Ukraine Refugee Visas

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary to make a statement on visas for Ukrainian refugees.

The conflict in Ukraine continues to shock the world. Putin’s invasion is deplorable and he must fail. We stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine and the Ukrainian people at this time. We are determined to help Ukrainians to find safety in the face of Russia’s aggression, and that is why the Government have mounted a comprehensive humanitarian response. In a short time, we have set up two new visa schemes from scratch, made changes to support Ukrainians already in the UK and surged our operations to meet demand.

Under the Ukraine family scheme, more than 23,500 visas have been issued to family members of Ukrainians already here in the UK. After setting up the scheme, we extended it to cover wider family members. Alongside that, we have set up the Homes for Ukraine scheme, to provide a safe and legal route for Ukrainians who do not have existing family ties in the UK. That is led by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) is the Minister who will be updating the House on it shortly. It has been heartwarming to see so many members of the public coming forward as sponsors, and my hon. Friend will be able to outline wider work that is being done to take advantage of those offers. Both those schemes are free and allow people on them to work and access public funds.

We have made it as easy as possible for people to apply. We have simplified the application form to make it quick and easy to use. We have increased capacity in visa application centres across Europe. Following advice from security and intelligence agencies that it was safe to do so, we have removed the need for biometrics to be taken from those with valid Ukrainian passports before arrival in the UK, allowing the vast majority of applicants to apply entirely online. We regularly monitor the scheme’s operational performance, bringing in additional caseworkers to ensure Ukrainian applications are prioritised. Our humanitarian response has involved the whole of Government, local authorities and the devolved Administrations, and we will keep working together to support Ukrainians who want to come to the UK.

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. This visa system is simply not working. It is leaving thousands of families in limbo because of Home Office bureaucracy. A businesswoman who is trying to get her sister and daughter to come here on the family visa scheme is still waiting, 10 days after she applied to the Home Office. A constituent of mine in Pontefract who applied under the Homes for Ukraine scheme has been waiting nearly two weeks to hear anything back from the Home Office. Another British host who applied for a visa for a woman undergoing a high-risk pregnancy has waited 12 days for a reply. Despite the Home Office helpline saying that she would be treated as a priority, that woman has had to travel extensively to complete biometrics in Warsaw and has still received no reply.

A mother and two young sons who had been granted a family visa and were due to travel this week had their visa revoked at the last minute. They had been advised by the visa centre to apply for the Homes for Ukraine scheme as well, so that they could link up with a host family. Now the Home Office has revoked their first visa and said that they cannot travel, and it has told them nothing more about what is going on. This is Kafkaesque. What on earth is going on? Why is the Home Secretary so totally incapable of getting any grip on this, despite repeated questions we have asked?

Can the Minister tell us how many people have actually arrived on the Homes for Ukraine scheme? Why on earth is it too early to tell us? The Government should be able to give us the basic facts. On the family visas, 23,000 have been issued so far, but 25,000 people had already applied and submitted their applications more than two weeks ago, so it is clearly taking at least two weeks to clear cases. Even at the current rate, only 700 family visas have been issued since yesterday. At that rate, it is going to take well over a week just to clear the existing backlog of cases that he accepts have been submitted.

Order. I grant urgent questions, but I do not make the rules, and they say that for each one the Member asking the question has two minutes. You have to stick to that, otherwise I will not be able to grant UQs. Please, can we just stick to the rules?

Apologies, Mr Speaker.

First, it is too early to say how many people have arrived under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, but we are now publishing details of visa grants. By 9am today 3,705 visas had been granted, and the trajectory for visa grants is increasing every day. I remind hon. Members that at one point last week we issued nearly 6,000 family scheme visas in two days. Again, that shows the type of capacity available once we get decisions ready to be made, and we would expect to see a similar increase in trajectory on the Homes for Ukraine scheme.

On the accusation that applications are being deleted, what has actually happened is, first, a removal of duplicates, for example where someone applied initially with biometrics and then did so without biometrics. Where someone did not qualify for the family scheme but they have someone in the UK who would be prepared to sponsor them—such as godparents, for the sake of argument—we transfer this over to the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Members will realise why that is a sensible and proportionate approach to take.

On the accusation about “reams of info”, we have cut back on what people are asked to supply. We do not need authorised translations and people can submit in Ukrainian, with the most basic of documentation: any evidence that shows residence in Ukraine. Again, we are not asking people to give us travel history or previous addresses; we are asking purely for something that shows they were resident in Ukraine in December and that there is a basic family link, if relevant, for the family scheme. We are cutting down the information purely to that which is necessary for vital safeguarding checks.

This is the latest in a number of humanitarian interventions and routes we have created over the past year. We saw the determination to help people in Afghanistan, from which we saw the biggest evacuation since Dunkirk; we saw the British national overseas route delivered, with more than 100,000 applications over the past year; and now we see these two routes for Ukrainians set up in record time, with tens of thousands of people already having visas under them. I just compare that with how the shadow Home Secretary got on with her own pledge to rehome one Syrian refugee.

This is going to be a wonderful scheme and we are all looking forward to welcoming tens of thousands of Ukrainians to this country, but something is going wrong with the scheme right now. Tomorrow, the vast majority of sponsors will have waited two weeks and will not have heard anything at all. We are testing the patience of people in this country who have put themselves forward as sponsors and, much more importantly, we are letting down vulnerable individuals and families in Ukraine. We need to process only about 8,000 households, and we are talking about 20,000 or 30,000 applications in total. That is not a huge or insurmountable task, but it does require the Home Office to make sure that the resources and the leadership are in place to get this sorted. I hope that we have heard today from the Minister that that will now happen in the next few days.

My right hon. Friend is right to say that people want to get on and help. Tens of thousands of people throughout the country have made a very generous offer and they want to be able to extend that and for it to be taken up. We are rightly doing vital safeguarding checks. Sadly, we have had some pings on the police national computer in respect of some of the sponsors who have come forward, and we will need to consider them, but the vast and overwhelming majority of people want to do the right thing.

I appreciate my right hon. Friend’s wish that we go faster. As I have touched on, the rate at which visas are being granted is increasing. As we have seen with the Ukraine family scheme, once people have passed through a number of checks, we can quickly start to issue a large number of visas, which is what we plan to do.

I call the SNP spokesperson.

Four million people are seeking sanctuary, but just 0.6% of them have been offered sanctuary in the UK. That is the inevitable consequence of using a clunky, bureaucratic and, frankly, traumatising visa system to deal with an urgent humanitarian crisis.

Around 140 countries do not require Ukrainians to have a visa before they travel there; we say it should be the same for the United Kingdom. I appreciate that the Government do not want to go as far as that, but why not allow even some Ukrainians—for example, those with biometric passports and children—to travel visa-free? That would free up significant capacity to speed things along. If that is not possible, will the Minister publish the reasons why he thinks it is not? If it is really all about security, why are there any other visa requirements at all? Why not grant a visa to any Ukrainian refugee who applies for one?

Finally, I welcome the Ukraine extension scheme that was announced this week, but it still excludes the possibility of people bringing their family here under the family scheme. A seasonal agricultural worker who switches to that route will still not be able to sponsor their family under the family route. Why not allow that to happen? Why not also allow Ukrainians whose visas expired before January to apply under the extension scheme? Until that changes, the Government are still excluding the possibility of huge swathes of the Ukrainian community here being joined by their families. Allowing that is the least we should be doing.

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s questions and the way he put them. I also appreciate the fact that there is a fundamental difference in respect of our belief, based on the advice we have received, that there needs to be a visa process with safeguarding checks and certain key security checks. We would not usually publish such advice, particularly when it is from intelligence and security agencies, for reasons with which the hon. Gentleman will be familiar.

On the hon. Gentleman’s specific points about the Ukraine extension scheme, provided that the people on that scheme have at least six months’ leave to remain—which they will have—they will be able to sponsor people under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. He gave the particular example of seasonal workers; the bigger challenge there will be to ensure that there is appropriate accommodation. I do not think any of us would advocate that it would be sensible to bring people into the UK without at least having an idea of where they would spend their first night in bed.

We have worked with the Scottish Government on their super-sponsor scheme, which allows someone who does not have a sponsor to come here, with the Scottish Government in effect becoming their sponsor here in the UK. Applications for that scheme have been received and we have been pleased to work on it with the Scottish Government and, in particular, with Neil Gray, to whom I pay tribute from the Dispatch Box for his constructive work.

Strong progress is being made. We have seen what we have already done with the family scheme; we would now expect to see the same trajectory for the Homes for Ukraine scheme. The question asked in the previous session on this issue may perhaps be asked in this one, and we still believe it is right that we do safeguarding checks, particularly given that children will potentially come to live with adults they have not previously met.

The experience that I have had in Christchurch, where we have already welcomed some Ukrainians who have arrived, has been much more positive. I thank the Minister and his team for being so accommodating towards MPs who raise particular issues. Will he encourage individuals and families who want to take advantage of the schemes and are finding bureaucratic problems to contact their MPs? Everyone who has contacted me has had a satisfactory result.

I am pleased to hear of the results that my hon. Friend has been able to achieve for his constituents, as he always does. It is good to see people arrive and to see communities such as Christchurch stepping up and doing their bit. It is encouraging that we have seen offers coming in from throughout the UK, rather than just from areas that have had, let us say, more of a tradition of taking part in the local government-based resettlement schemes. It is very good to hear of my hon. Friend’s experience. I have had constituent contact, as I am sure other colleagues have. MPs from all parties are doing their bit to advance cases when they are contacted.

I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.

I really do not understand why the Minister says that it is too early to know how many have arrived on the Homes for Ukraine scheme, because he has also just said that it is very important that the Home Office knows where people spend their first night in the UK. Perhaps he will be able to enlighten us on when he will be able to tell us the numbers.

As an example of the ongoing problems with bureaucracy, may I just tell the Minister about the case of Anna Kalyata? She has just given birth in temporary accommodation in Poland, having fled Ukraine. She does not speak English and, even though she has been matched under the sponsorship scheme, she has been told that she needs to have a birth certificate for the baby to allow the baby to get a visa. She is in a foreign country, traumatised by war and is now thinking of going back to Ukraine to register the birth. Surely the Home Office can have a more compassionate response to women, children and babies.

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for her question. It would not be appropriate for me to go into an individual case on the Floor of the House. Certainly, we are able to process children. We are conscious that some children, including some who have arrived from Ukraine, will not have any documentation. I am happy to look at the particular example that she has cited, but she should appreciate that there are particular issues, as touched on in the previous urgent question, about children being removed particularly from Poland and the border countries, which is why we have to go through certain checks.

It is quicker than getting a driving licence—I will give the Minister that. The service provided in Portcullis House is excellent. I took a case down there this morning. The person called up the record. It was received on 19 March. All the information is there and correct. It is simply awaiting a decision. Now that is disappointing, is it not?