Ex foreign secretary leads calls for UK to speed up admission of Ukrainian refugees

Ex foreign secretary leads calls for UK to speed up admission of Ukrainian refugees

Former foreign secretary William Hague has urged the home secretary to speed up plans to admit refugees fleeing the conflict in Ukraine.

Priti Patel has previously vowed to admit 100,000 Ukrainians to the UK, but has refused to waive visa rules for people fleeing the Russian invasion.

Patel told ITV yesterday evening that she was “absolutely working on ” plans to admit refugees from the warzone, but that security checks must be kept in place as agents of the Russian state and extremists may seek to infiltrate refugee flows.

This morning deputy prime minister Dominic Raab defended the UK’s reluctance to follow the EU’s lead on easing visa requirements, telling BBC Breakfast that most fleeing the conflict in Ukraine “ideally will want to go back to their mother country” and would thus prefer to settle in eastern Europe.

Writing in the Times newspaper this morning, Lord Hague argued: “We should equally play our full part in accepting people who have fled, suspending many of our normal rules as an act of solidarity and in the name of common humanity. The EU’s decision to allow in Ukrainians for up to three years is the right one, and it is part of another development which Putin underestimated: the re-awakening of the West.”

“Every day’s delay brings more hostility on his [Putin’s] head from around the globe,” he wrote, arguing that: “more refugees who will form a diaspora forever committed to his overthrow”.