 Good morning and welcome to the 15th meeting of the European and External Relations Committee in 2015. We have apologies from our colleague Hanzala Mali. We sent him our best wishes, but we have a rare substitute in Clare Baker and we welcome Clare to committee. Could I make the usual request that mobile phones have switched off and then interfere with our broadcasting system? Our second agenda item of this morning is to agree to take agenda item 5 in private. The committee agreed to do that. Agenda item 3 this morning is our Brussels bulletin, which is pretty full this morning, so I'm happy to take comments, questions and clarifications in the Brussels bulletin. Colleagues, Willie. Thanks, convener. On page 5, one of the recurring subjects at this committee looks at on broadband. You'll note that the European Commission is launching a public consultation for broadband beyond 2020 and what that should look like. I was wondering, convener, if the committee might be tempted to even submit a response to this and outline some of the thoughts and hopes that this committee has expressed over the past few years in this matter. I see the deadline for responses as of 7 December and the responses will be published by January, so I would very much hope that whether members do that individually or even this committee submitting a view on that would be very helpful and would make a good contribution to that argument. I mean, I don't think that it's either or. I think, you know, we could do both if people were minded to do so, but certainly I think that the committee's heard enough evidence to maybe put together something. Would you be able to put Katie on that? I'd love to do that. Is that okay? We can pull, because this is an issue that Willie's raised for a number of years in this committee now, so it gives us an opportunity to put our thoughts across. I mean, obviously the members have got their views and their valuable part of whatever this committee would say, so there's quite a lot we've had to say over the past few years on this, convener, and it gives us an opportunity to shape the commission's thinking going beyond 2020. I'm sure that we've got enough evidence that we can draw on for that. Yeah, we can do that. Super. Yeah, anything else? Rod? Just on the bit on the investment court system, TTIP, the commission will discuss the proposal with the European Parliament of Member State Governments. Following these discussions, the commission will present the investment court system proposal to US negotiators, part of the TTIP negotiations. Just wondered if there was a timetable for that, or whether we can flagged up how that actually will progress. Because presumably, as before, the full TTIP agreement is the European Parliament and potential member states, it must be done much more quickly than that. Yeah, yeah. Oh, we can find out when that back to committee. Anything else on the Brussels bulletin? Willie? Thanks again, convener. See on page 6 there on the Heading Employment Skills and Education. There's an interesting little note there on mobile workers. If you note what it says the early Court of Justice has decided that workers without a fixed or habitual place of work between their homes and the first and last customer of the day constitutes working time, so people who travel to work in those circumstances, in those particular sectors, that is now being regarded as working time. That will have some, hopefully, positive implications for many people in a variety of sectors, and it would be with following that up again when the timetables for that might actually be. I know that the TUC are doing a bit of work on this now, and trying to identify the groups of workers that are most likely to be affected, and in some of the sectors, it's care workers who may be our home help, that go straight through their home to somebody else's home, and then the same, and travel around all day. I think that trade unions are looking at that, but we could certainly find out a bit more information, because they have to find out what categories of workers fall into the scope, so that bit of work is being done, I believe. Anything else on the Brussels bulletin? No? Can we agree to share the Brussels bulletin with other committees? Is there any specific topics that we should raise with individual subject committees? My heading is saying, I know I'm always going on about fisheries, environment, climate, rural and fisheries. There doesn't seem to be anything on fisheries. Since the big fisheries bill going through Europe at the moment, I think that's rather on. It's just that there's headings for each area. Say again, I think it's very bad to set out, and it's much better the way it used to be. I don't know why they do it like this in our days compared to the way it was before. It's a much lesser report than it used to be. Ian Duncan has been named as a lead rapporteur on this. I know she was the person who sought out the report. We've been there, we have unstable that platform. It says, environment, climate, rural and fisheries, and then there's nothing about fisheries. That must be wrong. I don't know who's doing it. There is a big fisheries bill going through, and it ought to say something about it. Well, if it's not there, we can ask for it to be there. We can request that information. Is that always the heading? Yes. It's a portfolio headings. I think that there's something on chemicals under it. So it's grouped under committees, Jamie, and that's the name of that committee. If you require some additional information about the fisheries bill, we can ask for that. That's the whole purpose. Well, I would quite like to know what's going on. I'm sure we'll get a chance in Strasbourg next week to talk to some people as well that we can talk to about that. I mean, I keep in touch, obviously, with it, but it's okay. I mean, just to clarify that as well. The employment skills in education portfolio is there too, but there's nothing in those subtexts about education. That's the portfolio heading, that's all it is. Yeah, all right, but I'll take that point. We will find you something on what's the most up-to-date position on fisheries, Jamie. Okay. Okay, with the Brussels bill it in then, can we make sure that committees are highlighted? Yep, I'm happy to move on. I'm going to briefly suspend to allow all our witnesses to come in and just go into the round table, so spend them now. Good morning, and welcome back to the European External Relations Committee, and we start again with our agenda item four, which is around table discussion about the refugee crisis and the EU. Can I welcome all of our visitors today to committee? We're very pleased to have you all here, and to hear some of the work that you're involved in. We're going to try and run it like a bit of an open discussion, so if you can just get your hand up or give me a nod or something, let me know that you want in, and we will start in the room, and we'll come to Aspasia last so that we can do that as free-flowing as possible. We'll do introductions around the table, if that's okay. Starting with myself, I'm Christina McKelvie, I'm the convener of the European External Relations Committee. I'm Willie Coffey, MSP for Kilmarnock in the Irvine Valley. I'm Duncan Campsay from Glasgow City Council. I'm Roderick Campbell, MSP for North East Fife. I'm Gonzalo Vargasiosa from UNHCR London. I'm Adam Ingram, MSP for Carrick Cymruck in Dun Valley. I'm Joanna Zabatka, Fife Migrant Forum Manager. I'm Mick Taggart, MSP Glasgow. I'm Eric Mackerel, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. I'm Margaret Woods from the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees. I'm Al-Azidin from the Glasgow Girls' Campaign. John Wilkes from the Scottish Refugee Council. I suppose that I should also note for the record that I'm also chairing one of the sub-committees of the Ministerial Task Force, but I'm here today primarily in my capacity for the Scottish Refugee Council. But I'm also happy to answer questions about the task force if I can. I'm Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife. I'm Alison Phipps, I'm Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies at the University of Glasgow and co-convener of Glasgow Refugee Asylum Migration Network, GramNet. I'm Jamie McGregor, MSP for Highlands and Islands. I'm Morg Brown from Argyllun but Council. You're welcome. Espezia. I'm Espezia Babadog, MSP for the European Council for Refugees and Exiles in Brussels. Excellent. Welcome to you all. We are so delighted to have you all here today. I think that we might be just opening with a bit of a general question. If any of our guests around the table today can maybe give us a bit of an update as to where we are now. And I know that you and Margaret have just come back from Les Fos and maybe we're very interested in having an update from you from that perspective. But maybe, John, I don't know if you want to open with a bit of an update of where the task force is and where we are now. Okay. Yes, thank you, convener. Well, obviously, in Scotland, the response to recent events has been kicked off by the First Minister's summit just a month or so ago, which was attended by all key stakeholders around the table and all of Scotland's political leaders with present which will express their support for what was happening and the proposals followed by on the following Monday by the UK Government's announcement that they would take in 20,000 Syrian refugees from the camps around Syria and not from within Europe over the next five years. The Scottish Government has set up a ministerial-led task force to try and coordinate Scotland's response to how to deal with a big scaling up, I think, of taking refugees in through the resettlement process. But the UK Government has said that their refugees coming in will be given five years humanitarian protection status, which affords them all rights and access to things like work and a benefit system if they need that and so on and so forth. The Home Office is the UK Government's determining agency for operating refugee resettlement generally. There is an ongoing process called the gateway process, which routinely resettles about 750 refugees a year into the UK. That is mainly delivered through two clusters of local authorities in the north-east and north-west of England. That has been the model that has been used for the Syrian VPR, or Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme, that the Home Office had been using in operation for, since January 2014, when they first said that they would take in a small number of Syrian refugees, people from particularly vulnerable categories. Up to the recent events, about 216 people had been brought into the UK using that scheme, which is a scheme where the Home Office directly contracts with individual local authorities to bring in certain numbers of people. I think Scotland should be proud of the fact that up until that point, it played a major part in the 200 people, about a quarter to a third of that, mainly through Glasgow's efforts, and Glasgow should be commended for that, I think. At the moment, the Ministerial Task Force was convened very quickly to try to co-ordinate how Scotland could produce a good response to the announcements that Scotland has committed to taking its proportionate fair share of the people coming to the UK. More, if there is capacity in Scotland to do that, I think that COSLA has done a fantastic job in terms of marshalling local authorities, and many local authorities have committed already to wanting to take part, and currently looking at numbers and so forth. But there are many other agencies that need to be involved in terms of thinking about what we need to do for people who arrive, get settled, but it's also about the longer-term integration of people, and that some of those things we need to think more carefully about, I think. So the agencies like the police and health and all of those sorts of things, the third sector, of course, haven't involved. The Scottish Government, as I understand it, has committed £1 million to try and help some of the gaps. I'm not sure where they've spent that yet. They also set up a website to try to co-ordinate some of the massive public response that's been seen, and certainly my agency, and I'm not sure that many other people around the table have been really taken aback at the speed and warmth and generosity of individuals that have come forward offering all sorts of things. We've been charged by the Government to set up the website, which was set up a couple of weeks ago. Scotland welcomesrefugees.scot, which has the purpose of trying to keep people informed about what's going on, but also a place for people to register their interests and offer support, which we then just direct to the appropriate agency concerned. More recently, the minister decided to create two subgroups of the task force to look at two very important issues. The first issue is about the issue of accommodation, because without accommodation, you can't resettle people. And that's co-convened by, I think, Margaret Burgess, the Minister for Housing and COSLA. And that is going to focus on those issues. And the other subgroup, which I've been asked to chair by the minister of which one meeting has taken place so far, is loosely called integration, which is supposed to look at everything else in the process to work with all agencies and interests and stakeholders around the table to think about how Scotland can do the best response. It can within the constraints that it has. Obviously, the Scottish Government doesn't have control over the resettlement process. That still resides with the UK Government and the Home Office. Although, as Scottish Refugee Council has said to the Home Office, there's nothing to prevent the Home Office delegating that responsibility to the Scottish Government if it's so chose. The Home Office is also currently looking at how it ramps up the current scheme to cope with thousands of people coming in. And I note from meetings that I have attended in London that some of the things, the thinking they've got is that the current scheme may not be scalable up, that there may be need to be changes and adaptations to the scheme to cope with thousands of people, because at one point I think they're expecting people like 100 people a week to be coming through the system. So I think in Scotland we have an opportunity and a chance to think about that and think about what sort of things we might propose to do differently. So there have been some ideas floated around, for example, about having some form of reception induction step before people then go on finally to their local authorities and other thoughts about how things we can do further down the process. So that's all in train at the moment. Clearly there are financial discussions going on between the Home Office and local authorities and I'm sure Cosler and those will be able to give you more details about that. I would observe that the Home Office are still in that sort of ramp-up phase that they are throwing lots of people at this and it will be a few weeks, I suspect, before they're fully in gear in terms of how they're going to cope with this. The other factor, of course, is that they rely on the UNHCR, who are the international refugee agency, because it's the UNHCR's job to identify people in the camps to be put forward to the UK Government and I'm sure that Colleen from UNHCR will be able to give more details about that. Is that? Yeah, I think that's it. That's a good overview of what's happening in Scotland before I come to Margaret and Amal to give us their understanding of what they experienced in Greece. Gonzalo, I wonder if you could, in linking in to what John's just said on some of the aspects of the global impact and then some of the very local work that you're doing in the resettlement programme. Then, Espezia, I'll come to you after Gonzalo so that you can give us some insight from Brussels. Okay? Slightly delay on that. Gonzalo. Okay. Thank you very much. First of all, thank you to the committee for inviting me and also I want to place on record the sincere appreciation of UNHCR to the political establishment in Scotland. I mean, I think that long before that tragic picture of Ireland on the shores of Turkey forced many European leaders to have a more open and humane approach to the victims of this crisis. There were many politicians, senior politicians in Scotland asking for a long time for this to happen. That takes courage and we have very much appreciated that. In that sense, I think Scotland has led rather than followed. I think in terms of the extent of the crisis, I mean, I think you're all very much aware of it. So I won't go into details of figures, numbers. I think we all know that we are now past a half million figure in terms of arrivals in Europe through the Mediterranean. I mean, as a preliminary remarks, I would say that I mean, there have been some positive developments, I think, on the international, including the European political stage over the past two or three weeks, including of course the commitment by the Prime Minister of the UK to resettle 20,000. But I mean, some of these things that now appear to perhaps that are perhaps going to happen now, we have the humanitarian actors and some of the political actors have been calling for them for a long time. If I maybe could try to describe the situation through the viewpoint of a Syrian refugee, and of course there are refugees from many other countries coming to Europe, but I will take the Syrian example because obviously the largest number of persons coming across the Mediterranean are from Syria. I mean, when we interview Syrians arriving in arriving through the Mediterranean in Europe and we ask them, you know, what is the main reason? What is, if you have to choose one reason why you have decided to take this perilous journey across the Mediterranean to come to Europe, the answer is almost always because we have lost hope that peace will come to Syria soon or perhaps ever. So they don't cite the possible state benefits that they will get in prosperous Europe. They don't cite even the fact that they have family, some have family members here or the fact that they may have better job opportunities. Of course all those are important factors, but the primary factor for someone, for example, the ones we're crossing today is that they have reached a stage where they think that peace is not going to happen in Syria. And so if the international community and Europe wants to see a reversal of the mass movement that is happening now for people, first of all, to stop crossing the Mediterranean but eventually also for people to go back to Syria, this will simply not happen without peace in Syria. And I think that the politicians at the international level but including in Europe have unfortunately failed in this absolutely critical area. They have not put enough emphasis, time, effort, commitment, courage, leadership to try to forge a political settlement in Syria. The last few days of course in New York and we've all been following the events around the UN General Assembly, there seems to be more talk, but until that happens this crisis is not going to stop. The other, the second main factor that Syrian refugees cite when we asked them why did you decide to cross the Mediterranean and come here and risk your life in doing so is because of something else that I think many of us humanitarians have been saying now for a long time, that the conditions in the countries of asylum in the region in places like Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, which of course have shown extraordinary generosity towards the refugees but those conditions, now we're into the fifth year of the world, are getting worse and worse because the resources of these countries are absolutely and totally exhausted and overstretched. What that means is that then refugees have increasing difficulties in getting jobs, in having access to the basic social services, health, education. And so for many of those people the safety net so far over the past four or four and a half years, the safety net has been international aid. Now, on top of all those problems, the international aid has simply not been keeping up to the increasing to the growing needs in those neighbouring countries until a few days ago the main appeal, the main instrument for raising funds for the region was only 41 per cent funded. Now that means that many of these refugees have been living under less than half a US dollar a day. So if we, for one second, we put ourselves in the mind frame of a Syrian refugee, so he or she has lost any hope that there will be peace in Syria. He or she has stuck it out in Turkey or Jordan or Lebanon for four and a half years under the most difficult circumstances. And then on top of that he or she feels abandoned by the international community whose inability to fund programmes has meant in some places a 40 per cent cut in the food aid. Now, for a person in that state of mind, of course Europe seems like the only salvation even if it means getting one of those boats and risking their lives. Now again, in the past few weeks, of course, we have seen some positive developments in terms of commitments including from Europe and from European countries to significantly boost the aid towards the region. Now what is key is that those commitments are quickly translated into actual contribution. I think for the time being I'll leave it there maybe. Thank you very much, Gonzalo. Spezia, do you want to give us an update from the European angle? Yes, thank you. Well, I would only add to the global context that we are apart from the old factors that Gonzalo just very eloquently described. Also the restrictions that we can currently witness, for example, in terms of legal status and the possibility to stay in countries like Lebanon, the fact that people really remain without legal status and hence if they have no legal status they have no access to services, they can't send their kids to school, and all this creates a situation whereby people cannot just stay there anymore. In a country like Lebanon which has been hosting refugees for years and years now becomes a transit country. So all these factors leads to what we currently witness, which is substantial arrivals in Europe. The scale is quite significant, but it's not just the scale in absolute terms. It's also the fact that the response has been uncoordinated. The arrivals have been, of course, uneven, and there have been certain parts of the continent that received substantial pressure, namely, for example, the Greek islands further in the Balkans. And there has been a clear lack of a proper response which shows basically that when it comes to sudden arrivals, the European asylum system is just not ready. There is a common European asylum system in terms of laws in place, but when it comes to managing such a situation, it's just not coordinated and not ready. However, it was rightly said just earlier that there has been some traction. Member states have clearly shown an interest. There is a momentum partly because of a panic, like what to do with the situation, but also partly because there is a realisation that this is going to continue. It's not a one of just this summer and this September. This will go on for a few months and years maybe until really the conflict in Syria is resolved and there needs to be a system in place. I will maybe just briefly remind everybody of what has been the latest step-staking at EU level vis-à-vis the refugee crisis. There have been numerous negotiations, particularly regarding the controversial relocation decision. Eventually it was decided to relocate 160,000 people from Greece, Italy. While initially there was Hungary also included, because Hungary doesn't want to consider itself as a front-line state, there is still now this amount of people that remains to be decided whether that will be again from Greece and Italy next year or whether that will be from another member state facing a particular pressure later on. There has been also more money announced. There's been money particularly in the humanitarian assistance field. I'm not talking only about humanitarian aid to the region. For example, the Madaad Trust Fund or additional funding, for example, that has been announced also for Turkey and the Balkans, but there has been also emergency funding made available at EU level for European member states facing a particular pressure. There has been an increase as well at the same time with regards to the presence at sea, so the assets and resources made available to Poseidon and Triton operations for rescue at sea and border management. There has been traction and development with regards to setting up a system that will basically provide the framework for the relocation, namely migration management support teams that will be deployed at the relocation areas where there will be hotspots set up, so basically there will be a system of screening, identifying people for relocation and then identifying those potentially that need to be returned. There seems to be a traction in this set of developments, but of course there are also the needs that remain and push people to flee the region. In terms of resettlement, member states committed collectively to resettle 22,000 people, which is clearly not enough considering the numbers that are fleeing the region every day. It is estimated currently that about 400,000 Syrians are in need of resettlement, so 22,000 is obviously not really meeting the needs, but there is indeed a need to reconsider substantially the system of the solidarity mechanisms and the system that exists within Europe in terms of supporting member states in terms of determining the place where the asylum application is examined and where the person obtains a permit, the need for uniform stages across the union, the need for access to the labour market and so on and so forth. There are some question marks that we have with regards to relocation in particular, especially, for example, regarding the lack of consent from the side of the individual. In theory, the asylum seeker does not really have a say in the country where he or she will be relocated. Family links are taken into account, of course, but there are certain question marks about also the measures will be used during what measures will be used after the examination of that case and if the asylum applicant, for example, does not cooperate in the relocation, will detention be used, there are some question marks there that make civil society organisations worry about. But we do want to capitalise on the momentum right now and ask, basically, European member states to also open up more safe and legal channels for access to Europe. It's not sufficient to try to tackle the situation once people have risked their life and once some of them have died on the way. It's also perhaps more important to open up ways so they can travel safely and that includes family reunification possibilities that are more flexible, that includes resettlement and other forms of admission, that includes humanitarian visas, that includes private sponsorships and student visas, for example, and this sort of thing. So we do continue to advocate for that and we believe that essentially there cannot be really a solution by tackling the situation at the islands where people have gone through horrendous journeys but there needs to be also more before they take the boat. That leads us on very nicely to the journey that Margaret and Amal have just undertaken to Lesbos and maybe you can give us a bit of an insight of your experience there and maybe inform us all on what's happening on the ground, what we think should be happening on the ground, is happening on the ground and whether, you know, from this collection around the table today we can maybe remedy some of the challenges. Thank you, convener, and thank you for inviting me to be here. I came to the UK as a refugee 15 years ago and going to Greece just opened my eyes to how horrible the situation is. I mean, we didn't have to go through half of what we witnessed. We arrived in Athens on the 17th of September and we met local organisations and community groups and they were informing us as to what was going on in Greece at the moment and obviously in the past as well. We went to visit a refugee camp in Athens and it accommodates 750 people and it's opened in August and apparently it's going to shut in December which is really ridiculous because that's the middle of winter so where are people supposed to go? Lots of children and lots of families, mostly from Afghanistan and Syria people from Afghanistan are expected to stay a few days before they move on with their journey whereas people from Syria can stay longer and then we went to Victoria Square which is a little park in the middle of Athens and basically there was lots of families sleeping on the floor and they had no source of support. It was actually left to individuals just bringing water and food etc and we saw some people coming in and to give support like water and everything and all the wee kids would run to them and it wasn't enough. There was at least a few hundreds sleeping in that park and it was surrounded by local cafes and restaurants and we were told that actually for the refugees to use the toilet they had to pay 2 euros each every time. That was absolutely shocking. Then we left Athens and went to Lesfos and we were already really distressed by what we saw in Athens but nothing could prepare anybody for what we saw in Lesfos. It was absolutely horrific. We went and met Eric Kempson and his family that are a British family living in Lesfos they've been there for 16 years and they've been supporting refugees for about 8 months now. This has been happening not just since the wee boy's picture was in the media and it was really sad to see that that had to happen for the world to see what was going on. That boy could have been saved. That wouldn't have happened if the right support was there. Eric took us round the coastline to see what was happening and all we could see were life jackets and all I could think of was those are lives, people's lives and everything. He was telling us that the life jackets are supposed to only cost between 40 to 60 euros but people were being charged 100 euros each even for the wee kids. Some of the life jackets that we saw were not even inflated so if people had fallen off the boats they would drown anyway. He was telling us for people who would make that journey they were being charged 1200 euros each to make that dangerous journey and the wee dingy boats were just really, really horrible. There are 50 people who sit on them and we could see Turkey from where we were standing and we heard that there's 440,000 people in Turkey waiting to make that dangerous journey. Actually we were thinking maybe it might stop during the winter but we heard that from the volunteers and the people who are working on the ground that actually no this is going to continue. People are going to continue to come. Then the following day we went again to where the boats are arriving and we actually saw three boats while we were there with families and we went and helped people to get off them. One mother from Afghanistan just gave me her child her 5-year-old girl so that she can look for her other kids and she found her wee baby and she thought her wee baby had passed away because it wasn't moving. Sorry. Then she started breastfeeding the child and thankfully the child is still alive. Do you want to go? Yes, it's very, very emotional. It's a shocking state in Greece. To understand people are mainly, we're mainly moving through Greece on. Obviously Greece is very poor. People were moving on and the situation now is much, much worse because the borders are being shut and people cannot move on. If you look at the violence at some of these borders now the violence at Calais from the police, the violence in Hungary from the police and the fact that the Hungarian border is now almost completely surrounded and closed and how is that a solution to completely unarmed families with babies and children? How can that possibly in Europe be a solution to it? We saw people sleeping in the squares and they had been moving on but now they won't be and that camp is going to close. There are places where we've identified three projects which we're helping and are going to try and help with housing through the winter but the problem they now have just in the last fortnight has absolutely multiplied numerous times compared with what they had before. Tents and sleeping bags are useless. It's the winter, it's children. The temperature sometimes doesn't fall quite as low sometimes in Scotland but it's low enough and it lashes with rain. People will die from exposure and lack of food. Those projects are trying to do something in an organised way and people do come down, local people come down and help but some businesses are obnoxious about it of course. There's that. The fact that we all know there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of unaccompanied minors in Europe generally and in Greece and one of the projects we're trying to help because we've crowdfunded and I mean people have been enormously generous but it's a drop in the ocean but they have this fund for refugees. They get premises and a fund for people who are desperate for maybe needing medical care and they're trying to help some of the kids. They said they've helped children unaccompanied as young as 10 as if it's not bad enough and I imagine quite a few of the kids that come as we know from in the Parliament and committees we've discussed it before. You're usually talking about maybe youngsters 13, 14, 15 as they get here perhaps usually from Afghanistan. So he's talking about children as young as 10. In the confusion a lot of children get separated from their families and there's no facility at some of these borders particularly right now the Hungarian border I've read just in the last few days well meaning journalists trying to help families reunite with children trying to get into places where the authorities are not letting families go to try and find their lost kids so there's all of that complete absence virtually of the NGOs or the European Union on the islands. I read a journalist's comment on what I was doing I was at a reception centre giving out food the reception centre was two rickety tables under a tree two minutes from the sea we were making sandwiches in a tailor and honey sandwiches just for the kids water and that was where the boats were coming in or around the other bay the boats were coming in hundreds and hundreds of people passed my eyes in something like two hours little kids so that was it and that family and the people that take solidarity holidays and come from different bits of Europe the personnel change like every week they're paying £1,000 a day roughly on water, juice and pan bread that dries very quickly honey and jam sandwiches and Nutella sandwiches and yet it's crucial people were asking do we have to pay and can we take another sandwich and you know they just couldn't believe that no one was charging them and it's absolutely shocking the state of some people they would go up on to the road now to let you understand until about a month or six weeks ago when the temperatures I work in old money the temperatures were over 100 degrees it was a 65 kilometre walked where they were supposed to register until about six weeks ago there were no buses people walked that with women, children, babies elderly people they walked in that heat with the bottle of water given at this reception centre when we arrived it was the first day they had doctors so they had little folding chairs two doctors and a midwife one woman was in a state of actual trauma she was completely wrapped in blankets in a you know really in quite a serious medical state when we arrived so it was good that there was a doctor there and that was all just ordinary volunteers Europe you know so that was what we saw there when it comes back to Athens you know I think it's a very very serious situation there's almost none of the proper sort of plasticky wooden type container type things that you can have I believe they're reasonably cheap but they're the only things that are going to keep people warm and dry and there's almost none of them who knows where they're going to come from I have to tell you half the money we took in cash half of it was used to bury people who died on the boats that went down that morning before we arrived because one of the little volunteer camps we went to one of the hundred million things the women did was attempt to link up relatives who'd turned up with any bodies that had been recovered and she said if she knows to pay for this week so that's what we'll use the money for because they had bodies and they had relatives often they have bodies and no relatives and they have relatives and no bodies looking at the way the sea changed the weather changed as we were there from the beautiful diamond sea to the you'd have thought you were looking at the north sea in December you could have re-filmed the cruel sea and that was just the very start of autumn the dingies will not be launched anymore it will be the more rickety the fisherman's boats but some of them are falling to pieces I think people will come as long as it's remotely possible to come but it will get more and more and more dangerous I presume for some months it simply won't be possible to launch boats but as long as it's possible to launch a boat it's everyone's opinion that people will come and die in that sea and if they get to Europe look at what they're facing people like me I'm not a professional aid worker neither was anyone else I could give out water I could be nice to people it was better than nothing but that's what they've got and then when they get to Athens they've just got these wee projects wee local projects again volunteer projects or our teachers or where social workers are and it's in the spare time and it's money raised locally or by people as they thought we were having sent because we'd arrived with 2,000 pounds and we said we had a few thousand more that was coming it's millions of pounds that's needed what is the European Union doing it's one of the richest organisations in the world and there's no excuse now for months and months these folk have been arriving in Greece on little islands smaller than Les Vos months and months I don't feel there's any excuse now that something isn't being done the UNHCR buses are finally there so that people don't walk 65 miles, they don't turn up every day we had started to panic hundreds and hundreds of people had lined up we were hoping the buses were coming and they eventually did we heard the next day the buses just didn't come so people started to walk that day the same kind of people started to walk that day so that was really what we saw that was what it was like I think we were fortunate we didn't actually see any boats going down and the buses did come that day nobody died in front of us that day so I suppose we were fortunate but it was one of the most distressing astonishingly appalling things that I've ever seen in my life I've never expected to see such a thing in Europe while Europe itself did not have some kind of major war on its own land going on I think it's inexcusable if there's anything the Scottish Government can do there was a small NGO this really really small NGO from I think it's Denmark was supporting Eric and the family who just happened to have a house on the beach for 14 years doing a bit of artwork and selling these wee sculptures and these boats started arriving so they started they've got no normal life but fortunately every week a few folk come and help from some or other bit of Europe and that's really the way it is that's what's going on right now it needs that European fund to be put in money to be put in I don't understand why Hungary has been allowed to build a fence all the way around its country how many other countries would be allowed to build a wall all around their country are we going to have the whole of Europe with fences all around it I wake up in the morning and I think how many other countries are going to build a fence and are we going to have a whole of Europe every country's got a fence around it why are they being allowed to do that why are riot troops being allowed to wade in to women and children teargast in both Calais and at the Hungarian border women and children and babies being teargast to stop them trying to get through this border and something has to be done but with that little NGO because obviously no one who's helping quite rightly wants to take cash in their hand if you're raising money by public subscription as we are you want a paper trail and there's a little local shop will take the money from people who are donating it and give a receipt and then give the goods to Eric and his family and the people and this little NGO has a bank account based in Denmark and it will funnel funds of any kind it's properly set up although it's small so if the Scottish Government has any money that they have from any fund that is one way because they're not going to stop arriving on that beach all the way through the winter and into the spring the little camp where the women organise in the burial of bodies if necessary and trying to get more ground and proper not tents but proper units that has a bank account properly set up it's appalling that you're thinking of talking of that's what you're working through but that's what you're working through these people impressed me enormously they're absolutely genuine they're not taking any money they're watching that they're not accused of appropriating any money there was one person we saw there he was he can't walk he's had very bad injuries but he could walk but he's not getting the medical care there's a possibility he could walk there must be hundreds of people in that state but when you think of the little kids to me the little kids on their own I was a teacher so I just can't imagine children younger than the ones I was teaching on their own in a big continent at the age of maybe 10, 11, 12 we need in all common humanity we need to start doing something we need to cut through the bureaucracy where that can be done and we need to take a hard line where countries are not accepting the responsibility this is not some major disaster that God sent disaster buildings have crumbled and a tornado has gone through this is simply human beings fleeing something that actually a lot of our governments created they're only just people who could contribute so much that's all they are it's not some kind of monster has arrived all we need to do is speedily process them there should be no question people are sent to a country they don't want to go to how would any of us like that Margaret, see the NGOs that you've talked about can you make sure that you give us the information on that because we certainly would be making some sort of a recommendation anyway so having some of that information to pass on, especially maybe I see John's Geysers open there especially to the task force there's an issue that raised my attention on some of the issues about children and I've been raising for a while the issue about the Syrian resettlement scheme not allowing family reunification that's something that the minister and the cabinet secretary have been pushing at the joint ministerial committees meeting and I believe last week as well with the foreign minister in Westminster but one thing at jump this place this afternoon will pass I think world leading legislation on human trafficking with very specific measures in that which I've pushed myself on children and I did hear a report a few weeks ago about some of the trafficking rings moving into places like some of the islands in Greece and maybe Athens and some of the other countries I wondered whether that's something that you had picked up any sense of at all the people who were accused of trafficking were locals at the point when there were no buses and local people took their cars to drive people there were being arrested there were being arrested there were people trafficking it's what Aspasia said if there was somebody else if there were proper routes safe routes there would be no traffickers that's the truth of the matter attacking traffickers if the routes were open there would be no traffickers and yes I'm cautious about all these figures on trafficking because I mean one day one Sunday I read that 50 cars turned up so that it was like a blockade of people all local people because local people had been arrested for picking up pregnant women and children and things like that to take them round to the capital Mitalini where they could be registered and they were being charged with people trafficking which was ridiculous but that was exactly how the laws were being implemented not in a progressive way but in a specifically punishing way of anyone who was helping the other thing I should mention on the islands themselves and particularly on Lesvos the people who were helping the local people and the businesses anyone who was helping they were running the risk of being threatened by Nazis with knives and guns it was that dangerous and some people were getting threatened with their lives and the police in many cases is doing nothing because the police were somewhat sympathetic to the Nazis so it's a very difficult situation but at the human end of it yes we were both and Pinar as well very very very distressed by it all you just feel we were so pleased people have been very jealous with a little bit of money in our crowd funder and there's loads of we're doing it as an organisation but loads of individuals are crowdfunding and people going out for their holiday are taking a suitcase especially of clothes and all of this is what it consists of ordinary people in this country and other countries on their holidays taking extra, taking a bit of money spending some days helping with the reception centres et cetera that's what the aid consists of in one of the most progressive industrialised continents of the world and it's brilliant that these people ordinary people are doing that so I was embarrassed when I came out and said we'll get some money and it's £1,000, £1,500 for each of the projects they'll go through that in no time okay Margaret thank you Alison you want to come in I think Claire wants to come in after you I wanted to come in on and reinforce the point that Margaret was making around trafficking smuggling and the chaos around what those terms actually mean and then how they're being used from East Africa up towards the Mediterranean and how that's differentiated and how it is people are able to come to Europe safely how much money that would cost it's about £15,000 in order to get the right kind of documentation or the right kind of routes that might allow you to come in if you don't have that money and are in the situations precisely as Gonzalo was describing then the situation is far more complicated and some of what then happens particularly to young people is what is essentially being indentured into the human movement trade so what you will see are young people who have fled parts of the complex in different parts of East Africa and particularly a very large number coming from Eritrea who don't have any means to make the journey but will then be brought along tempted into here somebody who gives them a tiny ounce of hope or might even give them as basic as food and water and then they become part of the work of moving the people until such time as they are believed to have worked their passage at which point and we have seen this happening particularly in Libya they are given the keys to a boat and asked to sail it across the Mediterranean when we say as a country we will stop this by stopping the traffickers we need to remember that some of the people we are describing as traffickers are people who have just been given a gun and keys to a boat that they have never sailed before we will stop this when we take direct action to intervene with absolutely sufficient aid when we intervene to ensure that we are stopping the profiteering from the arms trade that keeps this in place we will stop this when we spend money on human protection rather than the vast sums that we are spending across Europe at the moment on border security there are ways of redirecting the resources we have towards making sure that the situation that Margaret and Amal have just described which has been going on for decades now is able to stop if we put that resource in and in 2007 the young girl who later as a matter of public record became my foster daughter was plucked out of the Mediterranean by an Italian rescue helicopter taken to safe land on Lampedusa there were many people on her boat very young people in that very precarious situation the poorer you are the more desperate you are the more likely it is you will end up in these dreadful situations there is a question of means underneath this and we need to be very very careful when we are looking at what we are describing about saying we are going to stop the traffickers the stopping the traffickers is not the solution the solutions lie much further down clear thank you convener we have heard very powerful testimony from a number of the witnesses this morning and there are so many issues I am sure that other members want to pick up on it is difficult to one thing in Margaret's description it sounds horrific what is happening in Greece I noticed with a lack of reference to any of the UK and international aid organisations not to suggest that this is their responsibility it is government's responsibility but however say the children of Oxfam nor have they done so then and do other people around the table have knowledge of the kind of work can support that they are doing the other thing is the issues that have been raised this morning are so broad you can lead to a sense of powerlessness what can we as a Parliament as MSPs do in this situation so I don't know if people want to comment on things that are within our control around how do we what will our reception for refugees be like in Scotland, those type of issues I know people who have raised and accompanied children already and the convener has an interest in that how do people feel that Scotland is equipped to deal with some of the big challenges that are coming that sort of leads us on quite well to the next section and I think maybe Derek when we've been working together on some of these issues for a very very long time including a trip to Ireland where we were given some advice on how to integrate people here so Derek it's really good to have you here but you here representing COSLA today and I know COSLA is a co-convener of one of the subgroups in the task force and a very valuable member an important member of the task group I wonder if you could give us in light of Claire's question are we updating where COSLA is maybe come back to some of the individual organisations who are doing stuff and including we were really keen to get a rural aspect so that's why we have our girl in but with us today but Derek if you could maybe lead off Thanks convener I think what I'm going to say now almost pales into instinctive Africans given the testimonies that's happened so far but I think you're right we need to bring it back to what we can do for my position what local government can do and has done so the background is that there was a real impetus around that horrible image in particular that made their TV screens and we were inundated way contacts from local authorities there's been a a whirrow windy things happened since then it may not seem that way but there genuinely has been we've been asking 32 local authorities specific questions about what their state of readiness what their response would be how they would do things and given them 24 hours to respond to and anybody that's ever worked with 32 councils we know that's not the easiest thing in the world to get a response to but to be fair to both the political and officer leadership in all 32 councils they've responded every time on time and we have taken in papers to get a political mandate around how we respond to this and it's been heartwarming to be honest with you to see the types of response that we've had and even those local authorities 32 councils want to play a part that's not to say that 32 councils will provide accommodation because in some respects it's probably not going to be appropriate for some of them to do so however 32 councils are committed to helping in any way they can and our understanding from a variety of different local authorities about what's going on in their local communities is that there are a huge number of communities being represented in local authorities opening up the premises that they own for both food banks for clothes banks all that sort of stuff so we're involved in both we have a weekly catch up with Mr Yousaf in the Home Office in terms of progress and we are involved in all the different Scottish structures that have been established and there are UK-wide structures as well and it seems almost petty to talk about money but it is important and I think it's important for two reasons if we're bringing people from any of these camps it's important that they're given the opportunity to settle and integrate as much as it's going to be impossible and there's also the responsibility to host communities that the lively public services around a whole load of areas that we would expect these people will need is not what it was 10, 15 years ago and we need to try and ensure so our position very blunt position to the UK Government has been that there should be more money than was currently in offer in terms of the scheme there should be less bureaucracy to spend and Duncan and others might talk about this a bit more but I think both the Home Office and ourselves spend a huge amount of time filling in forms and jumping through hoops to get money when the bottom line is that money needs to get out there into communities and help these people settle and integrate the issues that Syrian refugees come into any party Scotland will have will last for more than a year and that particular probably won't become apparent after the first year because there are a whole range of things about getting a house and the kids to sell the school and that sort of stuff so we're looking at the potential for a multi-year deal people coming in with five years status and we think that the funding should be for as much of that period of time as is possible we still don't know what the financial offer is and we've been promised for the last six or seven days to get some clarity on that my understanding at the moment is that things are sitting with Treasury and David Cameron may have to put his foot down so he's hoping to put his foot down soon we have got on top of the on top of the the structures that have been set up we already had five local authorities that were signed up this year in the VPR scheme and what we've done now is extending an invite to the other 28 local authorities to be involved in an officer group through our chute leads that would in fact the first meetings this afternoon and we've got I think 32 councils coming along to that and that's important because what we use is the experience that the likes of Glasgow and others have got and we can have local authorities benchmarking that and finding out that type of information but equally we've also had some more rural authorities involved in the Afghan staff scheme for example who don't have very multi-ethnic populations in their area and come up with a whole range of different obstacles and difficulties in how they do things you know two of the authorities couldn't source halal meat for the first fortnight very basic practical things that I need to be considered two of them don't have a mosque so it's where people can go and pray so it's that type of stuff that's been invaluable to others in terms of how they take this forward we are lightly very lightly either by closing play today or the first thing tomorrow to give the home office a list of local authorities that are ready to go now so I suppose it moves things beyond this you know people signing up and I think a lot of people will hear that there are committed structures and there are political processes and that sort of stuff that people want to do with them and a lot of stuff we would say what point does that actually mean what that means is that we will be giving a spreadsheet to the home office Scottish Government will get it today as well as I say if not today tomorrow morning giving what's going on but certainly in that timescale within a day we will be well aware that significantly more than half of Scottish local authorities are ready and willing to take Syrian refugees before Christmas and we are testament to the fact that sometimes the wheels of government in civic Scotland or civic wherever just sometimes can run much quicker than they usually do and we will issue the best of that but you know linking from from yours I think maybe if we can have an update cos Glasgow you know have been here many times before in some of the re-location programmes being involved and the reason why I know Margaret Wood is is a unison steward that I get involved in the Glasgow campaign to welcome refugees many many years ago so it would be interesting to get an insight from Glasgow and then maybe from yourself on you know some of the rural aspects which pose both challenges and opportunities ok thanks do you say we've been involved in a number of schemes the home office approach to council in February 2014 and asked us would we assist to the Syrian VPR scheme I think that was in the back we'd done the asylum dispersal contract from 2000 to 2011 we'd been involved in the Iraqi local engage scheme for people who had worked with the British army and we were already discussing with the home office a bit of similar scheme for Afghans so we had a bit of experience behind that so they asked us in the February would we assist we said we would have a look at it and we get into discussions with colleagues in health and education, social work, housing providers third sector cause as well and at that stage it was a wee bit unclear who would be coming to Glasgow we knew it was families and camps but we didn't know what condition people would be in, whether they would be coming off a flight and going to the hospital or going to accommodation it was that unclear at that time so we asked the home office to provide the cases that they wanted Glasgow to take and we needed to fill medical details once we got the details we sat down with health and went through them all and we decided that we could take the families that they were going to send I think at that time it was 63 it ended up it was 55 we took, there was a couple of problems with accommodation that we couldn't accommodate people so we spoke with the home office probably all through the summer and that's Derek's point about things taking a while to get agreements and funding in place the first flights came in October 2014 I've been dealing with the home office for 15 years and that was pretty quick, I thought it usually takes a lot longer so I was caught in the hoppy wee but how quickly they done it and I think that was for the staff who were able to get the visas through right away and then we get flights arranged so the first families arrived at the end of October and we took families November December, January, March and April I think it was coming up to their first year in Glasgow they're all still here they don't need to stay in Glasgow they can move on, they've got leave to remain but we always advise people in any scheme to wait to the kind of your periods over, all your stuff, something running the kids are all settled in school the kids have been in school within four weeks in Glasgow they're all speaking fairly good English now they've all got an accent like me it's harder for the adults they obviously miss their homeland their culture and their families and some people have made the point their families are split all over the place they're in different camps, some people are in Germany so they continually ask the staff about family reunion and I think that's something we do need to take up with the home office but in general I think they've settled in well it's difficult to come to Glasgow totally different culture, we know that but we always say to them just take small steps but you'll be getting there the adults are beginning to pick up my English now they've all seen doctors there isn't any trauma yet and I know that could come in later people haven't really spoken about their experiences but we'll wait and see if they do they're integrating into the communities they've all got a personal integration plan that we'll go through with them the ones that arrived first we're about to get the impermanate housing which I think is crucial as well it's kind of temporary at the beginning but we've got a good relationship with the housing associations who gave us flats and we're able to turn the tenants if you like into a permanent letting to become a tenant of whatever housing association it is and they get to keep the furniture that we gave them and the white goods so it gives them a start and then moving forward after that when their English gets a bit better I'll be looking at employment etc so there is positives to come out of it we're already in discussions with the Home Office before the current crisis we've been speaking to them about taking some more for the camps and they just sent us a list this week 63 cases who are in camps in Lebanon and Iraq asking can we take them by the end of October which might be a bit quick but we might be able to take some people by the end of October but we need to get any discussions with some of our housing providers we've got some housing available just now we need to speak to the Home Office and as Derek said we need to find out about the funding because we are currently probably the scheme that's running just now is going to change I think because it does take too long so we've got a current grant agreement that might want us to run with that for this group which would be fine with us but I think going forward we really need to speak to the Home Office and say what is the funding for this what is the funding for local authorities and I agree with Derek's point the way that it works now it's a grant agreement for every kind of batch of families you take which is now good you need to say over the five years we can take x amount and get the funding for that to cover education but health as well and the support that people need and I think I can't stress that enough it's not just about taking the numbers and putting them in a flat you need to provide support and it's pretty intense at the start because you're trying to get the more registered with doctors into hospitals if they need to be seen get all the kids into school get their biometrics which without that you can't get anything else done bank accounts, DWP benefit all that happens in the first few weeks to get that up and running so it's important that that happens but I think at the end of the day we've seen the first families here they seem happy enough they've not forgotten about their past but they're no having the trauma Margaret was mentioning and they're settling in and we'll continue to do more about it Thanks very much Duncan Can we get a wee insight Feta Gail and Bute and then I think Joanna you'll be able to answer some of the real challenges that people have when they get here as well and then we'll come back to some open comments What we've done in our Gail and Bute is that we've set up a refugee resettlement group by council to do that and we've put that within our community planning framework because we know that we can't do this alone it absolutely has to be done with our partners and our RSLs We've got very very limited experience of taking refugees we've done it through our homeless service we've had families from Zimbabwe but we're talking very very very small numbers but they're still here and they've integrated well but that's been over a period of time so this is a real upscale for us and what we've done previously but it was very important for us that we matched the scale of our response to the resources that we have available so we've made a commitment to take a minimum of 20 families in the first instance because to us it was really important that we managed to integrate families and we gave them a home, not just a house we're fortunate well if you can call it fortunate that our declining population and we've got an oversupply of housing issue isn't as much of an issue for us however the size of those houses may be an issue in relation to the number of bedrooms they have in relation to the size of the families we'll have to be quite careful how we match that we've got an awful lot of one bedroom or we've got more one bedroom houses available than three bedroom houses available but we will look at that and speak to our colleagues in the RSLs so we've started round table planning within the community planning partnership with the third sector directly with the communities that we will be looking at housing people with social work education health with the police and with the local college but as you touched on there's going to be real challenges for very rural or authority religious we don't have any mosques how I'll meet them will be a challenge for us the biometric passports that will be a challenge I mean our distances are so extreme we've got our islands it's going to be a challenge but it's a challenge we're absolutely up for doing everything we can and we feel that we need to look at the resettlement but also the integration and we need to almost be running two plans kind of simultaneously so that's where we are but an absolute commitment and there's been a huge amount within Argyll and Butte and collecting and donating and taking stuff and I know that stuff's been on its way over to Greece and everywhere else it's been a really huge effort it's really happening absolutely to hear that and I think there's some key people around this table today that I think you should network with who can certainly, you know Glasgow has got a lot of experience in this some of their activists have got a great experience in this grant and now who can give us an insight into Jannis Fife Migrants Network Fife Migrants Forum Sorry, sorry, sorry there's so many forums and networks but they're all doing extremely valuable work but you'll be able to give us an insight into some of that, you know the integration aspect of it some of the challenges but then some of the resolutions for that and I would hope that at the end of the committee you'll link up with Morag and then give us some support as well Yes, so several weeks we've been working hand in hand with Fife Council on Fife welcomes refugees initiative which we now linked with UK wide welcome refugees initiative so what I would like to highlight is the importance of the role of the third sector organisations and the community groups in the local areas they will play crucial role in integrating refugees into communities we are developing volunteering and befriending projects which we are hoping we'll get a lot of local people involved we speak to interfaith groups and we are planning a lot of events around cultural awareness and training for case workers and third sector staff I think what is important also to mention that we need to think about two strands of work we will be working directly with refugees who at the beginning will receive support from the local authorities but that will fulfil only their basic needs and the third sector will be there for the gaps which are very important because when we asked people who were the refugees some of them are our volunteers the first thing they said when they arrived was what was the most important for you they said to feel welcomed other organisations we contacted mentioned that the first and foremost is to keep them busy keep them active keep them in touch with the communities so there will be a lot of activities that we will have to develop before we can progress them to employability with the employability I spoke I attended a meeting with Scottish Syrian Association in Glasgow and one of the issues that was raised that people don't have a confirmation of their qualifications for example and there is nowhere to confirm their diplomas with somebody who is a doctor and would like to work in the country then how do we go about that and and are we doing enough to raise awareness on why people are fleeing their countries are we enough to inform our communities and whose responsibility is that is it the third sector is it local authorities so that's one of the questions and then resettlement of the refugees needs to be carefully thought through in our view people need to be housed in the areas where they connect with other people when or housed close to other families, refugee families or close to links to support they can't be left on their own somewhere and spread and the last thing I would like to also mention is the debate in media and I feel that is a huge need for truly independent press regulator because the lies and press cost lives and independent press standards organisation there is an evidence that it's not playing its role in controlling the media so that was the last point I wanted to raise thank you convener thank you very much and I think we've managed to hear from all of our I guess we are really really up against the wall for time here and I'm prepared to go on for another few minutes for questions I know John you want to back in and I want to maybe get some insight from Ms Spezia given what she's heard this morning as well and maybe from Gonzalo but John very brief I think Claire asked the most poignant question earlier in the experiences that Margaret and Amal have experienced what can you possibly do faced with such a huge situation and it's very easy to get caught in that and think we can't do anything but we can do things and I think what the Parliament and the Government here can do for a start is to keep the pressure on the UK Government I mean 20,000 people over five years is two or three boatloads that came over in a day Germany is committing to taking hundreds of thousands of people I think properly managed and with political leadership the sort of political leadership that's been shown in Scotland actually I would say if that could be shown equally at a UK level rather than the grudging approach that's been shown I would say then those are two things that certainly Parliamentarians can do because public opinion may very well change and shift and it's important when times get tough again if that happens that people stand up and keep making the arguments that this is a humanitarian issue and not a migrant issue, language is so important here other issues that we could do that could significantly help would be to has been said a number of times to ask the UK Government to review its family reunion rules there are several thousand Syrians already in the UK who have been here under student visas or have been here for a number of years if you could regularise their position and then allow them to bring their families currently the family reunion process is viewed as an immigration process and not a humanitarian process so it's very much limits the people that can be brought in I think for this situation the UK Government is within its absolute policy power to change the rules of family reunion make it much more easy we could sort out a lot of people to bring in to people who are already living here already established that would help thousands of people I think we also need to be clear in the language that local authorities have clearly outlaid what the process needs to be and what the challenges are they will come in and lots of them will have particular needs and need support but a lot of them will come in also with huge amounts of personal resources skills and a lot of them will what the first thing they'll want to do is get into the job market and support themselves and we need to sort of capitalise on that image as well we also need to avoid the situation of seeing Syrian refugees as somehow good things but remembering that there are other people in the UK asylum process continuing to come through as refugees does not need to be done at the best of the other and how do we make all this happen Scotland is saying we are going to take two to three thousand over five years a population of five million I think if we could look at the way the process operates and coordinate it better and if we can demonstrate that we can actually take the numbers that are coming in first effectively and well and settle them into communities so that there isn't dislocation of people and that could take a lot more so I think what we would say is that the current home office process is probably not the best route to scale up to the thousands and Glasgow in particular Duncan articulates so well the sorts of challenges that have to take place but that's because there's a whole infrastructure that supports that in Glasgow that isn't replicated elsewhere so I think we need to think of new ways and the local authorities are going to be really critical to this about how we can adapt and change the process that Duncan talked about, a specialist service that don't operate everywhere that they only operate the biometric identity cards which have to be issued to person before they can do anything else which is issued by the home office any two post offices in Glasgow do that so how can we marshal some of those specialist services that the DWP have about giving people national insurance some of the key tools that people have and that's what we're going to be focusing on in the integration subgroup working into trying other new ideas we can have and if the home office could be persuaded that Scotland does, with the lump of resource that comes with it, I think that Scotland would come up with much more creative solutions that are tailored to the environment and the agencies and organisations that may not happen but those are things that Parliament and Government here could do in terms of keeping I think that you're pushing it an open door on that one, John. I think that you know that. Alison and then Willie Coffey's going to come in. Underneath the remit of the resettlement I think that there's a number of things this committee could usefully keep in mind as we're looking at how that develops over the next five years. My concern is the differentiation. We have a group, the Syrian vulnerable people who are coming in on a particular route. My concern is what that does for the other people in the asylum and refugee process and system. I think that we need to really look at that as well as exactly as Derek said really working with different host communities. Those differentiations are very acute about whether you can work or not. They're about where you live. They're about a whole range of different aspects which could breed resentments and if we really are serious about New Scot's integration then we really need to look at that. That's the first point. The second one is I think we need to look at the five years. It's five years refugee status. We've learned a lot since the five year refugee status was brought in and one of the things we know is that any year four, if people have maybe had three and a half it's very difficult to get a job if it looks like your status is running out within the next 12 months. We're talking about people, the refugees on refugee status or people on humanitarian protection status who will hit that point in four years time and therefore revert very quickly and all the research shows this happens. If you can't get a job as Joanna was saying if you can't stay active then the vulnerability comes right back up and all that wonderful work we've done integrating and with the health services and looking at mental health in particular will be reversed. If we do not have a plan for what we do in four years time when we're looking at the end of that and that needs to be a plan for those coming in on the Syrian scheme, on this present scheme but also for all those who have refugee status what do we do at that point to stop people becoming vulnerable again? Languages. You can't learn another language in 60 hours of ESOL support. Nobody can. We know what it takes to learn a language so you can do your job well because it's the kind of training we give to diplomats when we place them overseas. We know what it takes. It takes quite a bit and I think one of the things we could do usefully is revisit some of our language policy within Scotland. Look at what we mean by languages. We're actually still quite hidebound I would say by a set of language policies for schools but also other areas which is based on, forgive me, where middle-class people want to go on holiday. I think that at the moment in terms of the grand problems that are actually facing us in society and worldwide the languages coming to us that have been brought to us by people at the moment who are being resettled are very much the languages of the future. They're the languages of the future in terms of humanitarian aid but also in terms of international relations and in terms of trade. That's part of that because every single piece of research says that once people have adequate housing and adequate food what actually is needed is the language to be able to relate to other human beings with. Finally this committee to follow on from what Joanna was saying can really keep an eye on the discourse we use in public. I think Scotland is to be commended and the minister is to be commended on the discourse that has been used so far. The research done on genocide says on point 4 on a 10 point scale that when one group denies the humanity of another group and members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases dehumanisation becomes overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder. What we have seen in our press but what we have also seen from is the use of language which does precisely that which equates other human beings to insects. We really need to keep an eye on that it's extremely dangerous this is not just something to do with political correctness it's about how we understand other human beings and I think really focusing on those aspects to make sure our public discourse in Scotland is very careful and attentive to the research that has been done on how dangerous that kind of language is vital. Thanks very much convener. At the outset I have to say thank you to colleagues, some of the colleagues for the very moving contributions that they've made particularly Amal and Margaret there earlier on but also to commend the work going on in Glasgow and thank you as usual to Glasgow and of course to Scotland for the efforts that are being made here. Colleagues, we're witnessing the end of a nation here in Syria. I was just looking at some of the statistics there. There were 22 million people living in Syria 4 million are now abroad, 7 million are displaced, another million we don't know about in three quarters of a million are dead probably more. This is a humanitarian catastrophe and the European Union has spectacularly failed here. I wanted to come back and ask Margaret and hopefully our UN European colleagues what more should be done immediately. It seems to me that the rescue efforts in the Mediterranean are nothing short of a disgrace when you've got a small navy like Ireland rescuing 7,000 people in the last few months and other navies are not there. They're missing. There's no co-ordination going on here so should that be a priority to get into the Mediterranean and to rescue these people? Or should we be sending refugees from the European Union to take this equipment and this accommodation equipment that you mentioned should we be taking it there and installing it in places like Lesbos? It's a real tragedy for the people of Greece and Italy who are themselves suffering at the front of this to have to bear the brunt of this rescue operation that's going on. If you can give us a message today what we should do and the message we should give to not only to our Government and the European Union is it rescue, is it accommodation equipment, is it food, is it medicine is it basically get your act together to rescue these people and save this nation? I think the first thing would be to actually open the routes because if you open safe routes then people wouldn't need to take the perilous journeys but until those are opened and I suppose there have to be agreements but that is the first thing then yes of course we should do that. The end of Marion Ostrom was just disgraceful and the fact that that boat that's there now from Britain is basically a frontex boat or ship. You have to proper search and rescue and proper immediate humanitarian relief in Greece in Athens in the cities where people are going to be living rough over the winter but also just speed up actually allowing these people to have status somewhere it's really the most drastic disaster end of help is the bit that shouldn't really need to be done because if you speed it up all the processes and allow people to come safely you would never need all that but right at this minute yes you are going to need all that because it's just all these reorganisations and people that myself over there is people and feed people so it's the two things you need opening the safe routes speeding up the bureaucracy and giving people status in countries appropriate where they want to go it's not a tiny proportion of the European it sounds like a huge number of people but it's a tiny proportion of the European population and they bring so many talents and resources to us but where that doesn't happen yes an immediate major disaster operation needs to be put in to process so that people don't die in the streets in the cities it's not just Greece of course it is Italy and France and Spain and then that people also don't die on those seas the Mediterranean is becoming a grave truthfully the day that we went it was 40 people died including one entire family and a newborn child I don't know if that helps I mean the safe routes immediately I think maybe we'll bring in Aspasia at this point we're really seriously running out of time now and I want to bring you back in I know that you've sat very patiently listening to all of the testing that we've had today but maybe there's some specific European questions there that I wonder if maybe you could give us some I don't suspect you'll have all the answers some insight into some of the action that's being taken to address some of the concerns I couldn't agree more with Margaret what she says and I think I mean we've all stated it that the answer is really to provide legal channels to provide people the possibility to travel it is just so unfair to see why we all can take the plane to go somewhere and these people just can't and there are many ways to do that and member states have done that one of them is humanitarian visas France has issued 1500 humanitarian visas to Syrians over the last couple of years so basically people go to the embassy in Beirut or whatever they are and they can get a visa which is for humanitarian purpose this is not asylum, this is just an entry ticket and they can arrive to the member state and then enter the asylum procedure this is already saving their life from having to take the boat then there are of course the family reunification possibilities right now it may take two years for somebody to get reunited with their family in Europe and it costs thousands of euros which may they may not have why shouldn't it be made more well should be made easier and faster to reunite with your family who are already living in the UK, in France, in Belgium and they have refugee status it is just so obvious but it is made so difficult there could be possibly also lifting of visas from certain countries in order to allow people to travel and of course this could be only a temporary measure for a short while but it would substantially reduce the risks that people take and the risks to their lives then there is of course the humanitarian forms of admission Germany, Austria, Switzerland have used this which is basically the possibility for family members, extended family not nuclear family so brothers, sisters, cousins already living in the member state to help bring their family member over all what the country needs to do is provide the permit the western's permit and access to the asylum procedure they are granted sometimes temporary protection status and in other cases like Austria they have been actually granted refugee status but basically the families say that they actually take charge and they don't need state entities authorities do not really need to do anything this is expedited this is fast, this can help get people safely to their destination without having to travel all these possibilities are there and they should be used it's just that we all witness a lack of political will and there are certain member states of course that have been more generous than others and it's very very saddening to see also certain member states especially eastern European states with their history now becoming the most conservative and closing down the borders I would also just add one more thing because I see on my on my screen here that apparently the session will expire in 10 minutes and I will disappear from your screen so maybe just under settlement practices some of the things that we have seen by collecting practice from different member states one of the things mentioned was for example the skills and the qualifications that people have had the studies they've done before arriving and how all this is lost doctors and engineers who arrive and then there is no diploma of course in their baggage and how do they prove that and how could that be capitalized so they also feel valued it is quite stressful to be a doctor and then have to do cleaning jobs all of us would feel the same so there must be ways to support this and actually there is a practice in the Netherlands there is an organization an NGO called University Assistance Fund UAF and what they do is basically they support people to enter the Dutch university system with loans and grants so they do a shortcut and maybe complete one more year or two years in the university accompanied with a language course as well and that basically brings them back to where they were in terms of their professional profile or maybe they want to adapt slightly to the particular circumstances where they are but it is a way to restart your life in dignity and decency and also to feel valued and that this is also fulfilling and it's not a failure and that's very important for integration other things that we have seen a lot for example from other countries that have been doing resettlement is the need to combine language training with vocational training and access to the labour market it is a waste of time to spend a year just learning the language and then try to enter the labour market whereas this in some cases they try to combine this in one training so actually learning the language is also useful in the sense of preparing for access to the labour market and of course the bottom line here is to prepare both for both sides it's not only about the housing it is not only about the NGOs to prepare it is also about preparing the people before they arrive for example information about their housing needs should be already transmitted before they arrive so one knows what's the number of members in that family what house would they need cultural orientation is not only for the refugees in order to prepare for the situation they will have when they arrive or the cultural context and so on cultural orientation is also necessary for the structures and the stakeholders in the host society they need to see a video they need to get to learn a bit about what does it mean for these people where do they come from what do they do in their spare time what do they like to do what is their music like many things about how to connect the two sides and there are a lot of countries that have been involving the communities the existing ethnic communities in that for example a video that shows Syrians already living in the country that shows what they how they experience that, what it feels like and this video is screened already to the people before they arrive it helps them prepare to understand what it will look like if they hear compatriots talk about it it's easier than hear somebody from an organization talk about how it feels like and what it is like living in that particular area and what community work is like and so on many things have been said about the role of volunteers the role of mainstream services and not just the specialists it's important to involve the schools the local not only the local authorities as well but churches, the GPs different types of take-overs that are not the usual suspects but they will also come across and they will also encounter they will liaison interact with their new arrivals and they will need to be prepared and finally I think for example for the Syrians it is important to consider that needs to be immediate access to psychosocial support there are serious traumas here people have even if there is settled and so they haven't taken the boat they haven't gone through that experience still I think going from their home country to Lebanon or Turkey is already very traumatic and I think that needs to be that should be taken into consideration in relation to housing and access to this kind of services nearby I'm afraid that my connection will be cut quite soon so I'm wondering whether I should just wait or maybe already thank you very much for inviting me to join the debate No thank you very much Espezia our connection will be cut too because we have to be back in the chamber very soon after 11.30 so we can't sit beyond that but can I thank you on behalf of the committee for your information if you want to share anything more with information please get in touch with the committee and share that that would be very helpful Gonzalo I want to give you maybe the final closing remarks this morning but we have very very limited time to do that but maybe an overview but very very quickly I have got a list of starred items family reunification on that process funding, NGOs, where are they integration services open and safe routes, humanitarian visas and possibly a temporary lifting of visas if there's anything missed from that that you think should be on it can you let us know Gonzalo I think all I would say just to wrap up that I think the key is that European states will be able to manage this crisis once they agree that in fact all the different mechanisms to address this problem are as important and should be supported by all states because what you've been seeing is states picking and choosing like a menu saying we don't like relocation we prefer resettlement all the aid should go to the refugees in the region yes search and rescue is okay and others say no in fact it's not okay because it's an incentive in fact they have to realise that all of these aspects are absolutely necessary and should be supported and you cannot pick and choose yes aid to the region is absolutely critical yes we have to find we have to use much more the legal ways for refugees to get from the region to Europe safely yes that includes resettlement but that includes the many other mechanisms mentioned by Espansia and other colleagues and that yes relocation is also critical and should be supported and of course whether the UK can obtain or out I think there is an issue of it's not a legal issue it's a solidarity so until all the aspects are supported by as many European states as possible this issue will not be addressed thank you Gonzalo I think that that brings us to a nice close although this issue and this topic will not be forgotten about that easily a few recommendations that we need to make in relation to some of the the evidence and the pleas that we've heard this morning we did invite the Home Office the Home Secretary to a committee this morning diary clashes didn't allow that apparently but it would have been nice to get the answers to some of the questions from that aspect and I think from this committee's point of view we will look at some of that as well can I thank you all very much not just for coming to the committee this morning but for all the work that you all do none of the position I think that we would be in right now in Scotland would be there without some of the absolutely crucial work that's been done over many years and I suppose I said prepare, prepare, prepare I think that Margaret Wood has been preparing and preparing and preparing not just services and networks and organisations and there's many people in here who are all part of that but preparing all of us for how we should react when fellow human beings are in extremity and I think it's nice to see that we can get all around the table and agree a way forward but not just say we're talking about it but we're actually doing something about it and I thank you all for what you do about it thank you very much I'm going to close committee now