Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking with her international counterparts in countries bordering Ukraine to support (a) identification and (b) transportation to the UK of eligible refugees.

The UK Government is engaged in dialogue with a range of international partners to ensure our response to the situation in Ukraine is coordinated and effective. The Home Secretary is speaking regularly to her international counterparts, including countries bordering Ukraine, to understand how the UK can work together with our partners.

The Home Office has made the visa process quicker and simpler for Ukrainians to come here. Valid passport holders no longer have to attend in-person appointments to submit fingerprints or facial verification. This means Visa Application Centres across Europe can focus their efforts on helping Ukrainians without documentation. The Home Office is deploying more staff to the region to support customer queries and bring on board further capacity to facilitate more biometric appointments. This is in addition to actions we have already taken including surging capacity to countries neighbouring Ukraine including Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic and Moldova, including a new pop-up VAC in Rzeszow, Poland. We have already increased the capacity to support customer queries and to expand capacity across our Visa Application Centres to 13,000 appointments per week in Europe.

A number of European transport companies are offering free transport for people fleeing Ukraine. This includes rail, bus, ferry and air travel. The transport industry in England, Scotland and Wales has also come together to offer free rail, tram, bus and coach onward travel for Ukrainians arriving in the UK from any international port, airport or train station.