Manchester should welcome in hundreds of refugees fleeing war-torn Syria, says one of the city’s MP.

David Cameron is coming under increasing pressure over his response to Europe’s migrant crisis.

Lucy Powell, MP for Manchester Central, has now written to him saying the country has a ‘moral obligation’ to act after she met with members of the city’s Syrian community.

She told the M.E.N. Manchester must ‘absolutely’ be part of that effort.

“I think the vast majority of Mancunians would welcome playing their part,” she said.

(Image: Vincent Cole)

But not everyone in the region agrees.

Greater Manchester council leaders are lobbying the government to send fewer asylum seekers to the area. Greater Manchester is already taking around five times as many as London.

The MEN revealed yesterday there are currently around 130 potential refugees living in the region’s hotels because asylum agencies have been unable to find them housing.

Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale - which has almost the same number of asylum seekers as London due to the Home Office’s ‘dispersal’ policy - said: “We have taken far too many asylum seekers already. The government isn’t very good at processing asylum to establish whether they are genuine refugees or should be returned to their country of origin. If they did that, there’d be more capacity, but they don’t. Rochdale is beyond capacity.”

(Image: AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Ms Powell added: “I totally get my residents’ and others’ concerns about immigration more generally, but what we are talking about here is - in Manchester’s case - maybe a few hundred people fleeing terrible, terrible violence and who have no home to go to.”

But Ms Powell said the government needed a workable policy and to provide the resources needed.

“People are coming anyway and that’s what’s causing the problem,” she said. “If there’s a policy change at government level that says ‘actually we will let a few thousand in’, then we could manage how that could go. At the moment we have the worst of both worlds.”

'It would only be to Manchester’s credit to warmly welcome people who have suffered so much', says Bishop John Arnold, Roman Catholic Bishop of Salford

"Perhaps it is the picture published today of a small child lying dead on a beach which may now have softened our hearts and will cause us to confront the reality and urgency of this humanitarian disaster.

"Listing numbers who have died in capsized boats in recent weeks has been very disturbing but this image has an impact at another level. I doubt that most of us can even begin to imagine the desperate state that people face that causes them to leave everything that is familiar because they are in fear of their lives.

"Living, as we do, in the prosperity of Western Europe we are shielded from experiencing anything that these people have faced that has now caused them to become refugees. Few of us now living in the United Kingdom will have ever experienced, at first hand, the appalling ravages of war or the extremes of poverty and deprivation now suffered by so many in the lands from where these refugees originate.

"Of course the prospect of admitting thousands of refugees into our country must bring with it a fear and concern for the consequences and the demands that any such move will cause. The consequence of not receiving them is, however, an indictment on any claim that we might wish to have to human concern or compassion.

"We can deal in time with the consequences of the arrival of refugees, meeting it with the generosity that we have so often found for humanitarian crises in our world. But our response must be now as these people cannot wait.

"I believe that people living in the United Kingdom understand the urgency of the situation and appreciate that this nation is made up of people who, within just a few generations, have come from all over the world.

"Many of our forebears arrived because of crisis in their homeland while others came simply seeking a better life. If we fail to make a statement of compassion to those now fleeing for their lives, we make a serious statement about ourselves and the values that we seem to have forgotten.

"Manchester is rightly proud of a tradition that has long welcomed newcomers who have brought skills and culture which have benefited the growth of this city. I believe it would only be to Manchester’s credit to warmly welcome people who have suffered so much and wish to come here to live in peace with us."