L

Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 22 January 2025

Debate

UK-Ukraine 100-year Partnership

Contribution

With your Lordships’ indulgence, I will ask one more question since we have lots of time. I want to pick up on a point that the Minister made in her initial response about the status of refugees in the United Kingdom. I declare an interest in that my wife, Caroline Dinenage, the MP for Gosport, and I have hosted a Ukrainian family for the last two and a half years. They are very happy here and are pleased that there is clarity that, with their initial visa due to end shortly, they will be allowed to apply for a further 18-month extension, which, of course, takes them to four and a half years—some six months shy of the five years required to apply for indefinite leave to remain. Notwithstanding the Minister’s comments about not wishing to hold them here, the brutal reality is that they have made their home here and they wish to stay. They do not wish to go back to Ukraine because they simply do not have anything to go back to. While I realise the Minister cannot commit as to their status, will she perhaps take this opportunity to say that the one thing the Government will not be doing is forcing people to go back to Ukraine?

More from Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Con)

Other recent Hansard contributions by the same speaker.

About Hansard

Hansard is the official verbatim record of proceedings in the UK Parliament. Every word spoken in the Commons and Lords is recorded and published — this page is a single contribution from that record.

Partner sites