Head of Migration Yorkshire says region is ready to take in Afghan refugees

The head of Migration Yorkshire has said that Yorkshire and the Humber are ready to take in refugees from Afghanistan.

Dave Brown told ITV News that some people had already been settled in the region, but that local authorities were ready to accept more.

Mr Brown made the comments ahead of the announcement that the UK will welcome 20,000 refugees fleeing from the Taliban over several years.

He said: "It's a whole society response to this issue, no one alone can do this. But what we do have in this region, in Yorkshire and the Humber, has always been that when we have been in a difficult situation, emergencies like this - humanitarian need - people come together, do the right thing and we're always leading the way on that."

Mr Brown said that the scheme needed to look at "humanitarian needs" and that it shouldn't be a political decision that decides who is granted asylum.

He added that they "simply do not know" how people are going to leave the country and it needed to be made clear if people will be taken out of the country using visas or whether people who have escaped already will then be granted asylum.

In an emergency address to the Commons on Wednesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that 2,052 Afghan nationals have been evacuated so far to the UK.

However, opposition parties have said the plans do not go far enough and are too vague to make a difference.

Evacuation flights carrying British nationals and Afghans have been arriving in the UK with the first evacuation flight including nationals and embassy staff arriving on Sunday night at Brize Norton, a Royal Air Force airbase in Oxfordshire.

A second flight arrived late on Tuesday night, while another landed early on Wednesday morning.