Over the last year there has been a lot of talk about refugees in the UK, much of it based on the politics of fear. Newport, in particular, has seen is fair share of wolf whistle politics around the issue. “1 refugee for every 319 people” is the latest attention grabbing figures in the South Wales Argus. I don’t blame the editor though, in fact his editorial on the issue, although not a position I fully agreed with, was at least honest and brought some humanity to the issue.
What is often forgotten is that for years refugees weren’t distributed around the UK, they were concentrated in the South East costing the government a huge amount of money on private housing. The decision to distribute refugees was made in Westminster, last time Labour were in power, to reduce the costs to the government finances. This was a decision that even our own wolf whistle politician, Paul Flynn MP, voted in favour of.
The truth is that, in Newport, it is only 0.3% of the population that are refugees. A tiny fraction, we are told, that is putting undue pressure on our health service and on our schools, but any system that can’t handle an increase of 0.3% has much deeper rooted problems. Take a look at the Royal Gwent Hospital, as an example. It is overstretched, with A&E based out of Portakabins. For years, Labour have been telling us it is going to be replaced with a new Critical Care Centre, but every announcement seems to be about another delay. The creaking infrastructure is not due to an increase of less than 500 people in a population of 147,000. It is a symptom of many years of under-funding and poor political leadership from the Welsh Assembly. Newport’s population is growing much faster from commuters than it is ever likely to from refugees.
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