Matt Hancock 'set to open home to seven refugees'

Former health secretary Matt Hancock is reportedly set to open his home to seven refugees fleeing Ukraine.

Mr Hancock, who resigned from the government last June after he admitted breaking COVID rules, told the Sun on Sunday he will house the family – and their four dogs – at his home in Suffolk, under the Homes for Ukraine scheme.

The Conservative MP said he was helping out a female constituent whose mother, two sisters, niece, nephew and his partner along with her nephew’s grandmother are heading to the UK.

He told The Sun on Sunday: “I got into this by instinctively making an offer to a constituent whose family was in desperate need.”

Mr Hancock, who will host the family for six months, said the visa process was a “challenge”.

It comes after another Conservative politician, Victoria Prentis, became the first government minister to take in a Ukrainian refugee.

The 25-year-old named Vika, who had previously met Mrs Prentis’s daughter in Ukraine, fled the southern city of Kherson.

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Separately another Tory MP, Alicia Kearns, told the Sunday Times that at least ten fellow Conservative politicians have sponsored Ukrainian refugees to come to the UK but that only two had managed to get them here so far.

Ms Kearrns, who has been helping to match up Ukrainians with British families, is herself waiting to welcome the wife of a Ukrainian MP and her sister, who each have one child.

The MP last week told Sky News that the government “could have gone further, faster” to help Ukrainian refugees and she still has concerns about the length of visa forms and that they are not in Ukrainian.

She told the Sunday Times that she had matched five other Tory MPs with family members of Ukrainian parliamentarians but none had arrived yet.

Expressing frustration at the delays, she said: “If Conservative MPs can’t get people here what hope do other people have at the moment?”

Other MPs including Transport Secretary Grant Shapps and Labour’s Louise Haigh have also said they will be taking in refugees.

Crossbench peer Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, who is offering space in her Cardiff home to a mother and two children, said she has been waiting for three weeks for their visas to be cleared through the Homes for Ukraine scheme.

She has described the visa scheme as “unwelcoming” and said it was adding to refugees’ trauma.

Home secretary Priti Patel apologised last week and expressed frustration at the time taken to get the visa scheme up and running but Home Office minister Kit Malthouse told Sky News it was now “motoring”.

Latest figures showed just 12,000 people had arrived in the UK under two schemes to help those from the war-hit country, after nearly 80,000 applications.

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