UK not to take part in migrant 'burden sharing' scheme proposed by EU ministers
Nick Clegg has backed a decision by the home secretary, Theresa May, not to open Britain's borders to migrants fleeing the turmoil in Libya and North Africa.
Instead the Liberal Democrat leader said Italy should be offered practical assistance in helping those refugees and migrants who manage to complete the dangerous journey from Libya across the Mediterranean.
On Thursday May is to confirm Britain's rejection of calls to take part in a European-wide "burden-sharing" scheme when she meets EU interior ministers in Brussels to discuss the north African situation.
The Guardian revealed earlier this week that European military units apparently failed to rescue 61 migrants who died after their boat ran into trouble en route to the Italian island of Lampedusa in late March. Clegg told a 60th anniversary celebration of the work of the Refugee Council in London that no one was going to accept the sight of people dying at sea. But he did not want Britain to take part in any "burden-sharing" scheme, describing it as a "some sort of version of pass the parcel. We want to make sure that every effort is made the conflict comes to an end in the first place," he said. "Obviously working with the Italians to provide practical support to those who have fled to their towns and cities is another way."
Clegg paid tribute to the 1951 UN convention on refugees, saying it had saved millions of lives and adding that "the measure of any civilised society is how it treats the voiceless".
He said more than 3,000 of the world's most vulnerable refugees had been settled in Britain under the UK gateway protection programme since its inception in 2002.
"I know from the experiences of my own family the openness at the heart of this nation. My Dutch mother spent part of her childhood in a prisoner of war camp in Indonesia. My father's mother fled the Russian Revolution and made her way across Europe. Neither had to seek refuge here – they were luckier than that, and both ended up marrying British husbands. But they nonetheless made their homes and built their lives in a welcoming Britain."
Clegg said since the election the coalition had ended the "scandal" of locking-up children for immigration reasons and the practice of deporting gays and lesbians to countries where they feared persecution for their sexual orientation.