THE UK should double the amount of refugees it takes in under resettlement programmes, the United Nations has urged.
A senior official at the UN’s refugee agency said accepting around 10,000 refugees a year would be a “step change” for the UK.
Equalities Secretary Angela Constance said the Scottish Government echoed the sentiment, that the UK could and “should do more”.
Volker Turk, assistant commissioner at the UN High Commission for Refugees, said there was a need for countries around the world to “step up” to address the crisis.
The Government has committed to take in 20,000 refugees by 2020 under a scheme set up to cover people fleeing the Syrian conflict.
Between the start of October 2015 and the end of March 2017, 7,055 people have been resettled under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme.
One in four of these, a total of 1,800 people have made Scotland their home.
A total of 29 local authorities have received people fleeing the war-town country. Some of the first to arrive, selected from refugee camps in the Middle East, have found a new home on Bute.
Equalities Secretary Angela Constance said: “Scotland has a long history of welcoming refugees and asylum seekers from all over the world.
“We have welcomed over 1,800 refugees through the Syrian resettlement programme - nearly a quarter of all those who have come to the UK according to the latest Home Office statistics.
“We have always said that Scotland will do everything we can to help in this humanitarian crisis and we agree with the UN that the UK Government can and should do more.”
Mr Turk, who was in London for talks with ministers, said he hoped the Government’s response would be “significantly” expanded after 2020, saying “it would be a doubling”.
Mr Turk urged the Government to do more to end detention of asylum seekers and to hit out at “irresponsible” rhetoric from Western politicians.
He said he wanted to see “significant numbers” of refugees offered the chance of a new life in the UK after 2020, with a resettlement programme open to people fleeing trouble spots around the world, not just Syria.
After his talks with ministers he said: “We had good discussions about possible ideas about what can be done post-2020 and the Government is open to discussing this and to learn the lessons from what is ongoing at the moment.
“We hope very much that there will be a regular resettlement programme by Britain past 2020 in significant numbers.”
The aspiration was for it to cover 10,000 refugees or more, effectively doubling the current rate.
He added: “It would be a step change, it would not just be related to Syria. It would look at where the urgent situations are, to have a certain flexibility in responding to them. I think we have to be very honest about the need for countries to contribute and to step up.”
Mr Turk praised the response of communities which had already received refugees saying some rural areas had been “revived” by the new arrivals.
He said he was “very encouraged by the reaction in Britain, by communities at grassroots level”.
“I’m so amazed when I hear about rural areas in Britain that actually they are so happy that people come to them,” he said.
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