Ukraine Refugee Visas

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. This visa system is simply not working. It is leaving thousands of families in limbo because of Home Office bureaucracy. A businesswoman who is trying to get her sister and daughter to come here on the family visa scheme is still waiting, 10 days after she applied to the Home Office. A constituent of mine in Pontefract who applied under the Homes for Ukraine scheme has been waiting nearly two weeks to hear anything back from the Home Office. Another British host who applied for a visa for a woman undergoing a high-risk pregnancy has waited 12 days for a reply. Despite the Home Office helpline saying that she would be treated as a priority, that woman has had to travel extensively to complete biometrics in Warsaw and has still received no reply.

A mother and two young sons who had been granted a family visa and were due to travel this week had their visa revoked at the last minute. They had been advised by the visa centre to apply for the Homes for Ukraine scheme as well, so that they could link up with a host family. Now the Home Office has revoked their first visa and said that they cannot travel, and it has told them nothing more about what is going on. This is Kafkaesque. What on earth is going on? Why is the Home Secretary so totally incapable of getting any grip on this, despite repeated questions we have asked?

Can the Minister tell us how many people have actually arrived on the Homes for Ukraine scheme? Why on earth is it too early to tell us? The Government should be able to give us the basic facts. On the family visas, 23,000 have been issued so far, but 25,000 people had already applied and submitted their applications more than two weeks ago, so it is clearly taking at least two weeks to clear cases. Even at the current rate, only 700 family visas have been issued since yesterday. At that rate, it is going to take well over a week just to clear the existing backlog of cases that he accepts have been submitted.

The Home Office has suddenly stopped publishing all the figures and deleted from its figures the thousands of people who are still waiting for a visa centre appointment. That is not good enough. It is not the kind of transparency we need to make sure that desperate people are getting the support they need. Why on earth is it taking so long? Why are we still demanding reams of bureaucracy and reams of information when the Government have been told by the refugees Minister and by Home Office officials that the security checks can be done really quickly? Why, then, is this taking so long? Why are they expecting people still to make these emergency journeys?

Tens of thousands of people are still stuck in the system. Families are desperate. People from across Britain have said that they want to help, yet the Home Office is letting the whole system down. Is that deliberate, or is it just total incompetence? Why on earth can the Home Secretary not get a grip on this and sort it out, to help desperate families?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I grant urgent questions, but I do not make the rules, and they say that for each one the Member asking the question has two minutes. You have to stick to that, otherwise I will not be able to grant UQs. Please, can we just stick to the rules?

[Yvette Cooper]

Apologies, Mr Speaker.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

My right hon. Friend is right to say that people want to get on and help. Tens of thousands of people throughout the country have made a very generous offer and they want to be able to extend that and for it to be taken up. We are rightly doing vital safeguarding checks. Sadly, we have had some pings on the police national computer in respect of some of the sponsors who have come forward, and we will need to consider them, but the vast and overwhelming majority of people want to do the right thing.

I appreciate my right hon. Friend’s wish that we go faster. As I have touched on, the rate at which visas are being granted is increasing. As we have seen with the Ukraine family scheme, once people have passed through a number of checks, we can quickly start to issue a large number of visas, which is what we plan to do.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

Four million people are seeking sanctuary, but just 0.6% of them have been offered sanctuary in the UK. That is the inevitable consequence of using a clunky, bureaucratic and, frankly, traumatising visa system to deal with an urgent humanitarian crisis.

Around 140 countries do not require Ukrainians to have a visa before they travel there; we say it should be the same for the United Kingdom. I appreciate that the Government do not want to go as far as that, but why not allow even some Ukrainians—for example, those with biometric passports and children—to travel visa-free? That would free up significant capacity to speed things along. If that is not possible, will the Minister publish the reasons why he thinks it is not? If it is really all about security, why are there any other visa requirements at all? Why not grant a visa to any Ukrainian refugee who applies for one?

Finally, I welcome the Ukraine extension scheme that was announced this week, but it still excludes the possibility of people bringing their family here under the family scheme. A seasonal agricultural worker who switches to that route will still not be able to sponsor their family under the family route. Why not allow that to happen? Why not also allow Ukrainians whose visas expired before January to apply under the extension scheme? Until that changes, the Government are still excluding the possibility of huge swathes of the Ukrainian community here being joined by their families. Allowing that is the least we should be doing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

I am pleased to hear of the results that my hon. Friend has been able to achieve for his constituents, as he always does. It is good to see people arrive and to see communities such as Christchurch stepping up and doing their bit. It is encouraging that we have seen offers coming in from throughout the UK, rather than just from areas that have had, let us say, more of a tradition of taking part in the local government-based resettlement schemes. It is very good to hear of my hon. Friend’s experience. I have had constituent contact, as I am sure other colleagues have. MPs from all parties are doing their bit to advance cases when they are contacted.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I really do not understand why the Minister says that it is too early to know how many have arrived on the Homes for Ukraine scheme, because he has also just said that it is very important that the Home Office knows where people spend their first night in the UK. Perhaps he will be able to enlighten us on when he will be able to tell us the numbers.

As an example of the ongoing problems with bureaucracy, may I just tell the Minister about the case of Anna Kalyata? She has just given birth in temporary accommodation in Poland, having fled Ukraine. She does not speak English and, even though she has been matched under the sponsorship scheme, she has been told that she needs to have a birth certificate for the baby to allow the baby to get a visa. She is in a foreign country, traumatised by war and is now thinking of going back to Ukraine to register the birth. Surely the Home Office can have a more compassionate response to women, children and babies.