UK doing more to help refugees than other EU countries, says Shropshire MP

Shrewsbury and Atcham MP Daniel Kawczynski spoke amid criticism by Labour's Andy Burnham.

The leadership hopeful said the UK Government has "done nothing but bury its head in the sand and deploy dehumanising language to describe desperate people".

Mr Burnham accused the Government of "a dangerous absence of leadership on the world stage" over the refugee issue.

"This is a humanitarian crisis, not just a tedious inconvenience for British holidaymakers, as our Government might have us believe," the Labour leadership candidate said.

The movement of migrants into Europe shows no sign of stopping.

Two ships carrying more than 4,200 people yesterday travelled to the Greek port of Piraeus after leaving Lesbos island – and more were expected today. The whole EU is struggling to deal with an unprecedented influx of migrants.

Some 2,000 people, mostly from the Middle East, remain stranded outside a railway station in Hungary after police stopped them travelling through the EU. The EU's border control agency, Frontex, says 23,000 migrants arrived in Greece last week alone – an increase of 50 per cent on the previous week.

More than 160,000 people have arrived in Greece this year – already surpassing last year's total. But in a reminder of the dangers they face, at least 11 migrants, believed to be Syrians, were feared drowned after two boats sank as they left Turkey for the Greek island of Kos.

The debate is now on about how the EU should deal with the crisis collectively. Greece's government says it lacks the resources to look after that many arrivals, but aid groups say authorities should be doing more.

Mr Kawczynski, who sits in the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, today dismissed the criticism, adding: "The trouble is there are a lot of European Union countries are that not stepping up to the plate.

"Europe is being judged as a whole. Actually, countries like Germany are playing their part as it said it expects to accept 800,000 asylum seekers this year and Sweden says Syrian citizens will be given asylum. Yet you have Slovakia and some of the central eastern European countries that are guilty of not doing their fair share.

"Slovakia has said it will only take refugees that are Christian because they don't have have any mosques, which I don't think is appropriate."

Mr Kawczynski said economic migrants needed to be assessed over those fleeing persecution from Syria.

He said: "Amnesty International says the United Kingdom has a responsibility to help those in need.

"The UK has done more than many EU countries to provide safety and a safe haven. I don't think that's a question but you have to remember we are a small island and we are actually due to overtake Germany's population by 2020.

"Surely it's the larger countries with decreasing populations that would want more people coming in."

However Mr Kawczynski said he doesn't think enough is being done in Britain and across the EU to scrutinise the differences between genuine asylum seekers and economic migrants.

"There has to be a laser-like, effective scrutiny at every port of entry to determine who is a genuine asylum seeker and who is pretending to be. Otherwise people's inherent desire to help will be dampened if they don't see scrutiny," he said.

Stephen Mayer, a German spokesman for Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU alliance, said Britain's refusal to take in more refugees could hurt David Cameron's plans to renegotiate the country's relationship with the European Union.

Mr Mayer said Britain's insistence that it is "out of the club" in sharing the burden of the thousands of refugees and migrants entering Europe could harm its relationship with Germany and the Prime Minister's ambitions to win back powers from Brussels.

Germany has said it expects to accept 800,000 asylum seekers this year whereas Britain received 25,771 asylum applications in the year ending June 2015, according to the Home Office.

Mr Mayer said Britain must help to ease the "huge humanitarian catastrophe" or Mr Cameron could lose support for his renegotiation plans.

He added: "I have always had sympathy and understanding for the British role in the EU and the demands for renegotiation.

"But we are now in such a huge humanitarian catastrophe, I do not have any sympathy or understanding for one-country-orientated positions."

John Whitelegg from the South Shropshire Green Party said all MPs and councillors should respond to the current humanitarian crisis.

He said: "We want to see the total number of migrants that will come to Britain to be proportionately allocated so that every parliamentary constituency and every county including Shropshire takes its fair share.

"This is a severe test of European and UK civilisation and ethical behaviour. If the UK responds with harshness and repression and turns people away we will lose credibility as a nation that can lead the world on human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

"It is also a test for all our MPs and councils. We desperately need all MPs and all councillors to respond to the challenges, declare their support for taking in these people and mobilise whatever is needed to make this happen.

"We are convinced that the people of Shropshire are up to this task."