MORE than 300 lawyers, including a former Supreme Court president, have condemned the government’s offer to take in just 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years as “too low, too slow and too narrow.”

Nine retired judges, including Lord Phillips, who was the first head of the Britain’s highest court, are among 343 signatories who said yesterday that “people fleeing persecution have a moral and legal entitlement to protection.”

But EU member states including Britain were making it “impossible” for people to access these rights, they said.

“The EU’s ‘Dublin’ system, under which asylum-seekers are compelled to apply to the first member state in which they land, is dysfunctional,” they said, calling on the bloc to suspend it.

The lawyers said Britain should adopt “humane family reunion policies” that would allow child refugees to be joined by adult relatives.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said Britain should be “proud” of its response to the refugee crisis.