6. Welsh Conservatives Debate: Ukraine

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:35 pm on 9 March 2022.

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Photo of Joyce Watson Joyce Watson Labour 4:35, 9 March 2022

I'm pleased to hear that, as people across Wales will be, because they're desperate to offer sanctuary. They're desperate to help people who are fleeing this atrocity. And who are the people we're talking about? They're women, they're children, they're elderly. And, as Alun has said, when you're fleeing for your life, you're not rummaging through a drawer to find a passport or a birth certificate, and I think we'd all be challenged to do that at the same time as thinking, 'We've got to get out of here, because we've got to save our children's lives.'

The Foreign Secretary yesterday announced that a pop-up visa centre will open in Lille to help Ukrainians process their application. Well, let me just tell you there have been 22,000 applications and 700 of those have been decided. So, let's just hope that that pop-up centre in Lille is not like the so-called surge team that arrived in Calais—all three of them, that is—armed with some crisps, water and KitKats to keep people warm and fed.

As lots of you will know, during the second world war, my father did escape from Poland to Scotland, and eventually back here to Wales, and he did that with the help of strangers. There are nearly 2 million people—again, I will repeat, women, children and elderly—who have fled the conflict in Ukraine. They've left behind everything—everything they had: their jobs, their houses, their belongings and, of course, their loved ones. They're relying on the kindness of strangers.

I watched the same interview that Alun watched this morning, and it doesn't make any of us here proud today to hear somebody say that they are ashamed of being British in this war. We don't want to be there. We don't want to join in that. But it does come to something when the people who are trying to come to Britain are being helped by the strangers in Calais, in Paris and in Brussels because we haven't got our act together, because we're not showing any compassion at all, but we're relying on those strangers in those countries to show the compassion that we have yet to demonstrate. So, we know the Welsh people are generous, with £100 million already in the Disasters Emergency Committee fund, but we have to stop being let down by the shambolic, lackadaisical, incompetent and, it seems, heartless UK Government. And I'm sorry to have to say that, but those, again, are not my words. It's trashing the reputation of this country. I hope they get their act together. I'm pleased you're going to support this, and I hope that you'll have some strong words with your leadership in Westminster to tell them how you feel. Thank you.