Janet Daby
Main Page: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)Department Debates - View all Janet Daby's debates with the Home Office
Ukrainian Refugees
Janet Daby Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I want to use this opportunity to put on the record the experiences of my constituents in Lewisham East, and to press the Government to act and to listen.
There are 530 Ukrainians living in Lewisham, and many have family and friends in Ukraine. They have told me what they are going through and how the Ukraine family scheme is full of bureaucratic obstacles. There are no visa application centres currently operating in Ukraine, and those operating in other European countries are overwhelmed with the workload, as we have heard. My constituent’s mother-in-law is in the middle of a two-week wait for the next available appointment at the nearest visa application centre in Poland. The situation at other visa application centres throughout Europe is no better, with reports of waiting times of up to two to three weeks. It is ridiculous, very painful and very traumatising for Ukrainian people.
Another constituent told me that their friend’s daughter, who began her application 10 days ago, is still trapped in Poland due to the Home Office’s bureaucratic red tape and delays to processing her visa. That is simply not good enough. Recent Government announcements on biometric data collection are welcome, but the Home Office should have done that weeks ago. Furthermore, the changes still will not tackle all the long delays that families are facing, and they will not include many of the people fleeing the invasion.
The Government often quote Scripture, so I will too. Matthew 25:35-40 says:
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in”.
Those words strike me, because that is what the Home Office needs to be doing for Ukrainian refugees. Instead, it is making it too hard for refugees to come to our country. The Home Office is making it difficult for refugees to receive food, drink and warmth. I hope this is the result of incompetence rather than a desire to create a hostile environment for refugees, although I fear it may be both. I will end by asking the Home Office to commit to introducing emergency protection visas for those fleeing Ukraine who want to reach the UK.