Homes for Ukraine: Child Refugees

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I have heard such stories many times from lots of my colleagues, so there is a fundamental flaw in the Home Office process. I have not seen the policy officially announced yet, although I might have missed it during my rather traumatic journey to Parliament today, but I am sure the Minister will update me. I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I will come on to that topic later in my speech when I talk about one person in the family being left behind whereas the rest of the family can come, which is not acceptable.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. Does she agree with me about the case of Alika Zubets, a four-year-old girl from Kharkiv who has been stuck in Poland with her grandmother? She has a sponsor, Dr Maggie Babb, in my constituency in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and extended family in Staffordshire, yet we have been waiting for the policy decision for weeks. I hope to hear something very shortly from the Minister. The little girl has to return to Kharkiv because her right to stay in Poland runs out on the 25th. Does the hon. Lady agree that such cases demonstrate the need for an urgent resolution of the issue?

[Tulip Siddiq]

This is not often said in this place, but I absolutely agree with my colleague from the other side of the House. I have a daughter who is not far off the age of the little girl the hon. Gentleman describes, so it is heartbreaking to think of her being separated from her family and not being given safe accommodation when something changing in the Home Office could rectify the problem. However, I know that the Minister cares and I hope to hear him announce the updated policy.

As many people will know, and before we hear the updated policy, the rules of the Homes for Ukraine scheme dictate that unaccompanied children are allowed to apply only if they are travelling with their parents or legal guardians to the UK. I understand that the Government have to take into account safeguarding risks such as people trafficking, and that the Government of Ukraine have stated a preference for keeping unaccompanied children in regions close to Ukraine, but this blanket, blunt policy and the failure to take a more sophisticated case-by-case approach has completely ignored situations such as Mariia’s.

The Home Office should be consulting the sector more and making the system work for such children. Excellent organisations such as the Refugee Council and the Children’s Society, to name just two, do this work day in, day out. They could help to come up with solutions that would provide children with necessary protections and safeguards. That is all we in the House want; we want to protect the children and make them safe; we do not want them to go through unnecessary trauma and be unable to come to our country. Perhaps then, Mariia—a 13-year-old girl—would not be forced to choose between returning to a war zone and staying alone, putting herself at risk in temporary hotel accommodation in Montenegro. That situation is especially ridiculous to me because she has a warm, safe home waiting for her in my constituency, but she cannot get here because of Government bureaucracy.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and he is absolutely right. It is a pity that so many children have been affected by the inability to rectify the policy. We knew the war was coming. I know we had to develop the policy at short notice, but I wish the Home Office had taken the issue more seriously and come up with solutions, as my hon. Friend has described. I will speak more about that later in my speech.

The interventions from colleagues across the House have shown that Mariia’s story is not an isolated case. I have dealt with countless similar cases of unaccompanied children denied access to the homes for Ukraine scheme due to the rigid and bureaucratic approach of the Home Office. For example, David and his wife in my constituency sponsored sisters aged 20 and 13 to live with them in London, but because of the Government’s policy the sisters never made it to the UK. Diahann, also my constituent, sponsored two 17-year-olds, who ended up sleeping on a kitchen floor in a small flat in Poland rather than in Diahann’s home.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February has resulted in more than 7 million refugees fleeing that country, but by 14 June, only 82,000 UK visas had been issued under Homes for Ukraine, and only about 50,000 of those people had arrived in the UK. That is less than two thirds of those who had been issued with a visa, but the Home Office has failed to explain why so many with visas have yet to arrive in the UK. That was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy).

The Refugee Council has warned that the gap between those figures might be explained in part by cases in which only some in a family unit have been issued with a visa. It is heartbreaking to think that all the older brothers and sisters have chosen to stay in Ukraine with their younger siblings rather than make the journey without them. That is not something that any of us would want for our family, and I hope everyone will agree that it is not something that people in Ukraine should have to suffer through.

[Aaron Bell]

May I take this opportunity to praise Lord Harrington for his engagement on this issue? There has clearly been, first, diplomatic wrangling with the Ukrainians and, secondly, policy decisions being made in both Whitehall and the devolved Administrations. I realise that the delay has been far too long, but may I take the opportunity to praise the Minister for Refugees for his engagement on the issue, because he has spoken to me personally about the case that I raised with the hon. Lady earlier?

[Tulip Siddiq]

Again, I find myself agreeing with the hon. Gentleman. The Minister for Refugees, to his credit, also met me about the case that I raised at Prime Minister’s questions and was fully briefed on the case, which impressed me, so I thank him. But again, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the delay was unacceptable, and I hope that it will very soon be rectified officially.

I am cautiously optimistic after hearing reports this week that the Home Office is considering changing the visa rules to allow unaccompanied Ukrainian children and teenagers to come to the UK. That would end an unjust policy that has seen siblings separated and children abandoned in the most dangerous of situations. I would like the Minister here today to confirm whether those reports are true and tell us officially if the policy has changed, and explain why it took so long, despite so much suffering, for the Government to acknowledge that it is unacceptable to bar unaccompanied children from refuge in our country.

The Times has reported that the Home Office estimates that at least 500 children have been stuck in limbo in Ukraine for two months or more because of the unaccompanied child policy. I hope that this Minister, who I know cares, will be able to tell us today how many children his Department estimates have been prevented from accessing the Homes for Ukraine scheme because of this particular policy, and how those children’s applications for asylum would be considered under any new rules that the Government are considering.