Ukraine: Urgent Refugee Applications

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

Certainly, in terms of the situation on the ground in Kharkiv, we have to be very careful about how we take President Putin’s offers of humanitarian corridors, not least because they are rarely respected and often may well be used as a cover for breaches of international law that then follow. We need to be quite careful about the whole concept of humanitarian corridors. I have already said that travel across Ukraine is extremely dangerous, and that people should not wait until they have any form of visa. If they can, they should get into a neighbouring country and then seek to come to the United Kingdom. Certainly, with the family route, people can either sponsor the family, or, see whether there is space available. The wider sponsorship group will come in if there is someone they know and love in Ukraine, whom they would like to sponsor, or if there is someone who has managed to get to a safe bordering country, whom they would like to sponsor to come here.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I just want to give an example of a constituent who is trying to help his niece who has fled from Ukraine, because it backs up all the things that the Minister is hearing from his own side about how just completely unsustainable this system is. Last Friday, they spent the whole day waiting for a form from the United Kingdom for a visa. Of course with the biometrics, they had to give a lot of complex information. After they had given all that, they were then asked for bank details and documentation that the niece who had fled from Ukraine just did not have with her. It is now three days since that, and there is no sign of a decision, which had been promised within 48 hours. My constituent said:

“I simply cannot put into words how angry and desperate we are becoming because of this shameful situation.”

What is the Minister actually doing to fix that chaos? That is a live situation and that is actually what is happening.

[Kevin Foster]

I can fully appreciate why asking for bank details and the things that we might normally ask for in the immigration system might be an entirely unreasonable request to somebody who has escaped their home in Ukraine with whatever they could carry. I am very happy to look at that case to see whether our decision makers are acting appropriately in terms of what they are asking for. I do not think that it is appropriate, for example, to be asking for bank details from Ukraine at this time.