There is scant evidence that Britain would reach the target set by David Cameron last year of resettling 20,000 Syrian refugees in the country by 2020, MPs have said in a damaging report which calls the response to the refugee crisis of 2015-16 a “Europe-wide failure”.
The home affairs select committee condemned the European response to the “colossal” numbers of people seeking asylum , saying the crisis should have been anticipated, and European countries had done “too little, too late”.
The committee also raised concerns about the “worryingly low” number of patrol boats available to the UK Border Force for patrolling Britain’s coast despite being given a key role in heightened security arrangements.
Although the government announced eight new boats would be added to the Border Force’s five-strong fleet, only half of the new vessels are already in service and the others may not be ready for another year. The committee called for the Royal Navy to patrol the coast to help make up the shortfall.
Martyn Underhill, the police and crime commissioner for Dorset, said on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that maritime security had suffered from cost savings.
“We’ve got cuts to the coastguard, cuts to the Border Force … police and marine units have been cut, and special branch have been reallocated to the cities. So really four of our lines of defence are being weakened because of cuts and we’re in a pickle.”
Cuts had also led to the Border Force losing its aerial surveillance service, he added.
Tony Smith, a former director-general of the Border Force, said the use of sea routes by people smugglers was a new development. “Up until fairly recently, the main route of entry has not been through maritime areas,” he said.
“What we really need is integrated border management. We need these agencies [the coastguard, the navy, police forces and the Border Force] working together, led by intelligence, so that we have sufficient resource in place to interdict where we need to.”
The committee report said heightened security at major ports and airports meant that people smugglers and other criminal gangs were increasingly turning to small ports and airports. It calls for security at these sites to be tightened “as a matter of urgency”.
“Europe’s efforts to address this colossal refugee crisis have been lamentable,” said Keith Vaz, the Labour MP who chairs the home affairs committee , after a year-long investigation.
There were 1.25m first-time applications for asylum in EU countries in 2015, the report said, more than double the number in 2014. More than half of these were from Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi nationals. The UK received 38,370 first-time asylum applications in 2015 – 3.1% of the EU total.
The report described the approach taken by the former foreign secretary Philip Hammond towards Libya as complacent and said the EU-Turkey agreement reached this year was “a partial solution at best”, which raised serious humanitarian, human rights, logistical and legal concerns.
The report concluded that it was unlikely that Britain would reach the target set by the former prime minister last year of resettling 20,000 Syrian refugees the camps on the borders of Syria by 2020, though this claim is disputed by the Local Government Association.
Cameron announced that target after an outpouring of support for the plight of Syrian refugees last summer, particularly after the death of three-year-old Alan Kurdi.
At the time, Cameron said: “Britain should fulfil its moral responsibility to help those refugees.” However, the proposed number to be taken under the scheme was condemned by some, given the extent of need.
From the time of the announcement until March 2016, 1,602 Syrians have been resettled under the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, which is particularly aimed at helping women and girls, survivors of violence and torture, children and adolescents, refugees with medical needs and disabilities and those at risk due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
More than 600 of the Syrians have been resettled in Scotland. In England, Yorkshire and the Humber and the West Midlands have taken the most.
The shadow home secretary, Andy Burnham, accused the government on Wednesday of failing to keep its promise to take in refugees.
David Simmonds, of the Local Government Association, however, disputed the suggestion that Britain was not on track to meet the designated target, describing the report as “out of date”.
He added: “The government made it clear that they would bring in a large group of Syrians before Christmas, then have a pause while they reviewed the logistics. Since then, it’s clear there are sufficient offers from local councils to meet that will reach the 20,000. We are in the hands of government and UNHCR about when they arrive.”
The report was also highly critical of the situation in the Calais refugee camp, where it said thousands of people who were entitled to humanitarian protection and whose claims should be processed in the UK” were kept in appalling conditions.
The committee also suggested that the 157 unaccompanied children in Calais who had family in the UK should be accepted into the country, despite concerns that doing so might create a “pull factor” and encourage more unaccompanied minors to make the journey.
The recommendation comes just a day after the Home Office won an appeal against a landmark ruling that allowed four Syrian refugees living in the main camp in Calais to come to the UK.
Lisa Doyle, the head of advocacy at the Refugee Council, said that while it was encouraging that the report suggested the government should go to greater efforts to reunite families, the government should be doing more. “Across Europe, children who are travelling alone are living in appalling conditions and are exposed to exploitation and abuse,” she said.
The report showed wide regional variations in the number of Syrian refugees resettled in each local authority between October 2015 and March 2016. Scotland resettled 610; Yorkshire and the Humber 171; the West Midlands 159. London took just 33; and the north-west none.
Peter Barnett, head of the council’s resettlement programme in Coventry which has resettled more Syrians than any other local authority in the country, said that if the government’s target were to be met 20,000 more local authorities needed to sign on.“It’s for each locality to think about what they can contribute. In places like Coventry, we’re a diverse multicultural city.”
The Home Office said: “We support the principle of family unity and already have several routes for families to be reunited safely. Under our family reunion policy we have granted around 22,000 family reunion visas over the past five years – reuniting many refugees with their immediate family.”