer to take 1,000 people displaced by the conflict.

Yousaf told MSPs that Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, had made it “very clear that 1,000 refugees coming to Scotland should be seen as a minimum and very much an initial, immediate figure – it is not a cap or a limit, nor is it spread out over five years like the announcement made by the prime minister last week.”

The Scottish government’s refugee task force agreed on Tuesday to set up a new website, http://www.scotlandwelcomesrefugees.scot/ with the Scottish Refugee Council, to coordinate responses, Yousaf said.

Claire Baker, Scottish Labour’s democracy spokeswoman, echoed his complaint that the 20,000 person ceiling and five year time scale set by David Cameron, the prime minister, was unacceptably low and ungenerous. There were 3,000 unaccompanied children caught in the wave of refugees now in Europe.

“On the refugee crisis the UK government has been reacting rather than leading. It is therefore important that we, as a parliament, should not stop applying pressure on Downing Street,” Baker said.