Michael Settle: UK Government attitude to Ukrainian refugees shames us all

Apart from the fund-raising – more than £150 million was raised in a single week – some 200,000 citizens have opened their hearts and their doors to help refugees find sanctuary. However, too often bureaucracy has failed to provide the key.

Most European countries have waived visas and offered open access but Britain continues with a protracted process. The longer refugees have to wait for help, the longer they are prone to becoming preyed upon by criminals.

Whitehall officials are said to be working hard to improve the system and reduce the 51-page application form Ukrainians must fill in. It includes the question: “Are you a war criminal?”

Leading charities have called on the UK Government to waive visa requirements for Ukrainian refugees to align Britain with the EU.

Of course, helping those fleeing conflict is not a competition in compassion but it is difficult not to make comparisons when stories are told of how help has been offered only for the machinery of officialdom to frustrate it.

Two UK schemes have been created: one allowing refugees to join family members and one enabling Ukrainian nationals to come here once they have a named sponsor.

Today, new figures are due. Last week under both schemes, visa applications numbered 65,000 with 29,100 issued.

However, the Home Office couldn’t tell me how many Ukrainian refugees had actually arrived in the UK. I suspect this is because – as I write – it’s comparatively, and, shamefully, low.

Understandably, those countries bordering Ukraine have received the vast majority of refugees – Poland with 2.5 million has by far the highest number – but others further afield have also taken in sizeable numbers – Germany 300,000, Italy 83,000, Turkey 58,000 and France 45,000.

As for the UK, Michael Gove’s Levelling Up Department has announced the creation of 31 “welcome hubs” at airports, ports and train stations to greet Ukrainian arrivals. But it’s hard to see them being inundated by grateful refugees fleeing the war.

Without any official Whitehall number, it has been reported a mere 10% of the 4,700 people granted visas under the Homes for Ukraine scheme had arrived in the UK by last week. The number under the Ukraine Family Scheme is estimated to be just 500. Together, that makes fewer than 1,000.

One suggestion is some granted visas are waiting to see if a return home might be possible given Russian forces are retreating from western parts of Ukraine. One Whitehall insider said: “It’s not the Government’s fault, if they don’t want to come.”

Lord Harrington, the Refugees Minister, ran the gauntlet of a radio phone-in when, faced with one exasperated caller, who branded the UK system a “disgrace,” the peer said he found it “hard to disagree,” adding: “We know things are not good.”

Later during a Lords debate, the minister faced more criticism as peers heard how the Government’s visa process was “causing enormous distress to people who are already traumatised”.

Crossbencher Lord Hannay described it as “somewhere between inadequate and abject,” Tory peer Lord Cormack branded it “inept” while Liberal Democrat Baroness Sheehan accused ministers of putting “paperwork before people”.

Lord Harrington also did not give a figure for how many Ukrainian refugees had arrived in Britain but referred to his aim of getting 15,000 visas processed per week and decisions taken within 48 hours.

He insisted: “I am prepared to live or die by it. If I cannot do the job, I will have to say so and somebody else can. But I am optimistic.” But is anybody else?

Tensions are said to be gripping Whitehall with Priti Patel supposedly having “torn strips” off her civil servants over the slowness of the visa schemes. It’s reported she and Liz Truss are at loggerheads over the backlog.

The Home Secretary has asked the Foreign Secretary for more staff to help process applications but Truss told Patel bluntly her officials were already over-stretched on the diplomatic front.

It’s claimed that Boris Johnson has privately branded the Home Office “a basket case”. A summer reshuffle could see Patel moved.

Earlier this week, Gary Gray, who runs the volunteer organisation scothosts.org, highlighted how only a “paltry” 270 visas had been granted to allow people from Ukraine to travel to Scotland.

With as many as 10,000 Scots having offered to open their homes to those fleeing the war, he said there was “frustration” at the length of time it was taking for the paperwork to be carried out.

Nicola Sturgeon has already complained the “process of translating applications into visas is unacceptably slow”.

“In the midst of a harrowing conflict,” said the FM, “it is neither reasonable nor morally acceptable to expect people fleeing a brutal invasion to go through the bureaucratic processes being put in their way and wait weeks to be given a visa.”

The Scottish and Welsh Governments have become super-sponsors for Ukrainians seeking refuge, offering to provide them with temporary accommodation until a longer-term place can be found. Sturgeon said Scotland could welcome 3,000 Ukrainians immediately.

If the UK is not taking in the scale of refugees other western European countries are, then at least the Government should increase the help to those border countries coping with the huge influx of people.

Yesterday, Marcin Przydacz, Poland’s deputy foreign minister, urged the Government to provide further assistance, saying: “They could offer a bit more financial support. Those 2.5m people need accommodation. Half of them are basically kids.”

On accommodating refugees, the Government has failed to rise to the occasion and, sadly, its bureaucratic processes have simply not been able to match the deep swell of public compassion felt by Britons for the Ukrainian people.

This should shame ministers. It’s well past time they got their act together.