Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee
Oral evidence: Ukraine Refugee Schemes, HC 464
Wednesday 29 June 2022
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 29 June 2022.
Members present: Clive Betts (Chair); Bob Blackman; Sara Britcliffe; Ian Byrne; Ben Everitt; Darren Henry; Kate Hollern; Andrew Lewer; Mary Robinson and Mohammad Yasin.
Questions 1 - 74
Witnesses
I: Lord Harrington of Watford, Minister for Refugees; Paul Morrison, Director, Humanitarian Taskforce, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities; and George Shirley, Deputy Director and Head of Work, Study, Family and Ukraine Services, UK Visa & Immigration, Home Office.
Witnesses: Lord Harrington, Paul Morrison and George Shirley.
Q1 Chair: Welcome, everyone, to this morning’s session of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee. It is our pleasure to have with us Lord Harrington, the Minister in charge of the Ukrainian refugee scheme. Richard, thank you very much for coming this morning.
Before we come to yourself and your officials we would just ask members of the Committee to put on record any particular interest they may have that may be directly relevant to this inquiry. I am the vice chair of the Local Government Association.
Ian Byrne: I employ a councillor.
Kate Hollern: I also employ a councillor.
Ben Everitt: I employ a councillor.
Mary Robinson: I employ a councillor on my team.
Darren Henry: I employ a councillor.
Sara Britcliffe: I employ a councillor.
Andrew Lewer: I am vice president of the Local Government Association.
Q2 Chair: Okay, that is on the record. Richard, would you like to introduce the officials who are with you this morning?
Lord Harrington: I do not employ a councillor, but it sounds a good idea to me.
Thank you very much, Clive, and welcome. Thanks for inviting me again. The first time you invited me, in this job, was right at the beginning of it and, as you know, things have moved on. We have kept in touch personally about things, but I am very pleased to do this formally. I am pleased to say with me today, on my right—that is not a political comment, but George is sitting on my right—is George Shirley who is based in Sheffield. He is responsible for the visa side of the operation, which is technically the Home Office, but we do work together as a cross-government task force. George, you have borne the brunt of a lot of what went on at the beginning, and I want to put on record my thanks to you and your team in Sheffield and elsewhere for what you have done there, because I personally find it very impressive.
To my left is Paul Morrison. I worked very closely with Paul when I did the Syrian refugee programme because he was responsible for it. When I was asked by Michael Gove and Boris Johnson to do the job this time, I requested that Paul be extracted from the depths of the Government Department to which he had moved, which was planning in DLUHC, but he came back to do this job. Paul is one of our directors in the task force and he is responsible for the most relevant, if you like, DLUHC bit—it is all relevant because it is all one team—but particularly to do with local authorities, the voluntary groups and all the matters to do with the settlement. I do not use the word “settlement” in that way because obviously a sponsorship scheme is not a settlement scheme, but I think you would understand what I mean. He is responsible for, shall we say, what goes on “UK-side” for people who come here.
That is the team. However, it is my responsibility. I am very pleased, obviously, to answer any questions. Would it help if I, perhaps, just summarise the situation—where I thought it was—before we start with the questions? It is entirely up to you.
Chair: Yes, okay, in this particular situation, I think it would probably be helpful.
Lord Harrington: I am sure you all know the numbers, but we are really pushing about 80,000 Ukrainians who are here under both of the schemes. The breakdown in my head, and it changes daily, is about 55,000-plus on the Homes for Ukraine scheme, the balance being on the extended family reunion scheme, but however we dice it, it is about 80,000 people. We seem to be moving between 5,000 and 7,000 per week over the two schemes, with far fewer on the family reunion scheme.
What I was asked to do—when I was plucked out of what I suppose you could call civilian life, and brought back to the Palace of Westminster on 7 March this year—was to try and replicate what we did for Syria, which is a genuine cross-government team where everybody works for one group across the two Departments here today—the Home Office and DLUHC. We set up under our own permanent secretary, Simon Ridley, who had made his name during Covid. He came on to supervise it, but Paul Morrison and Emma Payne are the two main directors who are running with it, and George on the Home Office side.
If I could summarise briefly, Clive, before everyone asks questions, the good points are we have nearly 80,000 people over here and, whatever it boils down to, there are 80,000 people sleeping safely in their beds who were not. When I go through the frustrations of the job, I sometimes think to myself, “At least there is that.” I cannot, unfortunately, change matters with Putin. I cannot change matters with the G7, NATO and all this kind of stuff, but this I have. That is the sort of thing that keeps me going.
I will just go through the big issues—if you like, problems—we are dealing with now, which may pre-empt some of the questions. The first blockage was to do with our policy on—we keep saying unaccompanied minors, but most of them are neither unaccompanied nor minor; it is just people who do not fit into coming over here with a parent. It took more time to deal with this than I wanted because so many different parties were involved. Perhaps of less relevance to this Committee but, nevertheless, important to us was what the Ukrainian Government wanted; they did not want children being moved across a continent to be resettled here. We had to negotiate with them on what the definition of a legal guardian would be and how to prove someone is a legal guardian. Under their system it is based with notaries, but half the notaries are shut because of the war. They have set up contingencies in their embassies where there are consul officials who can do that. I could go on and on about that. It is probably not of direct relevance to the Committee, but I am just saying that that was one of the things.
The main thing was to do with safeguarding, and the role of local authorities and the funding of it. What if it goes wrong? As everybody would know, the actual cost of taking children into care—forget the personal side of it—is very large. We had to make sure the Government were available to step in, and in fact they do. It all took rather longer than I wanted. We announced the policy, and we are working with a group of young people, mainly 16 and 17-year-olds, who are in the system, and then we will open it up shortly after to new applications. I do not think it will be a big thing. We have put restrictions in place. They have to be known to the sponsor they are linked with, and before visa is issued, the councils will have to do enhanced DBS checks. I do not think it will be big numbers, but it is dealing with a lot of the people who want to come here. Our main efforts as a Government are what we are doing on the ground to help local charities—the big one, obviously, is the United Nations, but all of the other organisations that help children over there. That is the first thing.
The second reason for delays, which has taken time to work through, is when the sponsors are deemed unsuitable, which is mainly to do with criminal record checks and things related to that. We found, first of all, that quite a few people, although a small number compared to the total, come up on the PNC checks, but we have to work out what is relevant and what is not. Someone may have done something 20 years ago that society might say is not right and been involved a conviction—I am guessing but, say, a fraud case or getting into some punch-up somewhere—but it does not mean that they are a danger to a mum and kids coming to live with them, so it has taken more time to work through that, and we have done. They are the two policy things we have been working on.
Rematching is becoming an issue. That is where sponsorship, for whatever reason, has not worked out. Paul and his team have helped a number of organisations; we have nurtured them with money and help for them to be able to do rematching. Local councils are getting experienced at it. It has not been a big issue yet, but it is something we have to work on down the line.
The final point is what happens after six months for those people whose sponsors might say, “We did it for six months and it’s been more difficult than we thought,” because, after all, you are having people in your flat or house. It is a good thing for them to do, but people also have their own pressures and so on. We are working on different schemes to rematch and help people to move into private accommodation. If anyone has any questions on that, perhaps I could go into more detail later.
Chair: I think we have further questions on all aspects, Richard, so we will pursue it at the end.
Lord Harrington: I think that is a fair summary, Clive, if that is acceptable.
Chair: It is helpful for the start-off.
Lord Harrington: You do not want me going on about that for the whole two hours, so I will stop now.
Q3 Chair: No, we do not. I am sure we might go on for two hours asking questions about the issues, so let us start on the issues we particularly want to focus on. Thank you very much for that introduction. We can all recognise and accept that having 80,000 people here in safety rather than in potential danger in Ukraine is an enormous step forward.
You referred to the fact that 80,000 people were sleeping safely in their beds, but when you came last time, we mentioned the Local Government Association’s concerns that already some of the people who had come here were starting to present themselves as homeless. That was a fairly small figure at the time, but we know the latest figures are that well over 600 families have now presented themselves as homeless who have come over here from Ukraine. There are people still on the list who are willing to offer their homes, but because the majority of those people—not all of them—have come on the family scheme, they cannot switch over to be linked up with a sponsor. Why do we still have that problem?
Lord Harrington: You are right in what you say. From memory, I think about 200 are from the sponsorship scheme and the other 400 or so are from that scheme. I realise restating the figures is not an answer to the question, Clive. The family scheme existed before we came up with the other scheme and, to give credit to the Home Office, they did their best to flex it, and it has worked in many cases. What happened was they flexed—perhaps you might comment on this, George—the definition of family to be as broad as possible, but in the end it is not a refugee resettlement scheme; it is a family reunion scheme. The level of wraparound and funding that is given to the sponsorship scheme, which is quite significant—about £10,500 per refugee, quite apart from paying the host £350 per family—is not available for that scheme.
However, what I would say in defence, before coming to the core answer, is that it does not mean that the people who arrived under the family scheme are without rights and the rules were changed so that they can get benefits and the right to work and all of the other things wrapped around it. They are not left completely penniless and on their own; they are entitled to what they would have been entitled to themselves were they a citizen here with the same rights.
The difference is the money that is paid to the councils. Yesterday, I met a group of refugees in York because I find talking to refugees and the people who help them on the ground very helpful, and I do it at least once a week. The reason I am mentioning this thing in York is because the people I speak to always bring up this subject you have brought up, and I perfectly understand why, but the local authorities are basically using their own resources. When we say homelessness, it does not mean they are sleeping on the streets; it means they have to be put into homeless accommodation, which is not as good as what they came to expect or will be used to. I am not making light of it, but at the moment, and it is work in progress, it is true that people cannot move from one scheme to the other. It does not mean they are left stranded without rights, but what seems a logical and rational thing to do, given that we have, in gross levels, more than 200,000 expressions of interest on the sponsorship scheme, is to move them. We are not able to do that yet, Clive. I want to do that and I am working towards it.
Q4 Chair: You want to do it, but you are not able to do it because other bits of Government will not allow you to do it?
Lord Harrington: Your words, not mine.
Chair: Right.
Lord Harrington: Would you like to comment, Paul, because we are working on it?
Paul Morrison: Yes, we are working on it. For the main Homes for Ukraine programme, there is rematching that local government can offer, but as the Minister says, the policy position around not being able to switch from the two schemes is as it is at the moment. We are working with local government on the support we can give around the prevention of homelessness, but in answer to your core question, Mr Betts, that is the position as it stands.
Q5 Chair: I think we are going to keep on pressing on this because, as you say, you have these people who are still saying, “We’re here to help. Will someone put us in touch with refugee families who need accommodation?” Yet, you have refugee families presenting as homeless who cannot be helped in that way.
Lord Harrington: Clive, perhaps I could rebut your words. I said, “They’re your words, not mine.” What I really meant is that we are exploring it. Honestly, we really are exploring it. Of course, it is not as simple as it sounds. From a financial point of view, it is easy to say in government, is it not, “The Treasury will not allow this and that,” but I do not think it is a financial matter because putting people into someone's homes would be cheaper for the taxpayer if you just view it as a financial matter.
Q6 Chair: We will explore that in a minute as Ben is going to come on and explore that particular issue about funding. Finally, from me, one issue: you mentioned the unaccompanied minors. As you say, many will be 16 and 17, and probably most of them will be. I have one particular case I am still waiting for a response to, which you know, and which I hope by the end of today we might have a response to, so I will not go into that one in detail just now. When unaccompanied minors come over, local authorities will have a responsibility for safeguarding. Does that responsibility apply to unaccompanied minors who come over on the family scheme as well as the Homes for Ukraine scheme?
Lord Harrington: I do not know the answer to that, Clive. You can see my lack of success at the mega level of politics because when I do not know the answer, I actually say it rather than waffling. I do not know the answer to that. Paul, do you?
Paul Morrison: We can talk around the safeguarding arrangements that apply to people coming in through the Homes for Ukraine scheme where there is an issue around, potentially, the sponsors not being relatives of theirs and, therefore, needing those additional checks. The way the family reunion operates is that we do not ask those additional checks of local government and, as the Minister has said, the family reunion part of this is as for any family reunion programme that exists and reunites people. The things that the Minister is talking around, specifically on the Homes for Ukraine scheme expansion, will, I think—we can confirm this in writing—not apply to the family scheme.
Q7 Chair: A young person could come over here to stay with a family who they have never seen and there is no responsibility for their safety.
Paul Morrison: It would be a member of that family.
Q8 Chair: How close a member? Could they be a cousin three times removed?
George Shirley: There are minors applying under the family scheme to join relatives here. We do pay particular attention to those under the family scheme to check the basis of the relationship and also the connections they have had. We do undertake some safeguarding checks at the visa stage in relation to minors applying under the family scheme. That is before we issue the visa, not necessarily after that.
Q9 Chair: No checks with the family themselves?
George Shirley: We ask for evidence of the relationship, which needs to be provided by the family themselves.
Chair: But no checks with the family themselves. The local authority does not check.
Lord Harrington: You mean checks with the UK-based family?
Chair: Yes.
George Shirley: In the relation of minors we will contact both stages of the family to check they are aware that—
Chair: But the local authority does not know where they are, do they?
Lord Harrington: The local authority does not know where they are with the family reunion scheme because they are with their family.
Chair: I just think this is an issue waiting to be a problem. The fact is you have no idea of the whereabouts of these children if they are here under that scheme while there are very appropriate arrangements in place to check under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. That is an issue we might be giving some thought to in due course. Can we move on to the family scheme and the funding of it? Ben Everitt.
Q10 Ben Everitt: Thank you. I will start with the numbers and the costs. What estimate have you made of the cost to local authorities of Ukrainian refugees under the family scheme who are now reporting as homeless? You mentioned a number. Was that the 400 number that you mentioned?
Lord Harrington: Yes, approximately.
Q11 Ben Everitt: Have you put a financial cost to that as an estimate?
Lord Harrington: It is the same cost as anyone who is homeless in that it is not a separate cost. We work out things that are directly relevant to refugees. At the moment it is a comparatively small number of people, so we do not really have enough data to do that. I hope it does not become more significant; I really, obviously, do. Apart from the official information we get, I ask loads of people. I was at the LGA as well; I meet different councils to ask. At the moment it is not a really significant problem. I have weekly calls with people, for example Georgia Gould in Camden, who is very good. Camden is very used to dealing with refugees anyway. It is not the overwhelming problem at the moment, but it could be.
In terms of cost, we have to view it as being the same as any other form of homelessness cost. I am more concerned about the quality of accommodation for people who have been going to people's houses, to ensure that they are put in decent accommodation.
Q12 Ben Everitt: I would just slightly push back on that a bit in that when we look at the cost of a person who is homeless, it is a range because their needs are different. They have multiple complex needs, as we know, and we know from our experience of “everybody in” during Covid, particularly in London and Camden as you mentioned, where we were taking people off the streets in these areas, they do have additional needs, such as translation. Previously in this Committee, we have flagged up the additional needs for refugees to deal with the trauma they have experienced through war. When you are making those assumptions about the cost of a homeless person being the same as everybody else, we should take it at the top end of the range because there will be those additional burdens.
Lord Harrington: That is a very fair point, but just take, for example, the mainstream scheme where councils are paid an amount of money per refugee. Some of the refugees hardly cost anything, but some of them cost a lot more. Everything is a pool.
You are absolutely right. They are homeless, but the whole issue of mental trauma and things we do not yet know if it is going to be a problem for the NHS generally, because, when we took people from Syria it was people who we knew were really traumatised personally. It was basically a humanitarian vulnerability scheme. I meet Ukrainians who, on the surface, are fine: young women with kids. I say fine; who is fine when your family has been in that? It has not yet come to the surface in many cases, so I am monitoring it carefully, but that could be a problem as well.
My mind is really on the homelessness thing, Ben, because at the moment it is a trickle and it is being dealt with. Morally, it is my job and responsibility to ensure these people are dealt with in a proper way—not because of what this Committee might say.
Q13 Ben Everitt: That is very reassuring to hear. In terms of the finances allocated to it, is there an additional top-up to that pool you mentioned to support local authorities should the trickle become a flood—the 400 starts to grow? There will be an extra burden on local authorities.
Lord Harrington: It is dealt with as part of the general homelessness pool, which I believe, central Government do assist with. They are not treated as separate homeless, if you like.
Q14 Ben Everitt: That said, that is done as part of the yearly grant, though. Is there anything to top up in-year because we can see this is an additional in-year burden.
Lord Harrington: Paul, would you like to comment on that?
Paul Morrison: There is no separate Ukrainian cohort under the family scheme. It is the £316 million that we set out this year to help with the prevention of the costs of homelessness, and then the £2 billion over three years that I am sure the Committee will be familiar with. There is no separate remuneration. What I would just say about the costs on the family scheme is it will vary area to area and, as the Minister has said, we have the numbers. As they are at the moment, they are relatively small, but there is no separate funding stream specifically for the Ukrainian family scheme.
Ben Everitt: We might get to the area by area bit in a second.
Lord Harrington: I would just say that we have feelers on the ground. We speak to LAs every week. You have your own group of officers; I do for the politicians. I do not even know who is Labour, Liberal or whatever. I get feelers from that. MPs are very much on the ground as well, and we do a weekly call with MPs and staff. We want to be ahead of the game and we want to know what is going on, but it has not yet been on the scale that we have comprehensive figures. It varies so much nationally. The whole thing with this method of dealing with refugees, both the family and, more importantly, Homes for Ukraine, is we do not dictate where people go.
Q15 Ben Everitt: I get the restraints that are on the funding now, but would you agree that it would be cheaper in the long run to allocate resources to prevent and deal with homelessness now, rather than sort out the issues that relate to it further on down the stream? You have some aircover here because I asked the same question to the Secretary of State, who gave a fairly positive, if typically noncommittal, answer last time.
Lord Harrington: Ben, I think what you say is absolutely right. We have to deal with it, and I am not looking on the financial side of it; I am looking on the humanitarian side of it. I do not think there is an incompatibility there as it happens. I do not at all.
Ben Everitt: The two work the same when you are considering other people’s issues.
Lord Harrington: Exactly.
Ben Everitt: Absolutely.
Lord Harrington: I do not know what Mr Gove said, but I am sure you do.
Q16 Ben Everitt: He was very eloquent, as ever.
The final one from me relates to the data we have coming in now because you mentioned we are watching it as it happens and reacting live. We have this data from 21 June: Kent, Surrey and Hampshire had seen 1,850 arrivals by sponsor location under Homes for Ukraine. These local authorities will get £20 million as a result of that number. Your letter of 16 June says, “We know from analysing Biometric Residence Permits (BRP) that the correlation with census data shows that the Family Scheme members are going to areas where the existing Ukrainian diaspora is as we would expect.” How much additional funding do you estimate the local authorities with the largest Ukrainian-born populations—be they in Newham, Ealing or Hounslow—should get?
Lord Harrington: What, for the family scheme?
Ben Everitt: Yes, because we have seen the data coming in.
Lord Harrington: No, I know that, but—
Ben Everitt: We know additional support will be required and it will be an additional burden on local authorities. In your letter, you stated, “We know that they will go to areas where there is an existing Ukrainian diaspora.”
Lord Harrington: The only way they are going to is to stay with a family. The Ukrainian diaspora are all over the place now because most of them are more than one generation away. I have met loads of people whose parents or grandparents came over to escape from communism in the first instance before all this. In terms of extra funding, with the family scheme itself, we are not paying an amount per refugee, as you know. I realise it is a contentious point, but the £10,500 per individual refugee that a council gets from the sponsorship scheme they do not get for the family scheme. There is no point me ducking round that; it is a fact. You and I may think that is not a rational and logical thing. For the majority of people who are under family reunion schemes, that extra funding probably is not necessary. What I have to ensure is that people get benefits, they go to school and they get a doctor—they get all of the things that we would do—but the wraparound bit at the local authority scheme is not there, and therefore it is not possible for me to answer your question.
Q17 Ben Everitt: We accept there is going to be an additional burden on public services—you mentioned schools and GPs—but there is no discrete pool to support the hotspots for where the Ukrainians are settling.
Lord Harrington: Although I would say that, of course, for education, health, and doctors’ surgeries etc., those authorities are paid in the normal way from central Government to provide those services so, in that way, there is funding in the way the school system works, for example. I would also like to say the early evidence is that many people are coming over and getting jobs, and they contribute as well. That refugees are a burden on the public purse is only true to a certain extent. The early figures on employment for Ukrainians are very encouraging from the employment point of view. Certainly, what I have learnt from speaking to people—I know it is not typical—is that quite a lot of refugees are in jobs.
Ben Everitt: Thank you.
Chair: You mentioned in your introduction the issue of matching and rematching, which is going to become a bigger issue as we go along, and I am sure Andrew Lewer will explore that.
Q18 Andrew Lewer: Good morning. We have heard from quite a few local authorities in the Committee and more personally that refugees have been threatened with homelessness by their host families for a whole range of reasons, such as a vegetarian host not welcoming meat-eating guests, smoking in the home and cultural differences in disciplining children. Also, there are residents who ended up feeling like their home is not their own anymore—that they have been forced out of their own home almost by the presence of a Ukrainian family. When we set that against what the policy for rematching is, and I am quoting now, “Rematching should only take place if one of the following applies, a) when the local authority determines it is genuinely not viable or safe for the Ukrainian guests to stay where they are, and b) because of failed DBS or accommodation checks,” which you touched upon earlier. In that context, how many hosting relationships are you or your team here aware of that have broken down?
Lord Harrington: There are too few to have data on it at the moment, Andrew, and I must say I have not heard of any of this, like the vegetarian point and all those things. I do not know if they are from your council in Northampton, but I would be very pleased to hear about them.
Andrew Lewer: I think it was to the Committee.
Lord Harrington: I have not heard of those. I have heard of some where we are having to do rematching because the local authority does not deem it suitable or because the family that have taken them in cannot cope. At the moment, it is not a significant number, but I totally agree that we do have to plan for it and we do have to gear up on rematching. Paul, would you like to comment, please?
Paul Morrison: Yes. On the rematching approach, what we have given to local authorities is in terms of our providing them with data around the other sponsors that may be in their area and the means in which to do the rematching. Part of the reason behind that guidance, though, is that we do not want to do lots and lots of shifting by way of personal preference. What we want to do is to try to ensure the rematching is occurring where it is most needed.
It is at the local authority’s discretion as to how they do that and, obviously, whatever way the rematching approach is undertaken—going back to our earlier conversation—we want to avoid homelessness. We have given the facility; we do want it to be used appropriately so that it is not happening as the default. Where possible, it is for the local authority to engage with sponsors and guests to try to reconcile and resolve those differences, but that was the rationale behind the guidance. The Minister is right: we do not have the numbers that we can publish around what we are seeing in terms of the number of relationship breakdowns but, from the conversations we are having and the information we are getting, it is the vast minority. That the vast majority of sponsorships are sustaining is the information we are getting from our conversations with local government.
Lord Harrington: Can I just make one point?
Q19 Chair: I am interested in the dissonance of that because I have come across, both personally and in evidence submitted to the Committee, quite a significant number of rematching problems and, perhaps not surprisingly really, there is the trauma of some of the resettlement. There are the quite significant cultural differences— smoking and approach to child discipline and what have you. Also, just the sheer fact of people opening their hearts to having somebody coming and then realising this actually means their house has been taken over by somebody living with them for six months is more of a shock to many than, perhaps, they should have realised. I am surprised, therefore, to hear that it is not as significant in your statistics as I might have thought.
Lord Harrington: That is how we have found it. Interestingly enough, we were warned by Poland—because the Polish were ahead of us simply because people came right at the beginning of the whole war—that what they call “host fatigue” is typically about six or seven weeks, so we were on alert for rather more than we have actually appreciated. As I say, we are on the ground, we are monitoring it, and we have a lot of other people who are very happy to be sponsors. Also, there are early indications that people are moving into private rented property. York Council is very well organised with refugees. The city has been doing it for a long time, as many have—Sheffield, Bradford and plenty of other places. They know all the private landlords well and they are literally putting people into private accommodation. I do not know if anyone wanted me to go into that in more detail, because we are doing a lot of work on that, but I was quite surprised to find people are moving into private accommodation.
Q20 Andrew Lewer: Related to that, I was going to ask about the matching pilot which was being developed by Reset which you did not go ahead with.
Lord Harrington: Excuse me. Did you say “did not go ahead with”?
Andrew Lewer: Yes, because—
Lord Harrington: No, they have done the pilot.
Q21 Andrew Lewer: Done the pilot but did you did not proceed. You went for voluntary community sector matching work instead. You touched on it earlier, Richard, that Paul was going to unpack that a little bit more, so perhaps it is a good opportunity to do that.
Paul Morrison: We have been working with a variety of different organisations, including Reset, but, as you said, we ran a pilot to get their matching process underway. That is continuing. Reset continues to operate a matching process. What we learnt from the initial pilot was that in the first stage there was an approach which was very labour intensive. There were lots of human interactions involved, and what they have been able to evolve from that is the development of an online matching tool which we are continuing to work with them on. What we have also done—so that we do not just have individual organisations—is we have worked with a range of different organisations. For example, we have worked with Citizens UK and Refugees at Home to have them recognised as providers so we are able to point people to work with those organisations and provide the matching tools but also, particularly in the case of Reset, the support and training to sponsors.
All of that was informed by the initial pilot with Reset, and we are going to continue working with those organisations to evolve those services to support sponsors and effect matches.
Q22 Andrew Lewer: Is that what you anticipate as being the later phases of the Homes for Ukraine scheme, along those sorts of lines?
Paul Morrison: That is right. We are very keen to keep working with different organisations. We set some criteria around what it would take to be one of those trusted providers, such as with the Charity Commission, and it being within the bounds of what the trustees of the charity regarded as the purpose of their organisation. We have issued guidance around it, and we will continue working. Hopefully, over time, as it evolves, we will be able to augment the list of recognised providers and give people a place to go to avail themselves of those services.
Andrew Lewer: Thank you.
Q23 Chair: Thank you very much. Just one issue about the rematching—Sheffield has obviously raised the needle, and I know you are coming to meet them towards the end of July—is that sometimes they are contacting people when a relationship breaks down to say, “We have a family here, you’re on the sponsorship list,” and they say, “Well, actually, that was three months ago; we’ve changed our minds and our circumstances have changed.” Are you keeping that sponsorship list up-to-date and refreshing it so that councils have people who actually do now want to take families rather than having an idea three months ago that they would?
Lord Harrington: It is a fair point and we are contacting sponsors now because, remember, we asked for EOIs—expressions of interest. It was not like a contractual thing that, “I will be a sponsor,” and we are now drilling down to it. When I was in Scotland the week before last, they said to me they estimate that about 40% of people who had applied actually in the end said, “No, it’s not for us,” so in my head I am using that as a rough estimate.
Was it 220,000? Certainly more than 200,000 people put their name down, so we have a long way to go. With, say, 55,000 people that have come in, let us say the average family size is three people to one family, so that is still 20,000 actual families that are sponsors, and therefore we have a long way to go. We need to do a lot more work on the expressions of interest, which we are doing, and we also need to communicate with—we are doing so—existing sponsors to say, “What happens when the six months come up? Will you extend it?”
Chair: We will come on to that point about the six months in due course if that is okay.
Lord Harrington: Oh, sorry.
Q24 Chair: You are basically going back and rechecking with these people that the expressions of interest still hold?
Lord Harrington: Yes, exactly.
Chair: That is helpful.
Lord Harrington: Paul, did you want to come in?
Paul Morrison: Yes, I just wanted to add that the point and purpose in us sharing the expressions of interest data with local authorities was so they could do that engagement to establish how many and whether there were other people in the area. That is part of what local authorities are doing. As the Minister says, not all those people who expressed interests will follow through into being sponsors.
Q25 Chair: Typically, whose job is it then? Is it your job at the centre or the local authority’s job to go back and recheck these expressions of interest to see if they still hold?
Paul Morrison: The expressions of interest is the database that allows us to engage and communicate, as Richard says. In terms of the communications with existing sponsors there is a separate—
Chair: I understand that. I was asking you about the expressions of interest from people who have not yet expressed interest for the purposes of rematching.
Paul Morrison: We have given that to local government. It is local government's responsibility to establish—
Q26 Chair: I am still not clear; I am sorry. On the people who said three months ago, “I might be interested in doing this,” who might not be interested now, are you going back at the centre and checking to see if those expressions of interest still hold so that they are still live if local authorities need to contact them?
Paul Morrison: No, local government is doing that. We are just passing the data over to them, so they can—
Chair: The data might be three months out of date.
Lord Harrington: That is the purpose of rematching. Contacting them all to find out who is still in is like a separate exercise really. That is our central response.
Q27 Chair: You are doing that?
Lord Harrington: Yes. It is a central responsibility.
Chair: Okay.
Lord Harrington: The LAs are absolutely critical.
Chair: Yes, of course. Kate, do you want to come in on this one?
Q28 Kate Hollern: If a refugee on the family scheme becomes homeless and is then hosted by a sponsor on Homes for Ukraine, does the local authority then receive the £10,500?
Lord Harrington: I am sorry. If—
Kate Hollern: A family can get on the family programme.
Lord Harrington: If they then move into the sponsorship programme?
Kate Hollern: Yes.
Lord Harrington: They are not at the moment, but it would be rational that if they did, the council would get the £10,500. It does not happen now.
Kate Hollern: It would be better for them if it applied to both schemes.
Lord Harrington: Yes.
Q29 Kate Hollern: Given the number of breakdowns it will become a bit more urgent.
Lord Harrington: It has not happened yet, but in the end the sponsorship scheme’s rules are very clear. If you are sponsoring someone, the council gets £10,500 per year for each individual doing that, but they do not for the family scheme.
Chair: The issue of data is, clearly, very important, as you have mentioned already. Darren Henry wants to explore that.
Q30 Darren Henry: Thank you, Chair. I am just looking for some clarity on numbers: 660 Ukrainian households are owed a homeless prevention or relief duty; 480 of those households have dependent children. Do we know how many individual Ukrainians that 660 represents?
Paul Morrison: No, we do not. The information we have is based on the survey return that local government has provided us and it gives us the information you have. It does not break it down by individuals.
Q31 Darren Henry: Perhaps this is a question to George: the LGA says that councils are keen to find a sponsorship route to support those coming into the family visa scheme so that if their accommodation and support breaks down, we avoid those individuals presenting as homeless. The letter of 16 June says that applicants to the family scheme are not required to provide an address—where they stay in the UK. I appreciate that this took place before Lord Harrington came into post, but if you were in post, would you have insisted on a location being provided?
Lord Harrington: Do you want to answer, George?
George Shirley: The Ukrainian family scheme was set up at pace because of the situation and was a derivative of the existing family routes that operate under all immigration routes for all nationalities. It was a derivative that was pulled out of there, and a more generous one to allow people to come quickly. Those normal family routes do not gather that kind of data, and so the Ukrainian family scheme was built off the back of that at speed to help those people. At the moment that data is not gathered in the same way that it is for Homes for Ukraine.
Q32 Darren Henry: Is there an intention to gather that information from now on?
George Shirley: The databases are different, so we would have to look at the nature of the different data that was collected from the two schemes. I will have to respond to whether that data is available in the same way to be shared.
Lord Harrington: I will give you a straight answer to your question, if I may, Darren. If I were designing the family scheme, you would have that information. I will say, in the defence of the Home Office, that they did it really quickly and they expanded it really quickly for very good reason. With refugees as opposed to, shall we say, the more narrow family reunion that it used to be, I can understand why it was not bothered with before, because it was not for people in Ukraine—it was for people anywhere in the world who wanted to bring family in. I would agree that it would be much better if we did know, and I know we are working towards that.
Q33 Darren Henry: Your letter of 16 June says: “From analysing Biometric Resident Permits (BRP) data we have a correlation with the census data that shows that Family Scheme members are going to areas where there is a Ukrainian diaspora,” and you would expect that. Is that information shared with the local authorities?
George Shirley: That information is not routinely shared with local authorities at the moment.
Lord Harrington: That is because we do not have the information as to where they are going. I would like to repeat, from speaking to the diaspora as I have done both on the ground and on the calls we have with their main body, it is very spread. For example, when the first refugees came over from the Soviet Union, they went to several towns and they had big community centres. They paid for it like the Poles do, and others where there is a concentration. Before last year they had nearly all closed down. I visited one, and they are very good at what they are doing, but they said that many of the others—I think Leeds and others—had closed down because the next generation had moved all over the place, as tends to happen when people get jobs and they move.
It is not like they are very concentrated in the first place, but the logical thing is that where Ukrainians live, that is where the family is, so we assume they are living there and they are going there, but they are not treated like a separate class. They are just family reunion people. It is a good thing the Government do that scheme and it is a good thing that, in the very short term, the Ministers and the officials concerned were able to expand it, but it is not the same as our main HFU scheme. It just is not; it was never meant to be.
Chair: We will move on to the administration of the payments which you have indicated are in place, with Mary Robinson.
Q34 Mary Robinson: Thank you, Chair. I have a couple of practical questions around the administration. In our work on the council tax energy rebate we found there have been difficulties in making payments. Have there been any difficulties in issuing payments through these schemes, both to refugees and to hosts under the Homes for Ukraine scheme? Have you encountered any practical difficulties?
Lord Harrington: Paul may answer on the practical side. I would just say from my side of things that we have negotiated all the time with local authorities to bring about a scheme they wanted, and what was agreed mutually was a quarterly in-arrears system for both the £10,500 per year and the £350. It was done with them. It is slightly different in Scotland and Wales by about a week. The first payments—remember, it has only been going for the three months—are next week, I think, and maybe a week after for the Welsh for reasons they wanted. Paul, perhaps you could expand on that.
Paul Morrison: There will be further detail, I think, by the end of the month, so this week. In the conversations we have had with local government, payments are happening. We are aware in some cases that, for example, with the £350 payment, there has been some delays and we are working with local government about what they are. There are a variety of reasons. It appears that sometimes it is the capacity of the council to get that in place. We are looking at local government. They are responsible for making those payments. We are assured it is improving where there have been delays, but we have been aware there may be some issues in some places and, as the Minister says, there will be more information shortly around some of the detail of that.
Q35 Mary Robinson: Are councils offering you feedback over how they have administered other schemes and where those difficulties are likely to be because there is some experience in this that is likely to be helpful to you?
Paul Morrison: This is quite a novel scheme in many ways and in the way that it is operating. We are doing all of it in a complete spirit of co-production and collaboration with local government. We have meetings almost every day, as the Minister says, so we are receiving those. There are new systems in place that help support the programme, and what we want to do is to remove all the obstacles from local government that may be causing that impediment. That is the nature of the conversation we are having with them and, absolutely, that process of feedback is a key part of what we are doing.
Lord Harrington: Could I please add just one point to what Paul said? Local authorities are not one coherent group. Some, for example, are really experienced in dealing with refugees from all over the world—asylum seekers, refugees, everything—they are set up for it. That does not mean the refugees are necessarily treated better because many small councils that have had no experience ensure they are treated really well. I am just talking about in terms of, if you like, the management side of it, for example, with payments.
We have to try our best to facilitate what everybody wants, yet they are often different. We use the LGA a lot. They have this group of interested politicians and officers, and I think we are there. What they all wanted to avoid was very frequent payments where there was a lot more—not paperwork these days, but a lot more management time needed to facilitate them, so they wanted it quarterly in arrears. It does not mean that people have to wait because they, of course, pay the money out from their own funds. It is just they get it back every quarter.
Q36 Mary Robinson: A couple of questions: it does beg the question really if a council, as you rightly say, has not got the experience and there will be differences, will they need extra resource to be able to manage the scheme?
Lord Harrington: Part of the £10,500 was worked out as a number with them for what they thought this would be, and what the different categories would be. One of those was to provide extra management resource to deal with it all so, financially, yes. In terms of advice and other things, a lot of councils are helping their neighbours if they happen to be, for example, a rural area that has very limited experience, but is next to a big town that has been doing it for quite some time. There is a real spirit of collaboration here, and given that we are in a room full of politicians, including myself, I would like to say I have never known anything that has been dealt with on, shall we say, such an unpolitical or non-political ground as this—and I include Scotland, Wales, and all the English local authorities. I hope it is a model for many things for the future.
Q37 Mary Robinson: The first quarter in arrears will mean there has been expenditure already gone out.
Lord Harrington: Yes.
Q38 Mary Robinson: Has that led to hardship? Are you aware of that?
Lord Harrington: From the local authorities not being able to pay out?
Mary Robinson: Yes.
Lord Harrington: It has not been reported to us, Mary. It was, in fact, the request of the local authorities to pay it in one lump. Of course, we cannot pay it in advance because we do not know how many there are.
Q39 Mary Robinson: So they have not been screaming about it to be coming through quicker. It does beg the question, I guess, of how payments have been made so far. I know it is early days.
Lord Harrington: This is the first one coming, is it not?
Paul Morrison: Yes. There will be a further breakdown of that, which will be imminent and that will come out, and then we can have all of that data. I do not have it today, but it is coming.
Lord Harrington: They are not screaming at us saying, “You haven’t paid us. You haven’t paid it.” It is just setting up the right systems and method to do it. I would be horrified if any payments had been held up because of Government not paying the money. It is just the same, I suppose, with a big company working these things out. Saying it is comparatively easy, but doing it in practice is more difficult, but it has been sorted out.
Q40 Mary Robinson: Just on another practical point, you have made it clear that under the family scheme it is just treated as any family scheme. To be honest, it is not like hosting some members of your family for a holiday for a couple of weeks, is it? This is quite a burden on families who want to do the right thing for their family members. Should we not be extending the payment of £350 to them?
Lord Harrington: All I would say is the family scheme is for permanent people coming over. It is not just for people for holidays and things.
Mary Robinson: That is exactly it.
Lord Harrington: It is not meant for that because otherwise they would come on a tourist visa.
Mary Robinson: Exactly.
Lord Harrington: This is for people saying, “I’ve got a member of my family; they want to come and live with us,” and if you like to be part of the country and eventually get citizenship and everything like that, and it is no different from that. All I can do is reiterate that people do get benefits and all the other things with living here. It is just that we do not pay the local authorities the £10,500.
Chair: Moving on to security and accommodation checks, Sara Britcliffe.
Q41 Sara Britcliffe: Thank you, Chair. You spoke about the majority of checks being done after arrival, and I appreciate the need for speed. I have been on the calls, as have many MPs who have raised their own issues. What is the average length of time taken for DBS checks, and then, secondly, for the accommodation checks?
Lord Harrington: As far as the DBS checks are concerned—I am not looking at my file to show you; I do know these things—80% of the standard DBS checks are done within 48 hours, and 80% of the enhanced DBS checks are done within 14 days. I believe that is the number.
Paul Morrison: That is the service standard. The latest data around the average time the enhanced checks are taking is just under nine days.
Lord Harrington: I have given the overall number for DBS checks. As far as the accommodation checks are concerned, we do not have a number for that.
Paul Morrison: No, we do not have a number on the exact timing around that. We are getting data around the completion of the checks, a bit like the earlier conversation around the payments. We are aware, because in order for us to get the data, essentially, on the checks being inducted, local authorities have to upload the information on to the case management system. It is not complete enough for me to be able give the exact data, but we are engaging closely with local government around ensuring we are satisfied that the checks are happening, but I do not have the exact management information I can share.
Lord Harrington: I must say we have found it quite difficult getting the local authorities to report back quickly enough so that we know when they are done. We trust them to do it; that is their job and statutory duty. It is not that, but actually loading it and sending it back has been a bit frustrating.
Q42 Sara Britcliffe: I suppose just building on that point then, on the expectation of a local authority to report back if there is a fear of a problem about accommodation, you would then just trust the local authority to speed up that process in reporting back?
Paul Morrison: Yes, there are separate reporting procedures. If a local authority has a particular concern, a safeguarding concern, there is also the foundry system in case management where they upload the fact of the check happening and whether it is passed or not. If there is a particular safeguarding concern, we have a 24/7 help desk so that that can be communicated back to us centrally, and it will depend on what we do with that document and where the case is in the system, for example, if the check has happened prior to the visa being issued or whether we are asked to engage with George's colleagues and intervene at that point, or work with the local government. There are different ways that a safeguarding concern, in particular, would get reported, but then having it on the foundry will allow me to answer and give the confidence around the wider integrity of the system.
Q43 Sara Britcliffe: Just coming back to your initial introduction on the security checks and criminal records, if somebody 20 years ago did have a fight in a bar or something like that, how is your Department now judging who is suitable and who is not? What is the barrier for that?
Lord Harrington: The criminal records checks are broken down into three categories—the traffic light—red, amber and green. Paul, perhaps you could perhaps go into more detail, but green predominantly are ones that are okay, and we do not touch red and amber.
George Shirley: Yes, so all sponsors—or at least over 18s—are run through our various databases, most notably, in this sense, the police national computer and its equivalents. Where there is a match against the individual that produced the report, our risk team at the Home Office will then assess that particular, as Lord Harrington said, on green, amber or red. Green is an offence or a match, but is one that is deemed to be not something that would cause a safeguarding concern for the well-being of the family arriving to live with that sponsor. They are then released and the case is processed. Red and amber are dealt with through a different process. Obviously, I cannot comment on individual cases in this sense, but it is where the nature of the offence is of such a level of severity that we believe it is in the family’s best interests to be with another sponsor, rather than that particular sponsor, based on the criminal record.
Q44 Sara Britcliffe: We have been told that some councils reported that Ukrainian parents had gone back to Ukraine to support their families, leaving their children, potentially, with the sponsoring family, and then local government has had to get involved and it has led to councils having to put children into care under their statutory duties. How can children, families and hosts be supported if this was to happen, which is being reported at the moment?
Paul Morrison: In those circumstances, the council’s statutory responsibilities would apply. I do not have the details of individual cases, but this is generally the rule. This is why we have the councils doing the aftercare checks and, at that point, if they had the same concerns—as they would with any child—their statutory duties would apply.
Lord Harrington: It is a very small handful of cases in that category; I mean really very small. I do monitor individual cases that get reported and there is not a lot, nor would we expect there to be.
Q45 Sara Britcliffe: Is there anything we could potentially put in place to stop that situation occurring? I understand the need for people to want to go and support their families, but this is about pressure on a sponsoring family over here for children to stay here without their own parents and the support they need from their own families.
Lord Harrington: Were that to happen, what would our options be? To stop the parents? It is not both parents. It is typically mother and kids. Occasionally, there are fathers there as well, but because the Ukrainian Government are very strict on that, it is either people over the age of 60, or if they have three children or more, or by some historical chance they were here before the conflict started. Typically, it is mum and children and, obviously, the vast majority of times the mother did return, and I have very few reported cases, the vast majority of those would be left with, for example, grandparents or responsible people. At the moment it has not become a problem but, in the end, if a child is taken into care, it is the responsibility of the state and the taxpayer, and so it should be.
Q46 Sara Britcliffe: What powers do local councils have to intervene if they believe that there are safeguarding risks? What powers do they have?
Lord Harrington: I am not an expert on this, but their powers would come from the Children's Act, and I only know about this because my wife is very active in it. She acts professionally for a lot of councils in such cases. Although she used to be an MP, she deals with child abuse and things like that.
Under the Children’s Act, the police have 24 hours; they have the power to take the child away in absolute extremis. Apart from that, it goes through the normal Children's Act system, which basically needs a judge to do it. I have met with the Family Law Bar Association on this side of things too, and they have judges and barristers who are prepared to work quickly and, in many cases, pro bono to deal with urgent cases to do with refugees.
Q47 Sara Britcliffe: What if it is not a child? What if it is just a general safeguarding concern?
Lord Harrington: Do you mean to remove the refugee from—
Sara Britcliffe: Yes. Do local authorities have the right to stop the placement altogether?
Paul Morrison: It is not specific power that local authorities have to prevent it. They can engage with both the host and guest, make arrangements, and offer the guests alternative arrangements and the rematching we were talking around. They will not necessarily pay the £350. The only other thing I would say is that if there was a really serious concern around modern slavery or issues around safety, there is also the law enforcement they would engage locally with. There is not a particular power to say, “Right. We are, as the local authority, now coming in and terminating this sponsorship.”
Lord Harrington: Could I make one general point, though, to all this, please? We were criticised for the length of time our UAM—the minors policy—took to come through, but this is precisely why we took our time: we were so careful to stop this kind of thing happening where children are not properly brought in with proper supervision under proper families that knew what they were going in for. There may be a few who slip through the net, but it will be really very few of them.
Q48 Chair: You said it is up to the taxpayer to fund it, but actually it is up to local authorities to handle it.
Lord Harrington: I meant us.
Q49 Chair: If a child is taken into care, the local authority gets no extra funding?
Lord Harrington: I meant us who pay taxes, both our council tax and our—
Chair: The local authority gets no extra funding for this?
Lord Harrington: No.
Chair: They just have to absorb it?
Lord Harrington: Yes.
Chair: We mentioned before the issue of what happens after six months where people who have agreed to take refugees for six months. Moving on to those questions, Mohammad Yasin.
Q50 Mohammad Yasin: Thank you, Chair. Minister, how many refugees from Ukraine are you expecting to arrive in the UK by the end of this year? Do you have any estimated numbers?
Lord Harrington: With certain things I cannot obviously forecast, like what would happen if the military situation got worse again—things do change.
Mohammad Yasin: You must have a plan and some estimate of the numbers in your mind.
Lord Harrington: Don’t worry, I can answer your question, I am just saying there are things that could happen that would be the worst military situation you could imagine in Ukraine, in which case the whole of Europe would be flooded with huge numbers of refugees. What I can say is that, at the moment, we are having arrivals of between 5,000 and 7,000 per week, which obviously can be multiplied through to the end of the year. What I can say is we have the capacity to deal with a lot more because we know we have more than 200,000 expressions of interest. We have not even tried to get new ones. Just say that does disappear by, our worst-case estimates, half, that still leaves 100,000, which gives us capacity for—if I take an average of three per family, which is typically a mother and two children—about 300,000 more. We have done nothing to, if you like, readvertise or remarket for more sponsors, because we have them.
I suspect that if a tragedy happens again—I know there is a tragedy every day, but say there was a new thing—I reckon we have a system that will allow for more. If we just take, pessimistically or optimistically, depending how you look upon it, 5,000 additional ones a week, we easily have capacity. George will comment on his capacity, but we have the capacity within the Home Office systems, particularly the new automated app that people use now for the visas, to deal with a lot more than the 5,000 per week. Perhaps you could comment on the visa side and then I would ask Paul to comment more generally on, shall we say, the local authority side of things.
George Shirley: We streamlined the visa application process right at the start of the conflict. Before the introduction of Homes for Ukraine the normal visa process was being followed, which directed people to a visa application centre. Although we flooded staff into that and increased the capacity within those visa application centres, it was not sustainable for large numbers, so we developed a permission to travel letter process which enabled people who had valid precedence to apply to be given those permission to travel letters and present biometrics in the UK.
That has then been further developed with the new digital system we launched in May, which presents both a digital app for people to apply, and digital status for the provision of that. All of that means the scalability of numbers is completely different from at the start of the conflict, where there had to be lots of heavy lifting and heavily pedalling to deal with that. At the moment, output-wise, we are dealing comfortably with the intake and the numbers per week that Lord Harrington has given.
Q51 Mohammad Yasin: Are those numbers steady or going up or down with the conflict getting longer?
George Shirley: Under both schemes there was naturally an early peak and a big rise once they were launched. They have now steadied somewhat, so they have been relatively steady through the last few weeks, but, as Lord Harrington said, predicting the long-term volatility of the situation is problematic.
Lord Harrington: What is interesting is that, at the moment, we have found very few of our refugees have gone back, but the Poles and others have found that many have gone back. More than a million refugees have gone back from mainland Europe to Ukraine, obviously to areas that are not involved directly in the fighting, and the Ukrainian Government are encouraging people to come back. I stood by the border in both Poland and Moldova where—particularly in Poland—there were huge streams of people going back. We have not found that yet, but we have consistently found the intention to go back.
As I said at the beginning, that is very different from our experience with Syrians and others, where they could not perceive a situation where it would have been possible for them to go back. There are lots of different parameters—I am glad I am stating this on the record—and I believe that we have the capacity for significantly more refugees than we have now and that is within our planning. So much effort goes into the mechanism with the local authorities and with the Home Office visa side of stuff that it is not just for a minimum number. When I took the job on, I was told specifically by the Prime Minister that this scheme was uncapped, whereas when I was responsible for the Syrian scheme, it was a finite number of refugees that I was, if you like, instructed or mandated to bring in.
We do have the systems in place and all of us have gone through a lot of very worthwhile pain to get to a system but, despite all this—and I cannot say any of the questions I have been asked today are unreasonable, irrational or wrong—there are things with it that need dealing with. We have a framework of system that has taken in about 80,000 people in a few short months, and it has significant flex within it. I do not know if you would like to comment further, Paul, about the LA side and capacity.
Paul Morrison: What I would say is that obviously it is an uncapped scheme, but the funding will follow per capita at £10,500. We are working with local government and bedding in the new systems and approaches that will be able to build up capacity. Because it is not ringfenced, we can work around really expanding that capacity. We have already touched on what is needed around the administration and the other wraparound services, so we are in the process of preparing for it. As the Minister said, in an uncapped scheme which is determined by international events, it is difficult to be precise on the forecasting.
Q52 Mohammad Yasin: It is three months since the Homes for Ukraine scheme commenced and we know there is the minimum six-month sponsorship period. Are you having any discussions with local authorities to plan longer term accommodation for these people, and are you ensuring that these people have help to integrate into their new communities?
Lord Harrington: Perhaps I could answer that and we could follow up at a later date. You are right: it is at three months, and it is not a legal contract, but people undertake for a minimum of six months, so it is our intention to write to them at four months, which is soon, to say, “Thank you very much for what you have done. Six months is coming up; are you prepared to extend it?” Obviously we do not know yet, but from speaking to people, I would say the vast majority will, because when you actually meet these people, as many of you will have done in your constituencies and as I certainly have, a lot of them become an almost integrated part of the family, which is how it should be.
There will be a number that do not extend, and perhaps I could go through some of the alternatives that we would be working on. One is hugely enhancing the rematch system because we have this big pocket of people, many of whom are frustrated they have not yet received refugees, funnily enough, which is quite the opposite, but people have done it with the best intention.
The second option is looking at private rental accommodation because people are getting jobs. One of the things that we are dealing with is that many landlords will not accept refugees, not because they do not like refugees, but because they have not got the credit references and the normal things needed by the landlord that are used to ensure they get paid and everything like that. I happened to be meeting some refugees yesterday in an area that is pretty good at getting people into private rented accommodation. Some areas—York is a good example—know so many landlords personally they are able to talk them into doing this. I have asked to meet with the trade bodies that represent private landlords, as well as institutions like Legal and General and others that do, if you like, more institutionalised buy to lets, to see if we can find a way to change the guidance for people who are over here on these schemes to make it easier for them to let privately.
This process is evolving and I do believe that between those two things we will be able to deal with the vast majority of them, but if this refugee process turns into a long-term refugee programme, there will be the same issues to deal with that people face in every town and city in the country, which is that there is a shortage of private rental accommodation and it takes quite some time to get into the social housing system. The answer to that is a significant increase in the volume of social housing in this country, to provide not just for refugees but for everybody else. The excuse that politicians are making is that it is beyond their pay grade. I am sure in my case this actually is, but it is my responsibility to try and make sure that the refugees in our system have good alternatives, and that is what I am working towards.
Q53 Chair: Paul, would you like to add to any of that?
Paul Morrison: Just very briefly. The six months is a minimum so, in the language of extending, I am sure there will be many sponsors who will not necessarily end it at that stage because of the reasons the Minister gave.
Also worth thinking around, there is going to be a period when we get to the six months. As George was describing, there was a period where there were no arrivals, the early arrivals came in and then it grew up, so we know where people are in the system and we are working with local government to anticipate and get ahead of it.
Perhaps the last thing I would say is that the other strand of this post-sponsorship period is, yes, around accommodation, the private rental sector and the longer term options the Minister was describing, but it is also about working very closely with our colleagues in DWP to ensure that people are able to become economically active and move into the workplace. All the thinking is about how we can support sponsors to make it sustainable in the short term, and then about getting into the private rental sector and thinking about the longer term accommodation, and also then what we can do to support people into employment. These are the strands of activity we are really actively working with local government on.
Chair: We have two supplementaries and then I will go to Ian Byrne about the wider refugee policy. We ought to try and finish by 11.40 am to allow time for colleagues who wish to go into PMQs.
Q54 Bob Blackman: I have written to you, Richard, about a particular case in Harrow, where an individual who was under-occupying private rented accommodation said, “Well, I've got space to take a Ukrainian family to help them.” The landlord said, “Yes, that's fine,” and then the council said, “Well, it's now an HMO, so we're now going to charge you £3,200 for registering as an HMO.” The good news is that after a change of control and pressure from my office, they have waived the fee. But what the council has said—this may be true for councils up and down the country—is because of this happening in private accommodation, they will become HMOs, because there will be more than six people potentially living in accommodation, and not all of one family. Has that been considered, particularly as we try and transfer families into private accommodation?
Lord Harrington: That is an absolutely fascinating point. I had not considered that and thanks for what you did with the change of control to bring that about. Paul, have we experienced this?
Paul Morrison: We have not experienced it in big numbers, but if it does start cropping up, we will definitely want to look at it.
Lord Harrington: I am going to bring this up on the LGA call this week, because it certainly has not been reported to me—that is the first case that you wrote about.
Bob Blackman: It is particularly true when you are going to then transfer families into private rental accommodation. It is really going to be hit hard.
Lord Harrington: Thank you for that point.
Q55 Ian Byrne: Lord Harrington, just a quick point about what you touched on earlier. You talked about the subscription of people actually wanting to help refugees coming in with this particular scheme. What are your thoughts on why that is?
Lord Harrington: On why people want to help?
Ian Byrne: Yes, what is the difference between other schemes like Afghanistan—other people fleeing from war torn countries?
Lord Harrington: I am not cynical about it, Mr Byrne; this is the first time we have actually asked people. Let me make a general point in response to yours. I would like to think that if I do have one legacy in this job, it would be that this becomes our UK system of dealing with refugees for whatever crisis happens in the world, which, unfortunately, it always does in history every few years. It is my belief that people will open their properties to people from wherever they come, because they are extremely humanitarian and good natured. This is the first time we have actually asked them to do it.
One of the things I wanted to do with the Syrian scheme was to go to Canada, because they are very experienced in sponsorship—they really started it. Unfortunately, David Cameron resigned and I got reshuffled the week before I was due to go, which is the way politics works, but in all seriousness, the Canadians are very experienced at this. Yes, you could argue they have more accommodation and more space—of course they do—but nevertheless the fact that we have more than 200,000 people who have even put themselves on a database to express an interest is very encouraging for the future, and I would like to see this as a permanent mechanism. Paul, would you like to say anything further about that?
Paul Morrison: There is not much more to say. We have not asked in that way before.
Q56 Ian Byrne: Thanks very much for your honesty. Going to the questions, your letter of 16 June said the UK has also made one of the largest commitments to resettle Afghan refugees of any country, and so far we have moved, or are in the process of moving, another 6,000 Afghan evacuees into homes. Could you confirm that in around a year not all Afghan refugees have been settled, and do you expect it to take a similar amount of time to settle Ukrainian refugees?
Lord Harrington: First of all, there are still 12,000 Afghan refugees in hotels, so whilst they might be safe in terms of what they were facing in Afghanistan, they are not in proper permanent accommodation. That is one of the reasons why I am so much in favour of having a—had it not got the connotations that it does, I would have used the expression “oven ready”, but I am not prepared to use it in this context.
Ian Byrne: I would not use that expression.
Lord Harrington: Had we had a sponsorship scheme available then, moving with a bank of people, I do not think this would have happened, because the “temporary accommodation” would have been people's houses, and then they would have moved on.
One reason why it is not appropriate for Afghans to go into a sponsorship scheme now is because they have already had temporary accommodation, and we now need to get them into permanent flats and houses. This is proving quite difficult for a number of reasons, one of which is that many Afghans have very large families. Families with between five and nine children are very common and, of course, even just putting any financial considerations to one side, we do not have properties in anything like the volume to accommodate that number of people, but we are working through them. It is just that I hope in future that such last-minute flows of people will be done with a bank of sponsors all ready to deal with them.
Ian Byrne: Yes, going back to your legacy you were talking about before.
Lord Harrington: I hope so.
Q57 Ian Byrne: That is interesting. Just talking about the scheme itself, in March, the Refugee Council and British Red Cross wrote a joint letter to the Home Secretary, co-signed by a number of other organisations working alongside evacuated Afghans in the UK, that highlighted the grave concerns over the lack of safe and legal routes available for vulnerable people still in Afghanistan. On reflection, could we have done anything different with the Afghan refugee scheme, and what urgent steps can be taken now to ensure safe and legal routes for refugees from Afghanistan?
Lord Harrington: I am not copping out of this, but I was not involved in it. My understanding is we still have a residual commitment to bring people from Afghanistan. I seem to remember it is 20,000, though I have not really been involved. George, perhaps you could confirm that?
Q58 Ian Byrne: Paul and George, anything to add with regard to lessons learned?
Lord Harrington: But there is a system for bringing those people here. Where I will get involved—I have asked to take on this responsibility—is to make sure that those people are not put in hotels whilst they are being sorted out other than what they were originally meant for, which is a few days or something like that. People put roots down. It might be hotels but they get on with jobs, lives, work, doctors, schools and all those things, and temporary should mean temporary. George, would you like to comment on that?
George Shirley: Yes, there is the formal Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, launched on 6 January, which aims to resettle 20,000 people. It is so far ahead of the first year’s target of 5,000, with 6,500 people identified.
Q59 Ian Byrne: You have answered one of my questions, which was about Ukrainian refugees requiring homeless assistance, so I will go on to the last one. In oral evidence on 30 March, Sonika Sidhu, Principal Policy Advisor of the LGA, referred to the different schemes that the Government have created for Ukrainians, and called for a longer term view, which we touched on before, about how the broader situation around new arrivals was being dealt with, with everybody dealt with in an equitable manner across the system. Listening to the evidence, generally, it is fair to say that the Ukrainian response was a fair, humane response from Government to a crisis, unlike the Rwanda scheme, which has united people from the future King to bishops about the immorality and perceived unfairness of that scheme.
Your answers have been really good this morning, and your comments to Mary and myself have been really interesting, because you have shown your main slant. What plans for a long-term joined-up programme to offer sanctuary to refugees can be learned from this, regardless of the situation they might be fleeing from? Can the Ukrainian scheme you talk of shape future policy, also including the narrative around refugees?
Lord Harrington: Mr Byrne—I am sorry; you are the only one I am calling “Mister”, I suppose because we have not met before.
Ian Byrne: I am Ian.
Lord Harrington: Ian; I am Richard. As I have said, it is my hope that this is the blueprint, and people from wherever can be shown a legal route through a sponsorship scheme when they are in a terrible situation in their own country, and qualify as refugees. I believe that can be the case. The policy matters are not really in my remit. Those people around this table who know me well will know I do not duck out of stuff, but it just seems to me that if there is a mechanism here that works—look at Syria; look at Afghanistan; look at Ukraine; heaven knows where it will be next. I just believe that this system is working, and it will be improved and changed. We may well find that many of these refugees, like all cohorts of refugees, become really good members of society, and I met some Syrians yesterday who were in our first cohort, and they have done so well in this country; they have jobs, kids at school and all this sort of thing. That was before we had capacity—we did not have a sponsorship scheme then—so I am hoping that it will become the norm.
Ian Byrne: What you are talking about there is taking out the toxicity and division, which can be utilised by this and put into policy, and it is really refreshing to actually hear what you have just said. Thank you.
Chair: We will move on to the last two sections now. Bob Blackman, on the provision of services.
Q60 Bob Blackman: Obviously a lot of pressure will come on school places, GP services and others because of the sheer numbers of people coming here, and I believe you were going to review the position at the Ministerial Conference on 14 June. I wonder what issues of concern have been raised as a result.
Lord Harrington: Did you say specifically on education places?
Bob Blackman: Education, GP services—basically the public services pressures that will come up. We have people from Ukraine who clearly will be traumatised because of their experiences, and they may have health problems. There will be places required for school children as well.
Lord Harrington: Why don’t you answer that, Paul, and then I’ll come in?
Paul Morrison: Yes, the Secretary of State was referring to an ongoing set of meetings that we have, which monitors exactly what the impact is on services, and we do keep it under review. For example, just to take the education places, we know that there have been about 11,000 applications, and about 87% of those have now been offered places in schools. That is giving us the ability just to keep monitoring that to make sure things are progressing, right across all of the public services.
Lord Harrington: There are some specific things that concern me, one of which is teaching English lessons. We are funding the local authorities to do it, but there just is not the capacity to do it on this scale. I was in Henley last week, and they have a self-help group for it, where literally everyone sits round in a circle. That is not part of the system, but it is a vulnerability. The mental health aspect that Bob brought up, actually a little bit before you arrived, has not yet transpired to be as much of a problem as it might have been. I do not quite know why, but I meet loads of refugees, and they speak well and are very grateful for what has happened here. When you first meet people, you would not think they had been through the shock that had happened, which would literally be like everyone in this room being told without any warning, “Next week you’ve got to be in a completely different country”. But it has not yet come through at all in the way I had feared.
We are monitoring the situation very carefully, and not just, as Paul said, a formal interministerial meeting where it is done. I meet individually with the DfE Ministers and the DWP. We are going through each section all the time to try and get feelers, but I am not complacent in any way.
Q61 Bob Blackman: Paul, you said 11,000 applications for school places, of which 87% have been allocated. With quick maths, that means 10,000 places, with about 1,000 people not getting a place. Presumably there are also families who have not applied at all yet. Have you got an estimate about how many people have not applied for a school place, and therefore will bleed into the system, particularly come September this year?
Paul Morrison: The 1,000 was a snapshot in time. The anticipation is that all the 1,000 will be offered places within 15 days. You are right: there are fewer applications than the overall cohort would suggest, which is, as you say, because parents will be waiting until the new academic year starts. The Ukrainian academic year finishes in June, so there are reasons for that. We do anticipate that there will be more applications, and that is exactly the kind of thing we are going to be continuing to monitor, but so far what we are seeing is that the people applying are being offered school places.
Lord Harrington: What I have found, again largely from just speaking to lots of refugees, is that primary school is comparatively easy. The kids go, and they are laughing and just like any other kids, and that is not just in places where there are kids from every single nationality. The older age groups are more involved with the Ukrainian system, which is different to ours. It is a cliché, but true, that they are much better at maths than our kids are, although not in other subjects, but then language becomes a much bigger issue. The parents still want them to continue on the Ukrainian curriculum because they believe they are going back to finish their studies there, so I am more concerned about older kids. It is not just the logistics of school places that we are dealing with, because they will be offered a school place and presumably they all go to school—they have to go to school—but we are going to have some difficulties with adapting to the two systems.
We are looking at options, like the Ukrainian Government offering online Ukrainian education. Our thoughts are whether we allow them to do that as a main education, or if we say, “You can do that as our equivalent of Sunday school and evening schools”—that sort of thing. Our feeling is that their children are here and under our responsibility, and they have the full rights and benefits of everybody else. They need to have UK education, with some flexibility for online Ukrainian input. In some places there are teachers from Ukraine actually in the area, but not many of them.
Q62 Bob Blackman: Finally on funding, funding is available under the Homes for Ukraine scheme for school and early years placements, but not under the Family Visa scheme, which obviously sets a challenge for schools in the areas where they are not getting specific funding for new arrivals from the family scheme. Are there any plans to sort that out?
Paul Morrison: It is the same issue as we have discussed several times in front of the Committee around the funding that follows the Homes for Ukraine scheme.
Lord Harrington: What Bob said is completely correct—they are not given the extra money to do it in the same way.
Q63 Bob Blackman: Okay, and have you made an estimate about the number of children who will be affected, because local authorities and schools will be looking to see how they can help?
Lord Harrington: I have not.
Q64 Chair: When will you be able to?
Lord Harrington: I am not going to say because I do not know whether I can deliver, Clive, but it is on my mind now and it will be dealt with.
Q65 Chair: You will be looking at it along with the wider issues of the family scheme that you mentioned earlier?
Lord Harrington: Yes, I am definitely doing that.
Chair: Okay. Finally, on the impact of the wider Home Office policy, Kate Hollern.
Q66 Kate Hollern: Thank you, Chair. The Secretary of State told us that some Ukrainians who have arrived in the UK have travelled through the Republic of Ireland and are presenting themselves as homeless. How many people do you estimate have come through that route?
Lord Harrington: Not many—really only a handful have presented themselves as homeless. We do not we have a separate number for it, but it is not of material significance.
George Shirley: We know that there are arrivals, so there are two parts to the question. In terms of the numbers, that is right—they are presenting as homeless. There are people arriving through the Republic of Ireland, but they are not necessarily then presenting as homeless.
Q67 Kate Hollern: The Secretary of State said that the Government were looking at helping these people through the matching scheme with people who have expressed an interest as a sponsor. However, the Home Affairs Committee was told that somebody who came to the UK by that route may be considered for removal to Rwanda. As a Minister in both Departments, can you explain what would happen in that instance?
Lord Harrington: I cannot understand why anyone from Ukraine would be sent to Rwanda, because they have no reason to, unless they had been in the hands of some people smugglers who misled them and said, “You have no rights to be here.” Because otherwise they have every right to be here.
Kate Hollern: Exactly, but that has been reported to the Select Committee, so there must be some—
Lord Harrington: I am guessing, but it may be if someone came here illegally, but there is no reason for them to do that anyway.
George Shirley: To separate the two out, we are aware of people arriving from the Republic of Ireland—the common travel area—and we have a process for those individuals where they are granted six months leave outside the rules with entitlement to work and benefits, so they are being regularised, so to speak. The point is they are being dealt with as if they have arrived on a safe and legal route, and for Ukrainians there are many safe and legal routes. The extreme example of where people have arrived separately is a completely different question to those people who have arrived via the Republic of Ireland.
Lord Harrington: Presumably they go from southern Ireland to Northern Ireland, then drive across the border and go to Border Force or whoever, and they just get registered and get their six months initially.
George Shirley: They get six months, yes.
Lord Harrington: Therefore why would they? There is no reason.
Q68 Kate Hollern: No, but it is a bit concerning that it has been raised at the Select Committee and the Prime Minister has commented on it. Dan Hobbs, the Director of Asylum, Protection and Enforcement, Home Office, was asked about Ukrainians crossing Northern Ireland from Ireland. He replied, “Dependent on the individual circumstances, they may not fall into the ‘Inadmissibility’ criteria.” How can that actually happen?
George Shirley: I will have to look at the exact context of my colleague’s response and we can come back to it. What I can say is there is a process for those arriving through the common travel area, and so we are treating them as if they are safe and legal arrivals, and granting them six months.
That does not step away from the broader problem. If any nationality arrives through a route that is not safe and legal, there are various processes to deal with it, but at the moment there are two safe and legal offerings: the family scheme and the Homes for Ukraine scheme for Ukrainians. We are aware of people arriving through the Republic of Ireland, and we do have a process to deal with those individuals, which gives them the six months leave outside the rules.
Q69 Kate Hollern: You are assuring me that Ukrainian refugees who come through the Irish route would not face being sent on to Rwanda?
George Shirley: Safe and legal pathways, yes.
Q70 Kate Hollern: Everyone from Ukraine? So if someone from Ukraine who cannot get the visa turns up in Ireland, what happens then?
Lord Harrington: A Ukrainian would come over the border and they would get a permit to stay, because they’re Ukrainian and it is a legal—
George Shirley: But they have entered the common travel area legally, and our Irish immigration colleagues will have dealt with them at the port of entry, typically Dublin. The Irish offer to Ukrainians is different to our own, naturally, but it means they have not arrived through an illegal mechanism in the same way that you might have across the channel. It is slightly different if they have entered through Ireland because the Irish original entry offer is different.
Q71 Kate Hollern: Just very quickly: if a Ukrainian family came on a boat across the channel, what would happen?
Lord Harrington: Why would they?
Kate Hollern: There is obviously an issue somewhere or we would not have civil servants, the Prime Minister or anyone else even commenting on it. There must be a concern somewhere.
Lord Harrington: I cannot imagine why they would.
Kate Hollern: Neither can I.
George Shirley: What we are trying to promote is that these are strong, legal and safe offerings for Ukrainians to use.
Lord Harrington: We make it really easy for them to be legal and to have all the rights, benefits, education, health and so on.
Q72 Chair: Coming through Ireland, you have a system to deal with them, which makes sure they are not treated as illegal.
Lord Harrington: Correct.
Q73 Chair: Okay, that goes on the record.
Richard, thank you very much, and your colleagues, for coming and answering a range of questions today. As you say, they are very relevant, and some you have to go away and think about again, maybe persuading colleagues that a change of policy with regard to the family scheme, at least, might be properly considered at some point. We appreciate the work that has been done in very quick time on these matters. I personally look forward to seeing you in Sheffield shortly to see what we are doing there, and that is appreciated.
Lord Harrington: It has been an absolute pleasure. If anyone else has any groups in their constituencies, please do approach me because I find it really helpful just talking to people on the ground, or people in local councils who are actually doing the work.
Q74 Kate Hollern: On that point, is that just for Ukrainian refugees, or other refugee casework?
Lord Harrington: Ukrainians, and I am doing my best to help with Afghans.
Kate Hollern: I have a few cases I will pass on to you.
Chair: On that point, Richard, thank you very much. That brings us to the end of our public proceedings today.