Alistair Carmichael has written a coldly furious article for the New Statesman about the vote last night when the Government defeated the Lords’ Amendment to the Immigration Bill which would have seen this country do its duty and take a relatively small number of child refugees.

Just last week, we saw the Government feign compassion to draw away attention from the calls for accepting 3,000 children, through their own announcement which completely sidestepped the issue of child refugees in danger within Europe, where Europol has estimated that as many as 10,000 unaccompanied children on the continent have disappeared, and will be spread out over four years to water down an already disappointing figure. They then went one step further by implanting a clause meaning that this will be the last time the amendment to accept 3,000 child refugees can be debated. It’s pretty hard to look away from the simple truth that the Government simply doesn’t care about these children.

We can get disappointed by the many wrong decisions the Conservatives are making, be they selfish, misguided or unproductive, but it’s the decisions like the one taken yesterday which really show the Government at its worst and really make me and so many others across our country downright angry. Like cuts to tax credits or employment support allowance, failing to help these refugees is directly putting lives in grave danger.

Providing a safe home for these children, separated from their families and in desperate circumstances, was easily achievable, he said:

However it’s imperative that, as politicians, we do care and when this year alone approximately 171,000 refugees decided water was safer than land and made the treacherous crossing across the Mediterranean, it’s our duty to provide a sustainable solution to deliver help for the most vulnerable. The amendment which was voted on last night would have allowed a small number of child refugees into the UK, a number which our country could have easily handled. The Liberal Democrats carried out a consultation with experts and charities to provide a blueprint for resettling Europe’s child refugees and the clear evidence showed that it was possible. Members from across the House united to try to save these children, having been profoundly moved by their terrifying ordeal.

The Government had an opportunity to show British values at their finest through showing compassion, and upholding the fundamental human rights which all people, young and old and across the world deserve. Instead it ignored its neighbours, the calls from charities but most importantly ignored these children.

You can read Alistair’s whole article here.

I still can’t get out of my mind that there are nearly 100,000 unaccompanied children already in Europe and our government couldn’t even take 3% of them. Each one of us, even if we don’t have children ourselves, has some in our lives as friends or family members. We would hope that, if they ever found themselves in that situation, alone, living in a refugee camp with no school, no support and at risk of all sorts of exploitation, the powerful would take action to look after them.

We can at least be proud of Tim Farron who has led the calls for us do more to help these 3000 children, who has visited the camps where they are several times. I was also very moved by speeches by Yvette Cooper and Dr Tania Matthias in the short bit of the debate I was able to watch last night.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings