Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said on Wednesday children who registered in Greece, Italy or France before March 20 – when the European Union struck a deal to return many migrants to Turkey – would be eligible to come to the UK without specifying how many.
The government said the retrospective nature of the scheme would avoid creating a “perverse incentive” for families to entrust their children to people traffickers.
The UK currently takes children from refugee camps in Syria and its neighbours but there has been pressure to take some who are already in the EU.
Britain has already agreed to resettle up to 3,000 vulnerable child refugees from the Middle East and Africa by 2020, as well as 20,000 Syrians from Middle Eastern refugee camps.
But the government had argued that accepting children already in Europe would encourage others to make the dangerous journey.
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