The government is scrapping Britain’s pledge to take in 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees, sparking fury. Will critics be able to force Home Secretary Amber Rudd to rethink and reverse the decision?

What has happened?

In a low-key, written ministerial statement on Wednesday, the immigration minister Robert Goodwill revealed that a government scheme to bring unaccompanied child refugees to the UK from Europe would in effect be wound up, with only 150 more due to be transferred. Around 200 lone refugee children have been brought to Britain under the scheme, but the total of 350 falls well short of the 3,000 that many MPs believed they were voting for when they passed the “Dubs amendment” to the Immigration Act last year. A separate, accelerated arrangement to bring in unaccompanied refugee children who have family links in the UK under the Dublin convention will also be ended, the Home Office said.

What is the Dubs amendment?

As a six-year-old in 1939, Alfred Dubs was one of 669 mainly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia who escaped to the UK thanks to a young stockbroker, Nicholas Winton, who has been described as Britain’s Oskar Schindler. Now a Labour peer, Dubs sponsored an amendment to the Immigration Act in April last year that required the government to relocate to the UK a number of refugee children who had reached Europe unaccompanied. Though his proposed figure of 3,000 was not included in the law, many MPs and peers believed the government had committed to accepting a number of children in that region.

Why has the government shut it down?

Summoned to the House of Commons on Thursday to answer an urgent question by Labour’s Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, Amber Rudd, told MPs that the UK had admitted many children through other refugee schemes, amounting to a total of 8,000 in the year to 2016 (including those resettled directly from camps in or near Syria). But, she said, that “the specified number of 350 children ... reasonably meets the intention and spirit behind the provision” of the Dubs amendment. Rudd suggested that the scheme had “incentivised” children making perilous journeys across Europe. Some will question, however, whether the high-profile backlash in sections of the rightwing press to the arrival of a group of unaccompanied child refugees in October will have coloured the government’s view of the scheme.

PM accused of closing door on child refugees as 'Dubs' scheme ends Read more

What has the reaction been?

From the Labour and SNP benches, dismay and anger. Cooper, who chairs the influential home affairs select committee and heads Labour’s refugee task force, described the effective closure as “shameful”. She said: “There are still so many children in need of help,” pointing to thousands in Greece, Italy and France who are in overcrowded accommodation centres or are homeless and vulnerable to human traffickers. She added: “The home secretary talked about clearing Calais; they are heading back to Calais, and back to Dunkirk: back to the mud, back to the danger, back into the arms of the people traffickers and the smugglers, the exploitation, the abuse, the prostitution rings – back into the modern slavery that this parliament and this government have pledged to end.” Britain, she said, “can do better than this”. Lord Dubs described the decision as “shabby”. “Local authorities I’ve spoken to are willing to take more children. All I’m asking is the government should not close the scheme down.” Patrick Grady, SNP MP for Glasgow North, said the decision was a “shameful betrayal”. “No one is suggesting that this country is not welcoming of refugees, but increasingly appears that the government is not.”

Wouldn’t they oppose Rudd anyway?

Maybe, but she has also been criticised by some on her own side, including the Conservative MP Heidi Allen, who said David Cameron’s acceptance of the Dubs amendment had been a proud moment for the Conservative party, but that she didn’t think the Home Office had tried hard enough to make the scheme work. After speaking to colleagues, she said, “There are quite a lot of us who are not going to let this go.” The government was also slammed by Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said he was “saddened and shocked” by the decision, having believed Britain had “committed to welcoming up to 3,000”. Winton’s daughter Barbara wrote an open letter to Theresa May urging her to “do the right thing” and reminding her that May herself had said, at Winton’s memorial service in 2015, that she hoped “that his life will be an inspiration for us all”.

What happens to the children who do arrive here?

Unaccompanied children arriving under the Dubs programme are distributed around the country as part of the National Transfer Scheme, where they come under the care of local authorities. Because of their vulnerable circumstances, the majority are placed in highly experienced foster care. All under-16s and girls are put in emergency foster care before being transferred, while older children go into temporary accommodation.

Can the decision be reversed?

Time will tell. Allen and a group of cross-party colleagues have secured a debate on the issue on 23 February, and are hoping to force the government to rethink. Writing in the Daily Telegraph on Friday, she argued that the Dubs amendment is not an aspiration but a commitment in legislation, “and we cannot renege on it now. Every country with financial means has a role to play in finding homes for those children trapped in Europe. As yet, I do not believe we have done enough.” The charities Help Refugees and Citizens UK have also launched a legal challenge to the decision to wind up the scheme, which will be heard in the High Court from 2 May. A petition urging the government to rethink had been signed by more than 40,000 people by Friday morning.