Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)

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I do not intend to take up anywhere near my allocated time, Mr Deputy Speaker; instead, I hope to be punchy and pithy.

Everyone in this House will remember the catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April in 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Because of that disaster, Chernobyl Children’s Lifeline, like other charities, was set up in 1991. It works hard for the children affected by the disaster. I need to declare a small interest in the charity. In 2001, when I was chairman of Heptonstall parish council, Chernobyl Children’s Lifeline was my charity of the year, and many of my constituents in the Calder Valley, along with people from all over the nation, host those young people on recuperation holidays.

Belarus and Ukraine, where most of the charity’s work is focused, received more than 70% of the radioactive fallout from the nuclear explosion. As a result, thousands of children are still born every year with, or go on to develop, thyroid cancer, bone cancer or leukaemia. The charity does much work to help these children. It provides ongoing supplies of multivitamins and basic health care products to the children, having delivered thousands of tonnes over the last two decades. The charity helps children too sick to travel by providing chemotherapy medicines to children’s cancer hospitals in Minsk and Gomel, as well as other regions. It provides support with medicines and equipment to babies’ homes in Minsk and other orphanages around the country. When needed, the charity brings children to the UK for long-term medical care and education.

I want to speak about the charity’s work in bringing child victims of the Chernobyl disaster over to the UK for four-week recuperation breaks. More than 46,000 young children have been brought over to stay with UK host families since the breaks started in 1992. Traditionally, for the last 16 and a half years our Government have provided gratis visas for these recuperation breaks, like every other country in Europe. The breaks help to prolong those young children’s lives and give them good clean air and good living for just four weeks of their lives. The gratis visas are due to cease in March next year. The charity will have to find an additional £89 per child to bring them to the UK for four weeks’ recuperation.

The visas are currently paid for by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from a budget of £250,000, but the actual cost is only £130,000. The money is transferred to the UK Border Agency for the service it provides. I have received a written reply from the Minister for Europe who has explained the reasons why the visas will cease. The money will apparently keep one of our smaller embassies open, it equates to full-time equivalent staff whom the FCO does not have to make redundant, and he feels that he gave the charities enough notice of the FCO’s intent when they were advised of the change back in November 2010.

I would ask my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House whether a solution can be found, because this charge, from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to the Home Office, is just that: a charge. There is no physical product, apart from just the process. The true cost of providing the visas is much less than the budget spent on them, and given the 0.7% of GDP that we spend on international aid, the amount is so small that it is almost embarrassing that we should be cutting support for those young, dying children. May I also ask my right hon. Friend whether, rather than giving a blanket no, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will please seek a solution with the Home Office—and perhaps even the Department for International Development —to ensure that we continue to do the morally right thing and help this and other charities to prolong these young lives?

Mr Deputy Speaker, may I, like others, take this opportunity to wish you and the whole House—Members, staff and their families—a wonderful Christmas and an incredibly peaceful new year?