Ukraine

Siobhan Baillie Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for her leadership and for her comments in opening the debate. It is sad that some Opposition Members are so keen to criticise and attack that they disregard the economic, military and humanitarian support coming from our country. It is clear that the Ukrainian people, President Zelensky and his team trust the Prime Minister, the UK Government and our people to deliver the support and equipment they need. I particularly thank our armed forces personnel, who spent many months training the Ukrainian army long before the Ukraine conflict was on everyone’s lips.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady, like me, is relatively new to this place. Was she as surprised and disappointed as I was to read in the weekend press that previous Defence Secretaries such as Michael Fallon pushed for armaments and support to be given to Ukraine, only to be turned down?

[Siobhan Baillie]

The history leading into any conflict will be pored over, and there will be various different accounts. We have to deal with the here and now. Having spoken to the parliamentarians who recently came over from Ukraine, I know they have faith in what this country is doing. We will learn on our feet as we go.

The people of Stroud care deeply about this issue. I receive emails all the time asking me to advocate for more equipment and more lethal aid, and to make sure we are doing whatever we can to support Ukraine. The majority of the public understand the complexities and the essential need to work with NATO, rather than trying to go it alone, despite the emotional pull to do more and more. Stroud very much wants to see Russia defeated and President Putin stopped in his tracks. We give respect to the Ukrainian forces that are keeping up the fight.

I will focus my remarks on the local work for Ukrainian families. The Minister for the Armed Forces and the Minister for Europe and North America are sitting on the Front Bench, and they are very aware that the fighters being brave for Ukraine need to know that their loved ones are supported and have safe sanctuary in the UK, or in whichever country they choose.

The schemes we have put in place are very important. We have already settled 88 guests across 43 properties in Gloucestershire, and many more people have put themselves forward to host families. My office is handling 55 applications, and over the last week we have had 27 confirmations that visas and permission to travel letters have been sent out. My website has an awful lot of information for anyone listening to this debate, and I give credit to organisations such as the Help for Ukraine Support Hub down in Dursley and Stroud’s Ukraine refugee community support network, which are doing a lot of organising.

It is right to raise concerns in this place where we see problems with procedures and schemes, but the Homes for Ukraine scheme has never been done before anywhere in the world. As we know, the Home Office is already stretched with various schemes to look after families from Afghanistan and Hong Kong, on top of all its day-to-day business. I am the first to criticise, sometimes but not always constructively, when I see problems, but I believe the public understand that, although we want to go faster, we have to be cautious on safeguarding. We have to get this right, and we have to make sure that children and women, in particular, are not at risk of trafficking.

I have permission to speak on behalf of the “team Gloucestershire” MPs, all six of us, on two key points for the Ukrainian refugees who hope to come to our county. First, I want to see fast work to organise a rematching programme for when placements through the host-matching programme break down for whatever reason. The second is the sharing of data between councils, particularly on the families scheme and on registering issues that arise with safeguarding cases and hosts.

I completely understand that there is a lot of focus on the original match scheme, but the rematching of willing sponsors with refugees is a vital part of the puzzle. We know that there will situations where relationships with hosts will break down, no matter how much effort is put in on both sides. There will also be situations where councils have to reject homes that are not considered right to host refugees, for whatever reason, and, more importantly, where safeguarding concerns are identified. We know that we all have hundreds of families in our constituencies who wish to take part—that is particularly the case in Stroud and Gloucestershire, because people have put their hands up quickly—so it makes no sense that the option available to families if a relationship breaks down or if there is a problem with the host is that they end up in a homelessness situation. I would like us to find a way to use that good will and the option for refugees and councils to rematch on a formal basis, not informally, so that we have all of the Government safeguarding and co-ordination put in place. I hope that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is able to achieve that soon.

Similarly, I hope we can tighten up data sharing, as that will be necessary for safeguarding and for ensuring that the schemes are efficient. In a local case, a 23-year-old female guest was coming to Gloucestershire, but the shared bedroom with a male sponsor was found to be unsuitable, and he had also made an inappropriate comment about the guest during a visit by the property team. Obviously, red flags were going up there, but there is no way to stop that match; the visa was issued. When spoken to, the guest said that the person was their boyfriend, but they have since moved on to another family and there is no way to track them. These are issues of safeguarding. We are talking about a vulnerable lone female. As I have said, we cannot stop the visas, and the guests are not deemed vulnerable under the legal definition as they are adults with no mental illness or disability, so councils cannot intervene. We cannot stop the original sponsors going on to rematch again, because there is no way of registering that there is a red flag for that host.

I am not going to be a negative ninny—I completely understand the complexities—but there are changes we can make to improve these schemes. I have been having wonderful conversations with people in Stroud. In my village of Frampton on Severn, everything starts with a WhatsApp group and there is a fantastic one looking after people who want to host or refugees who are coming. I want this scheme to work. I want it to be a strong pillar of our help for Ukraine, alongside the UK’s efforts from the MOD, Foreign Office and Home Office. It will bring comfort to those brave Ukrainian men and women fighting on the frontline to know that there are good, strong refugee schemes coming into this country. I look forward to working with all Ministers on a cross-departmental basis to achieve that. The world is dangerous, or it feels dangerous to us, but it is absolutely horrendous for quite a lot of people living in Ukraine right now.