Ukraine Refugee Visas

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I understand that it is remarkably similar to the second Statement that is going to be repeated—but nevertheless.

The British people have shown immense generosity in the support they want to provide to the Ukrainian people. The purpose of this is to look at Home Office bureaucracy and challenge the Government about whether the bureaucracy that has been put in place is inhibiting people in a desperate situation from coming to this country. The Minister repeated the statistic that 23,500 visas had been issued for family members, but the figure that has been repeatedly asked for, and which has not been given, so far as I am aware, is for how many have arrived. I do not know whether the Minister is able to answer that question now. When I asked him about it a couple of days ago, he did not have the figure.

The Statement made a point about the relaxation of the rules regarding biometric tests for those with valid passports. Another question which I also asked a couple of days ago was about the position of very young children who do not have a passport, and newborn babies and those soon to be born. How will their families be affected? Will the parents and wider family still be required to travel long distances to have the biometric tests done?

Another question is how many extra caseworkers has the Home Secretary appointed to help families fleeing war? Are there more to be recruited?

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for his very valid questions. On his first question on the number of arrivals, I cannot give him that number, but I said that I would write to the House of Commons DLUHC Select Committee, so will of course write to him. I said Friday or Monday; I would like to keep to that and certainly will.

The noble Lord’s second question was to do with children. If I may paraphrase, he said, “Yes, everyone knows security is important, but what security risk can children pose? Do children with their mother have to have biometric tests, et cetera?” The answer is yes, but I should explain the reason, because I asked that question a lot myself, as the noble Lord may imagine. Unfortunately, people traffickers are alive and well and are prospering. We have been warned of this by the Ukrainian and Polish Governments, so we have to be sure that the children are in fact the children of the person claiming to be their mother and I am afraid that involves a visit to the visa centre. All I would say in mitigation is that 90% of applicants are now able to apply online without using the biometric tests. The visa centres are a much quicker way of doing it. The officials are briefed to do it as quickly as possible. If there is evidence that we can look at that those children are children of the mother that they say they are, we are flexible as we can be, but I make no excuse for doing that, because we do not know another way around it.

Finally, conscious that we have 10 minutes, as mentioned by my noble friend, I come to the bureaucracy and the extra caseworkers. This has been geared up a lot. In fact, I am going to Sheffield tomorrow to see the process right the way through the system. There are hundreds of extra caseworkers. We are doing evening shifts and weekend shifts to make sure that the current backlog is expedited as quickly as possible.