Public opinion on refugees has changed – the government needs to catch up

The UK government has been slow off the mark in responding to the desperate plight of refugees fleeing Ukraine.

Although 3,000 of the 22,000 applications for visas have now been approved, Ireland, a much smaller country, has already allowed in 5,500 Ukrainians. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, was right to criticise Boris Johnson’s government for failing to live up to its “grand statements” about Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War.

It is true that the UK has been generous in providing humanitarian relief to countries neighbouring Ukraine, such as Poland – which, thanks to the remarkable generosity of people willing to take Ukrainians into their homes, has accepted 1.5 million without setting up refugee camps. Thankfully, the UK is now following suit and urging the public to hand over any spare rooms to refugees. We applaud a move that is in line with our Refugees Welcome campaign.

Ministers are trying to learn lessons from the exodus from Afghanistan which, sadly, had slipped from the politicians’ and public’s minds well before the invasion of Ukraine. Some 12,000 Afghan refugees are currently in hotel accommodation in the UK.

In principle, it will be much better for Ukrainians to avoid such limbo by sharing a home with a British household that offers them a warm welcome. People will receive £350 a month from the government and will have to commit to letting the refugees stay for at least six months.

However, the Homes for Ukraine scheme is not without risks. People offering space in their homes, and the refugees themselves, will have to be vetted. Charities will play a role in what is bound to be a challenging matchmaking process. The government must ensure the scheme is not strangled by the same red tape that has made it so difficult for Ukrainians with family links to reach the UK.

It must also guarantee there will be enough backup for those taking in refugees, who will inevitably be traumatised and disorientated. Many will be women and children who have left the men in their family in Ukraine. Although the government will give local authorities £10,000 for each refugee living in their area, councils still await full details of the programme.

As the coronavirus pandemic showed, the government does not have a good track record on trusting and funding local authorities during an emergency. They may require further resources to ensure adequate support services; as the Refugee Council warns, the public should not be asked “to become foster carers without having a social worker in place”.

There is also a case for approving the request by the devolved governments in Scotland and Wales to become “super-sponsors”, so larger numbers can be housed quickly in temporary accommodation while the administrations arrange longer-term housing, including some provided by the public, and ensure enough support.

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Although there is no cap on numbers, Michael Gove, the levelling-up secretary, said on Sunday that the programme was likely to help “tens of thousands” of Ukrainians. That is modest and would mean the government’s overall response falling far short of the “hundreds of thousands” pledged by Mr Johnson last week. He should raise its sights. The government should not rely solely on warm-hearted British people to provide accommodation; it should supply some too.

For all the “grand statements” from ministers, they appear to be stuck in the mindset they had at the time of the 2016 EU referendum, even though public concern about immigration has fallen since.

As we report today, an Ipsos survey for the British Future think tank, taken before the invasion, found that three in four Brits agree that people “should be able to take refuge in other countries, including in Britain, to escape from war or persecution”.

Less than a third agree that “it is important to have an asylum system that deters people from seeking asylum in the UK”, while 46 per cent would rather have a fair asylum system “even if that means allowing more asylum seekers to stay and live in the UK than we do now”.

Priti Patel, the home secretary, should think again about her Nationality and Borders Bill now going through parliament, which would make it illegal for people to arrive in the UK without “valid entry clearance” and allow them to be deported to a different country while their claim is pending.

The public has moved on since 2016; it is time the government caught up.

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.