MICHAEL Fabricant has been branded an “idiot” after a dubious attack on the SNP over their calls to help Ukrainian refugees.
Tory backbencher Michael Fabricant drew the ire of Scottish MPs when he slammed the SNP’s calls to scrap the requirement for Ukrainian refugees to obtain a visa before travelling to the UK as “reckless”.
Stewart McDonald, the SNP’s defence spokesperson, hit back at the accusations and shouted across the Commons: “You are an idiot”.
He added the attack was an “outrageous comment”.
Fabricant had earlier cited Russian spies poisoning Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2012 as a reason to impose additional checks on Ukrainians entering the UK.
He said that the “fog of war” had contributed to the chaos and delays
McDonald later added: “Although [Fabricant] has beetled out the chamber, can I just remind the House that the Salisbury attack was carried out by Russian FSB [secret service] agents, not Ukrainian refugees, to conflate the two was wildly inappropriate.”
The Government was again taken to task over its chaotic response to the crisis in Europe as what is thought to be the largest movement of refugees on the continent since World War 2 takes place.
A number of MPs told how their constituents were dealing with contradictory and nonsensical advice from the Home Office or its contractors.
Wendy Chamberlain, the LibDem MP for North East Fife, raised the case of two children aged four and six who had finally arrived in Scotland from Ukraine and had to deal with tortuous bureaucracy before arriving.
She said: “Their application was initially submitted in mid-March and it was finally, I am pleased to say, granted last night, but weeks after the adults in their group were able to travel.
“In that time the family made three visits to the Visa Application Centre, each time waiting for hours and then being sent away.”
Chamberlain added the family had been staying in temporary accommodation in Poland with “no funds”.
Home Office minister Kevin Foster said the Government’s long-term aim was “to move away from people having to go to a Visa Application Centre every time they want to apply for particular types of visas”.
He added: “For those who don’t have international passports, valid passports, the VACs do form a role of safeguarding checks, particularly in relation to children. Those of a younger age, we are not for example looking at security checks we might do with adults, but with children ensuring key safeguarding checks are done.”
The SNP’s home affairs spokesperson Stuart McDonald reiterated his calls for the Tories to scrap visas, saying the “massive wall of bureaucracy” erected by the Home Office was causing “totally unnecessary misery for Ukrainians fleeing war”.
