Ukraine: Refugees

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Wednesday 6th April 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

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.

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.