Today the Home Secretary announced that the criteria for visas for family members of British nationals and settled Ukrainians in the UK would be widened slightly to include grandparents and siblings, and a community sponsorship programme would be launched through which Ukrainians with no UK family could be matched with an individual, community group or company in the UK. There were no clear financial commitments made today to support the arrival and successful integration of Ukrainians fleeing war.
We hope these changes to the existing visa regime bring some certainty to some families in Scotland who are desperately worried about their family in Ukraine or neighbouring countries.
But unfortunately, this just doesn’t go far enough. Changes to existing visa routes like this are simply inadequate to bring refugees to safety from a warzone. We need to see the UK Government offer solutions which match the gravity of mass displacement from a conflict on our doorstep.
The UK Government must follow Ireland and waive all visa requirements for Ukrainians and offer them a temporary protection status as other European countries are likely to announce this week. The Home Secretary mentioned that waiving visas was too great a security risk. But this is not a true barrier to offering people safety. Security checks can be done very easily at the point of entry. It’s unacceptable to be casting suspicion on these people who are mainly women and children who are only trying to reach safety. The UK must step up and act in solidarity not only with Ukraine, but with our European neighbours, and take its share of the responsibility and care for the safety of refugees in Europe.
We know that many people across the UK and Scotland will be eager to help, and we have no doubt that many offers of community sponsorship will be made when further details of the scheme eventually emerge. But it’s unacceptable for the UK Government to pass the responsibility for bringing people to safety onto our communities and individuals. As it asks members of the public to step up, the UK Government is stepping down from its moral and legal obligations to offer meaningful assistance.
As a signatory of the UN Refugee Convention, the UK has an obligation to provide protection to anybody who arrives here in need of safety. There was worryingly no mention of any asylum route to safety for Ukrainians in Priti Patel’s speech today.
In a speech about refugees the Home Secretary did not use the word refugee once. This UK Government is seeking to essentially end the right to claim asylum in the UK in its anti-refugee bill. Yesterday the House of Lords voted against part of the bill which would penalise and criminalise refugees, including Ukrainians, just because they arrived in the UK off their own back, as many will have to do if they do not fall within narrow changes to visa announced today.
MPs must now follow suit when the bill returns to the Commons and significantly amend this law, legislation which is totally unfit to meet the moral and practical needs of today’s unstable world.
