Ukraine: Priti Patel's Home Office incompetence is failing Ukrainians and bringing shame on us all - Yvette Cooper

In Pontefract market hall, Ukrainian flags are flying. Castleford’s Yorkshire Craft Beer shop is selling Ukrainian beer in aid of Ukraine.

As the dire news of Russian bombardment of Kyiv and Lviv and the siege of Mariupol continues, people across Yorkshire are finding different ways to show solidarity with Ukraine – fundraising, donating and offering homes to Ukrainian refugees.

But while Yorkshire has been determined to offer support, and while the country is united in backing Ukraine, the delays from the Home Office in helping Ukrainian refugees have been shameful and shambolic.

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The Government needs to urgently get a grip. The visa system for Ukrainians seeking sanctuary in the UK is simply not working. More than 10,000 Yorkshire families signed up for the Homes for Ukraine Scheme to host refugees after they saw the plight of desperate Ukrainian families fleeing the bombing, shootings, rape and mass killings.

Home Secretary Priti Patel outside the Ukrainian embassy in London. Photo: Yui Mok/PAHome Secretary Priti Patel outside the Ukrainian embassy in London. Photo: Yui Mok/PA
Home Secretary Priti Patel outside the Ukrainian embassy in London. Photo: Yui Mok/PA

But more than a month later, only a few 100 Ukrainians have made it here to a safe home in our region because of the terrible delays in the scheme. That is just not good enough.

Ukrainian families are still waiting for weeks on end – running out of money in temporary accommodation, or risking their lives still in Ukraine as the shells fall – even when there is a safe home waiting for them here.

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Many British hosts are still tearing their hair out, struggling for hours on end to get through to Home Office helplines that never answer and won’t tell them what is going on.

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Here in Wakefield and the Five Towns, families have set up networks and Facebook groups to help each other and to make sure that Ukrainian families can stay in touch –but mostly all they have seen so far is delay.

Even though Priti Patel was given months to prepare, and has been urged since February to sort this out, she has completely failed to tackle the bureaucracy and delay.

Ministers and officials have admitted that the security checks can be done in a matter of hours, so there is no good reason for adding several extra weeks of delay for people in such desperate need.

There is still too much bureaucracy that could be ditched to speed things up; Ukrainians who have provided all their passport details are still being asked to show evidence that they were living in Ukraine on January 1 such as utility bills or rental agreements even though that’s not what anyone thinks to take with them if they have to flee for their lives.

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This is deeply wrong. I worry that the generosity we have seen will go to waste as families give up in despair on such a long and tortured process.

Time and again, Priti Patel’s Home Office is failing to sort out the basics and that is letting families down. Ukrainian visas that they promised would take hours instead are taking weeks.

Asylum claims that should take weeks or months instead are taking well over a year because Home Office decision making has collapsed – shockingly the Home Office is only taking half as many asylum decisions a year as they were five years ago so the backlog is growing.

Instead of sorting this out, Ministers are coming up with unworkable, hugely expensive and unethical plans to send refugees to Rwanda – a plan which would cost the UK taxpayer billions of pounds and make it harder not easier to get fast and fair asylum decisions.

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It doesn’t have to be like this. Everyone has supported the work that other Government departments are doing to help Ukraine – especially the work of the Ministry of Defence to provide them with weapons to defend themselves, or the work of the Foreign Office to ensure that evidence of war crimes is collected and to maintain a united front across Western countries against Putin.

Our country wants to come together to support Ukraine and to help Ukrainian refugees. The British public is ready and waiting to do their bit and they are impatient to get on and help. The incompetence of Priti Patel’s Home Office should not be allowed to bring shame upon us all.

Yvette Cooper is Shadow Home Secretary and MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford.