Oral Answers to Questions

Ed Davey Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his wonderful work in Blackpool for the communities he represents. It was fantastic to be with him and to see the extension and upgrading of the tram network in Blackpool, which will help to drive the economy and help to bring in high-wage, high-skilled jobs, in the way we hope to do across the whole of the UK as we get on with levelling up.

[Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

In the months before world war two, the UK took in more than 60,000 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Over half a century ago, we took in more than 27,000 Ugandans expelled by Idi Amin. Since then, we have taken Tamils escaping civil war, Bosnians escaping genocide and Syrians escaping Assad. But this week, the Home Office turned away hundreds of Ukrainian refugees escaping Putin’s bombs because they did not have the right paperwork. Can the Prime Minister not see that that flies in the face of our country’s proud tradition of providing sanctuary? Since the Home Office is clearly not up to the task, will he send in armed forces personnel to speed up the process so that Ukrainian refugees can come here quickly and safely?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much. The whole House wants to do as much as we can as fast as possible, but what he says about the UK is, I am afraid, completely wrong, because we have visa centres open in Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, Rzeszów in Poland, Chi inău in Moldova, Bucharest and elsewhere. We have already got 1,000 people in under the existing scheme. That number will climb very sharply. Look at what we have done already—15,000 from Afghanistan, 104,000 applications from Hong Kong Chinese, and I think there were about 25,000 from Syria. No one has been turned away. That is simply—[Interruption.] We want to be as generous—[Interruption.] It is important to have checks. Let me make this point to the House because I think people need to understand.

There are some people who would like to dispense with checks altogether and simply to wave people through—[Interruption.] I hear the voices on the Opposition Benches, and I think that that is irresponsible and is not the approach that we should be taking. The Schengen countries have a different arrangement. We must be in no doubt, as I said in answer to a previous question, that the Kremlin has singled out this country for the approach that we are taking, and we know how unscrupulous Vladimir Putin can be in his methods. It would not be right to expose this country to unnecessary security risk and we will not do it. We are going to be as generous as we can possibly be, but we must have checks.