In her Scotsman column this week, Christine Jardine takes both UK and Scottish Governments to task for their failures to support Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers from other parts of the world.
She highlights that the Home Office is taking way too long to deal with asylum applications:
In a recent Freedom of Information request, the Home Office confirmed to me that, as of July, fewer than 2,500 of 48,540 asylum applications submitted in the previous year had received a decision. Indeed, 14,000 applications submitted in 2020 were still outstanding six months into 2022.
Every week my office, and that of every other MP I know, spends hours chasing up long-standing, legal applications which simply are not being dealt with.
Each one represents someone who has fled persecution in their own country and has come here, not for some mythical easy life, but simply to survive, and is waiting. In limbo.
Often, they bring the vital skills and qualifications that are in short supply in our employment market and not only can they make a real contribution, they want to. But they cannot because they must wait.
And she highlights the failure of the Scottish Government to find permanent accommodation and support for Ukrainian refugees, many of whom are staying on a boat on the Water of Leith.
At the moment more than 1,000 Ukrainian refugees – twice as many as originally envisaged – are living on board a ship off the Edinburgh coast, unwittingly caught up in the log-jam caused by suspension of the Scottish Government’s super-sponsor scheme. They and thousands of others are waiting, unsure of their future.
The Scottish Government has said that they do not want them to have to stay on board any longer than necessary.
But unfortunately, the absence of any current alternative on offer brings a hollowness to their protestations.
If we are expecting to take into our care around 20,000 people, with local authorities running out of accommodation or money or both, someone – the government – needs to do something.
She asks if we would like one of our loved ones to be treated like that.
You can read the whole article here.
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2 Comments
The number of Ukrainian refugees in the UK is just a small proportion of the total and yet we appear unable to cope. How on earth is Poland or Germany coping with about 2.5 million between them or even Russia which has taken the largest number of refugees of any country ( as many as Poland and Germany combined.) We really need to be stepping up to the plate and doing our share of meeting these huge needs.
There is no way that refugees will be able to return to a country that is being brought to its knees by Putin. No electricity or water supplies make a return unthinkable. I am not sure where this will end but even if we avoid the third world war that Russia seems hell bent on starting, Refugees will be our responsibility for years to come. We need a plan to help them get employment and other supports they need and that plan must include continuing support for host families.