THE government’s failure to resettle child refugees in Britain despite there being spaces available is an “ideological decision,” the head of a fostering agency charged today.

Tact Care chief executive Andy Elvin said that fostering agencies have repeatedly informed the Tories of dozens of available spaces for child refugees. 

These offers, including 25 spaces at Tact Care, have all been ignored, Mr Elvin said. 

“The Home Office could easily accommodate its obligations to offer sanctuary to vulnerable minors,” he explained in an article in the Guardian. 

“Its response has nothing to do with capacity. It’s essentially an ideological decision they are making. 

“It’s not one based on child welfare or our ability to do it as a country. It’s that they don’t want to do it. We’ve told the Home Office, but they are not interested.”

The available spaces are in addition to 1,400 offers from local councils to house child refugees – which have also been ignored. 

This flies in the face of the government’s commitment to reunite 480 child refugees stranded in Europe with family members in Britain under the Dubs amendment scheme. 

Refugee rights campaigners battled with the government since the amendment was passed in 2016 to stop ministers wriggling out of the commitment. 

In 2017, the Home Office tried to limit the number further, capping it at just over 100, claiming that there were no available spaces to accommodate child refugees. 

Councils across the country quickly refuted the claim, saying that they had hundreds of households willing to take in displaced children. 

Mr Elvin’s searing criticism of the Home Office comes shortly after the government scrapped legal protections for child refugees in a separate commitment. 

Labour frontbencher Keir Starmer described the move as “a moral disgrace.” 

He tweeted: “Ministers have the power to right this wrong. This is their test – and I would urge them to do the right thing.” 

The Home Office refuses to reveal how many children have been reunited with their families under the Dubs amendment, but, as of last December, only 20 had been resettled. 

The government insists that it is committed to the Dubs scheme and that safeguarding vulnerable children will remain a priority after Britain leaves the European Union.