Money for UK hosts of Ukrainian refugees should be ‘doubled’, says minister

Refugees Minister Lord Richard Harrington has called for payments to those hosting Ukrainian refugees to be doubled, to take into account soaring household costs.

The Jewish peer said he feared around a quarter of the 25,000 households hosting refugees would pull out after six months – meaning new homes will have to be found for those who fled Ukraine for the UK.

Lord Harrington confirmed to The Telegraph: “I’ve asked the Treasury for the second six months to increase the thank you payment from £350 to £700.

“People are under pressure. I can’t say with hard evidence, but all my gut tells me that if they are in financial difficulty [the increased payment] will help a lot.”

The Leeds-born peer’s demand came ahead of Wednesday’s six-month anniversary of the Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.

Harrington said he was “optimistic” that the Treasury would agree to his request, saying: “Every single person who takes part in a sponsorship saves the state the cost of renting flats for people, so I think there’s a financial reason as well as a moral and humanitarian one.”

There are now about 115,000 Ukrainian refugees staying in the country, housed in 25,000 homes.

Hosts, including many from the Jewish community, were asked to commit to an initial six-month stay. In the first three months of the scheme, the Government spent £300 million on funding local authorities to provide services for refugees and to finance the thank you payments.

Lord Harrington said that in some parts of the country, the thank you payment is a “very important contributor to household expenses – electricity bills, gas bills”.

UK households are facing crippling energey bills, with some experts predicted inflation with rise to 18 per cent in January.

The new energy price cap that will come into force in October will be announced this week by Ofgem, the industry regulator, with a rise from the current £1,971 to around £3,600 per year expected.

Harrington had been brought back into government earlier this year to help ease concerns over the Ukrainian refugee crisis, having previously worked on the Syrian refugee crisis.

In an interview with Jewish News in June he said of his role helping refugees: “I believe, for all of us Jewish people, it is like our destiny,” he says. “We were once there.”

Harrington had earlier been responsible for turning the Conservative Friends of Israel group into a formidable organisation alongside Lord Polak.