My Lords, I declare my interests as per the register. I am pleased to welcome my noble friend Lord Harrington of Watford, who brings with him valuable experience from another place and is taking on important responsibilities at a grave moment. I look forward to his maiden speech and to his work on behalf of refugees, at a time when one in 10 people worldwide is displaced by conflict, persecution or disaster.
This debate is very close to my heart: 30 years ago today, Sarajevo, the capital of the country in which I was born and brought up, was attacked by the Yugoslav and later the Bosnian Serb army. It was besieged for 1,425 days, and 11,541 civilians were killed, of whom 1,601 were children. On an average day, 329 mortar shells fell on the city, which was cut off from electricity, food and water—and from the rest of the world. Almost 100,000 people died across Bosnia-Herzegovina during three and a half years of war. Crimes against humanity and genocide were committed, and over 1 million Bosnians became refugees. I was one of them. I hoped never to see similar scenes in another European country—yet, as we speak, Mariupol is enduring its 42nd day of bombardment and a quarter of the Ukrainian population is displaced, inside Ukraine or as refugees.
No one wants to become a refugee or to leave their home; it is a journey of fear, uncertainty, peril and loss. This country welcomed me and has given me extraordinary opportunities. It is a privilege to stand here today; it is something that I love and am deeply proud of. But I would much rather I were not here, had never been a refugee and had never been forced to leave my country of birth. I would much rather I were teaching English in Bosnia after a life of peace, as I had imagined and hoped, than speaking here, after an experience of war. I know that Ukrainians fleeing today will wish nothing more than to be able to live in safety and stability in Ukraine and for the international community to find ways to stop the aggression that has been unleashed upon them.
In the light of that experience, and of mine, I urge the Government to intensify their efforts in six areas in particular. First, on visas routes for Ukrainians coming to Britain, we should continue to expand our visa schemes so that they are as broad and generous as is possible and safe. All Ukrainians in the United Kingdom should be able to use the family visa route to bring their relatives to this country. All Ukrainians in the United Kingdom should have the same leave to remain, and non-Ukrainians who were permanent residents in Ukraine, and were displaced by the conflict, should also be entitled to refugee status in the United Kingdom.
I welcome my noble friend’s commitment to simplifying and speeding up visa processing. Security checks are absolutely necessary but must be as fast and as easy as possible. Research by the University of Birmingham has shown that the longer women in particular are without access to housing and resources, the more vulnerable they are to sexual and gender-based violence. Speeding up the process is a matter of basic safety.
My Lords, I have in general given strong support to the Government’s response to Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression against its neighbour, Ukraine, but when it comes to our handling of the massive outflow of refugees, often fleeing for their lives, which I would characterise so far as being somewhere between inadequate and abject, I can only express my great gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, for securing this debate and say how moved I was by the personal experience that she brought to her introduction to the debate—she put forward several points that I will endorse strongly in my remarks. I hope that this debate may perhaps mark a turning point in what has so far been a sorry story, which I hope will improve.
In being so critical, I do not wish to load blame on the noble Lord, Lord Harrington, whose maiden speech later this afternoon we await with interest. Since his belated ministerial appointment, he seems to have struck all the right notes but, alas, there is still a big gap between rhetoric and reality. Not so long ago we were being told by the Government about the benefits of taking back control of our borders from the EU. Well, our control over immigrants from Ukraine, still and always a third country for the EU, was as real when we were in the EU as it is now, but the EU has risen most creditably to the challenge posed by the exodus from Ukraine with its temporary waiver of visas and with wholehearted and massive relief schemes. What have we done? We have issued 50-page forms to be filled in and admitted a mere trickle of refugees. Is this bureaucratic cat’s cradle necessary? Is it even effective? After all, Ireland, as part of the EU, has waived any visa requirement on Ukrainians and since we are in a common travel area with Ireland this would seem to be a rather obvious loophole. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that.
Then there was the issue that has come up several times in Statements on this subject: security. For a considerable time, the Government led us to believe—perhaps they believed it themselves—that our visa requirements were protecting our national security against spies, infiltrators and so on. Then last week the Minister, in what I thought was an extremely frank and helpful clarification, said that it was nothing to do with that at all and that it was about protecting Ukrainian refugees from being preyed on by human traffickers.
My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, for securing this extremely important debate. I want to do something slightly different from the direction she gave us and ask a simple question. We know we have had Ukrainian refugees and that they have been victims of harassment and persecution. What else do we need to know and why? In other words, we have had many refugees throughout our history—Ugandans, Afghans and others—and if you add them up you build up quite a total. Ukrainian refugees will, in due course, become an undistinguishable part of that. Is that what we want? I suggest that we want to identify Ukrainian refugees as a distinct historical group with distinct historical experiences, which need to be remembered and will always be remembered, thanks to the efforts of people like us and others. Their identity should not be lost.
My first point is that, wherever there is a war or a crisis, there are refugees. This one is no exception. The question to ask is: what kind of refugees are they? What do they bring with them? What have they suffered for which they have paid this price? Why have they evoked this degree of mindless hatred? How can we stretch out a supporting arm?
I want to do two things very quickly. The first may sound rather philosophical, but that is what I am. It is to identify the constitutive characteristics of the Ukrainian refugees. What makes them distinctive from that of other refugees? Secondly, what has been the point of the British Government’s response to this crisis and how satisfactory has it been?
It is striking that this is the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War. The population of Ukraine is 44 million. Some 4 million have left and 6.5 million are displaced within Ukraine, so 10.5 million people out of 44 million—a quarter of the population—have been turned into refugees. No wonder it has been called a level 3 emergency. That is the first thing to bear in mind: the number of refugees represents an incredibly large percentage of the population from which they emanate.
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, for securing this debate and for her powerful opening. I wish the Minister well with his maiden speech. He has had a few dry runs, so expectations are high.
Can the Minister confirm that, as of Sunday, only 1.6% of the 32,000 who have applied to come to the UK from Ukraine had actually arrived? The Government have apparently assumed that refugees are not wanting to move too far away from Ukraine, but it looks increasingly likely that other factors may be the cause. The Telegraph reports cases of permission to travel letters being sent by the Home Office but not being received by the intended recipients. A government spokesperson said that they were aware of a “technical issue”. What is that issue, how many families are affected and has it been resolved?
On Twitter this morning it was alleged that only one member of each family was being granted a visa, meaning that the family, wanting to stay together, was unable to travel to the UK. This was responded to by someone else who said that only two out of three visas for his family had been issued. Is this conspiracy or cock-up? Is this a deliberate move by the Home Office to keep refugees out of the UK or are applications from the same family not being cross-referenced and dealt with together? It appears that, whether by accident or design, the actions of the Home Office are preventing even those granted visas from travelling to the UK. The Home Office estimated on 18 March, when the refugee schemes opened, that it would be able to process 10,000 visas in that first week, but it actually achieved less than one-tenth of that. Can the Minster confirm that he has set a target of 15,000 a week and say when he expects to achieve it?
In the Telegraph today, it is alleged that the Foreign Office is refusing to provide staff to help to process visa applications, saying that it is the Home Office’s problem. It has also been suggested that, despite being offered bonuses to work overtime and rest days, processing is likely to be impacted by staff taking time off over the Easter holidays. Are these factors going to impact on the Minister’s ambitions and are, as has been suggested, things going to get worse before they get better? Can he also confirm that he has set a target of 48 hours to process an application for a mother and child, but that it is currently taking on average a week, and that phase two, whereby organisations and businesses can offer accommodation to Ukrainian refugees, has been delayed until after Easter?
My Lords, I start by congratulating the Minister on his appointment. I was going to say “commiserating”, because I think that he has probably one of the toughest jobs in government at the moment, but I know that he is very hands-on—I am afraid that he will have to be in this job. I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, for this debate and in particular for her opening speech—I was moved by what she said. I agree with everybody else in condemning the appalling acts of the Russian state against the people of Ukraine.
More than 6.5 million people now displaced since February, a death toll that is continuing to climb by the hour, the graphic images of the dead left on street corners and the harrowing reports that rape is being used as a weapon of war bring shame, disgust and anger to us all. Over the weekend, the Prime Minister committed to sending specialist police and military investigators to help the International Criminal Court’s investigations, in the hope that those responsible for these heinous, evil acts may be held to account at The Hague. I very much welcome that recent action, as I am sure does everybody else, and the leadership that the Government have shown in providing solidarity, strength and support to the people of Ukraine. However, as we stand witness to perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis of recent times, it is only right that we do all that we can to support those who are fleeing their homes to find safety, security and solace in the United Kingdom.
As I mentioned in my preamble, women and children who are now arriving in this country have seen things that no human should. How can an adult, let alone a child, forget the images of a burned body flung on the roadside? As we learned over the weekend, those fleeing may have been subjected to brutal acts, and the trauma and post-traumatic stress that they will be suffering are incomprehensible. With this in mind, would the Minister advise the Committee on what arrangements are being made to provide Ukrainian refugees with targeted, specialist mental health provision? I ask this in cautioning that mental health services across the country are already stretched because of the pandemic. The mental health support that the incoming Ukrainians will need cannot be left to the lottery of local provision.
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, for introducing this debate and for her thorough and moving speech. I have watched this from afar and one of the few rays of sunshine has been the appointment of the Minister to his present role. I am only sorry that his maiden speech is at the end of the debate rather than earlier on, because I am sure that we are going to be pleased to hear whatever he says. We welcome him knowing his record and how hard he is currently working and will be working.
The point we are at at the moment takes me back to almost the beginning of my political life, which was Hungary in 1956, when I recall that our community welcomed Hungarian refugees who had come to Britain and were settled. Unlike today, those refugees had no option to go back. They were in Britain and integrated and, of course, they were far fewer in number. When I look at the situation that we are in today, I reflect that we let down former Yugoslavia. What happened there was butchery at the same level as is happening today, a butchery that we thought we would never see in Europe again. I think that we have risen to the challenge this time.
I am astonished at the Russians and their sheer stupidity. The way in which they have acted shows a massive failure of intelligence, humanity and understanding of the international community. We used to have a saying that British military intelligence was a contradiction in terms, but Russian military intelligence does not appear to exist at all. They have got themselves into something that will last certainly for the rest of my life and probably the life of many people in this Room. We are never going to be able to go back.
At a time like this, I am constantly reminded—I will say it, although it is not popular—of the sheer stupidity of leaving the European Union. When we look at the gatherings of European statesmen—we saw one with Boris Johnson when he went to the European Council—we are well outside the room. Whatever we say about NATO—I notice that we are suddenly on about the G7—this is a problem that requires a European dimension to virtually every part. Our act of self-harm is coming home to roost now.
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Helic on securing this most important of debates and I welcome the opportunity to continue to bring to my noble friend the Minister’s attention the case of two young Ukrainian nationals whose ongoing plight has been brought to my attention. I have been in touch with my noble friend and his senior officials on a number of occasions during the past week and have described to them the ongoing battle with this country’s ridiculous and completely unnecessary bureaucratic nightmare which these two young people are experiencing. I am certain that they are not alone in their experience. However, I put on record my thanks to my noble friend’s officials for their courtesy and assistance over the past few days and I congratulate my noble friend in advance of his maiden speech and welcome him to his new appointment —I know that he is extremely hard-working.
I applaud the Government for their laudable Homes for Ukraine scheme and those in this country who have offered to take into the safety of their homes Ukrainian refugees displaced by this appalling, unnecessary and horrific war. I must crave your Lordships’ indulgence while I describe the situation affecting these two young people. It is important and a photographic copy, I suppose, of what is happening to many people over there.
They are a 25 year-old woman and her 15 year-old sister, Olia and Tonya Voropay. Mrs Rachel Hickson, who lives at Cockshutt in Shropshire, contacted me some three weeks ago. She and her mother have long-standing close ties with Ukraine, especially as they know these two sisters. Mrs Hickson applied to take them into her home under the Government’s much-publicised Homes for Ukraine scheme. She was advised by the Home Office that both sisters could apply for visas and the scheme on the same form. They did so. However, the elder sister Olia received her permission to travel letter but the 15 year-old Tonya did not. The sisters’ mother died 10 years ago and they are all but estranged from their father. To all intents and purposes, Olia, aged 25, is the guardian of her younger sibling.
My Lords, like others, I applaud the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, for securing this important debate and I welcome the Minister to his post. He has apologised publicly—it has been in the media—and admitted that the system is not good enough. Many of us fear that, in his well-intentioned work, he might get so worn down that he finds himself mentally unable to function with the burden of what he is carrying on his shoulders. I do not believe that that has happened, but I put that as a warning to those who should perhaps be supporting him, because I worry that he may not be getting enough support.
The noble Earl, Lord Shrewsbury, recounted a story that is repeated in many pieces of correspondence that I have received, including one about a mother and her daughter who have, it seems, probably been tempted into what could be modern slavery in Ireland—contact with them has been lost. A lot of other young people are deeply traumatised. I will quote from the rector of the great academic council from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, who at the beginning of March wrote to Colin Riordon, who is the vice-chancellor of Cardiff University and who supplied me with this letter, to which he replied on 2 March:
“Almost 10,000 Ukrainian students, teachers, and about 500 foreign students are hiding in the basements of dormitories and educational buildings. There are no safe places left in Ukraine.”
Since that letter was written, the situation has deteriorated greatly.
We must be aware that the people in Ukraine are sacrificing themselves to protect freedom and democracy in all of Europe and possibly across the world. When we offer them sanctuary, we must follow that through. The visa process is causing enormous distress to people who are already traumatised. Our official processes must not worsen the health of those already vulnerable and traumatised by what they have experienced. Our border control and authorities should undertake their responsibilities properly by acting to counter all discrimination and mitigate health risks, not worsen them. People will need healthcare services—they need them now—as they have undergone mental and physical traumas. Children have witnessed rape, violence, parents killed in front of them and overwhelming terror the like of which we cannot imagine from the safe haven of these islands where we sit.
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This leads me to my second point, on trafficking and safeguarding. Some 90% of Ukrainian refugees are women and children. Like all displaced persons, they are at increased risk of trafficking, abuse and exploitation. The best way to combat this is to make sure that safe and secure official routes are open, bureaucratic hurdles are reduced and information on how to access those routes is readily available. We should also look to liaise with our European partners and strengthen our joint efforts to combat trafficking, including by urgently making sure that citizens and agencies are aware of risk signs, not at some point in the future but now. Although the vast majority of Homes for Ukraine hosts are generous and genuine, we need to be vigilant. There are always people who seek to exploit suffering for their own ends. Safeguarding checks on hosts need to be thorough. Perhaps my noble friend could look at accelerating enhanced DBS checks. Councils will need additional funding for checks upfront—they need to happen before refugees arrive.
Refugees will be vulnerable, even once here in the United Kingdom. Unaccompanied minors are a particular concern. I welcome the fact that the Department for Education has done work on this and is offering guidance to councils and schools. Safeguarding should not stop once a refugee has arrived. There should be follow-up checks over the coming months. I look to my noble friend to make sure that the safeguarding and anti-trafficking aspects of our response are not forgotten.
Thirdly, we need to make sure that there is comprehensive and ongoing support for refugees in the UK. A refugee is not only in need of physical safety. Many will be traumatised and vulnerable. We need to ensure that psychosocial support is available, both during the first six months and beyond, as refugees establish new lives here in the United Kingdom. I know from my own experience how difficult it is. I remember coming to Britain and how happy and relieved I was, but at the same time how hard it was to get used to peace. The initial euphoria of safety suddenly became a burden: a feeling of guilt that I was safe, but my friends and family were not. When I think about it today, I wonder how my host family coped, and from where they found their understanding, generosity and patience. It is not an easy undertaking. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can offer a commitment on providing support for refugees in processing their ongoing trauma. Specialist mental health support must be available for children in particular, as well as for survivors and witnesses of sexual violence and other atrocities. Schools, health services and local councils are all likely to need additional resources and assistance for arrivals under both visa schemes. We should not overlook the need to support those coming via the family visa route, either.
We all hope that this war will be over swiftly, but it may not. Just as important as speeding up the process now is making sure that our response can be sustained. What will happen in six months’ time, or a year’s? What support will be in place for refugees then, if needed? How are we going to help them find long-term accommodation? Support services will need funding beyond this year. My noble friend’s other responsibility is Afghan refugees, 8,000 of whom are reportedly still living in hotels. It is almost impossible to build a new life like that. I hope that he can tell us what is being done to provide long-term support for Afghans as well as Ukrainians arriving in the United Kingdom.
Fourthly, we should maintain our support for Ukrainian refugees in Europe. Most of them will want to remain close to Ukraine, where their husbands, sons, fathers and brothers are defending their homes and towns. We should continue to offer additional funding to UN agencies, NGOs and directly to Ukraine’s neighbours, who are supporting the great majority of Ukrainian refugees. We should push for third-country nationals displaced by the conflict to receive the same protection as Ukrainians in Europe. The funding we offer must be additional, not reallocated from elsewhere.
Fifthly, we should learn from these crises and apply the lessons to refugees elsewhere. There were 84 million displaced people worldwide before the invasion of Ukraine, more than 26 million of them refugees. It is natural that we play a bigger role in helping refugees from our neighbourhood than from countries further away, but all refugees have a right to protection and around the world too few are able to access the safety which is theirs by right. There are still refugees stuck on the Poland-Belarus border, exploited by Lukashenko, for sure, but also abandoned by democracies.
In the last year, two major crises have led to new refugee schemes in this country—the two schemes for which my noble friend the Minister is responsible—for refugees from Ukraine and Afghanistan. We have also had the BNO visa for British nationals from Hong Kong. I hope that, once Ukrainian refugees are receiving the support they need, my noble friend will reflect on the lessons of these three schemes. We cannot continue to lurch from crisis response to crisis response, improvising schemes which, for all their strengths, have real flaws—the Afghans still in hostels, the Ukrainians going to unprepared hosts and the endless visa process. We need to be better prepared.
I hope we will take the lessons learned from our response to Ukraine and apply them elsewhere. Human Rights Watch and others are calling for an Afghan family reunion scheme, based on the Ukraine family scheme, to allow those who supported our work in Afghanistan to be reunited with their families. Will my noble friend consider that?
If we could put the unity and determination currently on display in the West behind a long-term commitment to resettling serious numbers of refugees in liberal democracies around the world every year, that would be a remarkable achievement and a staunch rebuke of Vladimir Putin’s policies of division and his unconcern for human life.
Sixthly, we should remember that the best thing we can do for refugees in the long term is to prevent so many citizens from having to flee their countries in the first place. Donations are a stop-gap, not an answer. I struggle to think of a conflict in the last decade that we have really succeeded in ending. Fighting goes on in Syria, in Yemen, in Ethiopia, in the Central African Republic, in the Sahel. A fragile UN-brokered ceasefire is holding, just, in Libya, but the situation is still unstable. Our role in Afghanistan has ended in defeat and, of course, war has continued in Ukraine since 2014.
We have to work on solving conflicts rather than providing support around the edges. We must get better at tackling the root causes, not just responding when it is already too late. We should seek to strengthen international institutions where we can and urge our friends and partners to play their part. If those do not work, let us be honest about it. We need to improve our capacity to maintain the rules of war and to prevent war crimes such as sexual violence in conflict—crimes which are both drivers and results of displacement.
The horrific reports emerging from Ukraine are a reminder of how far we have to go and how impunity is still the norm. I hope that the opportunities for accountability in Ukraine may be greater than in most conflicts. Ukrainian prosecutors are active and I welcome the International Criminal Court investigation, the UN Human Rights Council commission of inquiry and the OSCE mission of experts. It is crucial that sexual violence in conflict gets due attention as part of these efforts. We can and should support this, offering expertise from our Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative and our team of experts.
I was pleased to see signs at Heathrow recently offering details for those arriving from Ukraine on how to report war crimes to the police. We need to ensure that such notices are widespread, particularly when it comes to sexual violence in conflict, which is almost always underreported. Investigations and accountability take expertise and dedicated resources. Survivors must be supported to give evidence. I firmly believe that establishing a permanent independent international body to investigate sexual violence in conflict in post-conflict situations would be the most effective way to ensure that this terrible crime receives the attention and knowledge it demands, that allegations can be investigated as soon as they arise and that impunity can be broken down, not just in Ukraine but elsewhere.
I will make one final point. We do not know how long this war is going to continue, nor do we know precisely how it will end. I believe, though, that one day there will be peace and that Vladimir Putin will not have won. Ukraine will outlive Putin and will remain a democracy and a free country. Many Ukrainian refugees will want to return to the homes, friends and family members they left behind. Just as they need our support now, they will need our support then. The cities of Ukraine will need to be restored and the economy rebooted. Schools and hospitals will need to be rebuilt. As we discuss how best to help refugees today, let us also remember to look forward to peace and rebuilding. That is the timescale over which we must sustain support for Ukrainian refugees and the goal towards which our efforts should point.
That is a worthy objective, but I spoke to Professor Phillimore of the University of Birmingham earlier this week. She leads an important research project dealing with the problems associated with protecting migrants from being preyed on by people traffickers, and she told me categorically that the visa system provides no—I repeat: no—additional protection against those risks. What is needed, she said, is to cut the time the migrants wait in limbo, a point clearly made by the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, because they are extremely vulnerable then. Alas, we are keeping them in limbo for a lot longer than we should. Secondly, she said that we need to strengthen checks on people in this country who are offering them a destination, another point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Helic. Both those points are key and the visa system has nothing to do with them.
Clamping down on traffickers is an objective we share with members of the EU, which are admitting hundreds of thousands while we are admitting hundreds. The best defence against trafficking and modern slavery that we have in these circumstances is the closest possible co-operation with Europol and the law enforcement agencies of the EU member states. Can the Minister tell us whether that co-operation is a living daily reality, or just something we talk about?
It is a frequently repeated truth that the Ukraine crisis has fundamentally changed huge areas of policy across Europe. That is certainly true of the European Union: look at Germany’s commitments on defence spending and arms exports, at the EU’s overall response in cutting its dependence on energy supplies, and at the sanctions packages. But it seems a bit less true here, particularly when it comes to immigrants. The Home Office has yet to shed its “hostile environment” label. What will it take for it to do so?
Secondly—this might sound trivial, but it is the basis of something more important—almost all of them are white and Christian. That should not mean anything at this stage in our history, but it is meaningful because it shapes their understanding of who they are. We seem to forget that what is happening in Ukraine is an explosion of an identity crisis. A group of people are saying, “Look, we are western; we have strong sympathies with the West and that is where we belong”, while another powerful group says, “No, you don’t know what you are. You are one of us; you are Russian”. They say, “Yes, we are Russian—we do not deny that. But that is not our whole identity. Our identity is mixed, in so far as we are Russian and western. Our overtures to NATO have grown partly out of our fear that our western identity will not be appreciated”. At a fundamental level, this is a quarrel arising from a collective identity crisis. I suspect that, if we are not careful, similar crises with similar origins will continue to appear in that part of the world, where there are long, deep-rooted, ambiguously connected sources of identity.
The third, rather interesting feature of the Ukrainian refugees is that there is an enormous sensitivity to animals which I have not seen in any past group of refugees. The Economist points out rather nicely that those carrying enough of a burden decided physically to carry their animals, and even those who had to leave them behind grieved for hours at the very thought of having to leave them to the mercy of mindless Russians. In fact, the pet travel specialist PBS Pet Travel says that 1.2 million pets have crossed the border along with human beings. I did not see this during the Ugandan or any other refugee crisis; if somebody did, I would like to be corrected. Even the British Government, in spite of being hard-hearted, had to make some provision for these animals. They have provided emergency licences for the pets and committed to cover their vaccination costs.
The fourth feature is the acute disparity we have noticed between the response of the British Government and that of the British people. For reasons that are very difficult to understand, some deep springs within British consciousness—which, despite being an historian, I have not been able to fathom—have been tapped, such that the overflow of sympathy, kindness and generosity has been unprecedented. The point is simply that the British people have responded with enormous enthusiasm and generosity. The Government responded— not on their own but only because the British people took the initiative—with the sponsorship scheme. However, having created it, they seem to have made a mess of it. Connecting with the sponsors and matching them with Ukrainians has not been easy at all, with the result that a large number of sponsoring hosts have felt deeply frustrated that their efforts, constantly knocking on the door of the Home Office to find out when their protégés were arriving, have not been listened to.
One simple fact will tell the story. As of 31 March, 65,000 visa applications were made. From that, 29,200 visas were actually issued. But if you look at the family sponsorship visas, you can see that 28,300 applications were made, while the number of visas actually given was 2,700. In other words, the system has been extremely bureaucratic and cumbersome. We need to introduce a much simpler and faster emergency visa system. We could lift normal visa conditions other than the biometrics and security checks, which could be done en route. Matching people to refugees could also be done quickly and refugees would not have to advertise on social media that they are available.
The simple story is that in desperate times you have desperate demands and desperate demands require desperate responses—and desperate responses may require visa requirements to be radically reconsidered, for the time being at least, so that more people can be brought in. It is also about trusting people when they say that they have visas or they do not have visas. Our climate of not trusting people has gone so far that when a man says, “My visa or my document is coming”, or, “My wife is coming in a few days’ time and she’ll bring it”, we believe that he is a liar and not to be trusted.
My last point is about a different category of people: third-country nationals in Ukraine who have been deported, harassed, persecuted and treated discriminatorily. It is important that they should be treated in exactly the same way as others, as long as they have gone through the same level of suffering.
The Minister is quoted as saying:
“We did not have, and we’ve never had, a proper system of administering the mass flow of people from abroad.”
This House passed amendments to the Nationality and Borders Bill to ensure that the Government set up and maintain the necessary systems, processes and support to local authorities to be able to cope with the sort of influx of refugees that we are currently seeing from Ukraine. If the Minister is correct, this would appear to be desperately needed. These delays are causing distress and costs that people cannot afford. Families here in the UK are desperate to offer a home to Ukrainian refugees, and Ukrainian refugees are stuck abroad with no money and nowhere to live.
According to the Telegraph, British families are paying thousands of pounds to keep refugees in hotels in places such as Warsaw, which they can ill afford, when they have spare rooms that the refugees could move into today. Sponsoring families are being left out of pocket and emotionally drained. Families who were linked up two weeks ago under the Homes for Ukraine scheme are still waiting for their visa applications to be processed and are not being given any information about progress.
Delays are being blamed on decades-old technology, with security checks being undertaken on a limited number of specialist terminals in secure parts of designated Home Office buildings, identity documents being processed through a second system and decisions being taken on a third, where data from the other two systems is entered manually. Can the Minister confirm that?
If these delays are inevitable, as the Minister apparently thinks they are, why do the Government not process refugees here in the UK, rather than before they travel? Why is it that almost every other European country is able to provide visa-free entry, but the UK is not? The Home Office is blaming No. 10 for insisting on a separate bespoke system for Ukrainian refugees. Others are blaming MI5 for insisting on security checks, while others say that the security services have no security concerns. Others are quoted as saying that the Home Office is insisting on putting security checks above everything else. On the one hand, we are hearing that Priti Patel was in favour of a much more open scheme to allow Ukrainian refugees to come to the UK, but her plans were vetoed by Steve Barclay, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, but on the other hand we are hearing that MI5 had strong views on the need for checks, so not doing so was never really considered by the Home Office. Can the Minister please explain where the truth lies?
Another reported excuse is that the Home Office wants to avoid “Windrush on steroids”, where thousands of people would be left without the necessary documentation to claim welfare, education, jobs and healthcare. But refugees with permission to travel letters are being told that when they present themselves at the UK border they will be given an entry stamp in their passport and that they can then use the stamp in their passport to access jobs and services. I ask again: why can they not be processed on arrival?
When the refugees arrive, local authorities are asking for a clear framework for housing checks, guidance on safeguarding beyond the initial DBS check and a clear steer on what to do when placements break down and require rematching. They are having serious issues with data quality, including access, duplication and missing information. Families are arriving under the family visa route with nowhere to live and children are getting visas under the Homes for Ukraine scheme and arriving without an accompanying adult. Some councils are being told that the £10,500 is only for the first year and it is only available under the Homes for Ukraine scheme in any event, although those coming via the family route also need access to council services. Third-party support services, such as translation services, ESOL and healthcare, particularly mental health care, are receiving no additional funding. Can the Minister explain what additional support will be made available for those services?
Finally, can the Minister confirm that work on other visas, such as work, study and Afghan visas, has been stopped, as all staff are diverted to deal with the Ukrainian crisis? What will the implications be on other visa applications?
We are here to hold the Government to account. We need clear answers, if the Minister can provide them, or does he, like us, see a good deal of willingness surrounded by a great deal of confusion, inefficiency and ineffectiveness?
Ukrainians have an incredibly strong work ethic. The Government’s relaxation of the rules to allow Ukrainian refugees to work is most welcome. I place on record my admiration of the companies, both large and small, which have demonstrated the best of British values in securing paid opportunities for those looking to make this country their home, if only for a short time.
However, we know that, for every good deed, there are individuals who, unfortunately, will seek to make a mockery of the system and exploit goodness. Could the Minister therefore provide reassurance that the Government will move heaven and earth to ensure that those fleeing war zones are not forced into modern slavery? Would he encourage local authorities to see what they can do to not only provide work placements but use their local knowledge and experience as an additional mechanism to ensure the legitimacy of the work being offered?
President Zelensky recently thanked our Prime Minister for the “historic leadership” that Her Majesty’s Government have shown when it comes to this nation’s support for Ukraine. I look down the list of all that the Government have done thus far and it is to be commended, as is the effort that we have seen in communities up and down the country, where the generosity and kindness of individuals serve as the greatest welcome that could possibly be made.
However, we must now ensure that when it comes to the processing, arrival and support of Ukrainian refugees, the apparatus of the state at national and local level kicks into play with the same speed, determination and force that we have been able to show on issues such as sanctions. The Government have issued more than 29,000 visas to Ukrainians in less than a month and I am reassured that they are doing their utmost to speed this up. To conclude on this point, will the Minister provide an update on what action the Government have taken in recent weeks to increase visa-processing capacity here at home and in Poland, Hungary, Moldova and other major centres?
That is because not only do we have the problems with the refugees and getting the refugees in—I am not going to repeat them—but we have to look to the future. There will be a future when we have to rebuild Ukraine and when some of those 4 million people will want to go back home. They will be doing so to a land that has been devastated. In part—I am not saying that we should not have done it—it will have been devastated by British weaponry used by Ukrainian troops in the fighting. None the less, we will have paid a lot of money to give weapons to Ukraine to win. We have an equal obligation to look to rebuilding Ukraine and to a generous running budget for some years from this country towards doing just that. There will be a European effort that we must also contribute to. We must make it part of our job to make Ukraine worth living in again.
When—as it inevitably will—refugee fatigue starts setting in, we are going to have to resist it. It is already setting in around the Afghan refugees. We have a huge job on our hands, as does the Minister, not just in getting people here but in settling them in and then moving forward. I wish him the best of luck and godspeed from this side of the House, and the other side, because this is one area in which the whole House is totally united behind the Minister’s efforts. We wish him well.
When Olia questioned the completely inhuman and irrational situation, which I believe representatives of the Home Office, or their agents in Ukraine, told her about, she was told by them that her younger sibling must reapply in writing as an individual, that this process would take at least three weeks and that they could advise no timescale at all. I was further advised by the Home Office officials over here that it was probably because the younger sister is a minor—but she is accompanied by her guardian, her elder sister. What on earth is going on? Every country in Europe is accepting these displaced people, yet we appear to be placing every barrier in their way. It is a total disgrace. What is wrong with us here? We raise their hopes and then dash them. These people are vulnerable and under huge stress. They deserve our support.
Tonya is in possession of a notarised document, signed by her father, giving her permission to leave and travel. I have sent copies of this document, both in Ukrainian and translated into English, to my noble friend’s private secretary, and I have included copies of both Tonya’s Ukrainian passport and her application form for a visa. Meanwhile, the two young women are stuck in Ukraine, with the war raging around them, while our bureaucratic machine grinds endlessly on. They are frightened and desperately worried, yet they have a family—friends of theirs—waiting to welcome them to the safety of Shropshire and a new life. Would my noble friend please give me an undertaking that this shameful situation will be rectified and the two young women provided with their documents with permission to travel without further delay?
Health workers coming from Ukraine should be allowed to continue working in our country with automatic recognition for their qualifications and help to integrate, because nearly all of them have adequate English already and the hurdles that they will be asked to go over will be enormous. Those in training should be allowed to access our training schools—I will ask the Minister about that later, because there is a problem.
We have an ethical obligation of non-abandonment of the seriously ill people and their families. Before the war started, Ukraine was estimated to have approximately 7% of the analgesics required to deal with its normal surgical and palliative care requirements. It had much less than the rest of Europe. That is now estimated to have fallen to 1% or lower than is required, simply to provide pain relief to people who need it in that country. That is an appalling statistic to have to live with.
I have previously declared that we have applied to welcome a family. On 9 March, the family we want to sponsor had managed to get to Sofia in Bulgaria, so I wrote to the ambassador there and gave all the details of the family, including their CVs—as much as I could obtain. Today, I received a reply. It referred me to some telephone numbers, which I tried; none was able to provide any help at all.
We applied on 18 March, as soon as the process opened. It took my husband eight hours to work through the forms, including communicating with them to get all the details required. The document list was inadequate. It did not state at the beginning of the process what would be needed as we worked through it. At one point, we had to upload a PDF of passports to an external agency—I do not know who the agency was, but we had to convert the JPEG files into PDF files. As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said, there was no linking of individual family members, so we know that three of the four applications are being processed but we have no idea what has happened to the fourth—the son—although we had an automatic email response.
There must be a way that families can be kept together, as has been highlighted. Wales wants to become a super-sponsor, with Scotland. Arrival hubs have been set up at ports of entry across Wales. They are not being openly disclosed in the public domain for obvious security reasons for those arriving. It has been estimated that Wales is expecting and able to take 1,000 people easily. Some 10,000 people in Wales signed up for the Homes for Ukraine scheme to act as potential sponsors. There have been 1,300 applicants to date for Wales; 143 have got visas. We have hotel rooms waiting to receive them, covered by the Welsh Government, that are not being used. Accommodation is available and processes have been put in place with local government. We have interacted with Cardiff Council, which I must commend for being extremely helpful and arranging to inspect property, conduct crime checks, et cetera. A helpline has been launched.
The universities are trying their best to link with other universities; Cardiff University has volunteered 50 projects to host Ukrainian academics for periods of three months or more, and the Council for At-Risk Academics is working with the university to try to provide support and arrange for twinning of UK universities with ones in Ukraine. It is currently not possible to accommodate all the students on courses because the Government have refused to waive the requirement to provide evidence of English-language competency or prior learning, but the courses would be willing to take them. There are a series of scholarships; Cardiff Metropolitan University—with which I previously had a role—has pledged £400,000 for two years to support scholarships and fellowships.
There is a concern that there may be a brain drain from Ukraine to the United Kingdom, but many of these people want to return, to rebuild their country once they can do so. We should support them. As well as providing a visa scheme and talking about three-year visas, what plans are being put in place now to let people know that we want to support them to come here, that we will do it fast and that we will support them to return when they are ready and want to do so but will not push them back?
There is a problem with medical and dental courses, and I ask the Minister to work with me to discuss with medical schools across the UK ways in which to accept and transfer medical and dental students into courses. We have an acute shortage of healthcare workers in this country, and we should help people who are a year or two years away from graduating to achieve the careers that they have worked so hard to achieve so far.
I understand from the Local Government Association that there is a concern that some people are already becoming homeless. How much Ministry of Defence accommodation is empty, how much of it has been assessed as habitable, and is it being repurposed deliberately to house Ukrainians in groups so they can stay together in their own community with people who speak their own language while other housing is being arranged for them? I understand from somebody in the MoD, who does not wish to be named, that there is such accommodation.
My last question relates to security. I understand that the Government, in the open session yesterday for which we are all most grateful but which some of us could not attend because of the health Bill, spoke about the security issues. How are they getting security information from the police files in Ukraine and from criminal records there to do the security checks that they say they need to do? Will the Government disclose to us the algorithm of the processes, as there are accounts of people getting emails to say that they have a visa, but the required documentation is not attached to that email and, therefore, they cannot activate entry into this country?