The mayors of Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and the Liverpool and Sheffield city regions have said they will welcome Afghan refugees but that those fleeing persecution must be fairly distributed around the country.
In an interview with Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday, Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, said: “We of course – as always – stand ready to help and to welcome people here who need our help, but it does need to be fair to places like Greater Manchester. ”
Steve Rotheram, the mayor of the Liverpool city region, said refugees were welcome in Liverpool with “no caveats”.
He said: “We would quite like the government to do things properly but that shouldn’t be a caveat to restrict what we would like to achieve. There are going to be issues that arise from [welcoming Afghan asylum seekers] and what we want to do is bring people with us. There are the Twitter loons who are saying ‘this is going to cost everyone a gazillion pounds’ and ‘they are going to take our housing and our jobs and our wives’ but that’s utter nonsense.”
Everybody in the country should play their part, he emphasised, saying many of the Afghans “are people who have been assisting our country”.
Tracy Brabin, the mayor of West Yorkshire, said the whole country needed to support Afghans in need. “West Yorkshire will play its part. We will not turn our backs on people who are going through this devastating crisis. However, the government must play its part too,” she said. “The government must ensure a fair, robust and coordinated response, as well as provide local councils with the right financial support and resources.”
In the Sheffield city region, the mayor, Dan Jarvis, an Afghan army veteran, said the UK had a moral duty to welcome refugees. He said: “The government must now work closely with local authorities, both to make sure the resources are in place to accommodate refugees and that there will be a fair distribution across the country, with everyone doing their bit.”
Mark Drakeford, the Labour first minister of Wales, also made clear refugees were welcome in Wales. “We want Wales to be a nation of sanctuary and we’ll do everything we can to support evacuations from Afghanistan. We’re working with the Home Office and councils on preparations to support those who need it,” he tweeted.
Burnham said the Home Office had recently broken a promise not to house asylum seekers in hotels. “We had a situation recently where one of our councils was notified at 4pm a day before 160 people arrived. Now, that’s not fair to those people who are coming but nor to the places they are going, because you just cannot put together the provision.”
The council in question was Salford, which earlier this summer received less than 24 hours’ notice of the imminent arrival of 160 asylum seekers, mostly Afghans who had been rescued while crossing the English Channel. All were placed in one hotel in a busy location.
“We complained to the Home Office because they were placed in an area of very high footfall, with few amenities and the responsibility fell on us to do all of their health checks,” said a spokesperson for Paul Dennett, the mayor. “Soon there was a Covid outbreak and a TB outbreak in the hotel … The Home Office apologised – and then two weeks later did the exact same thing in Wigan.”
