Ukraine: Refugees

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 6th April 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, for introducing this debate and for her thorough and moving speech. I have watched this from afar and one of the few rays of sunshine has been the appointment of the Minister to his present role. I am only sorry that his maiden speech is at the end of the debate rather than earlier on, because I am sure that we are going to be pleased to hear whatever he says. We welcome him knowing his record and how hard he is currently working and will be working.

The point we are at at the moment takes me back to almost the beginning of my political life, which was Hungary in 1956, when I recall that our community welcomed Hungarian refugees who had come to Britain and were settled. Unlike today, those refugees had no option to go back. They were in Britain and integrated and, of course, they were far fewer in number. When I look at the situation that we are in today, I reflect that we let down former Yugoslavia. What happened there was butchery at the same level as is happening today, a butchery that we thought we would never see in Europe again. I think that we have risen to the challenge this time.

I am astonished at the Russians and their sheer stupidity. The way in which they have acted shows a massive failure of intelligence, humanity and understanding of the international community. We used to have a saying that British military intelligence was a contradiction in terms, but Russian military intelligence does not appear to exist at all. They have got themselves into something that will last certainly for the rest of my life and probably the life of many people in this Room. We are never going to be able to go back.

At a time like this, I am constantly reminded—I will say it, although it is not popular—of the sheer stupidity of leaving the European Union. When we look at the gatherings of European statesmen—we saw one with Boris Johnson when he went to the European Council—we are well outside the room. Whatever we say about NATO—I notice that we are suddenly on about the G7—this is a problem that requires a European dimension to virtually every part. Our act of self-harm is coming home to roost now.

That is because not only do we have the problems with the refugees and getting the refugees in—I am not going to repeat them—but we have to look to the future. There will be a future when we have to rebuild Ukraine and when some of those 4 million people will want to go back home. They will be doing so to a land that has been devastated. In part—I am not saying that we should not have done it—it will have been devastated by British weaponry used by Ukrainian troops in the fighting. None the less, we will have paid a lot of money to give weapons to Ukraine to win. We have an equal obligation to look to rebuilding Ukraine and to a generous running budget for some years from this country towards doing just that. There will be a European effort that we must also contribute to. We must make it part of our job to make Ukraine worth living in again.

When—as it inevitably will—refugee fatigue starts setting in, we are going to have to resist it. It is already setting in around the Afghan refugees. We have a huge job on our hands, as does the Minister, not just in getting people here but in settling them in and then moving forward. I wish him the best of luck and godspeed from this side of the House, and the other side, because this is one area in which the whole House is totally united behind the Minister’s efforts. We wish him well.