Ed Davey
Main Page: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)Department Debates - View all Ed Davey's debates with the Cabinet Office
(2 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend, who is a great champion for Bolsover and for his constituents. Free and subsidised travel is provided to Bolsover students travelling, so far, to two of the three excellent colleges that are going to be offering T-levels from 2023, but I will make sure that he gets a meeting with my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary to discuss further what we can do.
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
During the second world war, my grandmother, like countless other people across our country, opened her home to evacuees, including two German Jewish boys. Over 70 years later, the British people want to shelter desperate refugees again. Two weeks ago, I was speaking to refugee families on the Ukrainian-Polish border at Medyka. Some desperately wanted to come to our country. One elderly couple told me that they had been told that it was just too complicated, and now the Government’s own figures say the same. Paperwork is being put ahead of people. When wealthy businessmen from more than 50 countries can come to the UK visa-free, why does the Prime Minister insist that a traumatised Ukrainian mother and child must first fill out a visa form?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman is right about the generosity of his country, and he is right to draw attention to his family’s own generosity in this matter. Everyone is pulling together. The number of people who have come forward to offer their home is incredible, but I really do not think he should deprecate what the UK is offering. Some 25,000 people have already got visas. We are processing 1,000 a day. There is no upper limit to the number we can take. This is a country that has already been the most generous in taking people from Afghanistan, with 15,000 under Operation Pitting. We have 104,000 applications from the Hong Kong Chinese. This is a country that is overwhelmingly generous to people coming in fear of their lives. [Interruption.] Yes it is, and so are this Government.