I thank your predecessor in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me permission to be absent from the Chamber for a short period to attend a long-standing constituency engagement online.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is an unprovoked and unjustified outrage—a grotesque violation of international law and a brutal attack on democracy. We all stand united with President Zelensky, with Ukrainians who are resisting Putin’s violence and with our NATO allies in opposition to this horror. Since the first images of the invasion appeared on our television screens, my constituents in Dulwich and West Norwood have been desperate to do what they can to help. I pay tribute to the many individuals and organisations across my constituency who have been mobilising support, fundraising and donating what they can to help refugees, and the hundreds who have offered their homes as a place of sanctuary.
But instead of leading the way, supporting and encouraging those who wish to help, the bureaucratic undertow of the Home Office is holding back the generosity of my constituents. I appreciate that the Ministers on the Treasury Bench are not from the Home Office, but I hope that they will convey to their colleagues that the problems are very serious. Constituents are contacting me daily about the problems they are experiencing in their efforts to provide sanctuary to Ukrainian refugees. My fantastic team are working flat out to support them, but the situation is dire. We continue to experience excessive delays. Cases take at least three weeks to be processed from the date that biometrics are submitted. Refugees who do not have a valid passport must first travel to a visa application centre in a third country before they can begin the application process.
This is creating particular problems for families with very young children. The travel bans during the covid-19 pandemic have meant that many families had not applied for passports for their children prior to the invasion. That means that some of the most vulnerable families are waiting weeks after the parents’ visas have been processed while they work out how to get their children to an in-person appointment in a third country. We are encountering frequent errors—applications going missing or technical errors meaning that the application process has to be started all over again. The communication and consistency of communication is terrible. The form and the process are very confusing. My office has seen several examples of parents listing children as part of their own application because it was not clear that they needed to submit separate applications.
In several cases, some family members have received an acknowledgement from the Home Office while other members of the same family have not. When my team have raised this with officials, they have been told that it is “hit and miss”. They were also told that no decision-making staff were on duty at the Home Office over the Easter bank holiday weekend so no applications were
progressed during that time. The same official also said to one of my constituents that the Home Office was deliberately approving some family members and not others in a cynical bid to improve its statistics without actually increasing the numbers of people arriving in the UK. I hope that the Minister will be able to answer that allegation because, if true, it is very shocking indeed. There is chaos in relation to unaccompanied children, who are among the most vulnerable refugees, with visas being issued and then revoked, calling into question the Home Office’s approach to safeguarding.
In the meantime, the performance of the Home Office in all other areas outside of Ukraine has collapsed. My caseworkers tell me that it is literally impossible for them to get a response on visa applications or other Home Office issues for non-Ukrainians. The crisis in Ukraine has again laid bare that the Home Office is not fit for purpose and is in need of root-and-branch reform. In the meantime, it is the most vulnerable and traumatised women and children fleeing war who are suffering. They need much better than this. The Government must urgently get a grip.
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