The Home Office has been accused of “outright lies” after it claimed Ukrainian refugees in Calais could obtain free Eurostar tickets to travel to a UK visa centre in Lille – when in fact this route does not exist.
Government officials said on Tuesday that hundreds of Ukrainian refugees in Calais could benefit from free tickets being offered by Eurostar to make the 70-mile trip to submit their visa applications in Lille - but the Eurostar service does not currently stop in Calais at all.
Hundreds of Ukrainians have arrived in the French port town in recent days after fleeing the Russian onslaught in their country. Most are trying to join relatives in the UK under the Home Office’s family migration scheme, announced last week.
Despite calls for these refugees to be allowed to submit their applications to the scheme in Calais, No 10 announced on Tuesday that they would need to travel to a pop-up visa centre in Lille to do so, or otherwise travel to visa centres in Paris or Brussels.
In response to concerns about how the Ukrainians - most of whom are women, children and elderly people - would travel to these cities, a Home Office official said they could benefit from free tickets being offered by Eurostar to make the journey.
However, Eurostar has confirmed to The Independent on Wednesday that Eurostar services do not currently stop at Calais.
A spokesperson said Ukrainian nationals could access free Eurostar travel from the continent to the UK, but that for travel within France, they would need to make contact with SNCF, France’s internal train service.
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A Home Office spokesperson told The Independent the Home Office official “misspoke” on Tuesday.
They said the department was going to offer alternative free transport for Ukrainian refugees to get from Calais to Lille as soon as possible. They could not say what form this transport would take.
Clare Mosely, founder of Care4Calais, which has been supporting Ukrainians in Calais, accused the Home Office of “outright lying”.
“They’ve said another thing that they don’t know to be true. It’s ridiculous. I don’t understand how they can get away with it. When is something going to notice that the Home Office makes false statements? There have been about three in a week,” she said.
It comes after home secretary Priti Patel was accused by a senior Conservative MP of misleading parliament over arrangements for Ukrainian refugees trying to reach the UK via Calais, after she twice claimed that a centre had been set up on the way to the French port – only for it to later emerge that no such centre had been set up.
French authorities have said that since 28 February, 638 Ukrainians have attempted to travel to the UK to join their families there via the port of Calais or Eurotunnel, of whom 325 have been granted entry and 313 have been turned away by UK authorities due to not having visas.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are providing free transport to Lille from Calais for anyone who did not arrive by car or who is otherwise unable to travel independently. Eurostar are offering free tickets to the UK for anyone who holds a valid visa.
“A Home Office official who has been working round the clock to help the people of Ukraine get to the UK explained Eurostar’s offer incorrectly during a press briefing. This was corrected soon afterwards when a journalist contacted the press office. To suggest this was a deliberate attempt to deceive is offensive.”
Concern is also mounting around the bureaucratic process refugees are confronted with when trying to apply under the UK’s family migration route, as it emerged some are having to wait weeks to get a visa appointment, while others turned up to visa centres to discover that they were closed.
In order to submit an application to the scheme, refugees are required to attend a UK visa centre, of which there are only one or two of these centres in most EU countries, meaning many refugees must travel for several hours to attend one.
Home Office figures show only 760 visas have been granted so far under the family route, despite tens of thousands of applications having been submitted.
Ukraine’s ambassador in London Vadym Prystaiko meanwhile urged ministers to temporarily drop visa requirements, saying that if bureaucratic procedures were “simplified” it would “definitely resolve all the issues”.
Speaking to MPs on Monday morning, he said: “I don’t expect many of them to come. I don’t want to see these pictures of people banging at the doors in Calais and scratching the doors which are quite sealed.”
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