In an article for the Huffington Post, Tim Farron has slammed Theresa May for scrapping the post of Minister for Refugees, a post which was only established by David Cameron last September to make it look like he was doing something.

The minister, amongst other things, oversaw the implementation of Britain’s commitment to take 20,000 Syrian refugees from the region and an additional 3,000 vulnerable refugee children from the Middle East over the course of this Parliament. This process was already moving at a snail’s pace – by the end of March of this year only 1,602 people had been resettled in the UK. Now, with no one holding the ball on this issue you have to wonder how anyone can remain optimistic that we will hit this target.

Arguably this role is more important than ever with the Government’s recent announcement launching a community sponsorship scheme enabling community groups to take on the role of supporting resettled refugees in the UK. Again, this scheme will run across the Home Office, Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for International Development not to mention the hopefully hundreds of charities and faith group and businesses that will be involved. This is a welcome initiative, something my party has been calling for the UK to implement for a long time to allow generous communities to help where they can, but without leadership and an accountable head that can work across the Government departments it is being set up to fail.

The refugee crisis is not going away and the Liberal Democrats will continue to hold the Government to account over their inaction

You can read the whole article here.

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