Ukrainian Refugees Debate

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Department: Home Office
Monday 14th March 2022

(2 years ago)

Westminster Hall
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Catherine West Portrait Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for introducing the debate, as well as all those who signed the petition.

The situation in Ukraine is heartbreaking. Scenes of devastation and loss have been beamed on to our screens every hour of every day since the launch of President Putin’s illegal and illogical invasion. Many of us suffer just watching it, let alone understanding what must really be happening to the people who face attacks day in, day out.

I was pleased to join a number of my constituents outside Hornsey Church tower for a simple vigil with the Songworks choir and the Crouch End Festival Chorus, and to hear some children read their poems and share their thoughts about the importance of peace, of pushing for a peaceful resolution, and of President Putin waking up and stopping what he is doing. At the end of the event, I was delighted to meet Marta, the mother of a constituent, who came to the UK on Saturday. I am sure that the Minister is relieved to hear that there is at least one happy story in this difficult debate. I will briefly relay what that family went through.

Marta was one of the lucky ones. She managed to flee to Romania after the Russian invasion, but when she tried to reach the UK to be reunited with her daughter and grandchildren, she entered a Home Office bureaucratic nightmare that went on for 10 days. There was no information on how to apply on the Government’s website, and a different website crashed continuously. At one point, the demand for appointments was so high that people were told there were no appointments until May.

Ten days of sleepless nights and incredible stress followed for the family, all to bring over the wonderful Marta, who, when I met her last night, was in floods of tears, having seen the solidarity of local people who met her and heard what she had been through. It is ludicrous that families are going through that experience at such a difficult time. Marta’s daughter told me:

“Currently, the attitude from the Home Office appears to be that this is an immigration process. It is not. These people are refugees fleeing war. That even the Ukrainians with family here are being denied a swift passage to come shames our country.”

I want to put on record the first-rate work of my parliamentary staff, who rushed down to Portcullis House to meet the Home Office staff who were there last week—that casework ended up in a result. I wonder what the Minister thinks about all the other people who are as desperate as Marta but who, for one reason or another, do not have a contact here or the help of a hard-working constituency team in an MP’s office, and who have no way of telling us what a terrible situation they are in.

In response to the brutal military campaign, Ukrainians have fled their homes and their country for safety elsewhere, in a movement of people not seen in Europe since the dark days of 1945. So many women and children have fled—as always, they are the worst affected by war. In response to the grave humanitarian challenge, many Europeans have opened their borders to provide much-needed safe refuge to those in need. Poland is hosting the bulk of those who are fleeing the devastation, but countries as far afield as Ireland are opening their doors in Ukraine’s time of need. Ireland is a country of a little over 5 million people, but it has offered to take 100,000 refugees. We have a greater population and a larger economy. If we had a more efficient Government, we would have more money to manage the needs of all and to encourage people to share. I welcome what was announced in the Chamber in the last hour. We can all get behind that offer and encourage our constituents who have a spare room and who can step up to meet the extraordinary challenge to show that generosity of spirit.

Labour colleagues and I have applauded many decisions, such as the one announced today, but the failings of the Home Office need to be reviewed. I encourage the Minister, once the immediate crisis is over, to learn from the situation and from what happened with Afghanistan, which was an embarrassment, and not just for the Foreign Office. I know that the shadow Minister for Immigration, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), is well placed to help with any review in the future because he led on the Afghanistan work from a Foreign Office point of view and so can comment on both schemes and how they are getting on. I welcome the appointment of a refugee champion, Lord Harrington. It would be useful to have a joint meeting shortly to thrash out the issues we deeply care about as MPs and to help the Home Office and Foreign Office to deal with such crises in a much more effective way.

Russia’s military were massing on Ukraine’s borders many months before the invasion. The Ministry of Defence and intelligence from the US were giving cast-iron warnings of an imminent invasion for much of the first part of 2022. The idea that this just happened 10 days ago is ridiculous. The Minister has first-hand briefings from the security services and will know that these events have been going on since well before Christmas. We needed to think through our actions. We know that the President of Russia lies and does so frequently, so we should have recognised that as a pattern from before, designed some risk assessments and put staff in place to deal with it.

This weekend, there has been what is called a surge of Home Office staff and I feel that once again we are lurching from crisis to crisis, which is typical of a Government who have no strategy. When a crisis comes, they fall down again, whereas if they had a strategy and could learn from their mistakes, we would not be here yet again. We all know that any invasion or military action inherently causes refugee flow, but yet again we are behind the curve and woefully out of step with both our European allies and the rest of Whitehall. That is a pattern of behaviour that we must tackle so that the next time there is such an event we can learn from the mistakes.

Every day I receive dozens, if not hundreds, of emails from my constituents in Hornsey and Wood Green who are keen to open their homes to those in need, willing to offer employment to Ukrainians and taken aback by the poor approach to date. We cannot continue to fail those in need and I urge the Minister to listen to the many calls today and to get a grip. The Ukrainian people have been added to the many Afghans seeking support. We owe it to those people in desperate need to live up to our moral responsibilities. Minister, fix the mess. This will not be the final refugee crisis and we simply cannot accept this shambolic reaction as the norm each and every time.

Marion Fellows Portrait Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd, and I thank everyone who has spoken so movingly.

I want to reiterate a point I have made in the Chamber: I have a UK national constituent with a Ukrainian wife with two daughters. They started applying to come here on 12 February in Dnipro. Since then, my constituent’s wife and her daughters have had to cross Ukraine and now they are all in Warsaw. I will not go into any more detail than that.

I want to quote the latest email I have. I thank the staff in the hub in Portcullis House and I thank the Minister, too, because I have been pushing, shouting and screaming—doing everything I can—to get this man’s wife and daughters back to Wishaw. The email from the Home Office hub says:

“I have just checked and the families visas were issued yesterday and manifested to Warsaw today. We will be in touch shortly regarding collection, please advise Mr Yardley not to travel to the VAC until we contact him.

As Mr Yardley’s family have already made applications and given biometrics they will have to wait for a decision before travel. I appreciate this is frustrating however, as the family have provided biometrics they have been granted 3 years leave outside the rules.”

It is frustrating, but I am pleased that we can almost see the end of the road.

Should it have taken that long? No, of course not, and my constituent is a UK national. I want to weep when I think of Ukrainians without passports and who do not have a UK national to help them. What are we doing as a country? I do not understand why this is happening. I will rephrase that—I know why it is happening, but it should not be.

As of last week, the Home Office advice for Ukrainian refugees had been updated nine times and the Home Secretary’s jumbled comments in recent days have only added to the confusion. It is also really concerning to hear of private firms who are cashing in. Can we please get that stopped, Minister? That is obscene and I think that the Minister himself would agree.

It is really heartbreaking that, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) said, this country is a signatory to the UN convention on refugees, and the UK has international obligations to recognise refugees who are in the UK and to offer them the protection they need. Get on with it—this is ridiculous.

I could not be in the main Chamber today, but I have seen the update on the Ukrainian sponsorship scheme statement from the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations. It is six pages with what looks like triple-spacing and very large print—I used to teach word processing—but I cannot find anything in here that I can give to my constituents that is of any use. This is happening continually.

Catherine West Portrait Catherine West
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Does the hon. Member agree that this is a classic case of this Government’s government by press release, rather than having a strategy, a plan or a discussion with local government about how to implement things—that is, doing things properly?

Marion Fellows Portrait Marion Fellows
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I could not agree more. I also agree that we are dealing with refugees here and not immigrants. This Government need to get a grip.

One of the new schemes states that Ukrainian refugees will be able to apply online—hooray. Someone is in a war zone and is fleeing for their life. Do they have internet access? Perhaps, but even if they do, my constituent’s application was lost three times in the TLScontact system. They had to reapply three times and they had to fly from Wishaw to Warsaw and then to somewhere else in the south of Poland to try to help get things done. Three times they had to fill out the forms and they could not even make appointments, because the system had gone down as well.

This is not going to work for people. We need, as the First Minister has said, to

“let people in and do the paperwork afterwards.”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 8 March 2022; c. 11.]

Common humanity demands that. Other countries have done it, so why can we not? I thought that this was supposed to be global Britain and that we were all on the front foot, trying to help. Minister, please take this on board. Waive the visas. That is what has to happen to get these poor refugees—I repeat that they are refugees—into the UK.

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Kevin Foster Portrait Kevin Foster
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I am happy to acknowledge all the generosity that there has been across Scotland in terms of the resettlement schemes, but the point still stands. It is rather odd to say, “There’s a lot being done on dispersal accommodation in Scotland because of one council down the road, yet the place I represent doesn’t need to take part in that.” As I say, we will be looking to reform the scheme, but it is perfectly fair to point out that plenty of communities across the United Kingdom step up for refugees and are part of our dispersal accommodation system, no matter how people try to argue it.

Catherine West Portrait Catherine West
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I will try to help the Minister with a different point. He has mentioned the Syrian scheme and the two Afghanistan schemes, and now there are at least two schemes for the Ukrainian conflict. Broadly, off the top of his head, where are we with the Afghanistan scheme? Obviously, we do not know how many more applicants to the Ukraine scheme there will be, because Ukraine is currently 18 days into the most dreadful war. Broadly speaking, we think we know what happened with the Syrian scheme, but could he tell us about the Afghanistan scheme?

Kevin Foster Portrait Kevin Foster
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As the hon. Lady will appreciate, the situation in Afghanistan presents some unique difficulties. Of course, we cannot—