12 Monday April 4 2022 | the times
News
Only one in ten of the refugees who
have been issued with visas under the
Homes for Ukraine scheme has arrived
in the UK, The Times has been told.
Out of 5,200 people granted visas
under the scheme, 500 had reached the
UK, according to figures from last
Friday.
The number represents 1.6 per cent
of the 32,000 people who have applied
to come to the UK under the scheme,
amid a growing backlog.
Ministers are increasingly concerned
by the delays in processing visas.
Lord Harrington of Watford, the
refugees minister, will travel to Poland
this week to get a better understanding
of the system and the challenges facing
refugees.
The government is also surprised
that so few of those who have been
given visas have come to the UK. They
believe there is likely to be a time lag
and that some may be delaying leaving
for the UK because they want to remain
close to their homeland.
When the Homes for Ukraine
scheme opened on March 18, it was
estimated that the Home Office would
be able to process 10,000 visas in the
first week. Harrington has set a target
of 15,000 visas a week, although achiev-
ing that is thought to be several weeks
off.
The UK has two schemes for Ukrain-
ian refugees: the Ukraine Family
scheme, under which people live with
relatives already in the UK; and the
Homes for Ukraine scheme, under
which people live with a sponsor in the
UK.
The number of visas issued across
both schemes is 29,100, but a further
35,800 applications have yet to be proc-
essed. It is taking an average of a week
for a typical mother and child to have
their application approved, which
Harrington wants to reduce to
48 hours.
He has called the delays unaccept-
able and Priti Patel, the home secretary,
admitted last week that it was far from
perfect.
Harrington, a former Conservative
MP, told The Sunday Times that the pro-
cess had been “far too slow”. He said:
“We did not have, and we’ve never had,
a proper system of administering the
mass flow of people from abroad. The
asylum system, the Syrian refugee
News War in Ukraine
Nine in ten refugees with visas
Steven Swinford Political Editor
Shapps tells
of frustration
over delays
A
n interview
with a
woman who
survived
the
bombing of a
maternity hospital has
been seized on in
Russia to boost claims
that the story is fake.
Marianna
Vyshemirskaya was
photographed fleeing
the building in
Mariupol last month.
At the time the
Kremlin claimed that
the Russian attack was
faked and cosmetics
had been used to
make the woman
appear injured.
Vyshemirskaya has
now spoken to a
pro-Kremlin reporter
in a video interview
that she posted on
Instagram. She said
she had heard two
explosions hit the
hospital on March 9 asKremlin uses video
report to cast doubt
on hospital bombing
she lay waiting to give
birth, but could not
confirm it was an
airstrike.
Local officials and
analysts have said the
damage to the hospital
was consistent with a
large bomb dropped
by Russian aircraft.
Channel One, the
Russian state
controlled
broadcaster, ran aGrant Shapps has admitted that
delays in the Homes for Ukraine
scheme “can be frustrating”.
The transport secretary will host
three generations of a family from
Kyiv: a mother, her son, his
grandmother and the family dog.
Shapps told Times Radio that he
found the family on Facebook.
He said: “There were lots of
people talking about it and I was
asked... we’d already been
discussing it since the beginning of
the outbreak of war that if we
could help we’d really like to.”
Shapps previously said that
neither the grandmother nor the
son speaks English but he hopes to
pick up enough Ukrainian “to
make them welcome”.
The father of the family is still in
Lviv, western Ukraine, and has not
been allowed to join the family in
the UK because of conscription.
Shapps has been
communicating with the family by
WhatsApp to help them through
the application process.
On the length of time taken to
bring refugees to the UK, he said:
“It can be frustrating.” He added:
“On the other hand, I would say...
it wouldn’t be beyond Putin to put
Russian saboteurs into groups of
people fleeing the country, and I
think it is reasonable the UK
would want to carry out
some checks.”
Shapps had told Red
Box: “These people are
fleeing for their lives...
Their family is
having to split
up. Every time
we get into a
family
conversation
about it that’s
where the
conversation
ends.”programme and everything else was
based on a much smaller volume of
people.”
He said there were people “working
overtime every evening and seven days
a week” to speed up the process, but
added: “It is not as automated as it
should be.”
The many checks on refugees and
their UK sponsors, including on pass-
ports and the international watchlist,
were taking far too long, he said.
He is working with Patel to reduce
the 51-page application form that
Ukrainians must fill in. It includes ques-
tions such as: “Are you a war criminal?”
Boris Johnson has privately called
the Home Office “a basket case”,
sources have said, and a cabinet minis-
ter said the department’s handling of
the UK’s refugee response had been “a
huge mess”. Some cabinet ministers
have said the visa delays had revived
questions over Patel’s future, but the
prime minister was said to be reluctant
to wield the axe as he “really likes Priti”,
a No 10 source said.
“There is clearly a significant deliv-
ery problem. The question is how much
of that is about Priti and how much is
about the Home Office itself,” a source
said.
Some cabinet ministers think John-
son is edging closer to sacking her as
part of a potential summer reshuffle. “I
think even Boris realises he’s at the end
of the road with Priti as home secretary,”
one cabinet minister said. “The Home
Office has been a mess for decades but
at this point you have to accept she isn’t
going to be the one to sort it out.”
Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow busi-
ness secretary, said yesterday the UK
had “not yet met the scale of the chal-
lenge” in taking in Ukrainian refugees
compared with other Nato countries.
He told Sky News: “There’s been a
huge response from the British people
around this... people signing into the
Homes for Ukraine scheme. The worry
is how is that feeding through on the
ground? I almost think we’re struggling
to understand the sheer scale of this. I
mean, the figures of people [refugee in-
take] in Poland and Romania alone.
“These are levels of movements of
people in Europe that we haven’t seen
for decades. And when you see what
other countries are coping with, and do-
ing, it’s hard to say that as of yet we have
met the scale of that challenge.”
Refugees in need, letters, page 26