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PM’s claim UK has taken more refugees than any country in Europe debunked in viral vid

Leading British aid agencies have launched a joint fundraising appeal to help more than 750,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine as the Russian invasion “turns lives upside down”.

The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), a group of 15 charities, began the effort on Thursday, with one member executive describing the situation as one of the most “heartbreaking” he had ever seen.

It comes as the PM claimed in yesterday’s PMQs that the UK has taken more refugees since 2015 than any other country in Europe.

However, Germany, for example, made more positive asylum decisions in 2019 alone (over 70,000) than the UK did in the six years from 2015 to 2020 combined (just under 66,000), as was reported by Channel 4 fact check back in November last year.

And attitudes shown by certain Tory MPs this week show that the party is hardly pro-refugee.

Video

Now a viral video by filmmaker Peter Stefanovic, seen almost 800,000 times, has slammed the PM for making more spurious claims in Parliament.

Above the post, he wrote: “Boris Johnson just defended his petty & mean spirited response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis by telling MP’s UK has taken more refugees since 2015 than any other country in Europe NOT TRUE! Germany took in more in a single year in 2019 than the UK did in 6 years from 2015 to 2020!”

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Related: PMQs – Ukrainian ambassador left to mull, ‘with friends like these, who needs enemies?’

Joe Mellor

Head of Content

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