the times | Saturday April 9 2022 31
Leading articles
schemes, Teleperformance, is barred from access-
ing the Home Office database for security reasons.
This means that advisers on the end of a phone
line cannot update visa applicants on the status of
these applications. All they can do is provide basic
information such as eligibility criteria.
Thousands of applicants do not know how long
they must wait or whether they will need to pro-
vide further information. It is extraordinary that
this problem was not anticipated by the Home
Office in awarding the contract to Teleperform-
ance, whose handling, under a separate govern-
ment contract, of visa application centres has pre-
viously come under criticism from David Neal, the
chief inspector of borders and immigration.
For refugees who arrive in Britain, there is a par-
amount need for safety. Our investigation reveals
that Facebook groups set up to match Ukrainian
refugees with British hosts are being used by single
men to target women. A fake female profile
created by a Times reporter attracted 75 messages
over two days, of which more than 40 were from
single men. One wrote: “I have a large bed. We
could sleep together.” The government must pro-
vide the funds to ensure that local authorities
make direct personal checks on the accommoda-
tion being offered. A criminal records check is notsufficient to detect predatory males, who may not
have committed any previous offence.
Safeguarding new arrivals requires additional
checks; processing visa applications does not. Re-
fugee charities have called for scrapping all visa
requirements, in line with the European Union.
The government rejects that proposal on grounds
of security and the need to make biometric checks
on applicants’ identities. The public can under-
stand these concerns but not at the price of ap-
pearing grudging amid humanitarian need.
It would speed up applications, and pose mini-
mal security risks, to drop visa requirements for
young children. At the moment, all online visa ap-
plicants must have been registered as resident in
Ukraine before December 31. Many small children
and babies were not. This may explain why so few
of the 40,900 Ukrainians issued with visas have
arrived in Britain. Families will have had visas is-
sued only to adults and older children.
Making entry for Ukrainian children, or at least
for pre-teens, visa free would be a humane course.
Ensuring that arrivals are not sexually exploited is
a minimal requirement of a decent society. Doing
both would help to bolster this country’s perform-
ance and reputation amid the gravest refugee cri-
sis Europe has faced in the postwar era.Its intolerance of any other view, and its clash
with feminist groups over the inclusion of trans
people in women’s sport and in access to safe
spaces and other women-only areas, has alienated
many organisations. No longer are several gov-
ernment agencies willing to let Stonewall deter-
mine whether employers conform to standards of
diversity. Indeed, campaigners for gay rights,
affecting many more people than trans issues, are
appalled at the way Stonewall has indulged some
of the more extreme trans ideologists.
The result, they argue, is to alienate many voters
who were otherwise supportive of gay marriage
and full acceptance for gay people. As Paul Barnes,
former chairman of the Tory Campaign for
Homosexual Equality, said in a letter to The Times:
“Stonewall has acted petulantly, destroyed an
event that would have helped LGBT people world-
wide and critically undermined its ability to lobby
for LGBT issues in future.”
The government must also accept blame for the
resulting bitterness. Its position on trans issues
was hopelessly muddled, as shown by a double
U-turn. It seemed to have little idea what the con-ference would do or who should attend. Even
more serious is its nonchalance in handing a
reported £8 million to Lord Herbert of South
Downs, a Tory peer, who was promoting the “Safe
to Be Me” conference across the world with visits
to Mexico, Argentina, Malta, New York and Wash-
ington. He proposed inviting high-level speakers
such as Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, and
Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, and
charging £3 million for their security. The money
may have to be written off. There must now be full
accounting for this waste.
Instead the conference could have highlighted
the global prejudice gay people still encounter.
Homosexuality is criminalised in 69 countries, in-
cluding more than 30 in the Commonwealth. In 11
countries gay people risk the death penalty. This
existential issue has been hijacked by a very parti-
cular trans agenda: even the LGB Alliance, a rights
group, would have been excluded for not signing
up to the trans rights ideology. Critics said the
conference had become a “monumental virtue-
signalling exercise”. Hard-headed campaigning to
build consensus would have achieved a lot more.New electric vehicles are on average 35 per cent
more expensive than conventionally fuelled mod-
els. There remains a lack of choice, especially at
the cheaper end of the market. Last and most seri-
ously, the absence of sufficient charging infra-
structure, and its uneven spread across the coun-
try, puts potential buyers off.
Even more than the upfront expense, which
many well-off customers are willing to bear, the
possibility of waiting in a queue to plug-in, or run-
ning out of juice and facing a long wait for assist-
ance, is understandably a deal-breaker for the le-
gions of drivers keen to do the right thing.The government recently announced £500 mil-
lion to fund a tenfold increase in charging points
by 2030. Big as these numbers are, they are not big
enough, not when there is just one slow/fast
charging point per 16 plug-in vehicles in the UK,
well behind the ratios achieved in similarly
wealthy countries. And not when almost half of
the existing charging infrastructure is in London
and southeast England.
For motorists in much of the country, for all
their goodwill towards the environment, going
electric is not a feasible option. More money, more
urgency and more leadership are required.Victims of War
Britain is failing Ukrainian refugees owing to needless impediments in their
visa applications and a lack of adequate controls to ensure women’s safety
Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine has created a
humanitarian catastrophe beyond its borders as
well as within them. More than four million
Ukrainians have fled and 6.5 million have been
displaced internally. Across Europe, Ukrainian re-
fugees have been met with warmth and generosi-
ty. The people of Britain are no less compassionate
for victims of war, yet the numbers of arrivals are
extremely low. Refugees face delays in applying
and risk exploitation on arrival. The government’s
failure in alleviating the plight of desperate people
is a stain on this country’s reputation.
Priti Patel, the home secretary, apologised yes-
terday for delays in granting visas under the
Homes for Ukraine scheme. Within a day of its
launch three weeks ago, 100,000 people had
signed up to offer shelter, yet only 1,200 refugees
have so far arrived. Under the separate Ukraine
Family Scheme, the numbers are scarcely more
impressive. In total, just 12,000 Ukrainian re-
fugees have arrived in Britain since the war began.
Ms Patel protests that “any new visa system
takes time”, but we report today on impediments
that deter Ukrainians from applying to Britain,
and on inadequate supervision that poses risks to
those who do come. The French-owned company
running the 24-hour helpline for the refugeeUndone by Intolerance
The collapse of a proposed LGBT conference reflects badly on all concerned
The disintegration of a proposed government
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)
conference is a fiasco from which no one emerges
with credit. The three-day event in June was to
have shone a spotlight on the discrimination
against gay and trans people and mobilised cam-
paigns to safeguard them. Instead, it has dissolved
into a welter of recriminations, arguments over
language and ideology, a boycott by most of the
groups who would have attended and anger
directed at Downing Street for its refusal to ban
conversion therapy for trans people.
The government’s vacillations on the issue of
counselling for people wanting to transition to the
opposite gender was attacked particularly viru-
lently by Stonewall, the main LGBT lobby group in
Britain. It insists the ban on conversion therapy,
rightly denounced as abusive by the government,
must apply not only in questions of sexuality but
also of gender. Stonewall has used its influential
position among employers and in British society
in general to insist that trans rights must, as a
matter of ideology, be treated in the same way as
gay rights.No Charge
The infrastructure serving electric vehicles requires radical improvement
If the government is serious about banning the
sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, it
must do much more to encourage motorists to
switch to electric power now. A worrying survey
by Auto Trader reveals that, with registrations
having increased year-on-year in 2021, searches
for electric alternatives on its site dropped off
slightly in the first quarter of 2022. Despite the
soaring cost of conventional fuel, the disincentives
to making the switch are still too great for mass
adoption. At the end of last year, only 2 per cent of
cars in the UK were electric or hybrid models.
The barriers to buying electric are threefold.Daily Universal Register
UK: Randox Grand National, Aintree, 5.15pm.
World: Pakistan’s parliament votes on a
motion of confidence in Imran Khan, the
prime minister.
Stephan Shakespeare,
pictured, co-founder
(2000) and chief
executive, YouGov, 65;
Sarah Ayton, sailor,
double Olympic gold
medallist (2004, 2008),
42; Sir Howard
Bernstein, president, Lancashire County
Cricket Club, chief executive, Manchester
City Council (1998-2017), 69; Lord (Simon)
Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, justice of
the Supreme Court (2009-12), 85; Sorcha
Cusack, actress, Father Brown (2013-22), 73;
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Conservative MP
for Chingford & Woodford Green, work and
pensions secretary (2010-16), 68; Elle
Fanning, actress, The Great (2020-21), 24;
Marc Jacobs, fashion designer, 59; Sir
Bernard Jenkin, Conservative MP for
Harwich and North Essex, deputy chairman
of the Conservative Party (2005-06), 63;
Alan Knott, cricketer, Kent (1964-85) and
England (1967-81), 76; Tom Lehrer, musician,
satirist and mathematician, 94; Cynthia
Nixon, actress, Sex and the City (1998-2004),
56; Dennis Quaid, actor, The Day After
Tomorrow (2004), 68; Vice-Admiral Guy
Robinson, chief of staff to Supreme Allied
Commander Transformation (Nato), 55;
Valerie Singleton, presenter, Blue Peter,
(1962-72), 85; Rachel Stevens, pop singer,
Some Girls (2004), 44; Kristen Stewart,
actress, the Twilight films (2008-12), 32;
Jacques Villeneuve, racing driver, 51.
In 1969 Sikh bus drivers in Wolverhampton
won the right to wear turbans while on duty.
Dame Carol Robinson,
pictured, chemist,
president, Royal Society
of Chemistry (2018-20),
the first female professor
of chemistry at Oxford
and Cambridge
universities, 66; Stig
Abell, broadcaster, Times Radio, 42; Gordon
Buchanan, wildlife film-maker, Cheetah
Family & Me (2021), 50; Ed Byrne, comedian,
Mock the Week, 50; Nicky Campbell, BBC
radio and TV presenter, 61; Sophie Ellis-
Bextor, singer-songwriter, Murder on the
Dancefloor (2001), Wanderlust (2014), 43;
Lesley Garrett, soprano, A North Country
Lass (2012), 67; Anoushka Healy, executive
vice-president and chief strategy officer,
News Corp, 50; Rosemary Hill, writer,
Time’s Witness: History in the Age of
Romanticism (2021), 65; Gloria Hunniford,
radio and TV presenter, panellist on Loose
Women since 2003, 82; Vincent Kompany,
footballer, Belgium (2004-19) and
Manchester City Football Club (2008-19),
36; David Moorcroft, middle and long-
distance runner, chief executive, UK
Athletics (1997-2007), 69; Peter Morgan,
screenwriter, The Queen (2006), Frost/Nixon
(2008), The Crown (2016-22), 59; Haley Joel
Osment, actor, The Sixth Sense (1999), 34;
Craig Overton, cricketer, Somerset County
Cricket Club and England, 28; Daisy Ridley,
actress, the Star Wars film series, 30; Steven
Seagal, actor, Under Siege (1992), 70; Paul
Theroux, writer, The Great Railway Bazaar
(1975), Mother Land (2017), 81; Errollyn
Wallen, composer, Mighty River (2017), 64.
“When you know that somebody has done
something before, it hampers you.”
Sam Selvon, writer, interview (1990)
Birthdays today
Birthdays tomorrow
On this day
The last word