Homes for Ukraine: Child Refugees

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) on securing the debate. Our caseworkers will be immensely grateful to her for bringing attention to the issue, because they have spent an enormous amount of time pursuing cases on our behalf.

Obviously, it is a huge pleasure to have the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) present to represent the Government. I am slightly confused, however, as to why it is not a Home Office Minister who will be responding to the debate. It does not send out the right message to have the Minister for rough sleeping addressing the issue of Ukrainian children coming to the United Kingdom. This is a policy issue and there should be a policy Minister here to make a statement about the change that the Government are making, which is hugely welcome.

I want to raise one of two cases that my staff have spent an inordinate amount of time addressing, to illustrate the issue that I suspect many colleagues will speak to. I will call this 15-year-old girl Oksana, because her identity needs a certain amount of protection. She is trying to get to the United Kingdom, accompanied by her grandparents and cousin, but she does not have permission to do so under the rules. She is sitting in Germany, about to be evicted from the property there.

The family have been trying to assemble the paperwork required by the Home Office to bring Oksana here. The problem is that her father is fighting for the Ukrainian armed forces and is engaged in combat, and her mother has found herself in Russian-occupied Ukraine, where it is extremely difficult to get to her. Even so, the family have managed to get notarised documents from the mother in Russian-occupied Ukraine in order to produce the documentation to say that her cousin could be her temporary legal guardian. The family have gone to the trouble of getting that documentation out of occupied Ukraine—and the Home Office has now had the data for a month—but they are still in housing in Germany and are about to be evicted.

This whole chain of events and all those requirements are simply unacceptable, not least when one considers that the whole Border Force system appears to be prioritising Ukrainian matters, which has had an enormous knock-on effect on all the other immigration cases with which teams are having to assist. Even people who have paid for premium-priced visas in order to come to the United Kingdom are not getting the attention that they have paid for at a substantial rate.

That is why I particularly regret that there is not a Home Office Minister here to respond to the debate—because, to be frank, most of these issues are not the responsibility of the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North, who has been put forward by the Government. I understand the pressures that result in the Government sometimes sending Ministers to respond to Westminster Hall debates on subjects for which they do not have particular policy responsibility. However, given that the Government appear to be about to make a policy statement on this issue, I really think that a Minister from the right Department should be responding to this debate.

In Oksana’s case, with her mother now in Russian-occupied Ukraine and her father fighting on the frontline with the Ukrainian armed forces, the requirements that the Government have insisted on to date are utterly extraordinary. If those requirements are about to be reviewed, I am glad. But it does not give one much confidence that, even when people have gone through the enormous steps of finding the means to satisfy the Government’s requirements, they have been left waiting for a month for the decision whether to allow them to come to the United Kingdom. That is not good enough.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

. Can I interrupt the Minister and say to my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate, who has been in this House for a considerable amount of time—25 years, I think—that people who speak in debates are expected to stay for the entirety of the debate? They are not expected to walk out on a whim and wander back in at whim. I hope my hon. Friend, if he wants to speak in Westminster Hall debates, will remain for the entire debate, as every other Member who has spoken in the debate is expected to do, too.

[Crispin Blunt]

Mr Davies, I stand reprimanded. I tried to indicate to you that I would be back for the Minister’s response, but I have been caught out by the fact that he is on his feet earlier than I expected.

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

The system in Westminster Hall is not the same as in the Chamber. People do not come back for the wind-ups or for the Minister’s response. People are expected to stay for the entire debate. Despite being here for 25 years, my hon. Friend might have learnt something today. I hope that he will not make that mistake again, and that that has been a useful lesson for everybody else who happens to be in the Chamber. Minister, I apologise for interrupting.