Homes for Ukraine: Visa Application Centres Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Home Office
Bob Blackman
Main Page: Bob Blackman (Conservative - Harrow East)Department Debates - View all Bob Blackman's debates with the Home Office
Homes for Ukraine: Visa Application Centres
Bob Blackman Excerpts(2 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Kevin Foster
The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to hear that the Government take a different view. It is for each country to decide its policy based on the intelligence and the assessments it receives, and that is partly driven by its geographical situation and, in Europe, whether it is part of the Schengen border-free zone.
Our position is based on the advice we have received. We have changed some of the systems of application based on that advice, and all our policies, particularly around visa national or non-visa national status for particular nationalities, are driven by a comprehensive assessment that includes security and other matters. I hope colleagues will appreciate why I will not outline the exact details on the Floor of the House, in a public forum.
As I have touched on, nearly 90,000 visas have already been issued. We are certainly seeing more progress every day, and we look forward to welcoming a large number of people to the UK.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Families in my constituency have very generously offered to house Ukrainian refugees. I was going to raise the plight of the Lykholit family from Ukraine, who applied on 18 March, but they have received their visas today after an extended wait—that is good news. However, there is the plight of those who are still in hotels waiting for their visas, particularly the relatives of people who assisted Holocaust survivors in escaping the Nazis. Will my hon. Friend prioritise those people? We owe them a big debt of gratitude for the risks that they undertook.
Kevin Foster
I am very happy to look at individual cases or instances that my hon. Friend wishes to supply. I am sure that, like me, he found that one of the most tragic moments of the current war was when a Holocaust survivor was killed by Russian shelling. Having survived so much horror in the earlier parts of his life, he lost it in the latest horror to be inflicted by a tyrant looking to dominate his neighbours.
Certainly, there has been a big step up in the number of visas being issued each day. As I say, nearly 90,000 have now been issued, and we are very much looking forward to welcoming those we are granting visas to. I am pleased to hear that the case that my hon. Friend had planned to raise has now been resolved.