 boards. Welcome to the 12th meeting of 2020-23 in session 6 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have apologies this morning from Karen Adam and Ben Macpherson is attending as Karen's substitutes can welcome. Our first agenda item therefore is to invite Ben Macpherson to declare any relevant interests. interests, including that I'm on the role of Scottish Solisters. Our next item on the agenda is to agree to take agenda item four, which is consideration of today's evidence in private. Are we all agreed? Thank you. Agenda item three is to hear further evidence to our inquiry into the asylum seekers in Scotland. We will hear this morning from John Taylor, chief operating officer at Mears housing management, who is with us in person this morning. Good morning, John. Caroline O'Connor, who is the chief executive officer of Migrant Help, who is joining us virtually this morning. Welcome, Caroline. I refer members to papers one and two, and I will invite each of our witnesses to make short opening remarks, and I would like to start with John Taylor, please. Thank you very much. Good morning, and thank you very much for inviting us to give evidence today. Just like to start by, it's been a wee bit about Mears Group. Mears Group is a housing company. We employ more than 1,300 people across Scotland. Our care team runs combined care at home and housing support services for adults with disabilities or mental health needs. Our facilities management team supports 16 schools across Inverness and West Lothian, two housing associations in Glasgow and healthcare settings in St Andrew's community hospital in Hs. In the last year, we completed nearly 120,000 repairs and maintenance to council homes in North Lanarkshire, employing 480 people, including the direct provision of 195 craft apprentices. In Scotland, Mears Group operates through its responsible business charter, which outlines a series of pledges to its staff, partners, contractors and service users. Mears is committed to pay all staff and regular contractor workers the Scottish real living wage. We have signed the Scottish business pledge. Our new independent customer scrutiny board was set up to strengthen tenant rights for our customers. The board is chaired independently and is made up of residents and tenants from across our services, including asylum seekers. For each Mears employee, we deliver on average £2,500 per employee of social value per annum. That is decided by using a recognised model to calculate the value of wellbeing. We will encourage the involvement of the local supply chain in our projects by seeking to work collaboratively across Scotland's housing management sector. We will publicise the revenue and profit that we make each year as a group. Overall, we do not expect to achieve a profit margin for our public sector work of more than 5 per cent to ensure value for money. In January 2019, Mears has awarded the asylum contracts for three regions—Scotland, Northern Ireland, North East, Yorkshire and Humber. Following a transition period, we became the provider in September 2019. Mears is an experienced provider of housing across the UK, providing much-needed homes for homeless households through our UK, our English-based Housing Association, as well as the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Justice. We have approached the contract that is committed to treating all our service users with dignity and respect. It is important to say that ours has a specific role around asylum and support, while in our accommodation. We have no role in the processing of claims and other services such as the provision of healthcare education. We signpost the relevant appropriate agencies rather than Mears provide direct. Our role is operational policy, which is set by the UK Home Office, and we refer policy questions to them. I hope that the committee will understand that this is an important distinction between what we can do and what we can affect. Operationally, Mears has supported many, many thousands of people in asylum accommodation in Scotland. Feedback in general has been very positive from the service users directly about the way that our staff treat them and about the quality of our housing provision. Were there any issues, we do our best to support our service users and resolve them through our welfare teams and our safeguarding teams. We are committed to ensuring that asylum accommodation is safe, habitable and fit for purpose, and we will meet the contractual and regulatory standards. Mears understands the importance of supporting each person whilst living in its accommodation and to ensure that, as a company, it works with the communities in which we work. We work very closely in partnership with local statutory agencies, including the NHS, councils, particularly Gloucester City Council and the police. We have excellent partnerships in the community with local organisations, NGOs, charities and support groups, sports clubs, faith groups and many more. If the committee would like to see more of what we do, I can provide detail of many projects that we support, fund and organise. Asylum accommodation and sport vision is complex and, at the moment, very controversial, and there are many challenges, but we are proud of our dedicated staff and the work that they do every day across Scotland. Caroline Cunner, chief executive at Migrant Help. We are a UK-wide charity that provides support to victims of displacement and exploitation, and 2023 marks our charity's 60th year. Migrant Help is one of two providers offering support to survivors of trafficking in Scotland, the other being Tara, who gave evidence at an earlier session. Tara supports female victims of commercial sexual exploitation, and Migrant Help supports all other adult survivors in Scotland. The work is funded through the Scottish Government's victim-centred approach fund, and we deliver similar services to survivors in Northern Ireland and parts of England. Migrant Help also provides support to asylum seekers across the UK through the Home Office's advice, issue reporting and eligibility contract, known as AIR, for which we are in the fourth year of delivery. We provide face-to-face and remote services in Scotland with a team of advisers based in Glasgow, supported by outreach and community liaison staff, as well as our 24-7 call centre. In other parts of the UK, we also deliver services under the UK resettlement scheme. We support Afghan and Ukrainian refugees in hotels. We are supporting Hong Kong national employability scheme and the EU settlement scheme. I look forward to providing you with more information about our work. Thank you. Thank you Caroline. Thank you for those opening statements. We will go straight to questions. I intend to allow around 75 minutes for this session. I will grant some flexibility. We have areas to explore, so I would welcome succinct questions and answers as far as possible. I would like to start with my colleague Paul. I am very grateful and good morning to Caroline and John. I wonder if I can begin to recognise that asylum and immigration are reserved matters, but I think that we are particularly interested in the devolved areas, particularly looking at the Scottish Government's work to address many of the issues that we have already heard this morning and throughout our evidence. I can perhaps ask you to share with us what involvement you have had with the Scottish Government strategies, particularly the new Scots strategy and the ending destitution strategy? We have worked since mobilising the contracts back in 2019 very closely with the Scottish Government COSLA and the Scottish City Council partnership board. The Scottish Government we probably meet once a month and more regularly during the Covid periods to make sure that they are fully informed of the accommodation contracts, the issues that we are facing, particularly during the Covid period, the pressure on numbers and that Scotland was not a rooting area for periods of that Covid time. We have had direct conversations. We are at the moment looking to meet with the relevant ministers to discuss a number of issues that are facing the asylum contracts for the next year, namely the wide dispersal and the impact on local authorities across Scotland, particularly around health, education and social services, and how that can be supported, how that can be managed whilst not conflicting with other projects such as the Ukrainian programme, Afgan, Syrians and Accompanied Children, all of which are looking for accommodation. We are very concerned that we end up chasing the same properties. Clearly, on the other issue, we want to discuss in more detail with the Scottish ministers around homelessness. We are going to see a lot more people now having decisions being made in the system, having decisions being stopped during Covid, and therefore, with a number of positive decisions, there is going to be a lot of pressure on homelessness and how we can work together to make sure that there is a balance and that we do not create another problem as people come out of the asylum system. We have always worked closely with the Scottish Government. I think that, hopefully, we will work ever closer, because I think that the next couple of years can be very challenging on a number of levels. Why does this sort of change the landscape significantly? Caroline? Caroline, do you have anything to add? Yes, thank you. Migrant helps closely involved in delivering towards the five principles of the New Scots approach, including integration from day one and building on the rights-based approach through initial induction information and through the 24-7 helpline. We provide induction on arrival, including translated induction booklets, followed by verbal induction briefings with interpreters. We involve asylum seekers and victims of modern slavery. There are lived experience advisory panels to develop and to improve our services. We have a community liaison coordinator and we have regional managers for both services. Both our head of regional services and our head of business support services have been working and living in Scotland for many years. We collaborate with other charities and with the COSLO, and we are part of working groups with both. We have given evidence in this session that we have worked very closely with Red Cross, Scottish Refugee Council and Refugee, and we work on behalf of the Scottish Government. John, you mentioned the challenges that exist currently in terms of the interaction with local authorities, particularly around housing supply. Wider dispersal in your view will exacerbate those issues. In your view, is the challenge with local authorities in terms of what is available, or is it about how mirrors chooses to interact with that? There have been a number of high-profile cases that we would all recognise that have been particularly concerning. Is your view that that is about the interaction with local authorities? Is that where the problem is? The interaction with local authorities in Scotland has been incredibly positive. Through COSLA, we have been discussing why dispersal since the autumn. We have taken time to make sure that there is an agreement about how wide dispersal can be managed in a planned way, strategic way, but also trying to demonstrate some fairness in the system that we do not have more sunseas in one area than others. All 32 councils have looked to participate, and we are trying to work through the acquisition process to make sure that we have that fair dispersal across Scotland. I would say that every council has entered into those conversations with a good deal of openness and willingness to participate and understand the system. Glasgow has been particularly strong in explaining how well we work with Glasgow and how dispersal works and the sport needs in dispersed accommodation. I do not think that that is the case. We have some very good relationships with the local authorities and COSLA are very good at managing that in a formal governance structure. The issue for us is more around supply. There is a limited supply of accommodation in the private housing market, and, as I said, there are a lot of programmes that are all looking to access that private market, whether it is homelessness. Glasgow has a particular challenge around homelessness at the moment, and it will take the brunt of the challenge of housing people that get the right to remain in Scotland. It is about how the impact on the number of properties that we need to get people into their own homes. Where do we procure them? Where will it be safe? Where can we make sure that we get the right services to people, that they are not isolated, that we deal with community cohesion issues, that our service users can access equal services, that they can access local community and faith groups? That is a huge operation to make sure that, as we go into new areas, they are supported and that our acquisition property does not then conflict with the programme to find accommodation for Ukrainians, the Afghans or, indeed, local homelessness services. There is quite a complex network of issues, but I would say that our conversations with the Scottish councils have been incredibly positive and very welcome. I wonder, just on the point about local authorities before I move on to a human rights approach, does Caroline, in terms of your interaction with local authorities, where do you see the gaps currently or the challenges in terms of wider support provision? The wide dispersal area and the short time frame in which it is needed to stand up properties, so it is very difficult to find accommodation for asylum seekers very quickly. Once it is identified, there is a need to place people there, so I think that the lead time to bring in support is difficult. There is also a huge risk—we are seeing this around the country—that support for asylum seekers is very focused in specific regions where there has historically been a great deal of dispersal. Opening up new regions means that there is a limited amount of support functions in those regions and there is not enough time for charities to stand up that support, nor enough funding to reach 400 hotels across the UK. That is where a real risk is. I accept the problem that we need to find accommodation for people, but we are following it up by support later than would be ideal. We have had a conversation about resource, and often those decisions become very resource-driven because of the pressures that are on local authorities and other agencies. The evidence that we have heard from people such as the Children's Commissioner is that we need to refocus and look with the human rights lens, because there are serious concerns about the dignity—we enjoy your spoken quick dignity and respect in your opening statement, and I think that the lack of dignity and respect very often for many people who are seeking this support. I referenced in a previous question those high-profile cases of people being inadequately housed or housed in very inappropriate settings and challenges in terms of people being left destitute. If you would reflect, do you think that you do take a human rights approach in Mears, for example? What more do you think you can do within your contracts to actually achieve that dignity and respect that you spoke about? The independent surveys of residents, the feedback is very positive in terms of how they feel they are treated by our staff and the property that we provide to them. There is a difference getting enough property, so we are not happy that we have to house people in hotels. I think that is the single biggest challenge to us. When we started this contract, no one was living in hotels. At the beginning of the Covid period, we did not operate in hotels. Because of Covid and the cessation of decisions, the system became locked, if you like, and that is where the use of hotels became a main issue. Making a hotel a good place to live is very challenging. Our staff are on-site five days a week. We have a seven days a week service. We have welfare support officers. We work very closely with the asylum health bridging team from the NHS to make sure that support is on-site. No one would say that a hotel is where people would ideally be housed for a period of time, so I would say that that is the biggest single challenge. In our dispersed accommodation, I would say that the accommodation, we have clear contractual standards and they are constantly checked by the Home Office. They have compliance teams that visit. We are very transparent about the service we provide, the number of pairs we do, and the visits we do to every property to try to make sure that properties are well maintained and looked after and that people are supported whilst they are in the system in the dispersed accommodation. Obviously, as we look to why dispersal, as Caroline indicated, we need to make sure that if we take properties on in Perth, Aberdeen and Dundee, we are able to provide that service to support them whilst they are in the dispersed accommodation waiting for the decision on their asylum application. The quicker those decisions are made, the better. I would say that we are transparent. We welcome people to come and see our properties. We are not quite clear in the dispersed accommodation. Our staff behave and I think produce a good quality service where we look to put the interests of the service user at the heart of what we do. The hotels, as I say, are a very challenging place to be living. If you are living in a hotel for three weeks, that is one thing. If you live in there for months, then it becomes a very difficult place to be. We try to make sure that families are in hotels for a long period of time because it is clearly not the right place for a child to be living. We do try to make sure that we manage that as best we can. Until we can get that wide dispersal moving and get the large volume of accommodation that is needed to make sure that we can end the use of hotels, it is not in anyone's interest to maintain hotels for any longer than necessary. Are you cognisant of the criticism, quite frankly, of people like the Children's Commissioner on some of the circumstances in which particularly pregnant women have found themselves, issues around how hotels are managed and supported by mirrors? How do you react to that criticism and take it on board and make changes? I think that much of the evidence that we have heard thus far has suggested that that does not always happen or that there is a real feeling that it does not always happen. It is a very emotional area. I appreciate that everyone has their views. We have talked to the Children's Commissioner on multiple occasions. I think that one of the issues that he was referring to was that we established a mother and baby building in Glasgow. That is a use of accommodation that has been used elsewhere in the UK. We have a number of mother and baby buildings in the North East Yorkshire-Humber area. They have worked very effectively in supporting single mothers in getting that support. We found a building that we agreed with the Glasgow City Council was appropriate and would potentially offer that support. We established it. It was during the Covid period and the Children's Commissioner was concerned that that building did not meet the needs of mothers and babies the way it should do. We took on that board and ended its use and used that building for something different. We do listen, learn and do things for the best of reasons. That type of unit was very successful elsewhere. It was not in the second sense, so we have ended its use. The feedback that we get from the Children's Commissioner and any support group that I talk regularly to the Scottish Refugee Council feeds into our service and we are constantly looking to improve our service and change it based on feedback. That is empirical objective feedback. We will always look at what we can do to improve. It is an error with strong opinions. We try to work on evidence-based. We have invited many people to come to see our properties and come to the hotels to see what they are like, to see what we can do differently. With the hotels, we talk to the service users about menus. We change menus regularly. We try to make sure that the dietary requirements are taken into account and that people's views are taken into account. Nothing is perfect, but we listen, evolve our services and change our services to try to meet the pressures and criticisms that may get made. I generally think that our staff are committed to that. Everything that I have seen in terms of my time in visiting the buildings, visiting properties, talking with staff and reviewing our services and the feedback that we get indicates that that is at the heart of what we do. I want to add that we are concerned about mother and baby units because it has limited testing and evidence around it. We believe that more needs to be done to understand and evidence the impact on mothers and babies. We are funding a pilot programme at the cost of £165,000 with a happy baby community in London where there are some mother and baby units to explore exactly this. The outputs will be included in the production of a report from the Institute of Health Visitors on improving maternal mental health. We are also working with a steering group, including both them and the Royal College of Midwives. The pilot started earlier this year, so we are working to get evidence around what best practices to support mothers and babies. We have been cognising of the illegal migration bill in this committee and looking at its impact. I wonder if, in terms of the broader humanitarian strategy that might pull lots of different Scottish Government strategies together, might be a better way to respond to that. I agree that it would be welcome, but I am very concerned around the urgency of the illegal migration bill as it proceeds rapidly. We are best relying on the existing strategies that are excellent in Scotland that are in place and doing what we can to push towards those strategies rather than trying to develop a new one. We are on the theme of housing, so it is an appropriate time to bring in the vice-conviner, Maggie Chapman. Thank you very much, co-cav. Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us this morning and for the information that you have provided so far. I want to drill down in a little more detail into the use of hotels. If I can come to you, John, first, on this, can you tell us how does Mears go around selecting hotels? Obviously, we know that we are looking at more and more cities and more and more places around Scotland. How would you go around looking and selecting hotels for use? What do you take into account? It has evolved over two or three years in which hotels have been used. We have a lot more hotels in Northern Ireland and North East Yorkshire than we do in Scotland. We look for town centre settings so that they are not remote so that people can leave the hotel and be part of the community because it is clearly being isolated as a massive issue. We try and make sure that there are enough facilities on site, that there are adequate dining facilities and other areas where we can operate projects such as English lessons, play sessions for children, et cetera, children out of the hotel and other sports activities for the residents to make sure that they are active and that there are offices for health to visit the site as well. We try and make sure that hotels have those basic facilities. We look for on-suite rooms so that people have some privacy. We look to make sure that most hotels are at least 30 rooms because, therefore, you create communities where people can make friendship groups and not feel too isolated in their own lives because they are likely to be in the hotel for a number of months. We are constrained by the market as how many hotels are available and want to be involved in the process. As I said earlier, there is a lot of competition for the hotels. The Ukrainian programme has used a lot of hotels around some cities and some of the homeless teams. We need to work on the art of the possible, what is available. We need to make sure that the cost is valid for money but that we have a clear standard for the size of rooms, the facilities and the quality of the hotel to make sure that it is a decent place to stay, albeit not where it is ideal. It is very much led by the market, then by quality standards and location. It is not always possible to get everything right on that, unfortunately, just because of the limited supply. If I can just explore that a little bit further. In terms of the operation of the hotels, you talked earlier about food and obviously the need for culturally sensitive food and that kind of thing. What direct operational involvement do you have in the running and maintenance of the hotels once asylum seekers are being accommodated there? We are responsible for that hotel, so we have direct involvement. The hotel operator will provide the cleaning staff, the laundry reception staff, 24 hours a day so that someone is on the site. We have a welfare officer on the site. If I can just sorry to interrupt you there. The hotel staff that are cleaning catering and those kinds of staff, they will not necessarily have trauma training or that they will not necessarily have expertise in dealing with people who have been through traumatic situations. Is that correct? We provide training for the staff on site and our welfare officer is on site as well. We have someone from Mears who is fully trained on site as a welfare officer and we work with the hotels to make sure that their staff are supported. The same goes for the security staff. We will have a security guard on site. That is as much to maintain ordering a hotel in terms of sometimes people trying to get into the hotel. Unfortunately, we do have protesters, so the security guards are not there because of any issues necessarily in the hotel. It is more to make sure that people feel safe on site and they are trained and suitably qualified as well. People on site are trained and supported by us. We are responsible for their behaviours. If there are any behaviours from the hotel staff that falls below the standards that we set, we can deal with that with the hotel operator to make sure that staff treat residents in the way that they would expect with the dignity and respect that they would come to expect of any operation. We make sure that rooms and the hotel are cleaned daily and that people have the services that they would want. The food is very important and we will often work very closely with caterers in the hotel to make sure that, as we say, the menus are varied, they change and they do adapt to the residents' personal requirements because each hotel will have a different cohort of people. Therefore, we want to make sure that the food meets what they would expect from where they come from. That is really important to us. We do have a lot of input and we do have ultimate responsibility for what happens in the hotel. Can I just ask—you mentioned welfare officers and security staff that you have, that are MIAS staff. You talked about that they are trained. Can you tell me what training they do have in terms of engaging and dealing with potentially traumatised people, families, those kinds of complex issues that you have already spoken about? What training do the staff who are on-site all the time actually get? The welfare officers go through a series of training sessions around dealing with trauma, dream and funerabilities. What I can do is email you a schedule of what every welfare officer will have trained for us because I will probably miss out a few of the courses if I try and do it from memory, but they are fully trained. The security guards are employed by security companies who are accredited and fully trained, and we make sure that they also go through our training sessions as well. They understand why they are in that hotel. They understand cultural differences, cultural sensitivities. They understand why they are in that hotel, why the hotel operates, and who is living there. They go through that training with us as well. They have the accreditation for security guard. In terms of the hotels, you talked about the locations. You look for town centres, you look for connections to other facilities. What engagement do you have with the local community prior to hotel selection or once a hotel has been identified? What engagement do you have with neighbouring residents, with the third sector, who will obviously be keen to provide some support that Ms Migrant help does not support? We have heard about other third sector organisations coming in. How do you do that prior to asylum seekers being moved in to the hotel? My colleague Pam is going to drill down into the third sector. John, feel free to answer the question if you can leave the third sector, because we have a line of questioning on that. When we put forward a hotel as being potentially available to the home office, eventually we are ultimately responsible for deciding whether the hotel is booked and comes into occupation. When the lead-up to that, there is substantial consultation with the local authority on services, education, if there are any children going to be the hotel, which is not often the case, health services and the police. There is a lot of conversations going on with all those statutory agencies, as well as the third sector, which I will come on to. When we set the hotel up, the police will often come into the hotel and they will help talk to residents about community safety and understanding of cultural differences. We will work very closely with the local authority. In Perthon Kinross, for example, we have weekly meetings with the council to discuss how we support their hotel users and how we provide extra services to make sure that they are well and their wellbeing is protected. I would say that the engagement that we have from Scottish councils is very positive when compared with other areas of the UK, I would say, and that the councils look to make sure that we have those networks with police, with the NHS, with support groups, so that we can then create projects and activities that keep people busy, fit and healthy as possible. I would say that the engagement, as I say, is as positive as anywhere and is really welcomed in the way that the local authority has approached that with us. I have a couple more questions and then I have a couple for Caroline. John, with wider engagement with local residents, if there are local residents who want to come in and speak to and welcome the asylum seekers who are accommodated in hotels, how do the welfare officers and security personnel have on site? How do they manage that? We have to be very careful because anyone coming on to site, we have to know why they come on to site and their reasons. Certainly down in North East Yorkshire, some people wanted to come on to site and then we discovered that they have other motives. We do have a lot of far-right protesters, so we have to be very careful about who is allowed in. We do ask that people come to us through volunteer organisations where we can agree access and make sure that people are safe and there is no poor behaviours, which is more than possible. The security and safety of the residents has got to be first and foremost. If there are community resident groups who want to engage with us, then we absolutely do, but we need to make sure that it is done in a supportive and positive way and that access to the hotel is safe. What is the average length of time for people to stay in hotels? We have heard what you have said already about availability of dispersal accommodation and hotels being institutionalised more and more, which is problematic. What is the average length of stay in hotels? It is really hard to give an average because up until very recently we only had a small number of hotels in Glasgow. It is only in that there are nine months when we have seen 11 or 12 hotels. Coming up with an average is difficult. There are some people who have been in a hotel in Glasgow for more than a year, some approaching two years. That is due to how long they are in the system. We only move people out of the hotel when the Home Office asks us to. That person has reached the point where they can go from section 98 to section 95 when we can move them into dispersal accommodation. The pace at which we move people out is dictated by the Home Office. If we feel that someone needs to be prioritised, then we will petition through Migrant Help asking that they are moved sooner because it is for their wellbeing. Some people move on within weeks or months. It is to do with their priority and where they are in the system. There is no rule of thumb other than that we would always say that people are living in hotels far too long and the quicker we can get dispersal accommodation in hotels the better. Just been indicated by Rachel that she would like to follow this up before you move on to Caroline Ritchell. Thank you very much, convener. I would like to ask why there are challenges to moving to dispersed accommodation, other than the fact that you have stated that some of the individuals could become institutionalised within the hotel accommodation. It is availability of accommodation. There was agreement to wider dispersal across Scotland out of Glasgow last year. We work very closely with COSLA, the 32 councils, and the Scottish Government to agree what wider dispersal looks like. Rather than just start and without good consultation, we have spent a number of months agreeing a plan with COSLA and the local authorities for what wider dispersal looks like. It is only the last couple of months that we have been trying to acquire properties on the scale needed to make sure that people can move out. Some people are not staying there too long, so there is a timing issue in terms of getting the dispersed accommodation across the country so that we get the volume that we can move people out. The decision on how people move out and how they are prioritised rest with the Home Office and Caroline Ritchell as part of that process. I am sure that she can have some insight into how the so-called ITP process works, but at the moment for us it is a dearth property. We are not acquiring any more properties in Glasgow. We have over 5,000 service users in Glasgow, and that is far too many for one city. We are trying to procure right across Greater Glasgow, the central belt, up the east coast, Dundee and Aberdeen, the Lothians and eventually all 32 councils. That hopefully will mean that we can supply and catch up with demand and we can end the use of hotels and people will not stay in a hotel for as long as they are at the moment. Follow-up on that. Are asylum seekers comfortable in the process of moving out? I have lost you there. Rachel, do you want to repeat your last sentence, please? Yes, thank you convener. I was just wondering, are asylum seekers comfortable if they are being moved from a city to a rural area, if that is the only option that they have? I would say that they are comfortable. I think that it is very challenging. People who go into hotels generally newly arrived in the country, so often they will be coming from the south of England up to Scotland, or probably the most common of people who have declared asylum in Scotland, and therefore we will place them where we have a hotel room. I think it's fair to say that people generally would like to be in Glasgow because they know there's lots of networks in Glasgow. We don't have hotels in rural settings. We have them in smaller towns, Perth, Aberdeen, Dundee, Erskine and Renfrewshire. So there's a number of different hotel settings that are generally in urban settings. People I think would prefer to be in Glasgow but clearly we've made that commitment that we'll have no more hotels in Glasgow due to overwhelming demand on that accommodation in Glasgow. I don't think that anyone is comfortable moving to a hotel. I think that only if it's over a number of weeks we just try to make sure that they're well informed of what's happening. Generally people go into hotels and say that they've newly arrived in the country and we'll come through that system and we will place them as best we can. Thank you. I'll return to Maggie, please, to finish your line of questioning. Thank you very much. On dispersal very quickly, John, when you talk about selecting dispersal accommodation and I get the point that you make about availability, there's recently been a traumatised family who was placed in a boarded-up block of flats on the edge of a derelict and abandoned estate in Port Glasgow. How on earth was that allowed to happen? If there's nobody else in the block or only one or two other residents in the block, how has that deemed an appropriate place to put a traumatised family? That clearly wasn't right and it's probably part of the process of learning around wide dispersals. There was a process of talking to local authority, getting approval for that property but this is a new process for them as well. Many of the local authorities don't have the resource in place to help work with us to make sure that we are taking properties in the right place. That's in Port Glasgow, I believe, the property you're referring to. That clearly wasn't appropriate and therefore we removed the family and we've no longer managed that property. It was clearly inappropriate and therefore we learn and we got rid of it. So as we go to a wide dispersal, we need to learn from those instances to make sure there are more checks on having we got the right area. We know Glasgow incredibly well. Glasgow are very well resourced to work with us and advise us on what is appropriate. We're learning with all the local authorities that we're now working with how to make sure that we get this right. If we get it wrong, we'll put it right and we'll end that. That's an absolute commitment. Caroline, thank you for waiting. I'm just curious if you could say a little bit more about how you feel the access to provide the support that you provide. Do you feel that you have the facilities, you have the access that you would want to have to be able to engage with the individuals and communities in hotels to provide the support that you spoke of earlier? What are the challenges that you find in engaging with those in-hotel accommodation? Thank you. It's a lot more complex than it used to be. We used to have clients based in the Glasgow area and they could come into our offices and see our staff face to face. I have 432 employees and our subcontractors have another 250 more of those 400 hotels around the UK, so we can't be everywhere. When a new hotel is set up, we tend to send a team in and work with near staff on site to ensure those communication channels. We give posters and booklets in translated form so that clients know who to contact. We run a 24-7 telephone line with interpretation. We do around 20,000 hours of interpretation, around 5,000 in Scotland alone over telephone and face-to-face. There is good access to language support in that work. We provided last month 2,000 devices for communication across the UK. That was 1,500 SIM cards, as well as some telephones, laptops and tablets to try and make access better, but it is incredibly difficult. It is really difficult reaching people in the hotels. We work with near staff and hotels to set up appointments with clients, and our staff make attempts to contact people, but they do not want to be necessarily sitting in the hotel and waiting. They will share phones among them because not everyone has a phone or have lost their phone on their journeys to the UK. It is very effortful to make contact with people in hotels. Ideally, we would again be in a situation where people would pass through Glasgow initially, where staff and support services are concentrated and then could be dispersed in the wider dispersal after they have had that initial contact, because they would be familiar working with us and working with the other charities in the sector. That would be the best of both worlds. It worked incredibly well in Scotland—probably the best that I have seen in the UK—with people in flats, having the independence to buy what they needed, care for themselves and make contact and support. However, we recognise that the population is so huge at the moment, and that is not practicable. I suppose that because of the difficulties that you raised, you would have concerns with hotel accommodation being used extensively. For the time periods, people are in hotels becoming longer and longer because of the lack of dispersal accommodation or because of the time that it takes to process all that. Are there things that you think we could collectively be doing better to get people out of hotels more quickly? What would be your sort of silver bullet if you had one? What would it be? It is twofold. It is quicker decision making, which I know that the Home Office is employing more and more decision makers to help, because the system is slowed down by the decision maker, but it is also affordable housing. When people receive a decision, if it is a positive decision, they might need to potentially move on to UK benefits or move into employment, under affordable housing. Between asylum support, homelessness support, the Ukrainian scheme and the Afghan scheme, the rental market is incredibly tight at the moment, so there needs to be solutions around accommodation that people can afford, and that is a UK-wide problem. In earlier sessions, people talked about modular buildings and solutions around that. I know that one of the people who gave evidence earlier said that that is fine as long as it is not a camp of asylum seekers in modular buildings that people are in communities. That sort of support for asylum seekers is really important as long as community embedding is still going on. Thank you, Caroline. I will leave it there. Good morning, Caroline and John. I thank you for your opening statements. In the committee papers this week, it states that the mayor has an obligation to keep an attendance record of the people in initial accommodation every day. What sort of data do you collect and record, and how is that data used? Do you think that better information sharing between yourself and the Home Office and local authorities would be helpful? That is a question to John. We keep an attendance log, because it is important that we know who is in the building for safety purposes and safeguarding. We record on our central system, which is a very secure IT system, who is allocated to which bedroom, and therefore we need to be able to report back to the Home Office that at the end of every week on their day that the people that they place there are still there and they are well and receiving the support that is being paid for. The hotels are free access, people can come and go if they want to be away for a night or two to visit people, that is absolutely fine, just let us know, and that is recorded. It is more a matter of safeguarding because some people do disappear and therefore we need to make sure that room is read to someone else, and we are alive to the risk of trafficking as well, so again it is another safeguard to make sure that we are aware that people are where they should be and get the support they needed. The Home Office have that data, they know where everyone is housed, and we, in our regular calls to local authorities, will update them on how many people are in the hotels, where they have all got access to GP services. We share what data we can in terms of GDPR, so the local authorities should be aware of how many people we house at any one time in the hotels. I will come back to vulnerable people and traffickers a little bit later on, but just on the question round, the work you do with COSLA and local authorities, we had them obviously on last week, and they did say that they had a great working relationship with you. However, the third sector, who deliver a lot of the key services for asylum seekers, rely on and have raised lots of concerns, would you say that a good working relationship has to be there for the third sector with you and how do you feel that it should be improved? We have a good relationship with many of the third sector organisations. I will share with the committee a summary of all the projects that we run with the hotel residents over and above the normal accommodation service to try and bring third sector in to give them support. We are very close with TARA, for example, and a lot of local charities that provide additional support, whether it is to mothers on their own, whether it is to vulnerable people. I think that we have an incredibly rich network of contacts with third sector organisations, and local football clubs run regular football sessions for the young men in the hotels and women who need exercise. We reach out to a vast array of people to try and have that network. There is no organisation that we will not talk to to see if we can bring that assistance in. It is making sure that the support that we provide is safe, well managed and productive to make sure that people's time in the hotels are as comfortable and as good as it possibly can be, given the shortcomings of living in a hotel. I mean, John, you mentioned earlier on that you signpost, so it is yourself that basically works with the third sector to bring that third sector in that is needed for that asylum seeker, is that right? Yes, we try to, yes. Just on trafficking now, we heard from previous witnesses over the weeks that hotels are typically targeted by traffickers to exploit vulnerable individuals in that accommodation. It was great to hear from Tara and Police Scotland about the work that is being undertaken to safeguard asylum seekers and refugees. How has your working relationship with Tara and migrant help changed your operation in order to help protect individuals potentially vulnerable to traffickers? Yes, obviously safeguarding is at the heart of what we do. We recognise that people are coming into the system and that people are coming to hotels and they need to arrive in the country, so it is a disorienting time, so we work very closely with migrant help and other bodies to make sure that we get that induction right and make people aware of who they can come to for help if they are concerned, if they have issues or they are worried, if they know who to talk to, whether it is migrant help or whether it is a welfare officer. We work very, very closely with the local police who will come on site and talk to people about concerns and our working relationship with Tara, past committees have said that we work very well with Tara to make sure that their information and services are available. It is something that we are all live to. I think that in Scotland it is something that has been well managed in terms of protecting people. It is a priority for us and I do think that the relationships and the systems that we have in place with those statutory and voluntary organisations have proved to be very strong, but no-one is going to be complacent about it because it is clearly a massive risk and a concern to everybody. Caroline, do you have anything to say on that? Yes, we work with Tara and Police Scotland to provide support to victims and potential victims. We need to discuss operational matters relating to people who are learning their services and specific cases. We talk to people about people within the trafficking service who may be moving and who are aware of risks. We take reports both through our office in Glasgow or on the telephone line of those concerns about people in the hotels who may be traffickers and we will report that to the police if necessary, to the home office, to mirrors to flag any risk to people. It is worth noting that, when there is initial asylum accommodation, there is a risk there equally to hotels, so that risk has always been present in the system. It is really important that the accommodation providers have good staff alert to that who can flag the risks to see if there are people hanging around inside the hotels who are presenting the risks. However, the eyes on the ground make the biggest difference in the asylum seekers that we support, for often the first chance you get to hear something, so we are really quick to flag that up. Just on that, Caroline, is there anything that you feel mirrors could improve so that they can protect those vulnerable people from traffickers? I think that it is one of the things mirrors ourselves, the home office, the whole sector really needs to work on. As concerned on working on, it is to flag the risk. I know that when Ukrainians came to the UK, we worked with unseen but out-text messages to people's phones who came from the Ukraine saying that this is the risk of traffickers when you arrive at the airport, watch out for this. As a nation, as a community, we want to support asylum seekers to say that this is what trafficking looks like. We have a translation from Syria, and I became aware that there is not even a word for trafficking in some languages. Knowledge of the people who are at the greatest risk is where we will make a difference. I have just got one more question on religious settings, so if that is okay. John, I wanted to ask a question around earlier on, you mentioned that sometimes you will have to go out the city centres into rural areas. What we heard from one of the evidence that we took was that people like to when they are in a foreign country, but the place that they feel home is the religious settings when it comes down to mosques, gurdwaras, where it is synagogue. Anywhere you know that churches people feel that comfort with. We know that in a lot of rural areas that there aren't a lot of places of community like that. Is that something that you have taken into account when moving people around? Obviously, the data that you collect, the background that those people are from, what they require when it comes down to community settings and houses of prayer? One of the things that we look at a hotel that is offered to us, or that we have identified, is its setting. We try to avoid rural settings completely. The summer in, on the edge of town, which is a bit more challenging, we look at where there are places of worship. If we establish a hotel, we talk to those places of worship to enable our residents to either go to that place of worship or the place of worship to come to them. We work very closely with local mosques in particular. During periods of Eid or Ramadan, we do a lot of work to make sure that our residents can observe correctly and get the support they need from the mosques. That network with faith groups is very important and is established when we do open up a hotel. It is always difficult to do, but it is absolutely one of the priorities because, as you say, if you are new into a country and you are not able to access your faith, then that is completely disorientating and leaves people feeling vulnerable and very cut off. It is important to us and it is an important thing that we do, interact with those faith groups. I would say that that is one of the priorities when we establish a hotel to make sure that works. John, is it a tailored service or is it just when people come that you just provide that induction saying that there are mosques here, there are gurdwaras here, there are churches here, or do you actually state and identify somebody from the Muslim background and say that this is your faith, that this is what is available here and that this is what is available there? Is that individual or is it group settings that you just put that out there? Both, I think. It depends on the size of the hotel, it depends on what is made and what is nearby, you know, how close and near as mosques are, how that mosque is interacting with us and most of them interact really positively and reach out to create those networks and if there is a need for transport, it will help establish transport and so forth to make sure that people can access those services. So it is a bit of both, if you like, I do not think that there is one size of it at all. Equally, we do not know who is going to be placed in each hotel, so the faiths will change and therefore we need to adapt, as you say, to the cohort of people that live in that hotel to make sure that we adjust as that cohort changes over time because it does change and we need to make sure and one of the key things is to make sure that we get the food menu right and that the food menu respects people's requirements on a faith basis. Just on going back to the trafficking, we found that through the evidence that certain individuals and women may not always go to the police but they will trust third sector sometimes to go there first and the police identified that as well and it may be because the countries that these women come from, the police has a different sort of system which I will not say what kind of system but maybe it is not so trustworthy for those women and when they come here they are a bit scared to go to the police. Do you find, John, that those women do come to meers as well for that help sometimes before they go to the police? 100 per cent. There is often quite rightly a fear of authority, people in uniform, can be very intimidating based on the person's past experience and why they have come to this country for sanctuary. I well for officers do a huge amount of work around that first point of contact. The welfare officer on site will be that first point of contact whether it is contact migrant help if migrant help are on site or by their phone line but I think how welfare officers do a lot. I was with welfare officers in Glasgow last week and talking about the impact on them. They hear some very disturbing stories about what has happened to someone in their country of origin and some of their experiences. It is something that is quite traumatic for our staff which we need to support them with but they are very aware of those pressures and the need to make sure that the people who are coming to them get the support they need and access the services they need through the police in a way that they find that is supportive and not intimidating. Thank you, John. Carline, is there anything you want to add before we wrap up and pass it back to the chair? Yeah, happy to add. We speak to every asylum seeker when they enter the system, when they complete the asylum support form and that is a question we ask of them and we ask about their experience and we try and help explain what trafficking is. Both men and women are given the opportunity and we are a first responder across the UK because we recognise that people do not always go to the police and they feel uncomfortable so they can enter the NRM and we will support them and their application to enter the NRM. So we work very closely with Police Scotland to give people the opportunity to tell their story and it is one of the key concerns around the National Health and Borders Bill is the need under the bill for people to declare that they are a victim of trafficking early when it is such a frightening thing to admit to. So we take a really trauma-informed approach and try and help people disclose any trafficking in their history. Thank you, Carline. Thank you to you. Thank you. Thanks very much. I would like to talk about children within the system and so far we have heard a lot of evidence from in previous sessions regarding the experiences of children. I want to kick off talking about unaccompanied children first and foremost. So, Carline, could you just give us a quick overview of how unaccompanied children what is their experience of the system as we present it here? Within Scotland we tend to deal with unaccompanied children who have been assessed as adults and they are dispersed into accommodation as an adult. We support adult asylum seekers in their families but either we are concerned that someone looks like a child or they self-identify as being under 18. So we employ through our own resources an age dispute adviser to work with that young person and our staff are trained in this where we will refer them to the local authorities to social services, will explain the system for disputing their age, will advise the accommodation provider that they can make them safe within the accommodation and move them to a location where they are not housed with the adults. We also give them signposting and support in getting legal advice when we follow up on it because we know it is a lot for a young person to cope with to make sure that they are getting legal advice to change the status within the system. Our services don't support people who are placed as unaccompanied minors and that's a contract that refugee council holds with the Home Office. We've had a reference being made to the Scottish Government's pilot into independent child trafficking guardians and the aim of that was to tackle child trafficking. Anyone under 18 suspected of being a victim or unaccompanied asylum seeking children will be given a guardian. Can you give us a view on that? What's your experience of that? We don't cross into that work at all but we really support the pilot and the need for that because there is a great risk and we know a huge number of young people are coming across the channel in small boats and so the traffickers are taking advantage of that. John, can I turn to you in your opening statement? You mentioned that you were supporting 16 schools. What is the nature of that support? Our facilities management service. We provide the facilities management to those schools so we do the cleaning, the caretaking and the mechanical engineering system. It's not support in terms of pupils, it's our facilities management company. We make sure that those schools are fit, safe places to learn. So those extended services may as has across Scotland? Oh right, so it's not specifically four. It's not just asylum seekers now. I was trying to explain the breadth of the services that has in Scotland. Okay, thank you. I'm glad that we've got that cleared up there. You've talked and mentioned a little bit about the mother and baby unit that was used by Mears and Glasgow and the lessons that were learned there, but very recently in the press there's another hotel that's been used and I think that there's about 10 rooms there that are being used for mothers and mothers to be, I suppose. I won't name the hotel but I am aware of it and I know that the size of it is actually quite limiting and there are no kitchen facilities for mothers to sort of, I suppose, have some kind of autonomy over there. So can you give us a little bit of insight into why that particular hotel was chosen and I do bear in mind that you have already said that it's not ideal to have mother and babies in hotels? No, I mean the mother and baby unit in Glasgow was, had its own kitchen, they had their own kitchen so they had to create their own food. Unfortunately there are a small number of mothers and babies in the hotels and that's purely down to supply so we had to find capacity so that when a mother and baby arrived in the country we could make sure they had a room to live in. They are prioritised with the Home Office to move on to disperse accommodation as soon as possible. We do make sure that they have access to food, powdered milk and baby equipment, nappies and everything else they need whilst they're in a hotel and the hotel is charged to make sure that the food is appropriate for a nursing mother as well. So it, as I say, it's far from ideal, we try and minimise the time. That hotel is deemed that we was probably the one that was available at the time, the way we could meet the housing need because those people needed somewhere to live. So yes, it's not ideal. I wouldn't have much rather that we didn't have children in the hotels but for the short period of time they do need to be. We try and make it as comfortable and designed as possible to make their life easy for them. But you do get the fact that a hotel room with say a double bed in it is not necessarily going to have space for a crib in there and also all the equipment that a newborn baby would require plus it's a very vulnerable time for mothers, for any mother, but a mother that's fleeing from trauma and the additional support services that are required. What availability is there of all the sort of like health and social care, I suppose, services that that mother and child will need? Yeah, it's far from ideal. We try and make sure that the room can take a cot and we can give them the equipment they need. Space is limited and, as you quite I say, it isn't where a young child and a young mother should be. Absolutely it shouldn't be. All we can do is try and move them on as quickly as we possibly can. We do work very closely with health and social care partnerships in all the local authorities to make sure that those mothers have a GP service, that the asylum health bridging team, who are excellent, have access and provide access to those mothers on a daily basis. You know, they can't speak high enough of the bridging teams that provide that service to the mothers in our hotels. The priority for us is to make sure that they stay in the hotel for a very least possible time, if at all, and that we get them out into dispersed accommodation, where they have their own space and their own home. And regarding sort of like slightly older children, I suppose, I'm particularly thinking about primary school age children, but actually all the way through the system, children need to be with other children. So what sort of facilities or provisions do you put in place so that people and children in particular can be connected to each other, i.e. playrooms and have access to toys and books? Where the hotel has special spaces, we try and make sure that we take a hotel and it does have communal areas where we can create playrooms and we can. And we do work with voluntary organisations to make sure that, as you say, toys, play space books are available in various languages. And we do work closely with the education authorities to make sure that they have access to a school place, because if they're going to be there for some time, they do access school, and that if we are then moving them into dispersed accommodation, we'll try and make sure that we minimise any move from a school to another school. So that's one of the key things. Certainly down in the north-east of the Yorkshire-Humber area, we do try and make sure that the school places are maintained and we're dispersed in the same catchment area, so that there's least disruption to a child's education as possible. It's a far from ideal situation, but it is about trying to, as we tried to say, keep the best, do the best we can to provide the environment that a child needs, and being in a hotel clearly isn't that. We work with Glasgow City Council and learn from how they operate their homelessness, how they support children in the homelessness system, and the systems that are there for education, health and social services to make sure that we have best practice to look after the wellbeing of a young child. It's, as you say, it's growing and developing. I thank you for your answers. The sort of evidence that I've taken, and it's anecdotal, it's through chats, but it's people's lived experience, so it is entirely valid, is that when there are tensions in the system and things aren't working, you've given us a good outline of what you technically provide, and I'm sure that you do. But when things go wrong, what I'm hearing is that very vulnerable people have to rely on third sector organisations or advocates to sort of defend their case and fight their corner. And a common phrase I've heard is that mirrors do get there in the end, but you have to fight for it. And in my head, I'm just thinking, you're clearly very experienced at this, you know, you run lots of outlets, you do lots of things. So why is it that people are still thinking? Why are you not getting it right the first time, if you know what I mean? I'm sure that's what you would want to do, so why is that maybe not happening? Of course it's what I want to do, and I would suggest that we do get it right first time in the majority of times. There's always, on the scale of what we're operating, the speed at how it's operating, there will be times when we get it wrong. I do believe we try and rectify those problems as quickly as we can, and I completely understand from the other position where an NGO or an advocating organisation would feel that it's a system there banging their heads against the wall without waiting for us to respond. I believe we do respond. We have to go through a process. We work closely with Margaret Helt because they are there to take those issues on board from the service user, and then we go to the Home Office to say, you know, whether we need to move somebody or what we have to do, or if it's just for us to solve a problem, I hope we do solve that problem as soon as we possibly can within the confines. I'm just looking, we have, at the moment, in the hotel population, the vast majority of the service users, 492 out of 585 are single males. We've got 10 single males in the hotels, and there's 83 family cases. We're trying to keep families right down to a minimum because it's absolutely the case and they do flow through. I do believe we learn. I do believe we put problems right as soon as we possibly can, but I do completely understand why, from the outside, some NGOs and bunch of groups will think it's a frustrating system, and they wonder why it takes us two or three days to respond when they think it should be that day, and maybe it should be, and we are trying to make sure we're responsive to those needs. I'd always take on board any cases you want to send through to me personally, and I'd advocate for them, because I'm personally responsible with these contracts. Across the three contract areas, the three countries, we're currently looking after 30,000 people, so the welfare of 30,000 people means a lot, and anything that happens that isn't right is something that we want to confront and deal with, so it's always preferable for me that somebody in your position comes to me with a case and says, I've heard this person is struggling, why, and I'll give you a chapter and verse. We'll make sure that you understand the issues and what we've tried to do, and we will put our hands up and say, yeah, we could have done that quicker, and we'll find out why that happened and put it right, but on the whole, I'm close enough to the system and the staff to know that we approach it with the best possible intentions to, as I said earlier, to centre the service user, the residents, at the heart of what we do. There's no point looking up to 30,000 people. I think that my colleague Ben Macpherson would like to come in. A general point, convener, I don't know if this is the right juncture to come in, if you're content. I am content for you to... Thank you, convener. Just with regard to the evidence given thus far, and I note the point from my colleague Mr O'Kane about immigration law being a reserved matter, but all of the evidence that I've seen for several years is that migrants make a net contribution not just socially to the wider benefit but economically. The areas in which asylum seekers are placed in Scotland, most of the areas in which that's taking place, are currently experiencing labour shortages. Where you can give comment, and I appreciate that Caroline O'Connor might be able to say more than yourself, John Taylor, but are we really interested in any reflections about how much benefit it would bring if we had a sensible approach that allowed asylum seekers to work and participate in the economy in order to begin that net contribution at an earlier stage, have resource, build skills, be able to assist themselves more in achieving housing and contributing to society as much as they end up doing if they're successful through the asylum system, so to speak. It is difficult. I must say here that we're representing MIAS, and we're a service provider. We're not a political organisation or a campaigner, so I would rather not comment on policy. What I would comment on is that although we've talked a lot about the vulnerability of so many of the people we look after, we do know that most of the people, if not all the people we accommodate, want to be involved in the community. They want to have jobs, they want to produce something, they've come here for a reason, and anything we can do to support them become part of the community we will do. I recognise what you say if you look over a migration over the last 500 years, you'll say that the country is a richer place in many ways from migration. I don't want to comment politically, but I recognise the rich background of the people that we do accommodate. Some are very professional skilled people, but they're going through the system, and hopefully when they get a positive decision, they'll want to make a productive contribution to society. I thank you for raising it. Employability is a really close to our heart at Migrant Help, and we're funding this year around £200,000 towards projects to help people to access employability. It helps community cohesion, and it helps people to appreciate the benefit that asylum seekers bring into the system. As you say, we have labour shortages not only in Scotland but across the UK, and a group of people who desperately want to work. We typically see young men, and the majority of asylum seekers are young men who become institutionalised sitting in hotels or in asylum accommodation unable to work, unable to access enough ESOL lessons, unable to put their skills to use, and if given the chance, the contribution they could make would be much more effective, much quicker into the system, and the cost of the asylum system could be driven down, because people are waiting until they have a decision and move on to benefits before they have the opportunity to find work, so it would release pressure across the system if that opportunity was there. I'll just come back in. Caroline, I just wanted to ask you again about the children's situation. I don't think that you did get a chance to respond to when there are tensions within the system and things haven't worked out well. How well do you think that at the moment things are resolved? Are they listened to empathetically? How quick? What could be done to support either yourselves or meers? Obviously, we will be making recommendations coming out from this inquiry, so how can things be improved? One of the issues are the tensions from the volumes. Releasing the volumes in the system by a quicker decision making by accommodation by helping people move on and start their lives will make a big difference. When we tendered for this contract four years ago, it was around a third of the volumes that were currently sick into the system, so systems across the charity sector have stretched at breaking point, and Covid decimated some of the charities and some of their funds and their ability to work. More funding is directed towards third sector groups that help people, particularly after they have completed the assignment journey, so either those with no requests to public funds or those who have just received a decision will make a big difference to help the pressures on the system, engaging people in the communities, putting them into properties as soon as possible rather than hotels, so that they can then stay in the communities once they have received decisions will help tremendously. It is all the things around the New Scot strategy that is more important than ever in the situation that we are facing that will make a real difference to the services. This group has talked about interpretation and the access of language, resource and ESOL to people who are entering the asylum system and spending two years looking for something to do. Funding towards ESOL from the Scottish Government would be really welcome and it will help employability, it will help us to services. I think continuing to push that Scottish strategy forward and seeing what the central government is willing to fund or can push to help solve some of those problems also make a big difference. I recognise that asylum seekers are coming to Scotland because they feel the services and the support here are better, so it is taking those lessons back to the central UK Government and saying that this is what is working, this is what people are coming to seek to find would be fantastic. Thank you Caroline, can I bring my colleague Fulton in please? Thank you convener and good morning to the panel. First I can offer my apologies for spending most of the meeting so far on remote, so I have been online. The reason for that was there was significant delays on the Airdrie Bathgate line today, which is my train line, as I am sure will be reported on, given the extent of them. I have a few questions, convener. I hope that you will take some sympathy with my travel woes and I can ask them if that will be all right. I can give you a little bit of leeway, Fulton. Thank you, I really appreciate that, convener. First questions for yourself. John, I would like to give an apology if, as I say, I was on remote, but if I missed anything and it has been answered then please just say in the interests of time. I know that mirrors have been looking at forming a house in association. Are you able to update on any progress or otherwise around that and how that might impact the work that you do with the asylum seekers? Something that is very important to us, as I said in my opening remarks, in England we have a housing association registered provider and we provide three and a half thousand homes for homeless families for local authorities. What we are very keen to do is have a housing association in Scotland where we could work with local authorities to provide move-on accommodation for asylum seekers to get a positive decision, because we are acutely aware that that is going to become a massive problem for local authorities, the part of why dispersal is where do the positive decisions make. Suddenly Glasgow have a huge challenge. We have been working with the Scottish Housing Regulator for the last five years to see if we can register, showing the extent of our services, not just homelessness, but around special needs housing and elderly housing. We show them the models that we work in England, which are viable and successful. The feedback that we have got this year is that the regulator has concerns about registering a housing association that the ultimate parent is a private company. The housing association would be, if it was registered a charity. It would be a standalone limited company. It would be linked to our English housing association, which is a not-for-profit body that is owned by Mears. If we could get registered, we have been talking with Glasgow about operating a scheme to acquire hundreds of properties for homeless households to alleviate pressure directly for asylum seekers that get the positive decisions so that they can stay in Glasgow, they can go into employment, and children can stay in their schools. We have the funding to be able to buy those properties and secure those properties. We would love to be able to do it, but I think that we do need that RP status, RSL status, in Scotland at the moment. The regulator is not minded to register us. I am looking to see if we can do a similar type of funding without that RSL status. It is harder, because I think that giving a homeless family an RSL tenancy is actually quite powerful, because it gives them security. After years in the asylum system of insecurity, I think that to be able to have a secure tenancy and know that they can settle without that and certain that they will be living under would be brilliant. We have been and are committed to setting RSL that we will be the first of its kind in Scotland. It is clear that there are some challenges there, but it is something that we would really like to do. I thank you for that update on that, because I know from your presence that you have a North Lanarkshire permanent constituency that that is something that you have been working on for a period of time. I am sorry if my line of questioning is a bit disjointed and maybe does not join up exactly, but I will bear with me. I am probably for yourself Caroline and John, but I am interested in something that has come up in the various committee sessions that we have had on this. It is around about interpreters. What are your thoughts on that? What is the service provision like around interpreters? Is there difficulties with it? How do you think that we might overcome that? We have heard quite a lot of panellists telling us that there are real concerns in the city. We are very lucky in that we do not have any issues with interpreters. We have a subsidiary company that provides interpretation and translation for migrant health on our telephone lines and for every meeting with a client where it is required. We get an interpreter on the line within two minutes, 90 per cent of the time. Even with difficult languages, we have processes in place to work with other agencies. We have good information about the languages that clients speak. There is really good resourcing around the interpretation. We have provided translation for some other organisations. Our subsidiary has a project called Empower that trains interpreters. We try to identify people who have gotten status that they want to work as interpreters and we fund the training for them. With no comeback, they are not required to come work for us. We are trying to help to populate those more difficult languages with interpreters. What is important is that other agencies have access to interpreters. Our subsidiary provides small grants for small charities to be able to get interpreters. It is really important that Government has those facilities in place. I know NHS does. I know some contractors do, so when people get move-on support, they have that there. We work with Nears and the other accommodation providers to translate their information. People call our helpline when they get a letter in English that they do not understand and we will get an interpreter on to read it to them. It is really important that people understand where they can get interpreters, what their rights are and that organisations do not have it yet to put it into place. Thanks very much. Joanne, have you got anything to add to that? How do your team access interpreters? Are there any difficulties with that or not? Do you feel you have gone so far? Not particularly. We have all our information translated into the 12 most common languages that cover everybody in our system, so the induction packs, information packs, etc. They obviously have all the information to the air contract that Carine runs, which is where the issues are reporting goes. All our staff have an app on their tablets that links straight into language line, which means that when they are in a property or wherever they are with us, one of our presidents, they can immediately access language line and get an interpreter there and then, so that they can have a three-way conversation and that is available in the hotels. We can always access an interpreter. We do use local interpreters as well, so if we need someone on site, we can arrange for them to be on site as well. It is not one of the biggest problems that we have. The systems are in place. One final question, if that is okay, convener. That is a very small question and very succinct answers. It might have been answered if it has, given what the convener said. It is something that has come across my mind when we have been taking those sessions probably for yourself, John, but maybe Caroline as well. However, if you have asylum seekers coming from different countries or different regions, how is that managed? Are mirrors and other organisations aware of any difficulties that might be around that? How is that managed? It is a very general question. There are probably 12 countries in total that the vast majority of us have come from. We do, after four years running the contract, have a good experience of understanding where people have come from and some of the issues that have been fleeing. Obviously, that is where our translation services are aimed at. It is important that we get that right in terms of in a hotel setting that there is integration occasion that we make sure that various nationalities can live together well. It is really just part of the process, really, and the hotels are more of a challenge, but it is the worst accommodation. It is understanding where people's social needs are and they have access to. There is a lot of, especially in Glasgow, a lot of groups that are set up to deal and support with the Afghans or the Somalis or the Rare Trains. The Afghan United group in Scotland, particularly in Glasgow, is fantastic in reaching out and helping us to work with those communities. The Afghan United do some superb work with us. It is only worth adding that we will take reports through our telephone line if there are any racial tensions and concerns in any of the accommodation or hotels between different groups and escalate that to the home office to mirrors. We will also escalate it to the place if there is a real risk of any troubles started because of that, because we do recognise sometimes different factions from the same country will come and end up being placed together, so we are very alert to those risks. Just before we conclude our formal business, members have indicated a few other lines of questioning. Are our contributors this morning content for us to write to you with any further questions? Thank you for that. If anyone would like to come and visit any of our hotels or buildings, I am absolutely happy to accommodate that. That concludes our formal business this morning and I thank our witnesses for attending today. We will now move into private to consider the remaining item on our agenda.