David Davis
Main Page: David Davis (Conservative - Goole and Pocklington)Department Debates - View all David Davis's debates with the Home Office
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberI want to get everyone in, so let us help each other because this is a very important statement. Please hold your fire until it is your question, and then make sure that you put the question. Let us work to help each other.
I welcome the Home Secretary’s response to the calls for generosity from many of us, which is what I expected. This is a much more generous system, but, quite properly, she has taken time to make it work practically. However, I want to raise a practical issue. As she said, the numbers are not clear. Some have forecast a total of 4 million will come out of Ukraine, and it may be 5 million or 6 million, so our share of that burden would probably be about half a million people. A significant number of them—perhaps a majority—will be women and children, not whole-family units, so the burdens on housing, education and social support will be bigger than anything we have seen before. Has she had discussions yet, or will she have discussions, with our European colleagues to ensure that that burden is shared across the whole continent? That is the only way in which we can look after these people properly.