LORD Bassam of Brighton has become the first senior British politician to open his home to a Syrian refugee after a trip to the Jungle refugee camp moved him to tears.

Steve Bassam, the Labour Party’s Chief Whip in the Lords, took in the 28-year-old asylum-seeker five months ago.

He told The Argus he had opened up about his and his wife’s generosity in order to encourage more to to do the same.

He said: “I don’t think the British government is doing enough to help.

“There are a lot of people who have got the capacity and the capability to help, and are concerned, and I would simply encourage others to do what we’ve done.”

In June of last year the 63-year-old peer and his wife Jill took a trip to the Jungle refugee camp in Calais.

Writing after the trip in the New Statesman, Lord Bassam said: “I’ve seen many things that have shocked, appalled or angered me. But nothing prepares you for what you see at the Calais refugee camp.”

Yesterday he told The House parliamentary magazine that he and his wife had a “lovely” young Syrian woman living with them for around five months.

He said: “She managed to get out of Syria to do a masters degree and she’s finishing that and she has now, partly with our help, managed to make an asylum application.

“So I think that’s been a really positive thing.”

The young masters student will be moving out of his semi-detached house in Brighton shortly, having had her asylum application approved.

She will be living in shared accommodation with friends in London.

Lord Bassam said he and his wife had some space in their modest home because two of their children have moved to London and the third is currently living away at university.

He also hit out at the Government’s decision to close a scheme, named after its founder Lord Dubs, by which unaccompanied minors fleeing the Syrian war are given accommodation in the UK.

He said: “I’m really very disturbed by the way the Government’s policies developed over refugees and their inability to grapple with the overwhelming humanitarian need of the kids. It really distresses me. That’s why one of my political superheroes is Alf Dubs.”

Campaigners originally hoped 3,000 children could be helped but only 350 have been housed so far and the Government has now stopped the programme.

Yesterday the Government narrowly defeated a backbench measure intended to restart the Dubs scheme.

An amendment by Tory backbencher Heidi Allen which would have forced councils to disclose the numbers of children they had taken in - with a view to finding spare capacity in some areas of the country - was voted down by 287 votes to 267.

When coverage of the migration crisis hit its peak in late 2015 a number of senior figures including SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and then-Labour frontbencher Yvette Cooper publicly said they would be willing to take Syrian refugees into their homes in response to the crisis.

However no other politician is believed actually to have done so.