The Ministry of Defence has offered to step in to rescue the chaos-hit scheme welcoming Ukrainian refugees to Britain, Ben Wallace has revealed.
A total of 300 visas have been granted to date, Home Office figures showed last night, in the wake of 17,000 applications and amid cross-party calls for quicker support.
“Of course we could do more and we are doing more,” Mr Wallace, the Defence Secretary, told Sky News.
“The first and foremost duty for all of us is to make sure those people get to safety. Once they’ve got to safety, making sure we just check their identity before they come to this country, [it’s] incredibly important that we do that.
“It shouldn’t take time and I’ve offered, and I will be offering, to the Home Office assistance from the MoD – in the same way we did in Op Pitting – to increase the processing time to help those people.
“The Home Secretary is determined to do that quicker… I will give her all the support I can to make sure it’s done as quick as lightning.”
Follow the latest updates below.
08:30 AM
The 94 sanction-free oligarchs who show Britain is giving Putin’s cronies an easy ride
A minister insisted sanctioning oligarchs is “not a competition” as it emerged that 94 of Vladimir Putin’s cronies have not been punished by Britain, writes Camilla Turner.
James Cleverly, a foreign office minister, made the remarks in response to a new analysis by Spotlight on Corruption, a campaign group, which found that 94 Russian individuals and 17 businesses have been sanctioned by the EU or US but not the UK.
Some have been the subject of international sanctions for half a decade, after the US as well as the EU and Canada sanctioned individuals believed to be close to President Vladimir Putin in 2014 when he annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
But several have been enjoying a luxury lifestyle in Britain, according to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Daily Mail.
Read more: UK has failed to punish many targeted by EU and US
08:29 AM
MoD ‘will do whatever we can’ to speed up visa processing
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme if he thought visa processing should happen at Calais, where there are 600 Ukrainians, Ben Wallace said: “I’m not Home Secretary, alright?”
The Defence Secretary added: “The ins and outs, the detail of how you process the visas, is clearly for the Home Office.
“But what I can say is the Home Secretary is determined to speed this up, how that is done and the ins and outs of the Border Force etc, I think I will leave for the experts to talk about.
“Priti Patel is determined to do that, we’ll all lean in to help the Home Office deliver that. First and foremost I’m there to help in defence, we’ve got military in Poland, we’ve got military around to help the resilience of those countries. We will do whatever we can to speed up that process.”
08:27 AM
Companies will be urged to list salaries on job adverts
Companies will be urged to list salaries on job adverts to help boost wages of women and ethnic minorities, writes Camilla Turner.
The new initiative, which ministers will launch today, is aimed at reducing the pay gap between white males and their co-workers.
The Government also wants businesses to stop asking job applicants to disclose their salary history, as they believe this will help to close the gender pay gap.
Officials say this is because women and those from ethnic minorities are less likely to negotiate a high salary and are also more likely to be turned down if they attempt to.
Stop asking applicants salary history, ministers urge businesses
08:22 AM
Vladimir Putin sets out his key demands to halt Russian invasion of Ukraine
The Kremlin yesterday offered its terms for a peace deal with Ukraine on another day when Vladimir Putin’s invasion remained bogged down, Robert Mendick, Ben Riley-Smith and Colin Freeman report.
After 12 days of intense fighting, the Russian president’s spokesman claimed the war could be halted “in a moment” if Kyiv agreed to a series of demands from Moscow.
Putin’s opponents said the offer represented a climbdown on his call to “de-Nazify” Ukraine and showed that his war had been a “failure”.
Russian troops continued on Monday to suffer heavy losses and had failed to establish air superiority, while a 40-mile armoured convoy north of Kyiv was stalled and open to counter-attack.
In contrast to Putin’s refusal to recognise Ukraine’s right to exist, Dmitry Peskov, his spokesman, accepted the country was an “independent state” and laid out the most explicit terms yet for a ceasefire.
This is what would make Putin stop the war
08:21 AM
Ben Wallace: We will ‘examine what more we can do’ to help Ukraine
Britain will “examine what more we can do” by way of defensive military support for Ukraine, Ben Wallace said as he confirmed he would make a statement in the House of Commons in the coming days.
“We have to tread a very fine line between how we make sure we maximise the defence of Ukraine without triggering a wider war in Europe and without putting the United Kingdom at risk,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“I wish I could even do more at a step change, but I am also acutely aware we have a President Putin who seems to have no limit to the humanitarian grief and murder that we inflict on a country, and we have to make sure we calibrate our response correctly.”
Mr Wallace denied a suggestion the British Government was “bottling it”, and insisted: “We are not going to be bullied or frightened by Putin in any way.”
08:11 AM
Vladimir Putin failing in Ukraine and is a ‘spent force in the world’, says Ben Wallace
Asked about his assessment of the conflict on Sky News, Ben Wallace said it’s “not going particularly well for the Russians”.
“We’ve also recognised that probably the biggest single casualties so far in the war are Russian military soldiers, who have been let down by appalling leadership, appalling leaders and appalling plans and you now see them at a large scale dying and I think that will be interesting in the Kremlin, whether they will admit to each other the failure of their illegal and aggressive invasion of Ukraine.”
He praised Volodymyr Zelensky as “the spirit of Ukraine which is young, which is liberal facing, which is forward thinking, which is European. This is about values and who we are. This is not about the military threat that was made up, manufactured, by Russia, it’s about values.”
On Times Radio, Mr Wallace repeated his claims that a no-fly zone, which he said was tantamount to “triggering a war”, would “not be a wise or a necessary thing to do at this moment in time”.
“The buck will eventually stop somewhere in the Kremlin and I think that is the reality. Whether that happens next week or next year or next decade is obviously debatable but whatever happens President Putin is a spent force in the world, he’s done, his army’s done and he needs to recognise that.”
He told the Today programme it would be “an impossible task to occupy such a people and a country”.
08:03 AM
An Honest answer from the Defence Secretary
Pressed on if he would be ready to boycott Burger King and McDonald’s while they continue trading in Russia, Ben Wallace told LBC’s Nick Ferrari at Breakfast: “I went to a brilliant place called Honest Burgers last night. It’s the best burgers in London. I’m going to do their job for them, all over London. I wish there was one in Lancashire… I’m not a vodka drinker either. And if I do drink vodka, Polish vodka is better than Russian vodka anyhow.”
Asked if his comments meant he would support a boycott, he added: “Well I mean I’ll try my best to focus. I don’t even know… I think what I’d say is go and buy homegrown, home-bred food, keep it local, that’s a better way anyhow.”
08:00 AM
Ben Wallace: Zelensky visit is a ‘Tommy Atkins moment’
Asked by LBC’s Nick Ferrari if the prospect of MPs who had voted against increasing military support giving a standing ovation to President Volodymyr Zelensky – who will address Parliament virtually later today – would be hypocritical, Ben Wallace quoted Kipling’s poem about Tommy Atkins.
“That is an issue that we all need to address, that our Armed Forces help us keep safe. They’re not the bad guys, they’re the good guys,” he said.
“We should always give them everything they need. We shouldn’t play Top Trumps with them, we shouldn’t play armchair-generals. The people being killed in the Russian army right now is because they were long on numbers… short on equipment.
“As the threat changes, we should change and the Prime Minister recognises that. There are obviously people who don’t agree with, sometimes, that. Well this is the Tommy Atkins moment when they now know what our soldiers can do and they are keeping them safe right now and I would always want to see them supported.”
07:58 AM
Ben Wallace: Ukraine hasn’t asked me for a no-fly zone
Ben Wallace said there had been no request from his counterpart in Ukraine for a no-fly zone.
“He may request and I think that the battle will develop and people will ask different times. But at the moment… missiles and artillery will not be affected by a no-fly zone and Russia has an overwhelming number of both.”
Mr Wallace added that a no-fly zone would put Ukraine at an “immediate disadvantage”, while the West can “help them have better control over the sky” by providing missiles.
07:56 AM
UK ‘can and will do much more’ on refugees
The UK “can and will do much more” to support Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion, the Defence Secretary said.
“We’ve been incredibly generous and we will continue to be so,” Ben Wallace told Sky News. “They can come, there’s a range of schemes, there’s a humanitarian scheme, there’s a family scheme. The key here and I understand the frustration is the speed of processing when they get to a safe country.
“They’ve done a pop up processing visa centre but [Priti Patel] recognises there’s more to do and they will do that. I’ve said we can do more there and we will lean in to do that.”
He added on Times Radio: “[A] point which I think is a fair point is the processing of visas, we can do much more on that. We can do more with pop up visa centres, the Home Secretary understands that and is absolutely determined to do that. The key here is to make sure we lean in and speed up that process.
“Yes, only 300 visas have been issued, I suspect that will increase rapidly when we all lean in and support each other. We are going to help over 200,000 people, that is our ambition, both through the humanitarian route and the family route.”
07:54 AM
Good morning
The Ministry of Defence will step in to rescue the chaotic scheme welcoming Ukrainian refugees to Britain, Ben Wallace has revealed.
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