Thousands of Ukrainians are expected to arrive in the UK next week following criticisms of the slow progress of government schemes.
The refugees minister, Richard Harrington, told a parliamentary committee that sponsors who had identified someone who wished to come to the UK under the Homes for Ukraine scheme would be able to apply from 18 March.
The Home Office minister Kevin Foster told MPs that 5,500 visas had been granted under the Ukraine family scheme and 20,000 applications had been submitted.
The two ministers appeared before the home affairs committee on Wednesday after concerns across parliament about slow progress. The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) expects that as many as 4 million people will be forced to flee Ukraine.
Lord Harrington, who has been parachuted into government by Boris Johnson to run the sponsorship scheme, said the priority was to get people into the UK, speed up the visa application process and match UK sponsors with Ukrainian families.
Asked if councils would check accommodation under the scheme before Ukrainians were housed, he told the committee: “It may not be possible.
“I mean, I’m talking next week … I’m expecting thousands of people to come, but it will be their responsibility and, particularly where there’s a possibility of vulnerability with children, this sort of thing, that would take priority. But if we started saying we’re going to preview it, it’s just not possible.”
He said he did not expect the £350 monthly payment for hosts under the Homes for Ukraine scheme to breach insurance or mortgage terms.
Asked by the committee if he could give assurances that Ukrainian refugees would not be housed in hotels, Harrington said: “It’s not our intention. But if all else fails, it’s our duty to make sure they’ve got a roof over their head and they’re fed properly.”
Local authorities will receive £10,500 for each refugee for the first year to support education, English language learning, safeguarding and social care, and there will be additional supplements for each child placed in a school.
The government is not asking councils primarily to help with accommodation, because it intends to rely on the more than 120,000 people who have expressed an interest so far under the scheme.
The Labour MP Clive Betts asked: “Isn’t there a potential real problem there? That if there is a concentration of refugees coming to certain areas, where there may already be enormous pressure on things like child mental health, school places?”
Harrington replied: “I’m not turning my mind to that yet … It’s a very valid point and please don’t think I’m fobbing you off, but for the moment we just have to get these people in.”
Every Ukrainian coming to the UK will still have to fill in a visa application, the ministers said, but the form was being simplified and cut from 49 pages to 30.
Refugees entering EU countries do not have to fill in a visa application before arrival.
The Conservative MP Adam Holloway said: “We’re making it incredibly difficult for women and children to come here, with enormous reputational damage to a government [that] is doing really well overall.” He described the situation as “utterly farcical”.
MPs were told that informal networks and charities were identifying people and helping to match them to sponsors.
The Conservative MP Tim Loughton called for regular updates for the public about progress, “otherwise people will get very frustrated, as they did in some of the volunteering schemes in the pandemic they signed up to, and then they never got called on to do anything”.
Harrington said: “I’m doing my best to make sure that does not happen … I want it to work. I believe when it works through, the real conduit for this will be those NGOs on the ground, and they’ll become expert at it.”
In further developments, Scotland is to act as a super-sponsor for an initial group of 3,000 Ukrainian refugees who could begin arriving in the country from as early as this weekend.
The first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said her government’s plans would run in parallel with the first phase of the wider UK scheme, but did not require those fleeing to be matched with individual sponsors before being allowed entry to the UK.
The Welsh government said it was also completing plans to become a super-sponsor.
