 Gan dangos. welcoming to the sixth meeting of the social justice and social security committee we have no apologies this morning before we start I believe Jeremy Balfour would like to. The first item of business for today is a decision to take agenda items four and five, in private, are we all agreed. digwydd ddysgwethaf y dyfu, wrth ei ffrindio, tor Vamosat, a gyda i'i prifigiad. Rwy'n credu i ddoch chi'n achos am eu unrhyw ymhellidau cerddol chi o'r ystafell ond y prifigiad yn ditchogonol. Rwy'n credu i ddysgwethaf eu prifigiad eich wyf, mae'n ddigonol i mas i ei dd Gymraennau Llywodraethol yn ei ddangos ffordd, ac i'n ddysgwethaf i'ch gyn Punch, trafodd, a gwybod i'r ffordd i fynd i â'r aethau ac aethau. Fy entw i gyd i'r ffordd gairion O'Neill, y Pwyllgor Cymru, Cymru Skat Smith ac Phil Arnold, yn ymgrifolfa fffordd i Gweithdoedd France, thatrion Wales ac Northern Ireland, Great Britain, i roi cyflei'r ffordd i fynd i'r ffordd i'i cyfeithio. Ystod o fynd i gweithio'r ffordd i gael y ffordd y ffordd ei fferno, Can we please wait until I, or the member, ask him the question, say your name before speaking? And don't feel you have to answer all or every single question. And if you have nothing new to add to what's already being said, then that's perfectly okay as well. And can I ask everyone to keep questions and answers as concise as possible? So we will now move to the questions and I'm going to invite Jeremy, and thank you. Thank you, and good morning. Thank you both for coming along this morning. If I can open up with a fairly general question, Matt, is how do you think the wider dispersal of asylum seekers across Scotland will impact on individuals and families when granted refugee status? And Phil, do you want to go first and then maybe Graham? Sure, thanks. And thanks very much for creating the opportunity to give evidence today. The British Red Cross is the largest independent provider of support for refugees and people seeking asylum in the UK. And over the last five years we've supported just over 11,000 people in Scotland, of which about half of people have been destitute at different points in Scotland. We also undertake surveys and over the past couple of years we've surveyed about 1,700 people seeking asylum refugees. And safe housing has been the largest priority that has come up for people time and time again during those surveys. So we really welcome the opportunity of giving some evidence and to talk through today. When it comes to looking at dispersal across Scotland, fundamentally we support a community-based dispersal model that enables people to integrate from day one, that empowers communities, that creates a space where people can connect, where they can start life after having experienced persecution and trauma and torture in other countries and conflict. The process of expanding dispersal from Glasgow across different local authorities holds a whole range of different questions around whether there's infrastructure in those places around what people's experiences are in the asylum system prior to getting refugee status and starting life in those places. And we have some concerns around that. There's a couple of points that I just want to flag. I guess the first is around institutionalisation of accommodation and what that means in Scotland at the moment. And the second is also just talking specifically around some of the experiences of age dispute. Where these become important is when you're thinking about expanding dispersal across Scotland, there needs to be an effective planning framework and a strategic framework for enabling that infrastructure to move across. If there isn't that, gaps will appear and people will experience challenge and difficulties throughout the asylum system. And so at the point in which they get refugee status and start life again, they're already on the back foot and have already experienced a lot of different issues inside that. Over the last couple of years, we've seen the growth of hotel, for example, hotel growth across Scotland. Grow our casework support between 2020 and 2021 and 2022-23 has increased over 900% in terms of the amount of casework support. It started at a fairly low level and now it's supporting over 250 people who are in hotels. What we see inside that place is a lot of changing support needs for people who are emerging. We see over double the support needs around clothing. We see an increase in destitution and a need for cash inside those places. There's also particular age considerations. For clients who are over 65, we're seeing a higher percentage of health needs that are emerging inside hotel accommodation. For children who are in hotels, we're seeing significant prevalence of additional support needs inside those situations. And so during all of that process, if people aren't getting the support during that process, then when they're coming out of that towards moving into getting refugee status, it's going to cause particular issues. And I also just want to talk about age dispute, young people in Scotland, because part of expanding dispersal is also there's an element that is different from supporting people on Ukraine, which is different from supporting people around who've come through an Afghan relocation programme, for example. And some of that is about the technical challenge of engaging with the asylum process. And there really needs to be an effective capacity-building programme to enable local authorities and to work around that. So last year we wrote to the convener of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civic Justice Committee, to highlight that over the last few years the Red Cross had supported 39 young people who were wanting to challenge their age in Scotland either through the local authority or because of home office practice. And of those, 82 young people were found to be children. They fell through the gaps of protection in Scotland and were living independently throughout for a prolonged period of time. Last year the Red Cross supported 40 young people, 44 young people, 32 of which were also age disputed young people. In that situation, what we found was that for those young people, for 20 of those cases it required both legal intervention and as well as the Red Cross to highlight the challenges of the age assessment process. Out of those, 85% was looking at judicial review against local authorities about that decision making process. On average it took 11 weeks for those young people to, for the local authority to agree to undertake an age assessment. And during that period of time people weren't provided with accommodation support. So in an acute situation what we saw was two young people and it took over two years to get the local authority to undertake an age assessment. We have young people in that situation who have lived in hotels, in hotels for over 100 men, for example. So at that point there's a real area about looking at what it means from an element of protection inside Scotland and inside the institutional accommodation settings where you compare an age disputed young person to a child outside of a hotel. There's a higher prevalence of responses that the Red Cross has been required around trafficking risks, around suicide ideation for young people, around safeguarding issues, all very prevalent with inside institutional accommodation settings. So we have significant concerns around, you know, the needs to be the infrastructure in place to enable that dispersal to take place across Scotland. Thank you very much. I don't know if Graeme wants to come in. Yeah, it would be okay to repeat the question actually. I think I probably should say if we can keep our answers reasonably tight other conveners are going to get sloppy with you. So I warn you now. How do you think the wider dispersal of asylum seekers across Scotland will impact on individuals and families who are granted refugee status? Okay, well I suppose first of all we would associate ourselves with what Phil has just articulated to the committee. So I'll try not to kind of go over the ground that Phil's really well covered. Secondly, just to say on behalf of Scottish Refugee Council again we're really grateful to the committee for the devoting time and space for this. It's not lost in us that you're doing that and you've been doing it for a number of years alongside the Equality and Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. The people out there that are in the refugee protection system can often, in our experience, be rendered invisible by UK Government systems and it's important in this Parliament through the committees that it would get visibility and voice and you do that alongside the Equality, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. So as Phil said, we are at Scottish Refugee Council also for a community-based approach for the accommodation and support for people seeking granted and refused refugee protection. We, in our experience, there's been a real systemic change in institutionalisation of the accommodation arrangements across the UK, including in Scotland, of asylum seekers. We know that there's about 1,400 people, as I speak just now, in 17 hotels or what we would call ex hotels in Scotland, across 13 local authority areas. People are living in a very kind of Spartan poverty laden and often socially isolating experience, which, as evidence is covered, does a lot of harm to people's mental health and wellbeing. That's despite a lot of really good support from often local charities and community groups who can step in where the state has been retreating. That's a serious trend that we're witnessing across the UK, including in Scotland, in institutionalisation. As others have covered in previous committee reports, there's a question about who's benefiting from all of this. We think that there's a real perversity in the fact that it's private companies that are benefiting huge amounts of money, public money, to accommodate people in what is often not good accommodation for them or for local communities either. From that, we start to see a weakening in the confidence and support sometimes for asylum and refugee protection. We stand that in contrast to the not perfect but generally good experience in Glasgow over 20 years where there's been a pride taking in Glasgow around having and being enriched by people seeking refugee protection and contributing as part of rebuilding their own lives process. As Phil said, there's huge challenges because so much of the asylum system operates through private companies, private contracts, so much if it's done to local areas as opposed to done with them. Most of the funding, as I say, goes to private companies, doesn't go to local authorities at all or refugees or local communities. It doesn't need to be like this, but it is at the moment like this. I just wanted to flag up before I talk about the particular impact on individuals and families in terms of granted refugee status because I know that that's the focus of the question. You know that the asylum accommodation contracts across the UK are 10-year contracts premised at £4 billion over that 10-year period 2019-2029. They have a renegotiation clause that takes effect if it was used from 2026. We would hope and expect that Scottish ministers would instigate an overdue discussion about the use of that renegotiation clause as well as committee to the Home Secretary because in the moment nobody's talking about it, despite the fact that everybody is talking about the gross waste of public money going to private companies and not getting much back from it in terms of wider social outcomes. That renegotiation clause needs to be put front and centre of the next two elections, the general election at UK level, the Scottish Parliament election in 2026. We'd invite the committee to consider that and we can furnish them with more details. On the impact of people being granted, this should be a time of joy for people, relief, that moment where they're moving on to be able to rebuild their lives. Because of the length of time that people have been left in the asylum system, it's essentially been dormant up until about August, September last year, and then the Home Office in the UK government started to, for various reasons, which we can maybe go into, started to make asylum decisions again. We've saw that that's been done at a breakneck speed often, and we've saw that that's created, as I'm sure we'll talk about, acute pressures, not only in individuals moving from a very difficult asylum system, which they've been stuck in for a long time, into new systems like housing systems, social security systems, and critically work right. People want to work and go on with their lives and define their own lives again. When we talk about refugee integration, can we please talk about work as a central part of that? Because it's beyond housing and social security, work is so critical. But often they are finding that as part of the, we would say, the Home Office is quite a poor system in asylum, but we don't actually offer much in the way of moving on support, so it's a rush job to get people out of the asylum system within 28 days. And then we saw in August, from August last year, the candidate dreadful situation by the Home Office done, we would say selfish policy making decisions and decided that the 28 day clock would start ticking from the day of service of the asylum decision itself, not from the issuance of the BRP card. And the BRP card is a pivotal document that people need to be able to move from the asylum system to other systems of housing and social security. Thankfully, the Home Office paused that disastrous decision and communicated that pause in December. We're not sure, we're not seeing yet, that pause can come in through in practice, including in Glasgow. And it is just a pause, it could be lifted, and we could have a situation where the Home Office was doing what they'd done last summer, which is making a decision in their own interests and actually shorting it already to a short 28 day move on period for newly granted refugees to, as we saw in some cases of his days, and I think colleagues in British Red Cross at UK level as well have articulated this very powerfully in terms of their evidence. And we know that the committee took evidence from local authorities, I think it was Glasgow and Edinburgh amongst others, who were dealing with the front line of this. Again, it doesn't need to be like this. The asylum dispersal system when it was first conceived was conceived as one that would operate through joint working between local authorities, devolved Governments and Central Government. It's the Central Government, the UK Government that, particularly over the last few years, have broken that contract and have basically pumped lots of money to private companies to do their will within areas, increasingly in institutional accommodation. And then what's came from that is we see hormone people, hormone communities and lots of huge public money getting in a dysfunctional manner, getting distributed to private companies and then getting into shareholder profits, getting into dividends and all the rest of it and never seeing the benefit of local communities. It just doesn't need to be like this. And often we feel people that are newly granted are completely forgotten in this January and New Year question and they are not getting the support they need. Ourselves in British Red Cross do a lot of integration services work and it's never been more needed than it is at the moment. It doesn't need to be us as organisations doing it, we know local authorities do it. What does need to be in place as integration services is a core service within Scotland moving forward. We would hope and expect in next new Scots strategy we'll have a funded new Scots refugee integration standard. I believe that that follows on in a further line of questioning Graham, if I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I'm conscious of the time as well and we have got quite a lot of questions from the members this morning as well. So Jeremy, I don't know if you had to have this question. Perhaps you could pick up at some point when we've looked at this previously, I know we're looking at housing and homelessness particularly today, but one of the issues around this person has been the lack of legal services outside central Scotland. I think the last time we were at the committee leader was a couple of years ago. I'm just wondering if that's any better. If I go to Blair Garry or if I go to Dumfries, is the legal support there or is that causing problems? I'll also move on if I can to my second question to pick up at some point is what is the impact on those whose asylum claim is refused and how can they be supported? Graham, I don't know if you want to start with time with that one. I think the legal support is the legal support there question is a really important one now. No, it's not there. Part of the way the Home Office system operates is that it's part of doing it to areas it doesn't think about what needs to be in place for the people that they are moving asylum seekers to those areas. So about adequacy of mental health support and related services, therapeutic services, adequacy of legal advisers and representatives. You know when you talk to people in the asylum process because they're in the asylum process and that process is pivotal to their lives and their future and their families lives and futures as well. Having access practically to a solicitor who knows immigration and particularly asylum law because asylum was a specialist area of law is important if we put ourselves into the shoes of people. You know we would know that, we all know that so no it's not there. I have to say that we've been disappointed with the engagement with the Scottish Legal Aid Board on this. We don't say that lightly, we know they're supportive of access to legal services but we've raised this for a number of years at Scottish Refugee Council with the Scottish Legal Aid Board and we've also raised with the Access to Justice team within the Scottish Government the need for legal advice and assistance to be practically accessible for people across the international protection spectrum. You know we've had which has been a good thing over the last 10 years or so real step change in Scotland in terms of Scotland genuinely having protection populations like people have came through the Syrian scheme, unaccompanied children and young people that have came through various means, the asylum system being expanded in problematic ways but nonetheless being expanded to different parts of Scotland and of course what's with the Ukraine or 26,000 people have came from Ukraine, I think that's been a real success story actually and I think Scotland should be very proud and the Scottish Government should be very proud of what they've done in Ukraine through good intentions. It's not been perfect but it's been good but access to justice feels a little bit like a Cinderella at the moment for us in relation to asylum and we don't say it lightly but these are opportunities for us to say these things because we want that next new Scottish strategy which its action plans to be there in June to be of a different quality and of a different status than its predecessors have been which haven't had teeth, which haven't cut through to policy making across different directorates within the Scottish Government including access to justice. So it's not there at the moment, the Home Office don't think about these things which fundamentally they should be but we also don't think that the Scottish Government have been on top of this issue and the Scottish Legal Aid Board have been on top of this issue of access to justice and we need to find ways to break that down because at the moment it's Glasgow based services providing online that Paul and you know others that are on you know here remotely at the moment enjoying the meeting that's that's how it's been done. People aren't seeing solicitors. Sorry to interrupt again, I'm really caught in just the time. We've only got about roughly an hour and we have got significant amount of questions. We are really really keen to hear from both of you as well and particularly interested in this particular area so if you don't mind I'm going to move on and bring in John Mason. Thank you. Thanks very much convener. I think maybe my first question to yourself Mr Neil. I think the Scottish Refugee Council has talked about this. Is it maximisation policy? It's called where adults who are not related or don't know each other have to share rooms. So can you tell us if that's a bad thing and why and what the impact is on people? Yeah, thank you. It's a shocking thing. Hotel maximisation is a euphemism that the Home Office put out for what it is which is a requirement on people who are in what they misleadingly call contingency accommodation which is basically hotel or barracks or other forms of institutional accommodation to require genuinely its adults and go men to require them to share a bedroom if they're unrelated to strangers. Is that just two or could that be more than two? It could be more in Scotland maybe it's been two and there's about 470 people from Home Office conversations to be had on Monday this week who are in bedroom sharing, forced bedroom sharing arrangements in Scotland at the moment. I mean some people would say well it's better to have two in the one room than one in the room and one in the street. Yeah, I mean people first of all in terms of I see a point but I suppose first of all people have a legal in the Home Office of the legal duty to provide accommodation to people under section 95 the immigration asylum, a good thing too because otherwise as you say people would be in the street in the state of the saying you just take your chances there and all the bad stuff that comes for that and we're a civilised society we don't want to go there. I would hope and expect I'm confident we don't so that legal duty is important for people not to be in the street but when people are in the accommodation I suppose it's into like a stance about what what what kind of society are we are we I don't think anybody in this room I certainly wouldn't want to be sharing a bedroom for prolonged periods of time which is what people are doing so when if I wake up in the morning there's a person there I don't know who they are if I want to go to toilet at night you know I don't know who they are it's just it's a deep invasion into the ability of somebody to have any sort of privacy and sense of control in their lives and these are long-term stays it's over a year or so so when the Home Office talk about hotel maximisation what they're actually saying is we require you to share a bedroom with an unrelated stranger for a prolonged period of time generally in quite small rooms because you've seen that having a negative impact on people's health and things we know it has we know it has so we know of one hotel there was four suicide attempts in Scotland late last year and obviously I'm not going into the detail but that was disclosed to us by a front line professional and we've raised that as you would hope and expect. So do you think the room sharing was part of the reason for that? Completely that happened in one of the hotels in that hat that it was rolled out most quickly in more broadly you know the public's been publicised very much you know the baby stock home we have four people you know in Scotland thankfully it's two it's all relative but it's two people in but it's four we know that there's an increase in self-harm we know there's an increase as Phil was talking about in in related contexts and suicide ideation before self-harm and we know that there's a heightened risk of death by suicide. Could I maybe just move to Mr Arnold next? I mean you might want to comment on that but if I could just ask you another question as well which was does it make any difference the way people have come what their experience is in other words those who've been granted refugee status after seeking asylum has compared to the UK resettlement scheme or as I think you mentioned earlier on the afghan relocation scheme is that affecting people's experience when they come here? Yes so there's a couple of I guess there's a couple of points to flag but also just want to quickly make a point around the legal aid inside this context as well. The British Red Cross with Baker Mackenzie surveyed 251 firms across the UK who were providing legal aid and in Scotland there was still contact to 27 firms to find out about their provision of legal aid. There was only any availability in Glasgow Edinburgh and Musselborough and that was to help with some of the questionnaires and the streamlined asylum process. The other point that I just want to flag and it comes back to your point as well is if somebody arrives through the asylum system and gets refugee status at that point they have the rights to also apply for family reunion. There's a technical area of work but there isn't necessarily the level of technical competence all across the entire of Scotland in the legal aid so often we see a lot of issues emerging for families. If somebody arrives with their family it's very different from arriving separated from their family. We ran a family reunion integration service that was funded up until 2022. What we've noticed following that period of time is the length of the family separation has gone up from on average 3.2 years to 4.6 years when people arrive. Those 4.6 years are when you're talking about your child means that those children could become adults and might not ever get the right to family reunion in the same way and arrive in that place. Is that affecting both the resettlement scheme and the asylum seeking scheme? It's a separate scheme entirely and it's one of the safe routes that is referred to by the Home Office and just to put it into comparison between 2015 and 2022 there was around 28,000 people who arrived through the resettlement programmes in the UK. In comparison there was 45,000 family reunion applications. There was 58 percent more family reunion applications than there was through the entire resettlement programmes. There is no advanced integration planning that's taking place for those families in thinking through what happens in Scotland. So really however they come there's problems with the system? Yes, so for those individuals arriving through family reunion they would arrive on the back of coming through the asylum process. I think partly what we've seen is a lot of different programmes that are running in parallel so you've got the relocation programmes from people from Afghanistan, you've got the UK resettlement programmes, you've got the Ukraine scheme and then you've got asylum arrivals with family reunion at the end of that. So there's a lot of different programmes that arrive. I think you've made my point because it was just to see if there was problems with all of them and there are so thanks convener. Okay, thank you very much. I'm now going to bring in Paul O'Kane who is joining us remotely. Thank you very much convener and good morning to the panel. I'm interested in continuing the themes that we've already discussed particularly in terms of the role of local authority. We've heard stories of children being abducted from asylum accommodation in England and I'm just keen to understand is that something that is a threat of happening in Scotland or is there instances of that happening in Scotland and indeed our local authorities within that context fulfilling their duties in respect to asylum seeking children so I wonder if I could maybe bring Philan first. Thanks for the question. I made the points around some of the experiences that we see for people who are age disputed. Under the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Scotland Act there's a duty to treat a young person as a child until their age is fully determined. UNHCR also did an audit of the Home Office in terms of their screening and vulnerability process when they arrive inside the UK and one of the things they flagged were some of the concerns over the age assessment, glance assessments that were taking place. The implications of that are that people may get dispersed up into Scotland without having a merchant-compliant age assessment and like I flagged last year we supported 32 young people who were age disputed inside that situation. For the majority of those it requires both work starting around judicial review to undertake an age assessment with the local authority and during that period of time those young people would be living independently as an adult in very precarious vulnerable situations. On average last year it took about best part of three months until local authorities agreed to undertake that age assessment. We've also noticed a change of practice with Police Scotland who are doing a skim assessment which is basically contacting the Home Office and looking at that. We don't understand what that policy and process is and that might be an area that you want to take further evidence around. What we observe is that the implications are it can be very difficult for young people to challenge their age and it can be a very drawn out process. That young person, like I said in the data that we prided previously, 82% were young people. Last year it was about two thirds of the people that we had supported had gone through and were found to be children as well. That is protection concerns. That is gaps in which children who have faced conflict or violence abroad who might be victims of trafficking who are in Scotland with high levels of vulnerability and are left to live independently as adults. That is the wrong way around. People should be treated as a child when there is any gap over their age. Thank you very much. If I could just on the point about the expertise and the resourcing of local authorities, in this context and of course in the wider context of supporting refugees, the Scottish Government would suggest that local authorities have built up refugees in some of the research that they have commissioned. From some of the answers this morning there are clearly gaps and more to be done, so I wonder if Graham might want to comment on his view of local authorities as status for refugees. I will try to be concise. One of the areas that Phil has just spoken about is what is happening to children and young people. Particularly by the Home Office, we would see that there is systemic, almost industrial scale practice in the Home Office, particularly in the south-east, of these glance assessments of rooting people, children, unaccompanied children, into adult home office accommodation. I must start to see that in Scotland, as Phil is talking about. We think that there is a population who actually won't be known to anybody as unaccompanied children and then there will be a population who maybe the front-line housing worker or a lawyer or a local community organisation has identified that this is a child here. The age-to-speak process, which is Phil's articulated, is not a straightforward process in itself, may be engaged. Then we see some of the outcomes that actually the evidence is building, sadly in building across the UK, where we have a lot of very bad practice by the Home Office at that initial entry point. We have a looked after child system in Scotland. We have clearly got obligations to unaccompanied children seeking asylum to treat them as children first and immigration states come second or third. This challenge that is being posed by the Home Office and industrial scale punting unaccompanied children across different parts of its Home Office adult accommodation estate, including, we fear now, in Scotland too. We would say that it poses a huge challenge for Scottish Government. It's not one that they've made, it's not one that they've caused, it's not one that councils have caused, but it's one that's incumbent upon us as refugee charities working with services on the ground to be saying to public to committees like this to say, these are the kind of serious issues that do need to be addressed by Scottish Government in terms of how they are resourcing child protection teams, social workers and different local authorities across Scotland, because this issue is not going anywhere, all this issue of the Home Office putting unaccompanied children and young people into adult accommodation across the UK is growing and growing and growing and we're now starting to see in Scotland too. And of course the illegal migration act is one of the issues that once that's commenced and we expect, it's rotten core, the duty to remove to be commenced when the so-called safety of Rwanda Bill gets royal ascent we expect within the next month. That's that switch, a really bad switch, the lights go off then and then you actually have a lot of people being permanently inadmissible to the asylum system. So the child protection issue is a key issue, Paul, committee, that the Scottish Government need to focus on as a strategic challenge. Really now we would hope and expect a new Scottish strategy would have clear lines in that, but it's wider than the new Scottish strategy because this is about looked after children legislation, it's about our children's Scotland act 1995 in the legislation and how we resource local authorities to deal with this. I'm conscious of the time as well, so I believe Mary McNair would like to come in. Mary, thank you. Thank you, convener. Good morning panel, I really appreciate your time this morning. I'm going to focus on homeless services, so I really want to ask you what's your experience of the impact on statwally homeless services and whether there are specific issues depending on the type of refugee status a person and or family can have. Can you maybe start with that, Graham? Yeah, it's a really great question, but it's an important question in terms of the seriousness of the issue. It is one of the other big challenges that's affecting, as you know, local authorities across Scotland alongside the child protection social work one. So we've seen, I suppose, the start point I would say around homelessness is that the issues that I've talked about in terms of refugee homelessness we think are exposed in an underlying fragility in homelessness across all communities in Scotland that have particular pressure points within Glasgow, within Edinburgh, Aberdeen City, Dundee City, some of our main urban areas, but we've already got homelessness issues that are there in the cost of living crisis that's been persistent for many communities and worsening for many is one of the underlying causes. Refugees, I suppose to put it with a bluntly, refuse to cause homelessness in Scotland. Refugees are just one of the groups who are in vulnerable socioeconomic and legal predicaments who are at risk of homelessness and are experiencing homelessness and are also experiencing breaches of their rights to have homelessness assistance. We saw, for example, in November last year in Glasgow that there were 27 individuals who had suffered a statutory failure to accommodate at all from the local authority through a refugee integration service, and some of that was just the fact that, as we talked about earlier on, the Home Office was accelerating for the first time in five years asylum decisions, doing it in a very shortened move on period, not even 28 days, but in some cases 7 days, 14 days max, and people were moving into at best an appropriate temporary accommodation for the longer term, so not really temporary, or at worst, as I say, a statutory failure to accommodate. So the issue we don't think has been resolved. We're going to see a continuing asylum part of all of this throughout 2024. A lot of people getting decisions. We think a good proportion of them will remain positive decisions, so people have got homelessness rights. We think a growing proportion of them throughout 2024 will be people who refuse asylum, which was touched on an earlier question. Those people are in an incredibly difficult situation in bodies like ourselves and in British Red Cross are often the only places that those individuals can go to. So the pressures are huge in homelessness, and I suppose this is one of the other issues that we want the Scottish Government to, as we said before to this committee late last year, to really grip, because a policy was getting made in the interests of the people who are in the inappropriate temporary accommodation. If you asked them what they would want, they would be saying, this is a number one priority, but it's getting cut. We know that politics is about priorities, but the issues around failures to accommodate people at all, as well as more widely people getting put into often privately owned temporary accommodation, like we see in the asylum system too. We see it as well in relation to local authority procurement of temporary accommodation. It needs to be addressed because it's only going to get worse, so the homelessness issue and practical, consistent access to homelessness assistance, which is decent, is a critical issue, otherwise we're just going to be here six months or a year from now saying the similar thing to you guys. Can I just go back to the 28 day period? Can you explain why it should be longer and what the advantages and disadvantages are to extending that? Can I just remind Graham as well that we are really close to time and, as I say, if you can be as concise as possible? We've got stuff to say in that, but I'll pass over to Phil on that, because British Red Cross have been lots on this. We did a cost benefit analysis of the move-on period and made a recommendation that it should be extended to 56 days, part of that. That was working with the London School of Economics and that's publicly available and we can re-share that, but I had a number of different assumptions inside it about the percentage of people who'd end up rough sleeping around the costs of quickly trying to process and access temporary accommodation around the mental health impact and the cost on the NHS of becoming destitute and homeless. At that point it was an estimate between £4 million and £7 million would be saved by extending the move-on period, so there is a clear period of time when there's so much public pressure on local authorities than to actually have a more planned and route way where destitution isn't built into a transition period is utterly essential. I think the other point that's just generated to the raise is around the concerns around withdrawals of applications rather than negative decisions or positive decisions and in the year up to September last year, September 23, there was a 300% increase in asylum withdrawal and we don't know often what's happened inside those situations, but people will often not know about their asylum claim, not know where they are at, might be out of contact with people and end up street homeless and what we end up with is a very reactive set of processes rather than a preventative system that is built to prevent homelessness. On top of that, one of the examples that we've got is around Reunited Families, for example, when we supported 4,000 Reunited Families during the Family Reintegration Service, the Red Cross has got a travel assistance programme and prayed for the flights of some of those families to arrive in the UK so we could give advance notice that families would be arriving and joining a refugee sponsor inside the UK. During that process we reduced the time it took to access temporary accommodation from 38 days to 13 days. Now what we've seen in Scotland because of the overspill of pressure under homelessness has gone in Scotland from six days to access a temporary furnished accommodation to 34 days and so what we're seeing is a lack of preventative work that's taking place and thinking through the experiences of refugee families who are arriving after the Family Reunion, after getting refugee status, which again creates quite a question of more reactive work because of the pressure that local authorities are under at the moment. Thank you. Risquitley, can you highlight a good practice you're aware of in terms of local authorities re-homing refugees? Yes, I mean if you look at the whole range of different experiences, I mean I think one of the bits that we'd like to draw out more is not both in terms of local authorities but more generally in terms of housing is Scotland has really stepped up around Ukraine and provided support for thousands and thousands of people and guaranteed accommodation for people who have fled from acute conflicts and warfare. That whole experience needs to really sort of reflect around what's the good practice that has existed in supporting people from Ukraine and how can we apply that practice for other refugees that are currently facing in Scotland. So I'd say there's a plethora of different good practice that exists. It's just trying to make sure that that goes to support all refugees and looking at how we apply that learning. Okay, thanks very much. I'm now going to invite Roseanne. Thank you. Thank you, convener. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you very much indeed. You've certainly given an awful lot of evidence so far and I understand entirely the concerns you have regarding the Home Office. My questions are very much on impact of the third sector organisations. Unfortunately our time is now very short so I think that the information you've already given regarding the Home Office will apply here but if you wouldn't mind not repeating some of that that would certainly help to get through this section. The UK asylum policy appears to consistently change and evolve which I would imagine you would want some form of evolution moving forward because different conflicts mean different issues. So how does this affect the type of support that organisations like yourself can provide to refugees? It's difficult to know where to start because there has been so much change that's happening so quickly when local authorities, when there's a lot of pressure taking place, when there's funding challenges that exist inside the sector, when you react time and time again to a whole set of different changing policies that are impacting people who's claiming asylum and also when you're looking at the devastating impact that will happen through the Legal Migration Act we're concerned that there doesn't seem to be a clear and effective strategy for mitigating the harm of that and then that's going to come down to impacting the volunteering community sector. Currently there's like just last year if you're looking at the streamlined asylum process for example we're in favour and in support of where there's high recognition rates to make sure that the asylum process has simplified that people can actually access quick decisions quickly that is effective decision making that enables people to move on and we've also got concerns that people are put into acute poverty through the asylum support system where they're unable to effectively support themselves, unable to work and become through that process become increasingly separated from being able to work and all of these things have an impact in terms of the mental health that people face, their well-being, their ability to contribute and also with the technical changes on things like the streamlined asylum process it takes a lot to build up an understanding of what the process is whether it's regulated activity and not regulated activity and to deal with the inquiries that comes through. So can I take from that if you don't mind that it's because it is such a short period of time for such radical changes that's what's causing the the main issue? I would say it's a mixture reactionary. I think we've got a perfect storm happening at the moment I think you know currently the largest fund for us where there's a whole range different things is public donations which in the cost of living crisis is challenging we don't have access to european funds for grants in the same way in scotland we've seen different processes we see more resettlement contracts for example for the third sector in other countries outside of scotland and so I think funding for the sector is incredibly challenging at the moment when you're also trying to build capacity when casework is becoming far more complex where we're seeing more and more protection issues emerge where mental health issues suicide ideation trafficking risks are all going up from an operational perspective that takes a significant period of casework support to create a space of safety when I referred earlier on to the surveys that we had undertaken in in scotland alarmingly 80% of clients informed us that they needed our help to help to deal with the situation of safety in scotland and as I say that if that's representative of the 11,000 people we supported over the five-year period that's a very unsafe situation that's occurring for people yeah thank you I will read to move on but I think I've got the gist of where your concerns are the next question what are the main pressure points for third sector organisations or organisations that support refugees and asylum seekers I think you've touched on that a little but Graham if you could answer that question for me please yeah I think as Phil mentioned the spaces of safety I think is a really good frame to look through this because they are dwindling and there's various reasons as Phil has said for that like you know often funding is one and we know there's less funding for everybody at the moment and the third sector is is is definitely suffering I would say disproportionately from that the third sector for the people that we work with especially if the illegal migration act due to to remove is commenced and that will be commenced let's be honest but I would say within two months then that is that switch that I talked about that is that you could have tens of thousands of people across you you will have tens of thousands of people across the UK perhaps immediately but certainly by the end of this year who will be permanently inadmissible to the asylum procedure to have an application considered and also if there's trafficking which there often is they'll not be able to access support right so essentially the state is closing the door on those people in the third sector so this is a foreseeable risk the illegal migration act and it's going to aggravate to put it mildly the pressures that are on organisations like us and others and the impact on staff like especially at the staff I can speak from my colleagues in terms of like working with them you know we have a lot of advisors case managers and we know British Red Cross due to and others do and they're really suffering here you know and people are burning out people are struggling to cope sure you would because of the issues that you're dealing with so there is there's a perfect storm which is kind of like at the ground level and it's right up at the the kind of the high level also so mental health pressure and staff you know worsening risk of people being exploited are all we're starting to see it already and we're we're going to continue to see it in less like child protection like homelessness assistance the third sector for this particularly vulnerable group is funding and resources and other form support is prioritised for it because nobody else for these for the people and I do understand that and I'm sorry I know I'm holding it tight but I am aware of the time and we have a lot of questions I'm just aware that the main pressure points and I think you've given me a really good example of for the two or three of them are actually there and my last question what differences do you see in how support and how you support people who are granted refusatus compared to those who are in Scotland and under UK resettlement scheme I'm sorry I didn't say that very well I'll do it again and what difference is differences do you see in how you support people who are granted refugee status compared with those who are in Scotland under a UK resettlement scheme and are there also differences between those who are here on different resettlement schemes again Phil I'm going to come back to you on that and again I'm sorry it's only one of you but we are short of time that's fine so we're not contracted in Scotland to provide support for on the resettlement programmes there is funding tariffs that are available for local authorities we as I mentioned previously about half of our clients are people who are in the asylum system or refused from asylum systems we also have support through the move on phase and for people who are in family reunion and arriving through family reunion so in Scotland we're not contracted to provide support for resettlement programmes generally we are in some other places and there is very different frameworks that govern how people are treated and how and what happens prior to people arriving we think there's learning that can apply from resettlement programmes that can be applied for for example for applications of learning in family reunion cases and looking at how to prepare in advance of arrivals one of the things that we suggested with inside new scots is that it's great having integration from day one but actually you need the planning and processes to happen before day one to make integration work effectively on day one for people so we think that there's routes to apply learning from resettlement more widely there's also different funding tariffs available through resettlement that there aren't necessarily available for people in other programmes so actually how do you have a funding strategy in Scotland that recognises the different schemes that exist and how can you effectively make sure that that support is there for everybody. I'm sorry it was short. I have got several questions based around the theme of what further support from Scottish and UK governments might be useful so how do you think the UK government should be addressing the backlog in asylum claims and if I can ask Phil if he could be as quick and concise as possible thank you. So as I mentioned earlier we're in support of simplifying an asylum process that enables people to get recognised as refugees earlier quicker and in a more trauma informed approach currently it's not that when the streamline asylum process was set up the questions that were there were complicated questions that almost replicated what might happen in a substantive interview but people didn't necessarily have reforms or in English and people didn't have legal support inside that we were advised that providing advice from the office of immigration service commissioner were advised that providing advice and completing those forms was a regulated activity and that that causes some issues inside that so it's great to simplify the process it's great to create a quicker route for doing that but it needs to be done in a a trauma informed route away and b it needs to happen within sides legal support for people to understand and to navigate that effectively I think there's significant concerns often administrative issues that go alongside the asylum system so the concerns around withdrawals has a significant impact in terms of people's rights and abilities to to start life again if they're unaware things I think when we're thinking about dispersal a lot of house moves can take place for people it can be quite disruptive in terms of people's ability to integrate and I think we're actually thinking through a dispersal framework more effectively that builds integration from day one will be you know is that at least is completely needed at this point okay thanks very much Phil and turn to Graham as well what more do you think the UK government could do to ease the pressure on local authorities and third sector organisations as well yeah thanks convener I think similar vein to what Phil's saying I mean we would urge the UK government or maybe more realistically the next UK government depending who it is to to have a recent moment around the asylum system to stand back and kind of think okay we've had this asylum system since essentially 1999 when the immigration asylum act was passed generation on now we've had a in our view a will regressions and weakening of the access to right to asylum the right to and identified accommodation the right to be free from poverty we think the asylum system is going to die basically and we think it's really perverse that you know they've never had more resources as we do today in the asylum system it's just where all that money's going it's not going to the public good it's not in the public interest so the first thing we would say to the UK government is aside from the illegal migration act and not to go there is to say look invest in the asylum process again invest in how the system across the UK works by which I mean devolved government local authorities and central government sensible discussions working together the way that asylum dispersal was originally conceived in 1999 and largely worked for at least the first decade not perfect it was a lot of problems with it but compared to where we're at now where we have real separation a parallel asylum system which is done to areas and done to countries across the UK so we think there's a reset moment that needs to happen we think that that reset moment should result in sensible decisions about how intra-uk government institutions work investment in the asylum process investment in the people who work in that process who are often very very stressed and are getting asked through this streamlined asylum process that was instigated last year getting asked to make three or four decisions a day like I mean that's quick and dirty stuff they're doing there so it shouldn't be like that again you know we're seeing a devaluation of the asylum process that needs to be reversed so I mean some structural changes need to happen because people will always move and people will continue to come very small numbers relatively speaking to come to the UK through the asylum process so there's kind of big political choices that need to be made by the next UK government about what they're going to do a legal migration act reset how the asylum systems working get the different parts of the UK working again is dispersal and the asylum support system is always conceived to be invest in the asylum process and build integration as Phil said into the asylum process you know so actually build it in so when you think about where you're putting people where you're moving people that type of thing and work becomes part of the conversation as well as it has in other European countries just very very quickly and it's a more of a local issue in but I'm just wondering if you've got an awareness of this happening across Scotland in particular with the refugees particularly the Ukrainians who are being housed in hotels I know from a local area that they've been given notice to quit the hotel and they're hugely concerned because they've obviously been there for quite some time their families their children are at school and they're now seeking you know well they're basically registering as homeless and but their concern is that the upheaval of it all rather and they've already basically maybe been working or attending you know college and whatnot and it's the upheaval and the change of it all as well is that something that you're recognising across Scotland or across the UK as well I'm well I don't know if you want to come in thanks very much I mean we're not we're not funded specifically in Scotland around some of the ukraine response there has been significant changes that have taken place I'd say one of the points I just want to sort of flag is within Scotland as well as the ukraine response there's a whole set of strategies that are working that are working together and one of the one of the aspects inside that is the ending destitution together strategy currently what we have a programme that's supporting through the Scottish crisis fund that supports 35 with 35 partners across 26 local authority areas and over the past couple of years it's supported over 3000 people with providing emergency cash that includes around 900 children who've accessed that emergency cash and I think part of how there's going to be there's always lots of changes that take place for individuals and I think part of it is how that those destitution strategies work alongside to create their safest that space of safety alongside things like the new scott strategy as well as putting plans in place to try and make sure that there's a safety net for everybody irrespective of those situations that occurs currently partly through the pressure but that we haven't necessarily got this long-term picture of how these strategies all work together to make sure that there's a protective space for everybody including people is that just the ukraine family is that you're talking okay thanks Phil um I'm now going to bring in paul okayn thank you thank you very much to be an hour maybe just pick up on some of the points um that you raised in your questioning there um the Scottish refugee council in the debates we had in parliament on the illegal migration bill had talked about the importance of a mitigation strategy from the Scottish government um in subsequent debates the government have said that it's challenging to do because they're not entirely clear on what the provisions of the bill and when they'll be enacted but i'm sure you've mentioned that a number of times this morning so just keen to get your view on the importance of a mitigation strategy still in the Scottish context. Yeah it's needed because we think it is really foreseeable the UK government couldn't be clearer you know they're about to pass the safety of Rwanda Bill sadly through the UK parliament and that will with it bring the commencement of section 2 of the legal migration act 2023 which is a duty to remove which is the one that envelops all people who arrive in the UK through a regular means which is going to be the vast majority of refugees of people seeking asylum as well as trafficking survivors therein and the UK government have been we think really sadly grimly clear about what they're going to do you know to those people they're going to hold people in at least for part detention or quasi institutional accommodation facilities are going to expect people to survive on you know around £1.30 £1.40 a day through its asylum support system in infertid commas and this is about to happen you know they'll try their test flights to Rwanda we think in the next two months you know through using through provisions the nationality and borders act they'll be legally challenged in the courts and then i suspect what they'll do is they'll wheel out the commencement of the duty to remove and do what they do which is all the grim politics all the grim visuals around this and say this is what will enable those flights to Rwanda to actually be taken off and we're going to see as we've said frequently we're going to see loss of life as a result of this like we've got to say in these forums because that is what's going to happen the UK government know it the home office know it the officials know it i'm not speaking i might seem sounds if it's a bit emotive but believe me i'm not being emotive on it i'm being crystal clear in this the risk of suicide ideation self-harm and particularly death by suicide is going to heighten significantly as soon as the efforts practically are made to because it's going to not only affect individuals in the Rwanda flight it's going to affect the chilling effect so we do actually need a plan an integrated plan in Scotland around this we get the Scottish government's position that you know there has been this really difficult period that they've been put in this limbo period but when are they going to commence it but the duty to remove is going to be commenced the UK government haven't put this in place not to commence it this side of a general election it will be commenced it will be commenced at the time the Rwanda bill is passed and then we're into that predicament that we've all spent last year in this committee and other committees talking about is just what is going to happen to those people what's going to happen to those people permanently in this with the asylum system act no access to trafficking trafficking support rights including in scotland that's what's going to happen it's dead clear so we do need to get an integrated plan in place if that's part of new scots or it links to new scots that's important of course it is that's one of the relevant strategies but we need something in place because otherwise this switch is getting turned and there's going to be a lot of people left in the dark in very very dangerous situations because the door has been closed on them asylum and trafficking okay thanks great i'm conscious of the time as well paul do you have any further questions no convener i think new scots has been covered adequately so happy to hand back to you okay thanks very much so that concludes this evidence session and i'd like to thank the witnesses for joining us this morning it has been particularly interesting hearing the evidence from yourself so thank you for that so that concludes our public business and we will now move into private to consider the remaining items on the agenda thank you