BRITAIN should take in 50,000 Syrian refugees, Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, has said.

The estimated £4.3 billion cost of the initiative would be paid back over time by the taxes and hard work of those who settle in Britain, he argued.

"The United Kingdom has taken a pitiful number of people and only done it under extreme pressure, when the Government has been made to feel under pressure.

"This is Britain doing what Britain always should have done in being a place of sanctuary.

"For all that we focus on Brexit, and lots of other things as well, the biggest humanitarian crisis facing our continent is still going on and Britain is turning its back and pretending it's not happening,” he declared.

"If you show confidence in people and give them sanctuary they become very loyal citizens. We are only talking about 50,000 people. We are talking about doing what is right," stressed Mr Farron.

He insisted that the move, along with reopening the programme to settle lone child refugees, would be fully costed in the Lib Dem manifesto.

The Lib Dem leader, who was visiting a refugee charity in Gloucestershire, said the numbers of new arrivals would be absorbed over five years.

The current Government programme aims to take in 20,000 refugees from the Syrian conflict by the end of the decade.

At the refugee charity, Mr Farron urged the UK Government to put more resources into teaching new arrivals English so they could find work and contribute to society through taxes.

Iman Nabout, who fled Syria with her husband and two children, cried as she told the party leader how happy and thankful she was to be in the UK.

Mr Farron, who played table football with a refugee at the charity centre, said the UK must show the same moral leadership over Syria as it did when taking in survivors of Nazi concentration camps in 1945.