This let-down showed the Conservative Party doing what it does best – promising the Earth and delivering excrement.

We were told any number up to 30 Conservative MPs were likely to rebel against their own government and support an amendment by their colleague Heidi Allen to restart the ‘Dubs’ scheme for refugee children.

And how many actually backed up those words with action? Three.

Pathetic.

Not only that; they have damaged the UK government’s reputation: They failed to support the scheme because, although it would have been the right thing to do, their bosses told them not to.

The government has narrowly avoided a Commons defeat on a Tory MP’s amendment which would have forced councils to reveal how many lone child refugees they had the capacity to take, in an attempt to restart the Dubs scheme.

The amendment to the children and social work bill, introduced by the Conservative MP Heidi Allen, was defeated by 287 votes to 267 on Tuesday.

More than two dozen Tories were thought to have been considering voting in favour of the amendment, which would have required every local authority in England to declare their capacity for resettling children, with figures collated at least once a year.

In the end, despite nine Tory MPs signing the amendment, it was backed by just three: Allen, the former education secretary Nicky Morgan and Tania Mattias.

Ministers announced last month that the numbers arriving under the system, introduced through an amendment by the Labour peer Alf Dubs, a former kindertransport refugee, would be capped at 350. This was despite campaigners’ insistence they had been promised that about 3,000 lone refugee children from camps in Europe would be brought to the UK.

The government had argued that councils had no more space to accommodate child refugees from Europe, which has since been disputed by several local authorities.

At the announcement of the vote, Labour MPs shouted “shame” across the benches, watched by child refugee campaigners in the public gallery, including the actors Juliet Stevenson and Toby Jones.

Source: Government defeats attempt to restart Dubs scheme | UK news | The Guardian

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