 Welcome to the 15th meeting of 2023 in session 6 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have received apologies from Pam Gosel. Agenda item 1 is agreement to consider evidence in private. Our first agenda item is to agree to take item 6, which is consideration of today's evidence in private. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. The second agenda item is affirmative subordinate legislation and its consideration of the affirmative instrument. The draft first tier Tribunal for Scotland local taxation chamber and upper Tribunal for Scotland composition and procedure miscellaneous amendment regulations 2023. I welcome to the meeting Siobhan Brown MSP, Minister for Victims, Community Safety and her supporting officials, Lisa Davidson, senior policy officer, civil courts and tribunals and Leanne McLarty, solicitor, Scottish Government legal directorate. I refer members to paper 1. I would like to invite the minister to speak to the draft instrument. Thank you convener and good morning committee. The regulations before you are the first tier Tribunal for Scotland local taxation chamber and upper Tribunal for Scotland composition and procedure miscellaneous amendment regulations 2023. This instrument will, if passed, amend the first tier Tribunal for Scotland local taxation chamber and upper Tribunal for Scotland composition regulations 2023, the council tax alteration of lists and appeal Scotland regulations 1993 and the council tax reduction Scotland regulations 2021. A suite of regulations to affect the transfer of functions of the council tax reduction review panel and the valuation appeal committees to the local taxation chamber of the first tier Tribunal came into force on 1 April 2023. At the same time, some limited functions of the land's Tribunal for Scotland were transferred to the upper Tribunal. The land's Tribunal functions, which transferred related to non-domestic rates valuation appeals and referrals and prior to the transfer of functions, these appeals or referrals were from the valuation appeals committees. These regulations amend the composition of the upper Tribunal when hearing appeals or referrals from the local taxation chamber. The regulations align the composition of the upper Tribunal when hearing valuation rating appeals with the composition of the upper Tribunal when hearing all other appeals. The regulations also amend the timescale set out in the council tax alteration of lists and appeals Scotland regulations act 1993 and prior to the transfer of functions an assessor had a period of six months to carry out certain functions when they were of the opinion that a proposed alteration of the council tax valuation ban was not well founded. This was substituted in transfer regulations to a period a time period of six weeks. Following representation from stakeholders, there are concerns that this time frame is overambitious and these regulations will amend it back to the six months. These regulations also correct a consequential amendment in regulation 94 of the council tax reduction regulations 2021. The president of the Scottish Tribunals was consulted with regard to the regulations in line with the requirements of the Tribunals Scotland Act 2014. I understand that the DPLRC considered the regulations on 30 May and they were content with the instrument. Since no member of the committee has indicated that they wish to ask any questions or make any comments, we will move straight to agenda item 3, which is the formal business in relation to the instrument. I invite the minister to move the motion. I invite the committee to delegate to me the publication of a short, factual report on our deliberations on the affirmative SSI that we have considered today. That completes consideration of the affirmative instrument. I thank the minister and her officials for attending and will pause just very briefly and then we will move straight on to the next one. We will now move on to agenda item 4, which is consideration of one negative Scottish statutory instrument. That is the SSI 2020-23165, the act of cedarent fees of solicitors in the court of session, sheriff appeal court and sheriff court taxation of judicial expenses, rules amendment 2023. I refer members to paper 2. Do members have any comments to make on that instrument? I will make a point here in the charges. It is quite the cost recovery factors that are within the charges. The council had approved a 9.75 inflationary increase to aspects of all tables of fees, but at the end of the papers that we received, it said that, in arriving at the increase to the charge rate that the council anticipates, there will be considerable volatility in consumer-based indices over the next few years and that CPI are unlikely to be unreliable measures after September 2021. I did not quite understand why we were looking at why those dates were relevant in the rules provision, but I just want to put it on record that it, to me, I do not quite get it. What is it that you wish for us to record on record? It just seems that there is considerable volatility in consumer-based indices based on the approval of the table of fees set out in schedule 1. I do not think that there is anything that we can do, but I just want to put it on record. If you have a concern, I can advise you that you have the ability to lodge a motion to annul with the chamber desk, and then the issue will be discussed and debated in the chamber. Our timetable does not allow for us to discuss it again, but that is a route that is available to you should you wish to take it. That is a very generous convener, but I will not be doing that today. It is just on record. In that case, and bearing in mind what Rachael Hamilton has said, are the members' content formally not to make any comments to Parliament on those issues? Lovely. That concludes the consideration of the SSI. I would like to suspend briefly before we move on to the next session. Good morning. Our next item of business is the conclusion of evidence on our inquiry on asylum seekers in Scotland. It is, in fact, a world refugee day today, so it is possibly a good day for us to come to the conclusion of our inquiry. The first panel, I would like to welcome Baroness Helena Kennedy KC, chair of the independent commission of inquiry into asylum provision in Scotland, who is joining us remotely today. Good morning and welcome, Baroness. Good morning, chair, and thank you very much for inviting me to this session. Thank you. I would like to invite Baroness Kennedy to make a brief opening statement, and that will be followed by questions from members of the committee. Baroness. Let me explain how I came to be the independent commissioner dealing with asylum issues in Scotland. I was invited to do this. First of all, it was thought that the Royal Society of Edinburgh might have been hosting this commission. Some difficulties arose around that, because inevitably there was going to have to be very substantial criticism of the powers that be that were perhaps responsible for some things that had gone wrong. The refugee organisation that was calling for this inquiry settled on there being an independent commission, and it was funded by the Runtree Foundation. I was invited by both entities to be the person who might share this, and I did so and came up to Glasgow but also held a number of sessions virtually like we're doing today. It was a shocking business and it arose out of Covid and the early period of lockdown, which of course affected all of us, but for the community of people who were awaiting asylum resolution and decisions on their asylum applications who were in Glasgow, it had particular implications. What had happened was that many of them had already been settled into accommodation flats that have once been council flats, other kinds of accommodation housing associations, some of the private rental accommodation, but they were mainly settled in accommodation and had been some of them for several years. Suddenly, on a particular day and over a very short period of time, the doors were knocked and they were told to pack their bags and that they were being taken to different accommodation because of the pandemic. They were told to leave their food behind in their fridges, even if they were cooking on the stove, everything had to be left of that sort. There was no food to be allowed into hotels and they were moved into hotels in the centre of Glasgow. Many of you will remember the events that took place where people clearly had mental health responses to this. People who have fled persecution and who are applying for asylum in our country almost invariably are being supported by the health services and they have got to know local clinics, local doctors, local social workers and of course being moved, disrupted all of that. There were people who had serious mental health problems, someone committed suicide and a particular individual had a psychotic episode where he ran around with a knife in the hotel, attacked a number of people, including a police officer who arrived to deal with the emergency and eventually a SWAT team arrived and he was shot dead by the police. There was a strong feeling that, while no one was feeling that there had been many alternatives to what the ending was with regard to that particular person, what was felt strongly was that taking people into hotels at short notice and taking them away from places where the established connection with neighbours, with health services and so on had in fact led to a crisis. My role was to hold an inquiry into that and to provide a report on it. Of course, we have got to remember that most of this emanated from decisions made by the Home Office because this is a non-devolved matter. Many of the findings of the asylum inquiry resonate with the evidence heard by our committee, such as people not feeling safe in the hotels, the food being inadequate, relying on charities, barriers to accessing healthcare, including mental healthcare. It also reflects on similar inconsistent evidence provided by MIRS and the third sector organisations. The third sector has been quite critical of MIRS, while local authorities have said that they work well with MIRS. MIRS has said that they work well with all partners associated with asylum accommodation. Do you think that there is inconsistency in evidence between private contractors and third sector organisations? I would also be interested to hear your views on the use of private contractors in this context. The evidence that we received in relation to MIRS did involve a high level of criticism of them and the way that they handled those events. One of the things that we discovered was that the people who were given the task of going and responding to call-outs and things like that by the hotels would find that the people who came had been given new nomenclatures. They would have given new names and titles on their badge where they were called welfare officers. The week before, they were called housing managers. Instead of looking at things that had gone wrong, such as the boiler or the lighting system, they were suddenly expected to deal with issues such as mental health, which they were not equipped to do. We felt that giving somebody a different name does not lead to the kind of support that people need in those circumstances. I did think that there was an inadequacy, and that came through very strongly in the evidence that we heard. Local authorities might say that their dealings with MIRS are perfectly fine. They are not, of course, the people who are receiving it and who are the asylum seekers. I have the people who have mental health problems. As well as MIRS, which is subcontracted to MIRS, a national company, a UK-wide company, not a company confined to Scotland. It is a subcontraction from the home office. I feel that when it comes to matters of this sort, I would prefer that it was a not-for-profit organisation. MIRS made a lot of money over the Covid crisis, as many other organisations did out of the privatisation of certain kinds of aspects of our existence. I do not feel that profit making in this area is a good thing. If you looked at the sums and looked at what the money was made at that time, it would be a shock to our system. The other thing was that there was a helpline called the Migrant Helpline. I asked the woman who was a counsel to the inquiry. I said that I want to see how that runs, because many of the people complained about the fact that they would try to phone the helpline. They would be hanging on the phone for hours. They have a card, but they are not people who can afford to be hanging on a line forever. However, if you are in a stressed situation, it is pretty hard going. The woman who was working to me was on it for hours waiting. I should be told that you are now 65th in the queue. It was a nationwide thing, based on the headquarters of our base in Brighton. I do not know where the call centre is, but the call centre was very low in—sorry, let me just turn this off. The call centre was very poor in its response to people who were in crisis who were wanting help. We asked them to provide us with—they said that we did respond to calls in Glasgow and so on. We said, can you give us the record of how many people called and what your responses were? It was never forthcoming. I felt that the migrant helpline was inadequate, and that is another privatised thing. I felt that the outsourcing to mirrors had serious shortcomings. That was the view that I took. I am affected by other areas of my life where I am dealing with the human rights and the protections of the rights of different groupings. We know that, for example, the privatisation of the care system for children has been a catastrophe. The privatisation, for example, in England and Wales of the probation service, has been really wholly unsuccessful. There are some areas of our life where outsourcing to profit-making companies is just not an appropriate or ethical thing to do when you are dealing with humanity and crisis. Thank you for that. That seems to be a question around the moral efficacy of private contractors dealing with the situation of asylum seekers, people in such distress. It is more than moral. Of course, there are moral and ethical issues about our responsibility to those to whom we might have a duty of care. However, there is another thing here, which is that if you are having to determine and make decisions where your primary concern is going to be safeguarding the interests of your investors, if you are someone who goes to a business school, one of the lessons that you are taught at the heart of business is that your primary concern is to guard the interests of your shareholders. That runs in the face of the very role that you have if you are supposed to be providing not just a place to lay your head but providing for the care and wellbeing of asylum seekers. I think that there is a conflict there between what are your major instigators. One of your recommendations was for mirrors to put a certain amount of money into a service that would look at mental health and wellbeing provision for asylum seekers and refugees. Has there been any movement on that at all? Not at all. We had hoped that mirrors would of its own volition decide that this was something that they ought to be doing given what had happened. Many of the people who survived those incidents were still suffering the consequence of them. The floors were awash with blood in that hotel where the crisis took place. We thought that if mirrors had any good sense and also wanted to maintain that contract, they should have immediately been funding, for example, the therapeutic help that should be offered to those people and none of that was forthcoming. I would like to bring in Maggie. Thank you very much, co-cav. Good morning, Baroness. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Thank you for the work that you did on the inquiry. It is really important work. You talked in your opening remarks about the decisions relating to the Home Office and the UK Government. There was a very clear recommendation in your inquiry report that was for the Scottish Government to consider what powers we should be looking at here to mitigate the failings that have been identified, the powers and support around the new Scots strategy, how that is resourced and governed, and then peer-to-peer support and how that is supported. Can you give us an indication of where you think the Scottish Government does have the powers to mitigate some of the decisions that are being made by the Home Office, given the current practice towards asylum seekers, and are there particular areas that you are particularly concerned about in the Scottish context? First of all, I wanted to say that I love the idea of new Scots, the concept that you embrace those who are going to be coming and have the hope and aspiration of settling in your country because they are fleeing persecution. One of the things that became very clear to me, and I should mention this, was that a couple of years ago, when the evacuation from Afghanistan took place, the military evacuation took place, I was involved in the evacuation of a whole lot of women, judges and prosecutors and lawyers, and human rights activists, who were on the high level of security risks. The MI6 was very clear that they were on the kill lists of the Taliban. I was involved in evacuating them. When it came to the business of trying to, I got them to Greece to a lilypad, when it came to the business of saying, I need to find resettlement for this 103 women and their families, their husbands who were good men, who were often professionals too, but who wanted their women to have professional jobs. They were not ones who wanted their women locked up at home and denied education. They came with their children. They were in temporary accommodation in Greece, and I was trying to find places for them to go. I spoke to the Scottish Government, and the Scottish Government was willing to take some of those women and resettle those families. Of course, there was a detriment to that. There was a block on it because of the policy that was being adopted by the Home Office at Westminster. I think that there is a thing there that is unfortunate about protecting the borders of the United Kingdom. With regard to the role that can be played by devolved Governments, there is no doubt that when it comes to the mental health and the physical health and the support systems, those are much better done. They are much better as a devolved matter. We know that when things directly affect the lives of people, that is much better within the devolved remit. We were very clear that we felt that money should come from central government to make that possible, but that should be handled by the agencies that are on the ground and understand the local circumstances and what is available locally and who are the people who are being supported and so on. Why would someone in Brighton have any sense of that? Why do call centres that are not based in Scotland know anything about that? We were very clear, but when we met people who provided help in the ordinary circumstances, the social workers who were connected to the local authorities, we found that that was where real knowledge was and real support on the ground had taken place in the months before. That example is quite a powerful example. You spoke a moment ago about your position on some of the profiteering around the privatisation of those services. Can I just be clear? When you talk about the services that you feel should be better and would be better provided by local health, social care and other service providers, you are saying quite clearly that the funding for that should come from the UK Government? Oh, absolutely. If the policy is going to be run from the centre, then the centre has to take financial responsibility for things further down the road. I think that money should follow the problem. What I think is wrong is that there is a profit making element in this. There are many not-for-profit organisations that would do this very efficiently. We all know and have read the stories of those who were running those businesses that were to find accommodation for children in care and adolescents who needed housing in care and finding places for them, driving around in Maseratties and living the life of Riley. There is something absolutely repugnant in that when you are dealing with those in crisis, those who have serious problems and that profit should be made from such a thing. I personally have a very strong position on it. Thank you. You also spoke about the notion of new Scots, as you say. You find that a very positive idea. I would share that. I would agree with you. Do you think that the new Scots strategy goes far enough and resourcing notwithstanding? Do you think that there are other areas that we should be looking at within the new Scots strategy? If we look at the nature of the discourse that is taking place just now around asylum, I am involved in the Westminster debates and I have amendments into the illegal migration bill. It is a shocking piece of legislation. I am sure that there are members of your group who are members of the Conservative Party too. I have many friends in the Conservative Party across the other side of the house from me, and they too feel a certain repugnance in it. One of them, indeed, said to me, is the last card in the pack. What is meant by a statement like that is that everybody knows that migration is one of those dog whistle issues and, unfortunately, as we approach elections, sometimes rather disgraceful decisions are made about what becomes important and what does not. I am afraid that the nature of the debates that are taking place just now around the illegal migration business and the business of crossing the channel is that the idea that we render everybody who comes by that route someone who is a criminal who is illegal. They do not get the opportunity of making their case for why they might be someone who is desperately fleeing persecution. They do not get the opportunity to do that, but they are criminalised. When they are deported, they are not going to ever be able to have the opportunity of coming here, even if they might have family already settled in this country, in the United Kingdom, in Scotland or in England or wherever. That is a breach of international law of the international convention, which we partly were involved in drafting. That included Scots law, if I may tell you. It is shocking that the extent to which law is being thrust to one side in an effort to pursue a policy. I want to say that the nature of the debate around all this has been horrifying, and the media does not help us. We have to try to create a different kind of discussion about why we need immigration and why the business of asylum seeking is separate and different and is about our duty of care to those fleeing persecution. Thank you very much. I could go on, but I will leave it there and let my colleagues come in. I have a quick supplementary from Rachel, and then we will be moving to Paul O'Kane, who is joining us online today. Rachel, please. Morning, Baroness Kennedy. Just to press you on the question that Maggie Chapman asked about the New Scot strategy in the inquiry, your panel recommended that the New Scot strategy had more teeth. You also talked about wielding the devolved powers of housing, health and social care. I wonder if I can press you on what you meant by giving the New Scot strategy more teeth. I have already mentioned it. I think that one of the ways in which that is the gold standard of what one should be doing across the United Kingdom is saying that there is a welcome to people who come and want to settle here. Obviously, it is not an open door to the whole of the world, and when it comes to immigration, one is going to be particularly interested in getting people who are going to bring certain kinds of skills that we perhaps just now do not have. You cannot overnight, suddenly, have all the doctors that our health service needs. You cannot overnight deal with the technicians that we need for the sustaining of aircraft, for example. Some of that recruitment is going to be necessary, and it involves being embracing. I sat for a while on the Justice and Home Affairs Committee in the House of Lords. We did a report on family reunion. We heard from senior doctors in the health service who wanted to bring their elderly mother from India, because there is a strong religious and cultural thing of looking after your elderly parents. Here was an oldest son, a successful consultant in Leeds, and he wanted his elderly mother to come. The answer was no. Elderly parents do not want to have elderly parents. This is somebody who is giving his life to something that we care about in the firmament of British society. It just seems ludicrous to us. There are many examples of that. The notion of family reunion is not being fulfilled in many cases where it should be bringing brothers and sisters together. The whole discussion and debate around that is very poor. I happen to think that the Home Office has been dysfunctional. We have seen it with all the scandals of Windrush, of the policies that were really about being hostile to any incoming people. That is why I like the idea that you are talking about new Scots, new Brits, whatever you want to call people. When you come, you are part of our society. By and large, we have been pretty good about all of that. Of course, it has not been perfect. There are times when there have been racist events. In Scotland, too, people have been seen to be taking housing away from the local population. By and large, we have a good story to tell by comparison with other countries. We should be telling that story more often and the media should be doing it. The media often is complicit in a presentation of this as being a catastrophic problem when the real problems are about the disaster or the economy and the way in which an effort was made during the period of austerity policies of diminishing government departments. The numbers of people working on asylum, for example, inside the Home Office greatly reduced. That is why you got the backlog of cases that were still not resolved. The number of people working on assessing asylum claims were far fewer. There was a huge turn of those working in those areas. The turnover was very high. Why? Because there is a sort of moral jeopardy. If you are somebody who is having to decide on whether you think that somebody's claim is justified, you might think that it is. However, you know that there is a sort of, if you like, a dictate coming from on high, which is that we have to be reducing the numbers of people who are getting in and you have to be tougher on this. There is a moral dilemma that people feel. Living with it is very hard. It becomes a conscious issue. People were leaving the Home Office in droves. They didn't like doing the job. Of course, they are not very well rewarded for it, really. It is a painful and difficult job, the material that you are sifting and dealing with. I think that the Home Office has been dysfunctional for quite some time and it is going to take quite a bit of work to get it to a state where it is really handling these problems in a way that we would all, I think, probably want to see. Thank you. Thank you. Paul O'Cain, please. I am very grateful, convener, and good morning to Baroness Kennedy. I wonder if I may return to the whole notion of hotels and the use of hotels. I think that we have been particularly interested in speaking to all of our witnesses about their experience in hotels. I suppose that we are really focusing on the idea that a stay in a hotel should always be short-term and transient, but what we have seen is that something that was intended to be a good innovation has become the norm. I wonder if you might say something about your work in terms of that piece and, essentially, is that becoming more and more normalised? Would you share the concerns that the committee has heard on that and on the conditions within those hotels? It most certainly is my experience that hoteling people have become normalised. It started off, as you have said, to be a short-term response to the needs of the where to find accommodation for people. Covid opened up a whole set of opportunities. Not surprisingly, hoteliers with fairly low-level hotel provision found that, actually, here was a reliable way of making money, so they became different providers. We could call them something else and not call them hotels, because what they are really providing is hostile accommodation. What happened in the hotels in Glasgow during Covid was that they did not go down in the morning and say, I would like brown toast, not white, marmalade, porridge, bacon with my fried egg. That is not like that. It was basically a hostile provision, with a meal like it or not. The food was very cheaply provided and so on. We can take that as red. That was part of the report. The business of hotel provision has now become normalised, because the people who ran those low-level hoteling things for backpacking, cheap holiday people, young people coming to London or the young people coming to Glasgow, found that here is a much more reliable source of income. You are not having to have the turnover. You are not having to change the bed every night, because somebody only stays one night. It became a much more profitable thing to people running that provision. Let us be very clear. This was done because it had financial benefits all around it. It is a cheaper way of doing things. People talk about the horror and the people up and down in the country think that they are staying in hotels and we imagine what it must be like when we go and take our summer holidays. Let me tell you it is not. The hotels are being used in a very different order. The hotel providers are really a hostile provision, that is what it is like. It is not even as good as what we provide. For example, it is not like a student accommodation. It is hard for people with families, with children, when you are in a room in which you are sharing it with little ones. It is really tough, but for people, even though they are adults, it is very difficult. During Covid, of course, it was particularly difficult when there was lockdown. However, it is still being presented to the general public in a way that is not honest. However, I think that you are right in describing it as being normal. There has been a normalising of it. We cannot pretend that there is not a problem. Our young leaving home wants to have somewhere to live, and the provision of housing has become a crisis in our country. The ways to do that has become very problematic. The investment in housing should be a priority for the nation, and that does not mean just in relation to what you do for people who are asylum-seeking. It is a problem for our young, for people with young families. It is a problem for what you do with people as they become aged, and you want to have oversight of people. We have not got housing sorted in up and down the country and in England and Wales as well as in Scotland. I am very grateful for that response. I think that that concurs with the evidence that we have taken and particularly the personal testimony of those who are living in hotels currently. I wonder if I might touch on the support that is offered in those settings. We have heard and we have touched on that already in terms of mirrors input. When we spoke directly to people living in hotels, they said that they felt that the problems were not resolved, that tensions grew, and perhaps if their own mental health suffered, things were not resolved. No access to counselling, no access to talking therapy, none of that. At mirrors, of course, when they came to committee, they would contend that they were putting support in to hotels and that they were providing that, if you have a problem, talk to us and we will resolve it. However, my sense was certainly that that was not the reality on the ground. I wonder if you might just say something about that lack of support in hotels, particularly on the mental health issue. Let me explain something that I felt in the inquiry, but I have come across in other fact-finding activities. One of the problems is that people are anxious. They do not want to complain. They do not want to complain because they somehow imagine that if you have come from a state where you were persecuted and where the powers that be were authoritarian, you do not know that Britain is supposed to be somewhere that is not like that, but you think that if you complain about the system, you might not get asylum. When you are even making contact with mirrors or you do not know who all these people are, are they employed by the state, who are they, you are used to being often in countries where there are agents who are going to inform on you. All the time, the voices in your head are saying, be very careful what you see here. It might be held against me, and if I criticise anything, I might be told that I am not going to get asylum. The other thing is that people often do not know and would not describe what they have as being mental health problems, because often in countries that they are coming from, there is no mental health provision. They do not talk about mental health. It is not a way of thinking. It is something that we as a more sophisticated society perhaps know more about. You really have to take account of all that, so mirrors will say to you that nobody mentioned to me that they were having mental health problems. For example, in the hotel where this catastrophe happened—there were difficulties in other hotels, too—people would come and sit in a desk in the area, in the reception area, and if you ever wanted to go and talk to them, people who were qualified or had any skills in social work or in counselling or any of those sorts of things, there were guys who used to change the light bulbs in properties that mirrors had run when things went wrong. You have to have the right kind of capacity, the right kind of skills and to understand that you have to sometimes be reading the ruins with whether a person might have mental health problems. Sometimes people retreat of course into silence with their mental health problems rather than being talkative about them. It is about the quality of provision, the nature of provision, but let me assure you that I met in the taking of evidence. I also met wonderful people involved in community support. People who themselves at one time had been seekers of asylum and were now settled in this country and had jobs but gave their spare time to help people who were going through the same things themselves. I was very impressed with local authority social workers that I met in taking evidence. There are good people there who are trying to do good things, but I felt that it was not, if you like, settled into the institutions that are involved in this and the corporate organisation that was involved in it. We would recognise much of what you have said, and I echo your comments on the excellent support organisations that we have met through the charitable sector and others who often felt that there were barriers for them to access the motel because of many of the issues that you have mentioned. If I may ask a question on the use of hotels that make people more identifiable about the risks of human trafficking and exploitation, do you think that the use of hotels has created the way that we know where people are and therefore they have become more of a target in that sense? Absolutely. People know that people traffickers are not just operating in the north of France but operating in our midst. Of course, if people are vulnerable, they can come to them and offer them the better accommodation. It is a slow grooming of people into the underworld that people can end up in. I do not know if you remember, but only about a month or so ago, there was the scandal of something like 200 children who have disappeared into the ether, who were received into the system, were initially placed in hotels or something and have disappeared. We know that for young people, who are 14, 15 or 16, to survive, they are going to be involved in issues to do with sexual exploitation, criminal activity and so on. That is one of the serious problems here, is that we sometimes fail to make the distinctions between adults and children. There is a fantasy out there that there are a whole lot of people who pretend to be children who are not really children. I have heard it being said by people in the Parliament. There are young men who try to pretend that they are children and they have three days' growth on their chins. Sometimes people from certain parts of the world are more here-soothed from adolescence than they are perhaps if they come from red-haired northern parts like we do in Scotland. I am telling you that the business of children in the system is still not being adequately addressed. The new legislation does not comply with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It does not comply with CEDAW or the Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women, because pregnant women are going to be drawn into some of the horrors of it. The European Convention on the Rights of the Child is a common law in denying people the opportunity of due process so that their cases are considered so that they can claim the entire asylum, refuge and sanctuary because they are fleeing for their lives. I would like to move on to Rachael Hamilton. On the subject of trafficking and exploitation, in the report, you said that we should be replacing institutional accommodation with community-based living arrangements. In evidence that we have heard from many stakeholders, including MIRS, that there is a lack of property and housing, and sticking on the subject of exploitation, in 2022 around 600 refugees were subjected to trafficking and exploitation of those, as you quite rightly said, 200 were children. We are in a little bit of a stuck situation because of the situation with housing. It is almost like we are in this cyclical nightmare where we cannot get out of the hotels. Even MIRS are saying that they do not have enough properties. What would your comments be around this situation to get the Scottish Government moving towards community-based, integrated living arrangements? I do not pretend that this is an easy one for Governments, and there is a shortage of accommodation because successive Governments have failed to build new adequate housing for young families and young couples and so on. They end up being marooned in the little social housing that there is or in the places that they rent, and now increasingly that is becoming even more problematic, certainly in the south. I am sure that the same sort of problems exist in Scotland. We have to have a building programme. What we do not want to see is let us build a whole lot of quick and easy places to build and put all the asylum seekers in them. We do not want the thing that they have in Paris, where they have on the road, which are totally filled with people from other parts of the world. You then create silos of immigration. The integration success story is about people living in their communities and in all the different bits of our communities. You did hear wonderful stories of people living in accommodation. When I was young, I would have been called council housing, which is now run by housing associations and the like. People living and getting to know their neighbours and sharing food and the asylum seekers cooking and then taking it to their neighbour as being something that they culturally were so used to doing. That has been so appreciated by Scots people. Scots, who were neighbours of the people who were moved out of accommodation, came and spoke to me at the hearing about why that was done. Why were they disrupted? They were living across the way, and they used to take my dog for a walk in the park because my hips are hurting me now. My new neighbour for the last year has been taking my dog out. That integration is so important. I cannot pretend that I have the answer to the immediate problem of how we deal with a shortage of accommodation. I think that there is a problem there. The answer to it is about creating new housing across the peace for young people of all sorts. Having a site to make sure that new communities and new housing are varied and variegated and are not just being a provision for new arrivals and for the new Scots, we must not have new Scots and new towns. We cannot have that. It must be that we provide that sort of integrated community thing, but there are plenty of our own young people who want to have housing that they can afford and to provide places where they can bring up their children safely and happily. It is a crisis of our times. I am afraid that I have a strong position on this, which is that taxes are what we pay to live in a civilised society. I do think that provision of good housing is something that the state has to put its mind to. You cannot shrink the state to nothing. There are ideological views taken by some people that the state should be as minimal as possible and that everybody should be able to spend their own money the way they like. I am afraid that there are some things that involve policy making, sensible policy making, direction for that and inputs of money. That has to be drawn from the business of taxation. We have to have a much more honest conversation with the general public about this and how we retain our reputation in the world for humanity, compassion and also good things. Can I just clarify Baroness Kennedy? In the inquiry, you did talk about mixed sex accommodation within hotels. I am trying to link your thoughts on whether you believe that the integrated community accommodation would reduce the trafficking and exploitation. I do not have any detail on that. I wondered whether it was something that was an aspiration or whether there was evidence to suggest that there was a link between having cultural integration and support from communities that gave women the support around them so that they had people that were able to stop traffickers. Do you find any link? Rachel, I think that there is a link because we see it—I use France as an example. If you go to the venue where everybody is from North Africa, the traffickers know where to go. If people are integrated and there is much more of a right, it is much harder. The business of being able to go in and source people who will be young drug carriers and act as mules, or if you are doing it for sexual exploitation, your location is readily identifiable. People in hotels are readily identifiable. The Earl's Court in London is the place where all the cheap hotels are being used for migrants. That makes the job of the trafficker so much easier. If people are spread around and are living in different communities and so on, it becomes much more complicated. The support networks are there, and it becomes more difficult and people have people to go to. I think that there has been a certain amount of research into that, particularly around modern-day slavery and trafficking. We were generalists when it came to that rather than people who were relying on those specific pieces of work. However, I know from other—over the years since the Modern Slavery Act came in—that I have followed quite closely the problems that there are. I think that one of the success stories that we have had in immigration has been largely about integration. Where people get collected together in one area, you are more likely to get trafficking. Your testimony this morning has certainly been very sobering as your report was. I would like to ask what has been the response from the Scottish and UK Government in regards to the findings and recommendations within the report? Well, when the report came out, the response of the Scottish Government was very positive and from the other parties in Scotland. I received communications from across the piece welcoming the report and drawing attention to some of the serious problems that there are in this field. I have just now, for example, as a result of what I have learned. I invoke it regularly when I stand on my feet in the House of Parliament in the Lords over this illegal migration bill. I regularly refer to the fact that I had the experience of being here in Scotland and hearing the evidence of people seeing the good things that I think Scotland has been attempting to do. However, the problems that there are going to increasingly be with this piece of legislation that has currently been run through Parliament at a speed. I am not hearing much welcome from the Home Office. The Home Office did not respond and the Home Secretary is not receptive to any kind of critique that does not fit with her worldview. Thank you for that answer. It has certainly given us a lot of clarity over our investigations the past few weeks. We are looking—we know that here we do not have within our remit the reserve powers over immigration, but in regards to what we could do here in Scotland, do you feel that we are sufficiently addressing those issues or could we do more? Listen, I think that resource always gets back to this business. Resource is one of the problems. We have in Scotland wonderful people working in the field of social work and we have wonderful volunteer sectors. That is one of the riches of Scottish society. I think that that could be drawn on more, but you still need resource. When people have mental health problems, of course, you need more people who are skilled in dealing with them. That means skilling out more people in the provision of mental health support. It is more than just counselling. Sometimes people are in need of pharmaceuticals to deal with their depression and so on. You need doctors involved, too, but all of that needs resource. It is not just asylum seekers who have mental health problems. The growth in the need for support post Covid has been great. Our young across the whole of the United Kingdom are the death of provision for the young in the area of mental health. It is shocking, but all of that needs resource. You get back to the business. We are having an economic crisis, but we have to decide what has brought that about and then you have to decide what the resolution is. I am afraid that if we are all going to be suffering the hardships and deprivations of a financial crisis, I would like to see some of the burden of that, following on the shoulders of those who are still very wealthy. I would like to see that money coming into the system. I would like to come to Fulton MacGregor. Thank you, Kennedy for your very powerful session so far. Having met asylum seekers recently, I think that, if any of them or agencies support them or watch them today, they will be very welcoming of your strong words. Most of the areas have been covered, but one of the areas that I wanted to go over again was when we have been speaking to people. It is almost always just the simple things. I think that there is an understanding out there that there is wider policy and political influences that need to be sorted at that level, but for most of the folk that we spoke to, they just wanted free transport, more appropriate meals, and treated with dignity and respect. I know that others have asked, but what can we do here and I suppose across the UK in terms of making this a reality for people? We need more people working with this community. Some of those have to be people for whom it is a paid job and others can be volunteers. I think that I may be romantic about us as Scots, but I happen to believe that Scots on the whole are very welcoming people. We had stories—there was a wonderful story—of two of the very, very black waste Africans who were in the community and who were stabbed—actually, both of them had been stabbed—because they tried to restrain the guy who had the knife, and they ended up in hospital. Those two young men talked about how, when they had first been put into the hotels, they had been on the street and they had been talking together about what they were allowed to go out to walk—to do remember the hour walk—and they were going out to do the exercise. There was an elderly Scottish woman who said to them, how are you boys doing? She fell into conversation with them. When they were able to associate, she had them to her home and fed them. They told the story of how she gave them a big pan of soup in a plastic container to take home with them—a good homemade Scottish soup. They took it down and put it in the fridge in the kitchen. When they went down in the morning desperately looking forward to having this Scotch broth, it had been thrown down the sink. It was a fun thing in the fridge. I am telling this not as a criticism of the hotel staff who did not know it, but about the generosity of people in the community. On the one hand, I think that there is goodwill from Scots. Once people are in it and they get to know them, their kindness to strangers is great. The other thing is that there has to be the professional help and it has to be resourced. It is about how—it is Robin Peter to pay Paul—how you resource that. I do think that we should be encouraging our, for example—I hope that one of your recommendations might be that we are providing more courses for people to acquire the skills of counselling, to recognise evidence of mental ill health, and that our universities and our further education colleges—our community colleges in Scotland—are terrific at providing opportunities for people to skill up in the provision that we need for the stuff that falls short of Florida's mental health problems, where you really need it to be dealt with by doctors, psychiatrists and so on. However, for some of this, it is about counselling and helping people to see why they are suffering grief. Many of them are people—I say this in the House of Lords—how many people have actually spent time with asylum seekers, because, for the most part, they have not. You only have to sit and hear the stories of people watching their members of their family being slaughtered in the most terrible ways. It is happening in Sudan just now, the rape of women. I am on the war crimes task force for Ukraine just now, the abduction of children, the sexual violation of women in the presence of their family members in front of their grandparents and family in front of the wee ones that are in them now. I am not just being raped but over and over by whole groups of men. I cannot begin to tell you getting over that is terrible. One of the things that we are going to be advising Ukraine about is having to skill up people to be able to deal with the aftermath of this. Let us be clear that there are ways in which we can speak to all of our different institutions about roles that they can play. I am not sure that enough of our colleges are providing those kinds of training courses. I think that there are people who volunteer who, for example, would be interested in acquiring additional skills so that they can do it even better. Thank you very much for that very thorough answer. My next and final question is on and around MIRS. I know that the convener said at the start that we did hear kind of mixed evidence on MIRS with the third sector organisations being particularly critical in local authorities and statutory organisations being a bit more supportive. We also had MIRS in themselves. What I wondered was, in possibly your opinion, what you might have picked up through your work, do you think that MIRS—I do not suspect that MIRS is individual people who are hearing the stories that we have heard—would not want to react and would not want to be good? Do you think that they have the power or the green light to challenge the UK Government or do they live in fear of their contract? What we did not ever get to the bottom of, and it was partly because the Home Office refused to play and refused to basically participate, where did the decision come from to move people from accommodation that they were in? I mean, there were some people who were—there was a woman and her son who were in a small flat, but they had been in for a couple of years and who were moved. I mean, she had to then multiply the depression pills that she was taking because of what happened, and she ended up in a hotel room shared with her son, who was an adult. Of course, the people who worked for MIRS were decent people, too, so do not get me wrong. They were full of kindness and so on, but they were often unskilled for the jobs that they were doing, but the other thing was who made the decision that it was going to be cheaper to put people into hotels that were empty because the tourist trade had gone. Therefore, we have another place where we can put people, and it is going to be much less expensive than putting people into places where rents have to be paid. I think that that came from the Home Office. Did MIRS go to the Home Office saying that an alternative has come up, which is possible? Of course, MIRS did not do of its own bat. It came from the Home Office. Decisions were being made, but nobody came forward to assist us. How was that decision made? Was it scoped? Did people think of the implications of it? Did they think of the consequences in terms of the welfare provision, the support systems that people might have established, the ways in which people's physical and mental health might be catered for? Would there be enough people during a period of Covid to go and visit the hotels to see what the conditions were? They would not step forward to testify on any of that, but I suspect that, sitting down in London, they were all working individually from home. That was done in the chaotic way that the Home Office has been working for a long time. It may be that there is now more effort going into dealing with the backlog of many people still waiting for decisions. They are going to have to deal with that anyway, and I think that they are getting in more staff and so forth to do it. That decision was being made in the Home Office. The Home Office refused, first of all, to hold its own inquiry. The people who called for a refugee support system were calling for a public inquiry, which was refused. When we held the inquiry and I asked the Home Office to participate, they did not do so. Transparency, accountability is fundamental in a democracy. I am afraid that we have had less of that, and more and more power is going off to Home Secretaries to make decisions for which they have never held to account. You have provided us with very powerful, compelling evidence this morning as part of our inquiry. I would like to thank you for taking the time to speak to us and give us all that information and insight. We are now drawing to a close to this part of the panel. Once again, thank you very much to Barnas Henle Kennedy for attending this morning. I will suspend the meeting for just a short time while we change over to the second panel. I welcome to the meeting Emma Roddick, MSP, Minister for Equalities, Migration and Refugees and Supporting Officials, Alison Byrne, interim director of equality, inclusion, human rights and alien harding, policy manager, asylum and refugee integration. Members have had a chance to look at the papers and we will invite the minister to make a brief opening statement before we open up to the committee for questions. Thank you, convener, for the introduction and for inviting me to be here to speak to the committee on what is, of course, World Refugee Day. I will, following this meeting, be attending an event by the Scottish Refugee Council as part of Refugee Festival Scotland, which is in its 22nd year. There are over 120 events taking place across Scotland this week, co-ordinated by the Scottish Refugee Council, with this year's theme being hope. I recognise that both the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament have a crucial role to play in providing that hope to asylum seekers. The Home Office is, of course, responsible for UK asylum and immigration policy, including no recourse to public funds and restricting asylum seekers' right to work operation of the UK asylum system, including decisions around how it operates and provision of asylum accommodation and support. I recognise that many essential services are devolved and that there is a responsibility of the Scottish Government and local authorities who play a key role in supporting asylum dispersal. I have also been amazed by the ongoing and constant efforts of Scottish third sector organisations in making an invaluable contribution to supporting asylum seekers in Scotland. We are proud to support those organisations and the Scottish Government is providing nearly a million pounds to third sector organisations in 2023-24 for refugee integration work. We have taken a human rights-based approach to our policy on asylum, with our new Scots refugee integration strategy being clear that integration should be supported from day one of arrival, and we are clear that that applies whether you first arrive as a refugee or a person seeking asylum. New Scots was developed and led in partnership by the Scottish Government, COSLA and the Scottish Refugee Council, and it helped Scotland secure £6 million from the EU's asylum migration and integration fund, which went towards a £6.6 million project to support refugee integration. I am committed to working with our new Scots partners to refresh the strategy, building on work-to-date and ensuring that it continues to be informed by refugees, people seeking asylum and those with experience supporting both groups in our communities. The ambition of new Scots is the right one to support everyone to have the best shot at integrating and being properly supported and able to realise their human rights. However, I stress the difficulty in achieving that fully within the constraints of devolution. For example, we are providing over a million pounds to support the delivery of our ending destitution together strategy, which improves support for people with no recourse to public funds, including many asylum seekers. We do not believe that anyone should be pushed into destitution, but we have no power over who NRPF is applied to, nor can we support those with NRPF to access Scottish benefits or the Scottish Welfare Fund. The British Red Cross is a valued partner in delivering crisis funds to those who need it, including asylum seekers with NRPF, but it should not be necessary to resort to crisis funding to make sure that someone is not made destitute. Scottish ministers continue to raise issues and concerns about NRPF with the UK Government. At this point, I would also like to make short mention of the illegal migration bill and the Scottish Government's and Scottish Parliament's opposition to it. The Parliament of course debated and agreed a motion describing the bill as dehumanising and immoral. The bill is currently at its committee stage with the House of Lords with a report expected in early July. The Scottish Government is clear that the bill will prevent people, including those who are human trafficked, from accessing safety and support in Scotland, and we believe that it should be withdrawn immediately by the UK Government. We know that trafficking victims are often suffering from severe trauma, that they have little choice about their movements and are frequently unaware of their location or how they entered a country. Removing existing protections based on how they entered the UK is irresponsible and indefensible. It will make victims much less likely to seek help, tightening the grip of perpetrators and therefore making the job of the Scottish Government in supporting victims of human trafficking a duty that we take extremely seriously very difficult. That is why we are seeking to withhold consent on key clauses which impact on the competence of Scottish ministers and our ability to operate in devolved areas. I will be attending an illegal migration bill summit on Thursday with some key stakeholders and I would like to extend the offer to write to you following the summit to share any key insights. I will finish just now by highlighting our wider work through introducing a human rights bill and continuing to pressure the UK Government for further powers to be devolved or at least improvements made to the immigration system and setting out a vision for an independent Scotland that enshrines human rights in a written constitution. We are committed to doing whatever we can to help people who need it most. There is more to do and there are significant challenges, which is why we are committed to working with our partners to refresh the new Scott strategy, building on work-to-date and continuing to ensure that it is informed by lived experience as well as organisations with expertise supporting people. I have been very interested in the important work carried out by the committee and I look forward to hearing your questions. Thank you Minister for your opening statement. You will be aware that we had Badness Henna Kennedy just prior to your appearance and the recommendations that are in her inquiry. One such recommendations was the review of right to work and I am going to throw in free bus travel in there as well. The right to work obviously not only makes economic benefit for Scotland but also that human dignity of being able to provide for your family and not being a burden in any way. What powers would the Scottish Government require for refugees and asylum seekers to be able to have the right to work and are there any communications that are taking place or have taken place with the UK Government around that issue? Absolutely, convener. Those conversations are on-going and have been long-term. Certainly, applying the right to work to asylum seekers is something that we have been particularly keen on alongside removing NRPF, because those would allow integration as that set out in our vision that allows people to integrate from day one and, as you say, be economically active during their time here. In terms of what powers we would need, that sits within the wider asylum and immigration power that the UK Government holds. We have requested more power over the rights and entitlements of asylum seekers and other migrants. That is something that we will continue to pursue. In terms of bus travel, I would point out that our approach has not been exclusive of asylum seekers. Our concessionary travel scheme, as it stands, allows for asylum seekers who meet the current criteria, including being under 22 over 60 or being disabled, to acquire free bus travel. That, we estimate, is around a third of asylum seekers in Scotland who are currently eligible through that. I know that there is a pilot on-going that I will bring Aileen in to say a bit more about, but, once we have further information about how that is being used by asylum seekers, what sort of journeys are being carried out, how much it might cost for the Scottish Government to extend it and what justification there could be for extending to one cohort rather than on the basis of age and disability, we are more than happy to explore that and look into it further. That would be really helpful to get more information. It has come up again time and time again through evidence, lived experience to third sector stakeholders. They have all raised the issue of free bus travel. Aileen? There is an existing programme for government commitment to look into how best to provide bus travel. That could be concessionary travel, it could be through other routes, for example, through third sector schemes. There is not a conclusion been made on that yet because the work is on going to explore that in line with the programme for government commitment. What is happening at the moment is that there is a pilot running in Glasgow. That builds on knowledge from third sector organisations who I know have given evidence to you who have provided support themselves in the past. We really appreciate the information that they have been able to share with us on schemes that they have run. The specific information that we are looking to get from the current pilot is around how people use bus passes and how many journeys they make, so that we can get more information on what the likely cost would be of either extending concessionary travel or otherwise providing. There is evidence out there of need. We recognise that. That has been raised with us. What we are doing at the moment is running a pilot that we hope will provide more evidence on what the cost element may be to enable calculation to look at that and to inform on how that benefits people seeking asylum so that we can use that to inform further consideration in line with the programme for government commitment. The pilot is running up to July. It is being run specifically in Glasgow because that is where most asylum seekers are currently. However, we are also alive to the fact that widening dispersal is taking place. Therefore, we also need to consider how best to provide bus travel across Scotland rather than just specifically in Glasgow. Rachel? Miss Harding, you have just answered in your last sentence. What I was going to ask is that there is a concentration, obviously, of asylum seekers in Glasgow. Do you think that the Scottish Government believes that one of the reasons that local authorities are not taking asylum seekers is that they cannot get transport, so they are tending to seek areas that are cities that have an infrastructure in itself? What is the Scottish Government doing about that beyond the issues with the challenges around bus travel? First of all, we are in the process of widening that asylum dispersal to other local authorities, but we have been really clear that given the amount of work that has gone in and given the experience that has been built up, the experience and knowledge of those working in partnership in Glasgow to support asylum seekers, there is a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure that the support and services are there once that dispersal is widened. Local authorities will have many different reasons and a variety depending on which council area it is for having hesitation about accepting asylum seekers, but certainly in terms of transport, we will learn a lot from the pilot. Although it is very different, as you will know, transport in a city to transport in a suburban or rural area, it will inform us on how much cost would be likely to be inflicted. I will bring Alison in, just to say any more around asylum dispersal. We have just to add what the minister said. One of the challenges for Scottish local authorities is the funding from the Home Office to support asylum dispersal. That has only recently been put in place in the course of the last year, so that allows local authorities to think differently about how they could support the wider dispersal of asylum seekers in Scotland. I have no recourse to public funds. Minister, you mentioned that asylum seekers' refugees have different status and that they are assessed on as well. In response to the Ukraine crisis and the war in Ukraine, the Scottish Government took on the role of super sponsor. Through evidence, we have heard over the past few weeks of asylum seekers and refugees from countries such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Sudan, who in no way wish to see the amazing work and support that Scotland provided at both government level and public level towards the Ukrainians. However, they did feel that there was a disparity in treatment of different refugees from different countries. I would just be interested to hear the Scottish Government's view on that and the minister's view on that. What would be the criteria in future? Unfortunately, we do live in a turbulent world of the Scottish Government using the super sponsor status again. I would point out first of all that the resettlement from Ukraine was a reaction to a very difficult event, the illegal invasion of Ukraine, but we were led there by decisions made in the UK. Ukrainians who are displaced in Scotland and the UK have a right to work, they have a right to access benefits. They are in a very different position to how we would be able to treat asylum seekers from other areas or who had different routes in. That is one of the reasons that we have been really clear that there needs to be safe and legal routes. If you do not provide safe and legal routes, all that is left is unsafe and illegal routes. I can completely understand why someone seeking asylum would look at the support that has been given to Ukrainians and wonder why that has not been extended to everyone else. The unfortunate answer is that we do not have the ability to treat asylum seekers in the same way. In terms of integration into the community, I know that it has been really successful in terms of Ukrainians who are displaced here at the moment, being able to get into work. 85 per cent of those in Edinburgh, for example, are in work and they have been able to access services in Ukrainian due to the large cohort that has very similar needs and very similar background. There are very different cohorts here that we are discussing and we are simply not able to do things like how we reacted to Ukraine and Sudan in terms of expanding social security access to people with, for example, NRPF. I am interested in exploring some of the possibilities that we have for action around the use of hotels. We know that hotels have been increasingly used not as the temporary or short-term accommodation that was originally intended, but they have become institutionalised accommodation across the piece. We see that not only in Glasgow but in other parts of Scotland, such as Falkirk, Aberdeen for instance. First, what do you think are the priorities for ensuring that we move people out of hotels as quickly as possible? We know that those are not the best places for them to be. Asylum seekers do not necessarily have the mental health and other healthcare support that they should. It also ghettoises, it makes them targets, it identifies them very clearly as that community of asylum seekers is living in that one place. What are the Scottish Government's priorities for ensuring that the institutionalised use of hotel accommodation shifts? I would say that, first of all, I have been really interested in the evidence that the committee has gathered around hotels, but keeping in mind that the placement of asylum seekers in hotels or other temporary accommodation is a decision that is wholly reserved to the UK. It is really important, again, to go back to my answer to the previous question. Asylum seekers not having a right to work, not having recourse to public funds makes the placement of being in a hotel very different to how it would be for other cohorts. We are clear that there is time to use hotels that are appropriate circumstances. We do not see asylum seekers waiting for a decision on their immigration status as being an appropriate situation. I completely agree around the use of the word temporary. If we are providing people with temporary accommodation, it needs to be clear that it is temporary. With the waiting lengths for decisions around immigration status being what they are and the uncertainty that asylum seekers are facing, I do not think that it is fair to use that word when placing asylum seekers in hotels in Scotland. One of the challenges that we heard from Baroness Kennedy this morning is that local authorities and others are finding that it is not having the capacity to move people out of hotels because accommodation is not there. I appreciate that provision of housing is something that is within the powers of the Scottish Government. There is also something around the health and social care support that is clearly devolved within our capabilities. Is the Scottish Government thinking of working differently with local authorities and third sector partners to try to make sure that whilst asylum seekers are in pretty horrendous hotel accommodation in that situation, they get the best possible health, social care and other support that they need in that so-called temporary situation? First of all, it is the Home Office that is responsible for matching refugees into properties. In terms of health and social care support, the Scottish Government has always been clear that asylum seekers and refugees have access to NHS services. They can register with a GP, same goes for other devolved services such as education, a child seeking asylum or a child refugee has the right to an education as with anyone else. I would also go back to the matter of funding for local authorities. We have long highlighted that the UK Government's asylum dispersal funding is inadequate. Having met partners in COSLA and local authorities, that is definitely being felt at the moment. There is a great deal of fear about increased asylum-seeker provision without extra funding. If the committee were minded to back our calls to the UK Government to ask for further funding and clarity around that, that would be very welcome. One of the things that we heard clearly from organisations supporting asylum seekers and asylum seekers themselves and from this morning's earlier panel was the lack of that channel of funding to third sector organisations. There is a lot of money going to hotel providers and miers and none going from the Home Office directly to third sector support organisations, which is just completely back to front. In my view, there are other words that I could use to describe it, but I won't. A couple of other points. When we have been speaking to asylum seekers, as we have done in the past couple of weeks in different situations, the joined-up-ness of services has been an issue for some folk. We know that, in addition to the public transport pilot that you have already discussed in Aberdeen, one of the bus providers in Aberdeen did work with Grec, the Grampian Regional Equality Council and got a bus service provision for asylum seekers going there. Those are so important for allowing people—nobody wants to sit in a hotel room for most of the day, leaving to go and eat food that may or may not be culturally sensitive, maybe being able to get out to go for a walk to nearby facilities, but if they are having to travel further afield, there is a mental health consequence of not having the additional services that may not seem like life or death but are fundamental to being human. I just wondered what more the Scottish Government, either through the new Scott strategy or the Ending Destitution Together strategy, can look at to ensure that we get—we look at the whole. We do not look at services in silos and say, right, you get your healthcare from the GP, you get your housing when that is worked out with the Home Office and the local authority, but we actually look at asylum seekers as human beings in the whole. I am just interested to know what more you think we could be doing in that space within the powers that we have. I completely appreciate the points that were made particularly around mental health impact and the support around that. We are working with a Glasgow-based mental wellbeing project to support better those who are facing those challenges. In terms of third sector funding, as I said in my opening statement, we have provided over £2 million between the two different funding streams that the member mentioned. Much of that goes from the Ending Destitution Together strategy to the British Red Cross to provide crisis grants to those at risk of destitution, but we have to be clear that they are at risk of destitution due to NRPF not having a right to work difficulty getting appropriate housing. It is very difficult to carry on funding at these levels to mitigate what are failures in the UK Government's immigration system when that is not something that we are allowed to change, but we have that duty to try to make things better around the edges. I would much rather be making big changes to the rights and entitlements of asylum seekers. I would much rather be saying, yes, we will remove NRPF, we will give people the right to work, but as we can't do that, what we are left with is providing crisis grants and other support through different means. A quick question. It is more of a point to flag. One of the things that we heard speaking directly to asylum seekers in the last couple of weeks was when their status changes, when they do get a decision and they become refugees, it is almost like they dropped. There are some support networks that exist within the hotel structures, or they have built up relationships with organisations, and when they get their settled status or refugee status, they cannot access that anymore, because they no longer are asylum seekers. There is just something for us to watch there that in that transition from asylum seeker to refugee, we do not have people falling through the cracks and therefore being even more in need of the kind of crisis funding that you were talking about? I hope that the member understands the reason that resources are pushed towards asylum seekers. Obviously, in international law, there is no distinction made, but in terms of rights and entitlements in the UK, there is that distinction. The difficulty then is that we have people who are being forced into destitution, and that is where limited money has to go. Absolutely, in terms of developing the refreshed new Scot strategy, that is the kind of thing that it is really important to pick up on. I would like to bring in Paul O'Kane, who is joining us online. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to the minister and officials. I am keen to explore further, if we can, the first Government's response to the illegal migration bill. I wonder if the minister would just share with us what interaction she has had in terms of the bill with the UK Government and what representations have been made, and with whom? I think that I have picked up enough there, convener, if you want me to. Yeah, I think that the general thrust of that was regarding the illegal migration bill and what communications have you had and who with. Yes. Of course, we did have the debate in Parliament, which informed our way forward. The Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice wrote to Robert Jenwick to reiterate the Scottish Government's opposition to the bill on 25 April. Then, of course, we led the political debate in opposition of the bill's provisions in the Scottish Parliament. On 30 May, we lodged our legislative consent memorandum with the Scottish Parliament, and there will be an opportunity to discuss that in a parliamentary debate. That LCM recommends that consent should not be given to clauses 23 and 27, which are the clauses that I referenced in my opening statement, which we believe significantly alter the competence of Scottish ministers and our ability to meet our international human rights obligations to support victims of human trafficking, including children. The discussions have been on-going between officials and ministers with those in the UK Government to make clear what we are opposing and why. That has been on-going, and I will pass to Aileen. The Scottish Government has lodged the LCM on 30 May. It is going through the process to determine whether it is considered to be a relevant bill by the Parliament for there to then be debate on that. The view of the Scottish Government is that it is, but it has to go through those parliamentary processes to be accepted before there can be debate scheduled on that. Thank you, convener. I will just check if you can hear me. I think that the previous question was an issue. I can hear you. You cut out periodically, but very briefly. Of course. Given the context, if we might hear from the Government in terms of what has been done in the devolved context, the human trafficking legislation that was brought in 2015 is an area where we would seek to challenge much of what we have been talking about in this inquiry. I wonder whether the minister might say something about progress on that. Yes, certainly. The act was passed in 2015 unanimously by the Scottish Parliament, which shows the strength of feeling across all parties around doing more to support victims of human trafficking. Police Scotland is continuing to work closely with UK partners and beyond to share that intelligence and co-ordinate work. We are bringing in as much knowledge and expertise as possible so that we are able to approach it as widely as possible and as effectively as possible, but we are very concerned that, should the bill pass in its current form, we would be severely limited in how we would be able to identify and support victims because they would have that extra burden of not being able to come forward and explain their situation due to the potential removal from the UK. I want to ask you how many Ukrainians are still living on cruise ships in Scotland? I do not have the exact number to hand. I think that just to give a bit of context here, the number is changing every day at the moment because the disembarkation of the MS Victoria is getting to its nearest final stages. Every single day, we are seeing quite a significant number move off the ship, but I do not know whether officials have our most up-to-date— Where will the Ukrainian refugees be moved to? The full variety of accommodation that Ukrainians are currently living in in Scotland is being used as options from the ship. We have had significant interaction with the private rented sector around what offerings there are, particularly in Edinburgh. We have had Ukrainians matched with host families across Scotland and there have been specific movements, particularly around the £50 million that was made available to local authorities to upgrade empty and void properties. When those have been coming online, Ukrainians on board have also been matched with the new properties that we have managed to bring back into use. I do not think that we have managed to get a specific number, but we can definitely write back with the most up-to-date statistics. At who pays for the accommodation that you just mentioned, there was a £50 million fund. Is that part of the Ukraine Longest Resettlement Fund? That was the specific funding that was made available for local authorities to use for only empty and void properties. Once Ukrainians move out of those properties, they will then be available for social use again by the local authorities. Is that temporary? Well, it is temporary in that most Ukrainians living here consider any place that they are living temporary, but it is not temporary accommodation in the way that hotels and vessels are. Thank you very much for offering to get back to the committee with regards to the number that has moved off the cruise ships. It would be interesting to know how many had moved, as you described, to a variety of accommodation, whether it was hotel or private rental or social housing. However, I am interested in the number of houses that are becoming available in local authority settings for asylum seekers who have settled refugee status and those who are Ukrainian refugees. How is there parity over the offering of housing to move individuals from hotels or cruise ships to accommodation? Firstly, in terms of the statistics around where Ukrainians are moving from the ship, that is something that, due to the context of them all being on the vessel, that is something that we have managed to collect extensively data on where people are going and why. It is a lot easier to do when they are based first on the ship and with all that support service around them. Those statistics are being collected and we have had quite a good insight into future planning in terms of how many want to go to Ukraine in the near future and how many are thinking much, much further ahead or want to leave Ukraine altogether permanently. Sorry, I have forgotten your second question. It is just on the parity. I would point out that the supersponsor status that we have in terms of Ukraine is a unique situation. There is no parity because the Scottish Government does not have that formal role in other immigration routes. If we had the powers that we have been asking for around being able to set our own controls over immigration and our own rights and entitlements for those seeking asylum or for refugees, we would not. I think that the many successes of the Ukraine supersponsor scheme in terms of the support that was offered to those who arrived here under it and the partnership working with COSLA, local authorities and third sector partners is a demonstration of what can be done if we take that approach of treating people with dignity and respect and allowing them the right to work, making sure that there are varied types of accommodation available to them based on their needs. Having seen the working between different local authorities, we had councils from across Scotland coming to be on the ship and speak to those living there about what was on offer in their area. That is a great demonstration of what can be done if we take that human rights-based approach. Can I just ask about the New Scot strategy, which has been covered by I think it was Paul O'Kane and asked a question there? There has been some debate about how it is working because it seems to be an umbrella term for a lot of different groups of people. For example, this committee has not specifically had the opportunity to speak to any Hongkongers. However, we know that across the UK, around 166,000 Hongkongers have come to this country, but a very small number have come to Edinburgh, so just a few hundred. I am interested to know if the Scottish Government has done any analysis on why there are so few Hongkongers wanting to come and live and work and stay in Scotland. There is always on-going information coming through and I had a really interesting discussion through Reform Scotland recently about Hongkongers and the routes and why people are moving where they are. It very much seems to be based around where there is particular information or an existing diaspora saying that this is what works and where works for us. We find that with cohorts that are in Scotland and are continuing to move to Scotland as it is those who came from the same country, who they know their families, who are living in a particular place, draw them there. I agree. Looking at the statistics, it shows that a lot of Hongkongers have settled in Manchester and Salford and that those areas in the north west. However, Hongkongers who have come here, who are just a few hundred, recently had a round table and they felt that they did not feel welcome. I think that it is important for us to understand how the impact of them choosing to come to Scotland has had on them and it would be welcome for the Scottish Government to do some analysis around that. To my comment that the new Scots strategy is perhaps an umbrella term rather than looking specifically at cultural identities and understanding people for whom they are rather than because they are part of a group of people who have been displaced. Absolutely. It is important to keep remembering that, even though it is an umbrella term for all different groups of migrants, even within refugees and asylum seekers, they are not homogeneous groups and they have different needs and different expectations upon arriving in Scotland. In terms of Hongkongers in particular, this is the kind of lived experience that is going to be really valuable when we are shaping the refresh strategy so we can absolutely engage with the people who have raised those concerns as we form the new strategy and make sure that those things are taken into account and hopefully they will feel that the next strategy is much more relevant to them if they have managed to feed in during that process. I had a question about ESL, which was part of this. Do you want me to ask that? Yes, go ahead. It was just really as part of that welcoming strategy. We heard in evidence from various stakeholders that the access to ESL is very challenging, and I wondered what solutions the Scottish Government were proposing to address that. It certainly is very challenging, and I am aware that the displaced people from Ukraine at the moment that the demand for ESL is creating a lot of pressure on providers and increasing waiting times. We are looking at ways to support that to move on. Again, I would point out that this is one of the funding issues that comes with asylum dispersal that is not specifically funded by the UK Government. We are in a position where we do not have control over which ESL is needed, how much is needed, but then we still have to provide it, so there are all these challenges going on around where the funding comes from. It is something that our committee should dig deeper into with regard to what kind of ESL is required. I am not quite sure what you mean. I met a Ukrainian refugee the other day who said that she was funding her own ESL privately and taking virtual lessons so that she could ensure that she could get work in Scotland. I am wondering what your meaning is by that requirement. At the moment, colleges are working with community planning partnerships, because based on the local area, there will be different need and demand. Online is a good example of that. There are certain settings where it is very difficult to get people around in a room, but there are also examples going on of things such as language cafes, which seem to work a lot better for certain people, not everyone, because it is a relaxed setting and it is more conversational and it is more informal. Some people are more able to pick up a language in that kind of setting, so there are different kinds of provision of ESL, and that is why it is really important to us that local communities are able to feed into that and design it based on what the local need is, particularly if we are looking at rural challenges where people might prefer online to travelling or they might not be able to access online. I would like to ask you a few questions on what we can do here in Scotland that is within our competence. We have heard over the past few weeks, given witness testimonies, of a few areas that are obviously within the remit of the UK Government. Badness Kennedy told us this morning that there were issues with the Home Office, but the Scottish Government and local governments do have some competence in some areas. Are there any areas that you feel that could be used within our competence to address some of the issues of asylum seekers in Scotland, which we are maybe not currently doing? I think that in terms of what we can do, we are doing what we can. In terms of supporting asylum seekers not excluding people, which we have seen be the attitude in other settings, we are inclusive, so the public services in Scotland, such as the NHS, such as schools, the baby box as well, asylum seekers can receive, the baby box can access those services. The member will have seen just yesterday that we published our vision for what a constitution of an independent Scotland could look like and that enshrined human rights for everyone in a written constitution. That is the approach that we are trying to take even now as a devolved Government in our human rights bill, which is out for consultation at the moment. We are seeking views on how we can best incorporate international treaties, as far as possible, within devolved competence into Scots law, because we would not seek to treat people differently based on how they got here or what their personal circumstances are. Embedding that approach, that is taking a lot of work at the moment across Government, because it needs to be something that all ministers have in mind, that we are taking this human rights-based approach, that we are embedding equality in all that we do, but for all the devolved services that we are providing, there is not a gatekeeping there, preventing asylum seekers from accessing the baby box education, the NHS. That is really good to hear. I note that the Scottish Government is extending tuition fee support from August this year to asylum-seeking children. There is also a guardianship system that is coming into place. Could you give us a brief outline of what that would look like and how that will help asylum-seeking children? Absolutely. Before I bring an official in, I will say that that is one of many examples, because we are also making sure that progress made around childcare and early learning is expanded to asylum seekers as well. That is all going back to the principles of our new Scots strategy, that integration from day one is absolutely the goal. That is why we expand as much as we can rights and services to asylum seekers. We are looking to do more every day. We are asking the UK Government to, for example, remove the Scottish welfare fund from one of the excluded benefits under NRPF. We are pushing for whatever we can to expand provision to asylum seekers, but I will bring in Aileen to say a bit more about the tuition fees. The tuition fee specifically is going to enable from this academic year for young asylum seekers who have made their asylum application before they turned 18 to continue their learner journey, so they will be able to progress from school if they are offered a place at university and be able to apply for their tuition fees in the same way that any other student would do, and therefore not have that artificial break in continuing their education while they wait for a decision from the Home Office. Once someone has refugee status, they can apply to SAS in the same way—the same eligibility—as other students who are resident in Scotland. That will extend that specifically. I am aware from colleagues that they are also looking at the outcome of consultation that was taken forward earlier this year around access to education, so they will be looking at that further. That may include consideration for other groups of asylum seekers or other groups who currently can't access and will not benefit from the change that is coming in, but it is a real benefit to young asylum seekers that they will not have that artificial break while they are waiting for a decision and will be able to continue with their peers into education. That is fantastic to hear, because we know from witness testimony from asylum seekers that the uncertainty was something that really affected their mental health. Avoiding any such breaks is particularly important. Can I ask about the guardianship programme and what that looks like? The guardianship service is actually a service that has been running for some time, I believe, since 2010, on a non-statutory basis. The significant change is that that is now coming in on a statutory basis as of 1 April this year. The service will be providing specialist support to unaccompanied asylum seekers and traffic children who arrive in Scotland. Children are looked after children. The benefit viewing of the guardianship service is working with the child, having somebody who can advocate with them, who can ensure that they are aware of the services that they can access, and if there are barriers to access, support them in that access to them. That is very helpful, thank you. Thank you. Can I bring in Fulton MacGregor, please? Thank you, convener, and good morning just to the minister and your officials. Thanks for your evidence thus far. I have got a few areas of questioning, if that is all right in the first is on mother and baby units. When we met with asylum seekers over the last couple of weeks in private, we had some very powerful sessions. I think that my colleagues have already went over some of the issues that have been raised, but the session two weeks ago, mother and baby units were talked about quite a lot. In one of the particular groups that I remember being on, there were some quite horrific stories to hear about that. So I am just wondering if the Scottish Government has made representation to meers or the Home Office regarding the use of mother and baby units and what the Scottish Government is doing to make sure that asylum seeking mothers with babies are being supported. I should have said that the concerns that we heard were around in Glasgow. Yeah, absolutely. I am aware of the concerns that the member raises. Of course, the accommodation in Glasgow stopped being used as a mother and baby unit last year. The Scottish Government did make representations back in 2021. It was before the election, so it was, Aileen Campbell was the cabinet secretary, but those representations were made and we have been clear that there are concerns around that provision and how safe and secure it was for those who were being placed there. That is good to hear and I think that it will be welcome news to those women that spoke to us that day to hear the Scottish Government responding so categorically in that. Similarly, we heard quite a lot and we have heard it right throughout our whole evidence session about the provision of interpreters. We will probably be aware of that. We have heard quite a lot of concerns about inconsistencies in the provision of interpreters and the quality of them. One of the things that we have heard quite a lot of asylum seekers tell us is that sometimes interpreters do not say what it was that the person said. Are you aware of those concerns, Minister? What do you think that the Scottish Government can do more to address? It is the home office that holds overall responsibility for the delivery of interpretation and translation services, but asylum seekers living in Scotland have the same access rights to interpretation as refugees do. It is provided at the point of need, so I appreciate that there will be differences because funding is sourced in all these different ways, but I am more than happy to look more closely at the evidence that the committee has gathered. I think that we will produce a report that will be highlighted because of the amount of evidence that we have heard from both organisations and individuals. Moving on to my second line of question, if that is all right, we have heard very evidence on Mears. Broadly speaking, third sector organisations failed the critical of the Mears service, which provided Mears, perhaps unsurprisingly, and statutory services, such as local authorities, being more positive. I wonder what the Government is understanding is if the relationship that Mears has with statutory agencies and community organisations, and if there are regular meetings between the Government and Mears, and if there is any else involved in those? There has been some engagement with Mears Group in the past, but the member will appreciate that the Scottish Government does not have a place in the contract between the UK Government and Mears Group. It is entirely between them that the UK Government sets the criteria for the contract and then Mears delivers it. However, the committee would certainly have a place in scrutinising how that relationship is working and whether the contract is meeting expectations. I will bring Eileen in just to say any more about official engagement. Scottish Government, at an official level, has a discussion that includes Mears. It is not direct discussion with Mears as an individual or organisation. It takes place through the Asylum Structures in Scotland, so there are regular meetings of the Asylum Partnership Board, which is chaired by Suzanne Miller, who I know gave evidence to the committee from Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership, and also at an operational level in the delivery and procurement group, which is chaired by COSLA. Scottish Government officials engage in those. Mears and Migrant Help engage in them, as do local authorities in particular, and that is particularly at Asylum Dispersal. We engage with Mears through those meetings. I am aware, but I am not directly involved in meetings that Mears have with a third sector group, but you would have to seek more detail from Mears directly. In those meetings that you described there, does the Scottish Government appreciate that the Coen Tracks for the UK Government is an opportunity to raise some of the concerns that we have heard about Mears, or is there an opportunity there to discuss how they operate in Scotland at those meetings? If there are concerns that are being raised with ourselves and equally with local authorities, those meetings provide a space that enables us to raise those and ask Mears and Migrant Help. That participation engagement is one of the reasons that it is enabling discussion about widening dispersal and things like that to take place in Scotland. As has been said, the contract and the terms of what they have to deliver do still sit between the home office and the contractor, but it is helpful, particularly for trying to ensure that there are not unintended barriers to access to services and things like that, that there are operational level discussions in the dispersal space in Scotland. We are encouraging particularly that the home office recognises those structures and engages with those structures on any plans around asylum dispersal in Scotland. A very final question, which I will be very brief convener, the minister mentioned in her response to Karen Adam about the recent paper this week, just yesterday, on independence on a constitution for Scotland and the protection of rights. Will the minister be able to outline how she thinks such a constitution will impact directly asylum seekers in Scotland, who, as we have all heard, have been treated in the most appalling circumstances by the current UK Government regime? I would say first of all that human rights being enshrined in Scotland will benefit absolutely everyone, but asylum seekers are a particularly good example of the real-life impact of having those rights realised in a country and being able to access justice if those rights were not being met. In terms of being able to be supported by the Government, having a right to access housing, a right to access education, all of those things have a real impact on the lives of everyone, but when we look at asylum seekers as a cohort now in Scotland, we see that there are areas where human rights in the treaties that we are looking to incorporate are not being met in those groups. Having those absolutely set out and sticking to them and making sure that everything that we do when we are assigning budgets, when we are making decisions on policy, that we have human rights in mind, that we are prioritising based on meeting the human rights of everyone in the country, that absolutely has a real-life impact. Rachael Hamilton had a supplementary point. It is a point of clarity. You mentioned twice about the default responsibilities for ESOL. You said also that asylum seekers have a right to education. Is that delivered through Education Scotland ESOL? ESOL has been integrated with the adult learning strategy, so it is delivered by colleges but in partnership with community planning partnerships, just to make sure that there is local engagement and local tailoring. I just wanted to clarify what you said earlier with regard to the Home Office being responsible for ESOL. What I said was that asylum dispersal funding should meet all the services that are then required to be provided by the Scottish Government or local authorities. That is part of the right to education, learning English language. I am speaking about the impact on services of having asylum seekers in a particular area, so that comes with specific needs that are reserved matters, but it also impacts on devolved services. Asylum dispersal funding needs to make sure that it meets that extra cost and service provision that is needed. No, I am still not understanding what the difference is. I will just intervene. Perhaps we are coming to the end of our session, and I am sure that the minister would be more than happy to answer any further questions from the committee that I put in writing. We have clarity around phraseology and understanding. I am sure that you would be happy to do that, minister. On that level, we have come to the end of the session. The time has gone very quickly. That is, in fact, the final live session regarding our inquiry. I would like to thank the minister for attending and for her officials this morning. We heard from Baroness Kennedy this morning, but throughout the past few weeks, we have heard from a wide variety of stakeholders that are doing amazing work up and down the country. We have also heard from local authorities, from mirrors, and we have had many written testimonies that have been put in. We also undertook two sessions in private where we went out into the communities and spoke to Sirenseekers and refugees and heard their voices directly from them, which was invaluable, I think, in seeing the person and not just talking about the abstract. We will now be moving on to putting all of that together, the challenge of putting all that together and working on creating a report over the summer. We did ask the UK Government to take part in our inquiry and, unfortunately, there was no response that was received from the UK Government, so I would like to say that our inquiry has been comprehensive, but due to the lack of response from the UK Government, it is not comprehensive. However, I do feel that we have captured extensive voices across all of the themes that concern asylum seekers and refugees. On that note, once again, thank you minister and your officials for attending. I draw this meeting to a close.