Military staff will be drafted in to speed up the chaotic visa process for desperate Ukrainians fleeing to the UK, a senior Tory has said.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said he would offer Ministry of Defence assistance amid mounting outrage over the speed of the British response to Europe's largest refugee crisis since the Second World War.
The Home Office confirmed on Monday it has granted 300 visas to Ukrainians with family in the UK out of 17,700 applications started - and 1.7million refugees.
The paltry response comes as Ukrainians arriving in Calais were told to travel to Brussels or Paris to apply for British visas.
Refugees arriving at one centre on Monday were met with the message: "NO VISAS DELIVERED IN CALAIS."
Home Secretary Priti Patel sparked confusion yesterday by saying visas could be obtained in Calais - then saying a centre was still being set up.
A Government spokesperson said it "will be by referral from Border Force only to support Ukrainians. The primary Visa Application Centre in France will remain in Paris.”
It is understood there are 400 appointments available at the UK's Paris Visa Application Centre this week, and 100 are protected for Ukrainians.
Walk-in appointments are also available at the Visa Application Centre in Brussels but only Wednesday to Friday.
Mr Wallace admitted that the process needed to be ramped up and said he had offered military logistics support similar to Operation Pitting, the airlift out of Afghanistan.
"The first and foremost duty for all of us is to make sure that people get to safety," he told Sky News.
"Once they've got to safety, making sure we just check their identity before they come to this country, it is incredibly important that we do that.
"It shouldn't take time. And I've offered, I will be offering, to the Home Office assistance from the MoD in the same way we did in Op Pitting (the evacuation of Afghanistan) to increase the processing time to help those people."
The senior Tory acknowledged "we need to do more" to address the situation in Calais, where desperate people have been stranded.
"It's difficult for those people - why wouldn't it be - to go all the way back to Paris," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We need to upscale it, I know that the Home Secretary has already doubled, or trebled in some cases, more people in different processing centres.
"We can do more, we will do more."
He insisted the Government's compassion was "huge" and would result in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians coming to the UK.
"It's not the case that we are only allowing 300 people in, it is the case that the system has not been quick enough, which is what we're going to address."
Boris Johnson is under pressure from his own MPs to do more, with 37 senior Tories urging him to offer immediate support.
Jeremy Hunt, a member of the One Nation Tory group, said: "1.7 million people have now fled and no one could possibly argue they don't have good cause."
The MPs wrote: "This is not another migration crisis - this is a crisis of war.
"This should not be business as usual, we need sincere and immediate support for the Ukrainian people."
It comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was due to the address the UK Parliament this afternoon.
