UK's Lords slam government's Brexit bill over child migrants

UK's Lords slam government's Brexit bill over child migrants

SeattlePI.com

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LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Parliament has Prime Minister Boris Johnson to rethink part of his key Brexit bill and restore a promise to reunite child refugees with family members in the U.K.

Parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, voted 300-220 on Tuesday to ensure that post-Brexit Britain will continue letting unaccompanied migrant children elsewhere in Europe join relatives living in the U.K.

The promise was made in 2018 by former Prime Minister Theresa May but removed from the Brexit legislation after Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives won a big parliamentary majority in an election last month.

Alf Dubs, a Labour Party member of the Lords who came from Nazi-occupied Europe to Britain as a child refugee, said the government was sending a “very negative” signal.

He implored it not to use migrant children as "bargaining chips" in the negotiations on future relations between the European Union and the U.K.

“If the government wants to disprove the accusation that it is mean and nasty, then surely the thing to do is to accept the amendment,” Dubs said.

The prime minister's office said the government would not accept any changes the House of Lords makes to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which sets out the terms of Britain’s departure from the 28-nation bloc at the end of the month.

The government says it intends to continue resettling child migrants in Britain after the country leaves the EU but argues that the issue does not belong in the withdrawal bill,

The vote marked the bill's fourth defeat in the House of Lords. The measure must be passed by both houses of Parliament before Jan. 31 if the U.K. is to leave the EU on schedule. The chamber's members, known as peers, voted Monday for amendments to bolster the rights of EU citizens in...

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