Businesses rush to find thousands of Ukrainian refugees jobs in the UK

More than 100 businesses have joined together to provide Ukrainian refugees with jobs, as the number of Britons offering them homes surged past 122,000 in a day.

Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, hailed the “fantastic milestone” as he thanked “everyone across the country who has stepped up to offer their help so far”.

The Homes for Ukraine scheme was only formally launched late on Monday. It recorded 44,000 registrations by families and organisations within five hours, 89,000 by early Tuesday morning and 100,000 by lunchtime.

They have been joined by firms offering jobs and services including Tesco, Marks & Spencer, AstraZeneca and Nestle. Poundland, the AA, Oxford Education Group - which teaches English and resettlement skills - and Transperfect, which offers language skills, have also offered to help.

'Desperate to do something'

The informal consortium of businesses has been brought together by Emma Sinclair, the chief executive of Enterprise Alumni, who is proposing an online platform to guide businesses to the geographical locations where they could recruit and support refugees.

“Businesses are desperate to do something just as individuals are desperate to do something,” she told The Telegraph. “Entrepreneurs and businesses are designed to solve problems, push through barriers and make things happen faster.

“It’s a compilation of businesses that are doing innovative things: teaching languages at scale, reskilling and training. There are millions of jobs available in the UK and it will benefit the economy by helping them.”

Asos, the online fashion house, said it was looking to employ “double digits” of refugees in technology engineering roles based in the UK, due to Ukraine's “strong skillset in this area”.

Tesco has made 1,400 roles available for refugees in its central European business. It is establishing a Ukrainian language recruitment helpline and providing language training for successful applicants.

The Tahora app for mental health in the workplace will offer a paid 14-month community support and marketing apprenticeship. Other firms include Bernard Matthews, which said it had several roles to offer, Lush, Welcome Break, River Island, Vodafone and Britvic.

On Tuesday, the United Nations said the number of Ukrainians fleeing abroad had come close to three million. Nearly half - 1.4 million - are children, meaning one child a minute has become a refugee since the start of the conflict on Feb 24.

'Criminal gangs have moved in'

Theresa May, the former prime minister, warned of the threat from human traffickers targeting Ukrainian people, particularly child refugees, and urged the Government to act with "urgency". 

"This is happening in Poland. It's happening in other countries where Ukrainian refugees are fleeing to,” she said.

"It's a sad reflection on human nature that at the very point where these women and children are fleeing Ukraine for their safety to find refuge elsewhere, the criminal gangs have moved in to make money from the trafficking of what they consider to be yet another commodity, that is human beings. They are attempting to make money out of this human distress and vulnerability."

Amid growing concerns over the number of unaccompanied children, she urged the Government to work with the United Nations and the European Commission to put in place a system that meant "there can be no unidentified children left to the mercy of the traffickers”.

She stressed the need to catch and prosecute traffickers and to ensure that Border Force recognised the possibility of Ukrainian children being brought into the UK this way.

"There are many unaccompanied children coming over, not necessarily orphans, but children who may not have their family with them when they come in,” she said.

"Some of those children don't have papers. The Polish authorities, I understand, are making valiant efforts to look for papers, to find papers, to photograph children, to find some sort of record of the children, to identify them.

"What we know is that there is no database, there is no real means of that identification and tracking of what is happening to those children."

She said Europol, Interpol and the National Crime Agency needed to be involved with “reinforced” guidelines for Border Force officers on how to identify trafficked children.

The Home Office said it had approved 4,700 visas for Ukrainians to join their family in the UK. From Tuesday, Ukrainians with passports no longer had to do biometric checks before arriving in the UK in a bid to speed up the process.