Refugees from Ukraine

Robert Buckland Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

Actually, we have. I am sorry if the hon. and learned Lady has not been able to use the many facilities we have made available to her constituents and her to make these cases come through.

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement today, and she knows that I and others have been pushing for tech and biometrics to be used more constructively. On the repurposing of officials and their movement to the front- line, not just from within the Home Office, but from across Government, will she work with the excellent new refugees Minister to ensure that we can get that sense of co-ordination and urgency here? As Russia leaves the Council of Europe and denounces the European convention on human rights, the slide into tyranny continues. This is a crisis that will not wait.

[Priti Patel]

My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right; we are blessed with the appointment of our noble Friend in the other place as refugees Minister, because this is about co-ordination. This is about national co-ordination, not about one Department or another Department; this is “whole of Government effort”, a phrase I have used several times in this House. The refugees Minister will be overseeing much of the community sponsorship scheme, which will come in due course, and there will be further announcements about that scheme, too.