Refugee workers have warned that Ukrainians seeking sanctuary from war may end up in hotel accommodation because of the “decimation” of official resettlement programmes.
They warned that sponsorship schemes of the kind that is set to be launched by Michael Gove on Monday should supplement, not replace, large-scale state programmes, amid fears that generous communities were being expected to “pick up the pieces” in the absence of official help.
Meanwhile, Labour accused the government of “dragging its feet” over the scheme, which was first announced by Boris Johnson a fortnight ago but was reportedly delayed by wrangling over the benefits to be granted to the new arrivals.
Shadow communities secretary Lisa Nandy said it would be “unconscionable” if it was as cumbersome as a similar programme set up in 2016 during the Syrian war, which has taken up to two years to place refugees and has so far helped only around 660.
The new humanitarian sponsorship scheme will allow individuals, charities, businesses and communities to open a route for Ukrainians without family links to enter the UK, by offering them accommodation and support, potentially for six months.
There will be no cap on numbers, and government sources believe tens of thousands could take up the offer.
A hotline and website will be set up for volunteers, and each offer of accommodation will be vetted for safety. They will then be matched with Ukrainians who have been through Home Office checks after applying for help.
The plan was first announced by the prime minister on 1 March amid criticism over the UK’s failure to follow EU allies and simply waive visas for Ukrainians fleeing Vladmir Putin’s war.
But its launch is understood to have been held up by a departmental spat over whether arrivals should be given full refugee status, entitling them to receive assistance including housing benefit and child benefit, or a temporary status offering more restricted support.
It is understood that they will be allowed to work and access public services for an initial period of 12 months. It is not thought that hosts will receive payment for welcoming them in.
The proposal has already prompted a generous response from the British public, with 1,500 offers of help received by the Sanctuary Foundation, and 500 in the past week alone by Reset, an organisation helping churches and charities sponsor refugees.
Refugees at Home, a charity helping individuals provide accommodation, said applications had soared from 20 a fortnight to around 1,000 in the two weeks since the outbreak of war.
But Refugee Council chief executive Enver Solomon said that the plans had so far been “vague at best”, with no detail about how the scheme would work or what funding would be provided by the government.
“This is all the more frustrating given the clear desire from people up and down the country to support Ukrainian refugees in their communities, who would jump at the chance to do so through sponsorship,” said Mr Solomon.
“For any scheme to be a success, we must see the government working quickly and effectively to have a clear plan in place, and funding allocated to enable councils, health services, schools and communities to best prepare for welcoming Ukrainian refugees through a comprehensive programme of support.”
Charities have expressed doubt that the new sponsorship scheme can be scaled up quickly, since it will require a lot of time, training and paperwork to organise. Groups are expected to provide refugees with support accessing benefits and services, as well as a home.
Kate Brown, co-director at Reset, said: “The existing Community Sponsorship scheme has shown how friends and neighbours can welcome refugees, and we believe there are many lessons that can be learnt from this amazing work.
“However, the existing scheme takes time to prepare and get ready for, and it would not be suitable for responding to emergency situations [like] this.”
Tim Naor Hilton, chief executive of Refugee Action, told The Independent that the failure to maintain previous resettlement programmes had left the UK unprepared for an influx of refugees, with the result that thousands fleeing Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover last summer are still in “temporary” hotel accommodation.
Official data shows that the number of people who come to Britain under refugee resettlement schemes has plummeted by 75 per cent in the last four years, from 6,212 in 2017 to 1,578 in 2021.
“Ministers have decimated our once-successful refugee resettlement programmes to the point where they have been left unable to respond effectively to the conflict in Ukraine,” said Mr Hilton.
“By scrapping the UK’s long-term resettlement commitments, the government has left local authorities unable to invest in services and keep a stock of housing for refugees.
“That is why 12,000 Afghan refugees are still stuck in hotels seven months on from the Afghanistan evacuation, and why we are deeply concerned that the government is considering similar forms of “temporary” accommodation for Ukrainians.”
There are already 37,000 asylum seekers and Afghan refugees living in hotels awaiting more permanent homes, costing taxpayers almost £5m per day.
Mr Hilton said that sponsorship schemes were “a wonderful way for communities to support refugees”.
But he warned: “These schemes were only ever envisaged to be additional to large-scale government resettlement programmes that are the only way to manage much greater numbers at pace. And it’s being able to welcome high numbers of refugees at speed that is exactly what is needed in a crisis.
“We are left with the impression that the government is leaving it to communities to pick up the pieces of a UK refugee protection system that has been run into the ground. This is simply not good enough.”
He called on MPs to back House of Lords amendments to the government’s Refugees Bill, currently going through parliament, to create a commitment to resettle 10,000 people every year.
Ms Nandy said: “Weeks after the invasion of Ukraine, the British people stand ready and willing to help while their government drags its feet.
“Excessive bureaucracy and a lack of planning cannot be allowed to get in the way of sanctuary for people fleeing Putin. The government is behaving as if these were ordinary times. This is an extraordinary challenge and it calls for extraordinary measures.”
Home Office minister Baroness Williams said 1,305 visas for Ukrainian refugees with family links in the UK had been issued by Thursday.
Mr Johnson has said that the family route could eventually assist as many as 200,000 people, but with more than 2.5 million Ukrainians fleeing their homeland, the numbers so far taken by Britain are dwarfed by those accepted by neighbouring Poland, Hungary and Slovakia and the 250,000-plus who have fled elsewhere in the EU.
The former head of the diplomatic service, Peter Ricketts, told the House of Lords on Friday that Britain must improve its “inadequate” cooperation with the EU to prevent scenes like those in Calais, when hundreds of Ukrainians were turned away as they tried to reach their families in the UK.
“Given the number of traumatised Ukrainian citizens who are now leaving the country, this flow of refugees is bound to continue for months, conceivably years,” said Lord Ricketts.
“We really do need to be working well with our EU partners if we’re going to avoid damaging the climate of confidence, which is so important for good law enforcement and judicial cooperation.”
The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered. To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here. If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page.
