BRITAIN will provide asylum for unaccompanied child refugees in Europe following David Cameron’s decision yesterday to drop his opposition, avoiding a damaging Commons defeat.

The Prime Minister insisted last week that Britain should only take refugees from camps in Syria and that children who had reached Europe were already in “relative safety.”

But he backed down as Tory MPs prepared to rebel against the government and back a Labour amendment to the Immigration Bill mandating Britain to save children in Europe.

“It is not relatively safe to be pulled into trafficking and prostitution,” Tory rebel Heidi Allen told BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

“That is not the safety that you and I think of when we think of Europe. These children are not safe at all. They need our help.”

Sir Erich Reich, among 10,000 Jewish children saved from the nazis by Britain as part of the Kindertransport, also urged Mr Cameron to reconsider his position in an emotive letter issued yesterday.

“I feel it is incumbent on us to once again demonstrate our compassion and human kindness to provide sanctuary to those in need,” he said.

Announcing the climbdown during Prime Ministers Questions, Mr Cameron said: “We are going to do more for children who were already registered in Europe before the EU-Turkey deal.

“But we must stick to the principle that we shouldn’t be encouraging people to make that perilous journey.”

The government will now accept the amendment by Lord Alf Dubs — a former child refugee who fled from the nazis — when the Immigration Bill is heard in the Commons next week.

The government said it expected the first arrivals “before the end of the year.”

But a spokesman insisted they could not say how many children will be resettled before they checked with councils.

And only children registered as asylum-seekers in France, Italy or Greece before March 20 — the date the EU-Turkey deal was implemented — will be accepted.

Labour’s refugee taskforce chair Yvette Cooper said the “strength of parliamentary feeling has forced ministers to change their minds.”

But she said the government must turn the amendment into “tangible action” and not try to “fudge” the issue.