The Deputy Prime Minister emphasised the needs for security checks on new arrivals to Britain as part of the Government’s commitments to helping those fleeing Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
Mr Raab – whose own father fled from the Nazis in Czechoslovakia in 1938 – was asked by Nina Hossain, a presenter with ITV News, whether the pathway for Ukrainians should be as simple as it was for those seeking sanctuary during the late 1930s.
“I don’t need to be lectured by you about what my father went through. And you are talking about something you know little about,” he said. “It was incredibly difficult for my father to get to the UK.
“I think we’re doing the right thing in the right way. There’s been a question about whether we should have security checks. Look, this is people coming from a war zone.
“It is absolutely right, given the foreign fighters that are there alongside the Russians, that we make sure that we do have security checks precisely so that our generosity is directed to those who deserve our compassion, not those who might seek to harm us.”
Around 1.5 million people are now estimated to have fled to neighbouring countries from Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on February 24.
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Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, has unveiled plans that will allow more than 200,000 Ukrainian refugees to come to the UK, including extended family members and sponsored workers.
However, all arrivals will need to have visas and undergo the relevant security checks amid fears around Russian infiltration of support schemes.
“Extremists are on the ground in the region, too,” Ms Patel told MPs on March 1. “Given that, and also Putin’s willingness to do violence on British soil – and in keeping with our approach, which we have retained consistently throughout all emergency evacuations, including that of Afghanistan – we cannot suspend any security or biometric checks on the people whom we welcome to our country.
“We have a collective duty to keep the British people safe, and this approach is based on the strongest security advice… We have been the target, basically, of Putin’s Russia.”
Boris Johnson said last week that the numbers of refugees who take up Britain’s offer of asylum was “hard to calculate [but] they could be more than 200,000.”
The UK also announced a further £220million of emergency and humanitarian aid as senior Conservative MPs urged a “flexible and pragmatic approach” towards the refugee crisis.
