 Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the ninth meeting of 2020-23 in session 6 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have no apologies today but we know Rachel Hamilton is running a wee bit late, she'll join us as soon as she can. As members will be aware, Joffith Patrick has resigned as convener of the committee following his appointment as Minister for Local Government Empowerment and Planning. For this reason, I will be chairing this part of the meeting in my capacity as deputy convener. I would like to put on record the committee's thanks to Joe for his work and congratulations and wish him well in his new role. I now move to agenda item 1, in which the committee will be invited to choose a new convener. The Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish National Party are eligible for nomination as convener of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, and so I therefore ask if we have any nominations for convener. Yes, Karen. I'd like to nominate the co-cab. Nomination of co-cab. I'll wait to second that. Thank you very much, Fulton. We have co-cab. Are all members content? Do all members agree with that? Co-cab, you are duly nominated and chosen as our convener. Thank you very much. I will now congratulate you and hand over to you to chair the rest of the meeting. Thank you very much, Maggie. Thanks to everyone. I'm sure that people will bear with me as my role of convener for the first time of a committee. I'd also like to thank Joe FitzPatrick for all the work that he did previously and wish him well. I look forward to working with everybody. The second item on the agenda is to agree to take item 4, which is consideration of today's evidence in private. Are we all agreed? Yes. We are agreed, thank you. We are now moving on to agenda item 3, which is our panel with stakeholders that we welcome here today. We will be shortly hearing from our panel. Today, we have joining us Philip Arnold, who is the head of refugee support, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland with the British Red Cross. We have Annika Joy with us today, programme director of the Simon Community Scotland. We are also joined by Graham O'Neill, policy manager of the Scottish Refugee Council and Andy Sirell. I hope that that is a correct pronunciation. Legal director and partner of Just Right Scotland. You are all very welcome with us today. I will refer members to papers 1 and 2 and invite each of our witnesses to make some short opening remarks and we'll be starting with yourself, Phil. Maybe just a couple of minutes. Obviously, the members wish to ask lots of questions so that we can get to the heart of the matter and do some sort of deep scrutiny there. Brevity in your opening remarks would be appreciated. I'll start with you, Phil, please. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to input. It is such a critical time to be discussing the asylum system and looking at how we can stand up for rights for protection for people across the UK and in Scotland. There are a number of concerning policy developments, not least the illegal migration bill, which would be devastating on the lives of men, women and children seeking protection in Scotland and across the UK. However, there are opportunities to build on the work that's happened through the anti-destitution strategy, the integration strategy learning from the Ukraine super sponsorship scheme. However, since the publication of Hidden Lives and New Beginnings on 22 May 2017, the British Red Cross has provided support to 130,000 people seeking asylum and refugee protection across the UK and approximately half of the people have required destitution support since that time. We do expect more people to become destitute and we think that there's a need for a more holistic and a stronger strategy, more holistic strategy around humanitarian strategy inside Scotland. There's also a need to better consider how we enforce better accommodation in Scotland and including institutional accommodation in hotels and ensure public bodies are empowered to protect people's rights like victims of trafficking and unaccompanied children. Thank you very much, Phil. Is it okay if I go on to Annika Joy? I'm a programme director for Simon Community Scotland and we are a homelessness organisation. I joined the organisation to lead work on preventing and ending destitution in Scotland, coming previously from a refugee rights background. Simon Community provides accommodation and supports people who have been refused asylum and have no recourse to public funds. That's what's sometimes called end of process. It's where the Home Office believes that there's no further right to proceed with your asylum claim and threatens you with permanent removal from the country. It very rarely enacts that removal, that detention and that removal. The community that we work alongside provide a safe place to stay and access to legal advice and support in partnership with the Refugee Council where people are able to make a fresh claim and re-enter the asylum system. Each year, about 50 people stay with us. The people who the Home Office has considered to be rights exhausted and each year around between 80% and 90% of those re-enter the asylum system and ultimately gain refugee recognition. During that time, they receive financial support from Red Cross and other organisations that this small ecology exists in Glasgow. Our concern really is that the illegal immigration bill will abolish asylum in the UK and will create a rough sleeping crisis. The small charities that provide the support, such as the Simon Community and the Refugee Survival Trust, will be overwhelmed and not able to provide support. We're barely able to do it at the level that already exists and we're concerned that the future presents a much more grown option that would mean exploitation for people who are not able to have the safety of a third set to support. Thank you. Thank you, Annika. Can we move on to Graeme, please? Thank you very much, convener. Congratulations in the convenership. Just to say thank you, a real heartfelt thank you to the committee for taking the time to devote to this issue. It's much needed. It's timely. As both Phil and Annika have alluded to, we're at a real turning point in relation to refugee rights within the UK. It's a very scary turning point, a very dangerous one. We have, as has been mentioned, the so-called illegal migration bill that's getting rattled and rammed through the UK Parliament currently, a very, very little scrutiny worthy of the name. What that's doing has been said is abolishing asylum for the vast majority of people who seek refugee protection. It's also seeking, in a further egregious move, to end protection for survivors of trafficked exploitation, modern slavery. To be clear, that's women that are raped daily within commercial sexual exploitation. As a result of the bill, we will no longer be able to get any support from the UK or other parts of the UK unless we stand against it. It's as brutal as that. Shame on those that are perpetrating this legislation at the UK level. It needs to be said because it's such a profoundly worrying moment. It's a betrayal of what's happening in the moment of the refugee convention. We should remember that the refugee convention rose from the ashes of the international community's response to the Holocaust. That was over 70 years ago. That's what's been turned away from through the illegal migration bill, through its attempt to abolish asylum. I suppose what I'm trying to convey here is the gravity of the moment, which is one of the reasons why we are so grateful that the committee's given its time today. The Scottish Parliament should, and it's great that you are, speaking and devoting time to that. I don't want to add too much more, because I know there's plenty of time for the session. Suffice to say that we regard this bill, the illegal migration bill, as morally repugnant, and we think that it's going to be practically and workable, and we think that, like all deterrence-based legislation, it has zero evidence of effectiveness behind it, because that is not why people come to seek safety. The reason that people come to seek safety is to rebuild their lives. As one of the most human and relatable things that we would all do, once you get out of the immediate danger, you go to a new place and you try to rebuild your life in that place. What one of us in this room wouldn't be trying to do that. When I have those moments of empathy and I speak to people who have refugee protection, that's exactly what they say and they convey, there's nothing more human than that. That is why the refugee convention has been so successful and so lifesaving over the years is because it is in the real world of people making really difficult decisions. It's not in a dangerous fantasy world, which frankly, this UK Government legal migration bill and predecessor legislation has been. It acts about how they think people should behave, as opposed to how people actually do behave in moments of crisis. The final thing that I want to say in the open remarks is that we cannot bystand in relation to this legislation within Scotland, because if we bystand, then we unintentionally enable and facilitate its full horrors hitting the people in Scotland who both seek refugee protection as well as those who are experiencing traffic exploitation and there's an overlap between those two. We do need to have a higher level intervention in Scotland in relation to this and we've said in a briefing that we've prepared and I'll just reiterate it here that we really need a radical humanitarian based strategy. We would hope, led by the First Minister, precisely because of the gravity of harm that's going to stem from this very dangerous illegal migration bill. Thanks. Can I move on to Andy, please? Yes, thank you chair and members of the committee. I'm here today to provide insight and legal analysis of the current asylum system and most critically the impact of the illegal migration bill in Scotland. You won't be surprised after my colleague's opening remarks to hear me say that I'm not exaggerating when I describe this bill as a legal meteorite. This bill is an emergency, it demands urgent attention. The bill abolishes the asylum system for almost all that use it. The bill abolishes the trafficking support for an assistance system that this Parliament put in place in 2015 for victims of trafficking in Scotland. The bill provides for the indefinite detention of men, women, children, victims of trafficking without oversight by the courts in Scotland. The bill makes it mandatory to remove everyone who enters the UK irregularly to either Albania or Rwanda. If a person cannot be removed there and most won't, the bill demands that they and their children never obtain permission to live here and that their unborn children never obtain citizenship. Unable to be removed, unable to properly live, it is civic purgatory. Indeed, it's hereditary civic purgatory. The last thing I'll say, we in Scotland, as the other parts of the UK do, currently struggle to prosecute and convict human traffickers and organised crime. This bill will snuff out whatever chance we had because it punishes the victims. It is a bill that pretends to combat serious organised crime, but that is just a fantasy. As legal practitioners on the front line working with women, children, trafficked and exploited in Scotland, individuals that Graham mentioned there every day, looking them in the eye, I can tell you it's inevitable that this bill will increase exploitation in our communities in your constituencies. I'm looking forward to answering your questions today, but I'd like to ask you during today's session to ask yourselves periodically throughout the evidence. Am I comfortable with this? And what can we do to combat this? Thank you. Thank you to the panel for their opening remarks. As we proceed with our questioning, I'm going to kick us off and I'll be followed by those who will come in with their own lines of questioning. There may be colleagues who wish to, if you wish to come in on a supplementary, please do indicate to me and I'll do my best to bring you in. If I could also ask colleagues to direct their question at a member of the panel, in particular to start us off, and if any other member of the panel wishes to add any further information or wishes to come in, please just do indicate to me and I will bring you in. On that note, we'll crack on. Andy, I'm going to come to you first. I'm interested in the legislative context for asylum in the UK and how that comes together with Scotland, I suppose, because it would be good for us to get a bigger picture on where we sit with regards to the UK and the effect on that context on asylum seekers and on service providers both in public, private and the voluntary sectors. Sure. It is definitely helpful to understand how the asylum process works right now in order to fully appreciate the changes that are coming to pass. The asylum process is governed by the Refugee Convention 1951. Every person has enjoyed the right to claim asylum in the UK. The UK has an asylum system that's been operating in the similar way as it does just now for the past 30 years or so. Scotland plays a vital role in that. In Glasgow, we have a Home Office department here, and Glasgow has been one of what's called the dispersal cities for adult asylum seekers for a long time. At least a decade, I would say. In terms of what should happen, an individual should go through the asylum process. It should ordinarily take around six months or so. They will be interviewed by the Home Office in Glasgow. Their claim will be measured against the criteria in the Refugee Convention, and they will either be refused or granted asylum in the UK. There are some hallmarks of the modern asylum system that are causing some of the issues that you are seeing today, and that my colleagues will speak more eloquently about in terms of support. The first one is that, from 2018 onwards, the Home Office effectively stopped making asylum decisions. In 2018, the backlog of asylum decisions was sitting at about 16,000. 80 per cent of folks went through it and got their decision within six months. Fast forward four years, four short years, the backlog has increased 900 per cent. It's now at 160,000, and only 6 per cent of people get their decision within six months. Average lengths are somewhere between one and three years. I'm working with a young person right now in the court system who arrived as a 16-year-old child, and he's now 20, and he only just got his decision. Four years of a young person's life, that causes. Decision-making decisions have fallen off a cliff. The upshot of that is that people are not being moved on from their asylum accommodation here in Glasgow. The community-based accommodation has filled up. The hotels have been introduced, the hotels are now filling up, and we've arrived at this point where we're seeing mass destitution and rather shambolic ideas of barges and scary ideas of detention facilities across Scotland. It's not because, and it's a very important point for the committee to understand, it's not because numbers have increased to the extent that it caused this backlog. It's because the Home Office has stopped making decisions. Numbers have increased about three times, so they've probably tripled since 2018, and as I said, the backlog has increased tenfold. You can see from the maths there that they're not aligned. That is the issue at stake here. The impacts that this causes on the ground in Scotland, my colleagues are far better placed to answer in terms of the difficulties around supporting. That's where we are at this point in time. Andy, before that, there will be other members that will wish to come in on this, and please just raise your hand and let me know. You're saying that the Home Office has stopped making decisions. They can't have just stopped making decisions. They must still be making decisions. Are you saying that those decisions are not being made efficiently? Are they not devoting enough time or resources to it? Or do you think that there's something further? They're making less than half the number of decisions than they used to. In the years running up to 2018, you would see about 10,000 decisions per quarter, so about somewhere between 13,000 and 40,000 decisions a year. Now you're seeing about 19,000 to 20,000 per year. The Home Office has halved the number of decisions that they're making. That's why the backlog keeps increasing. The decisions that come through are slower. Those decisions that we're seeing are for folks who claimed asylum three or four years ago. They're not for contemporary arrivals. That's one of the key problems. When I first started lawyring in this sector in 2013-14, you would get a decision within six months. It would be a relatively expedient process. I tell my clients that they're looking minimum a year, even if you're a woman fleeing who's experienced sexual exploitation. Even if you're not a company child, it doesn't matter. I'm trying to get to the point of whether is this a resourcing issue or is it an ideological issue? The Home Office and the UK Government would say that they are investing billions of pounds into dealing with the very issue. I'm finding it difficult to reconcile how the system has such a blockage and such a backlog. That's quite shocking what you're saying. I'm trying to get to the heart of what is that about. What is going on here? What's the underlying issue? That's a very good question. The best people to ask, quite frankly, are you to ask Home Office officials or indeed ministers from the Home Office? You could say that it's a resourcing issue. They have increased the number of decision makers since 2018, but decisions have still gone down. Only in the last two quarters have they started to go up again. There's a lot of resource in the Home Office. There's a lot of money that goes around. It usually goes on unworkable harebrained schemes like Rwanda. If it was invested in making the current system efficient, that would be a far better use of resource and would be far better for all the communities that you represent. As the ideological point, I'm probably not at liberty to comment on that. Thank you. It was worth a try. I think that it gets to the nub of it. For us, on the spectrum, we would say that it's more likely ideological because there's been a long-term degradation erosion of the right to asylum for about 15, 20 years, but particularly since the ex-prime minister, Theresa May, coined the hostile environment as official public policy in 2012, asylum has been one of the kind of casualties of that hostile environment. When you look at the valuation that is given to the really crucial role that an asylum decision maker is, when you just go to First Principles and you say, what are we asking that decision maker to do? We're asking him to make a profound life-changing decision. They bear huge responsibility. They carry great risk. They're doing a really, really difficult job, but the Home Office systemically doesn't empathise with that and doesn't value that. I know, we know, people who work within the Home Office, both decision makers and support professionals. I have a lot of respect for a lot of those individuals. Sometimes that can be controversial from a refugee rights organisation to say, but it's important to say it because they've often been put into really dreadful circumstances when you look at the attrition rate within the Home Office decision making function. It's very high. The chief inspector of borders and immigration in his report about two years ago into decision making and casework handling found that the attrition rate over his inspection period, which was about six months, was 46 per cent. There's a reason that happens, and then there was the downgrading of the decision maker role from the higher executive officer, the civil service down to the executive officer. So when you look at the pattern of decision making, what happens is that you have boosts of decision making numbers in moments of panic when the Home Office are reacting and then it goes back down again when the heat's off the Home Office a little bit, Home Secretary's a little bit. I just wanted to flag up, aside from that devaluation point of the right to asylum, which is really perverse from our perspective, it should be valued like a job that a teacher and a nurse should be valued because it's such an important job, but it isn't and people are being set up to fail. But I think it's also just important to recognise that most of the people that do seek refugee protection are actually refugees. You know, they're coming from countries like Afghanistan, Sudan, look at Sudan at the moment, Iran, look at Iran at the moment, Syria, look at Syria over the last decade under the Assad regime, Eritrea, the forced labour and slavery that goes on in Eritrea as a matter of state policy. You know, that's the bulk of the people who are coming to seek refugee protection here. The UK Government chooses not to facilitate safe travel. It watches people in Belgium, in Netherlands and in France that they know are going to come over to the UK for very human-relatable reasons to do with language, they might have a pal, they might have family, they might have cultural links here, they might regard rightly in many ways the UK's human rights respecting country. But the powerful UK state sees that and then says, no, you're not going to come. Even though it knows that people are going to come through various routes, be it lorry drops, be it small boats, and it decides, even though it's such a powerful state, to say, no, we're not going to provide a simple step like a safe travel visa so that you can have your asylum claim considered. It chooses not to do that. And in choosing not to do it, we need to look at this from a power analysis perspective and say, there's a very powerful UK state and there's some of the most desperate people in the world. But we choose a UK state to turn their back and say, don't come because we're making things so brutal here in terms of our asylum system and now we're abolishing asylum with the illegal migration bill, which is what they are doing. But as I said in open remarks, that is not the main human motivation why people seek protection. And very, very few people seek protection within the UK. It's less than 1 per cent of the world's asylum seekers. And it's not going to change despite some really high-faluting irresponsible remarks from the current Home Secretary. So just to emphasise that point of the political devaluation over a long period of time of the right to asylum, which is perverse, one of the forgotten casualties in that is the asylum decision maker getting set up to fail and getting asked by his or her bosses to do the impossible. And then actually a lot of the people at the end of the day are actually refugees themselves. And we and many others on this panel on the outside have been saying to the Home Office for years, please, in UNCHCR, have been saying that please introduce for high refugee recognition nationalities that you know you're not going to return the people to Afghanistan, Syria, et cetera, and accelerated asylum decision making procedure. You retain your safeguards of appeal, et cetera, but you need to have a much more, in this case, efficient, responsive, realistic system. And the reason that the Home Office know that better than anybody else because they know all this, so that's why we are more to that actually what's going on here is ideological and it's making a lot of people suffer when it really doesn't need to be like this. And we've got to then question the political motivations as to why they are doing this. They're making it spectacle and the tragedy of this is that a lot of people are going to die, lose their lives needlessly as a result of this. And I'm not speaking loosely. Acceleration and deaths of finnish island accommodation has shot up in the last three years and many of them are confirmed or likely suicides and we know that because we've collected the data with liberty investigates and the ferret investigative journalism platform also we see the tragedy of people making more dangerous journeys coming across the small boats. Thank you very much for that. Graham, I've just got a short time left for myself. Would Annika or Phil like to add anything? In particular, the original question was about the legislative sort of context. So if you want to refer to the Nationality and Borders Act of 2022 this would be the time to make a comment but we may be able to come back. Phil? Thanks very much. Andy and Graham have outlined very effectively just about how positive decisions are there to be taken and about the length of time it takes place. I guess from an operational perspective we've seen so many different changes that have taken place over quite a period of time. We know that it takes support for people to go through the asylum system to have trusting relationships and identify the issues of vulnerability to support people along every step of the way and quite often where we've seen changes so there's a work at the moment taking place around high recognition rates from a number of different nationalities. Those announcements have often come through with not very effectively engaging with the sector as a whole that has led to us being quite reactive in about how do we process things. Streamlining asylum process is taking place over the course of this year almost every two weeks we've seen a new announcement taking place and so it's very difficult to really understand the extent of changes that are taking place to advise case workers about how meaningfully and effectively to support people through that and it just leads to gaps where we're not having an effective partnership group that takes place. Some of it is just around so there's a streamlining asylum process part of the issues with it is if people do not respond then they'll have their claims considered withdrawn and so even for very high recognition rates we support processes to speed up the processes for high recognition but it needs to be done in an effective and humane way. Thank you, thanks Phil. I'd like to bring in my colleague Fulton please. My congratulations and welcome to the roll formally. Good morning to the panel. What a really hard-hitting first 30 minutes and quite rightly so. Thank you to all the panel members for coming here and what we know isn't easy in standing up for these people in the manner that you've done. I think that that has to be commended. I was wanting to ask about rights and entitlements and it's follow-on almost from the convener in your opening statements and I do appreciate that some of you have already touched on bits of this but I'm wondering for the record of the committee if you could talk about what are people's rights and entitlements been seeking in this island and how do those rights and entitlements change when people are either refused or granted asylum and I'm quite happy to start with yourself because I know you never get in the last thing. Thank you, Fulton. I will speak about people who have been refused asylum until very recently that's been in Scotland a very Glasgow population and an ecology of peer and community support organisations have developed around those people who have been refused and the work of my organisation is part of that ecology. The asylum system such as it is is not trauma-informed and as Graham and colleagues have alluded to the decisions that are made can sometimes appear arbitrary and it feels like quite an arbitrary refusal that happens but the end of process is also very brutal. When you have had a negative decision you will have exhausted your rights to appeal or will have been told that you've exhausted your rights to appeal perhaps because you're opportunitly timed out or you didn't have a lawyer or you didn't have adequate casebook or your mental health was poor and you weren't able to engage with the paperwork that came and you will receive a decision from your home office contractor in Glasgow at the moment about the amount of time to leave the accommodation in which you are currently accommodated and your very meagre asylum support allowance will cease. At that point there is no plan for you. At that point organisations like as we were known safe in Scotland part of Simon Community Scotland refugee survival trust, positive action and housing we do our best to step in to decide what accommodation and support that we can to people at that moment which is about trying to remove the risk of re-exploitation for people because if you don't have the right to claim any benefits you don't have the right to go to the council and say I'm homeless what are your options? Your options are rough sleeping your options are exchanging labour including sex for accommodation being exploited by people who run delivery gangs and have you riding for them your options are really very very limited and when you're trying to survive you have absolutely no chance of being able to re-engage with the asylum system so the refugee council has amazing advisers who can provide support to people but if you're trying to make ends meet and you're trying to find somewhere safe to stay every night there's absolutely no chance to properly engage with a fresh claim so the really important piece of work that happens at that stage is to step in with a holistic support to do everything that the asylum system should have been doing which is about providing people with a trauma informed person-centred approach to what are your needs, what is your situation tell your story once to a case worker who will then advocate with you for advocate with your lawyer to make sure that when you are ready to submit a fresh claim it's in really good shape and the home office is much more likely to accept you back into the asylum system and back into what we call what is called section 4 support which is back into that meager I mean to be honest it's still a state of destitution but it's state of under destitution as opposed to state enforced destitution what my what our concerns are and if I can just kind of conclude on this point is that our capacity is already very very stretched within the third sector and it is only the third sector generally speaking that can step in when people reach the end of process as the numbers of people who are likely to be refused remissable through the new bill increase as the home office enforces dispersal on cities and towns around Scotland that have no previous experience of working with people who have been refused asylum this risk of exploitation and this risk of high levels of raw sleeping which disproportionately affects people of colour people with mental illness it will become a Scotland-wide consideration and the third sector is not sufficiently well resourced to step in and it causes grave concern to us that we won't end homelessness we won't end destitution in Scotland despite our best efforts to do so Thanks very much I get again a very hearty contribution I wonder if any other panel members I think that was a really good example when a really good description of when asylum is refused I wonder if Andy would be able to talk about when what rights and entitlements change when asylum is granted I'll bring you in a bit on also the second part of my question just to bring it together just now for the other panel members as if people could talk about what impact the illegal migration bill might have on any of these rights Andy, over to you I'll comment here for a minute when you're going through the asylum process you live on what's called asylum support provided by the Home Office and as I mentioned it there's a few different options that you have at this moment in time around Scotland you can either be in community-based accommodation which is what we had for the majority of the last 10-15 years you know what it is in various parts of the city you're a member of the community you receive a stipend of what's now £45 per week so that's £6 £42 a day most of us have probably spent that already this morning getting to work today I would say if you're in a hotel which lots and lots and lots of people now are in Scotland all over from Falkirk to Aberdeen Bathgate, you know, everywhere in between and that hotel provides your meals then you receive £9.10 per week which is £1.30 a day these sums are to cover all of your communication all of your clothing all of your travel if we've spoken about delays you therefore exist in this sort of state-enforced institution for years waiting for your asylum claim if you are refused you lose entitlement to it altogether see Annika's previous comments if you make a fresh claim for asylum that means if you gather new evidence that you haven't presented to the home office before then you receive section 4 support which I think operates at around £45 a week but this time it's on a rechargeable card so it's not cash based if you are granted asylum you have full access to the employment market you have access to benefits subject to the usual eligibility criteria you have access to healthcare you have access to social housing you have access to all the things that we have access to as citizens the vast majority of folks you know, once they cross the sort of initial precarity in terms of housing moving from asylum support through to social housing that's a real gap here in Scotland but once they cross that they work, they pay tax they become members of our community so to speak so that's the way that it works at this moment in time the last point I'll say about the legal migration bill because this is really important people exist in the asylum support system whether it's the initial one or the initial one they're in a hole but the thing that keeps them engaged with us the thing that keeps them engaged with the home office the thing that causes them to go and report to the home office every couple of weeks is because there's a possibility that they're going to be granted status there's a possibility they're going to be able to start their new lives the illegal migration bill abolishes the asylum system that there is no possibility so that ladder out of the hole is being set on fire it's being taken away now what do you do then are you going to hang around on £45 a week for the rest of your life or does the shadow economy does trafficking and exploitation arise you all know the answer to that question and that's what this bill does it takes an existing situation and it just makes it infinitesimally worse thanks very much Andy could Graham or Phil like to come in and add anything and I should probably just say as a convener said and have the question as well that you don't need to as well Graham the only thing I was going to add to what Anakin and Andy have said is that we need to think about how much resources are currently within the UK asylum system but more specifically I would really ask the committee to focus on the distribution of those resources so the juxtaposition or the contrast that I draw when I'm talking to people is to say that as Andy said people who are in these so-called contingency asylum accommodation in firearms i.e. ex hotels are military barracks they get £1.30 a day remembering always that they're denied the right to work people are desperate to work and they're denied that right as part of the systemic denial of social economic rights to people coming here seeking refugee protection which sadly has been around for about two decades that denial of the right to work but that £1.30 then you think about where's all this money going that Graham speaks about there's about £3 billion per year in the UK getting spent on the immigration system I would say about 99% of that money that £3 billion a year is going very quickly from the treasury through the foreign and common wealth office or the home office depending on what year it's getting allocated straight into the coffers of Mears, Serco and Clear Springs that's the free asylum accommodation contractors and then that network that some of those contractors of subcontractor companies or hotels that they do deals with to put asylum seekers in now in terms of the growth of the resources just to give you an idea that there was over a 10 year period 2019 to 2029 the home office and the treasury agreed that the cost over that decade of asylum accommodation would be between £4 billion and £5.6 billion that was a projection range is currently as I say £3 billion per year 99% of that we would estimate is going to private companies the private none of that touches local communities none of that touches local services none of that touches refugees of course they're getting £1.30 a day so I think about that £1.30 a day to the person, the refugee nothing to local community or services cost the £3 billion a year to private companies and ask yourself the question what's actually going on here who putting it really bluntly who's running the show is it just the home secretary or is it actually the chief executives or more precisely the institutional investors that fund a lot of the resources within these private companies and what's the image of the legislation that the nationality and borders are instituted that only took effect last June, 28th of June last year I mean it's leaving in a full year we've got this illegal migration bill on the scene that nationality and borders act instituted accommodation centre-based accommodation as the accommodation norm and that wasn't something that was getting plucked out of thin air that's been something that's been happening for at least three years across the UK so to give you an example 2,500 people within what's called contingency what is institutional accommodation the form of X hotels in March 2020 about 55,000 people in that then you look at as Andy said the community-based accommodation often the jargon called dispersal accommodation people in flats that was about 42,000 people in March 2020 it's now around 55 it's relatively flat lined it's an old adage it's follow the money where's the money going the money's going from the state to the private companies profits, dividends reinvestment final statistic I was going to give you is that Clear Springs ready home in 2021 of three directors they run the asylum accommodation with the home office and they've got a whole network a web of subcontractors in 2021 they had £39 million getting given out to cross three directors and dividends I think that that £39 million could have done for people that are supposed to be in the name of which is the refugees themselves in the local communities so I'm not surprised we may come to this later on that some local communities across the UK feel done to because they are being done to but they're not being done to by refugees they're being done to by the home office and private companies basically suiting themselves putting in opening hotels and putting vulnerable people in those areas and then taking the money out of those areas and never letting the money touch those areas where it should be able to be a source of investment I'm just mindful of the time we've got a lot of areas to cover what you're saying is really important but I'm conscious that I want to bring in my colleagues we have areas are you okay? If we have time I'm more than happy to bring you in so I am now going to my colleague Maggie Thanks very much Cokab Good morning to the panel and thank you very much for being here and thank you for laying out so starkly what a bleak picture we have at the moment never mind how much worse it's going to be with the illegal migration bill Graham you've identified two areas that are worth remembering that final point following the money but also the point around the hostile environment and that this is we are going on a journey of an ideological trajectory that started with that hostile environment some years ago I'm interested in exploring the current practice we have around particularly hotel accommodation and you've all mentioned it in slightly different ways Phil I wonder can you just outline why so many asylum seekers are currently being accommodated in hotels we've heard about some of the issues around that the failure to integrate and hotels seeing almost as ghetto-wising asylum seekers but if you could just tell us a little bit about the hotels and how they support asylum seekers they have sure thanks for the question largely I'm going to repeat a couple of points around the asylum backlog so part of the issue is we've seen a huge increase in the amount of section 98 in hotel use rather than moving people through the system and so with reports of over 50,000 people inside hotel accommodation linked to the decision making time scales that we've talked about that the scale of hotel use is huge hundreds of hotels all across the country that are being used often we released a report in 2021 called Far From Home and in that report it spoke to 100 people in asylum accommodation of different points and used our operational insights about some of the issues emerging from hotels often we found people were not feeling safe inside those situations as Annika was talking about there isn't necessarily an effective vulnerability assessment that takes place as part of the asylum system and in two reports now Far From Home as well as a joint report with UNHCR we've called for improvements for how vulnerability and screening assessments consider individual circumstances so often we've seen hotel use for being used for it could be whole range of different vulnerabilities that just haven't been picked up on inside that situation between November last year and March our crisis response teams had over 50 requests from local authorities and NHS and different requests to respond to hotels inside hotel accommodation there's a lot of different issues but there isn't necessarily clothing on arrival for 2,700 people through our crisis response teams where there was concerns of deterioration of health issues and also infectious disease outbreaks like scabies that was linked to the requirements for clothing also as we've talked about there's the issues of financial support for people inside hotels and the very negative impact that that has on people's circumstances in our Far From Home report we outline over 400 case files where we've provided just over the course of a year we've provided support and those case files have referenced a suicide ideation for people inside a home office accommodation the impact the mental health impact of prolonged periods of time often in rooms that sometimes may not have even have windows can obviously the very nature of trauma for people can often go undisclosed for a long period of time there's many reasons why people might not disclose information actually it can lie dormant for a long period of time and we have grave concerns over the use of institutional accommodation and how that may trigger past traumas for people who have experienced persecution, trauma or torture in confined spaces and across the world there's also I mean I just wanted to also make the point around the difficulties there's issues with travel for people to actually access things the doctors of the world released evidence not from Scotland but from London highlighting 80% of people were not accessing primary healthcare 84% of people weren't getting HC2 forms to enable them to access free healthcare if they wanted to access healthcare and so we've heard in our report for example of people who've spoken to hotel staff about accessing GPs who've been asked to disclose what the health issues are inside GPs and concerns of isolation where people well there's a number of different things partly hotels are quite visible and we've grave concerns of the increased visibility of hotel use hope not hate had done some work and highlighted that at least 15 of the hotels had had far right activity and that had taken place inside that when we provided responses to penality ministry of defence in Wales we spoke to everybody on the site and the vast majority of people did not feel safe and when we spoke to people a quarter of the people who we spoke to were saying because it was because of racial abuse they had stones thrown at them, they had death threats and when you have a high level of visibility of asylum accommodation you exponentially increase the risks so in our joint assessment with UNHCR talking about at risk that was released last year we've highlighted the concerns over hotel use and highly visible from the risk of there's evidence of traffickers, there's evidence of hotels being targeted and being unsafe and so we do have significant concerns over the regulation of accommodation and making sure that accommodation is safe for people Thanks very much Phil Graham if I could come to you I know you've talked about institutional accommodation and the I think people would like to believe that the hotel use is not institutionalised but I think it's quite clear that it is becoming and has been for some time institutional accommodation particularly in some parts of Scotland with it becoming more widespread with hotels being more widely used across the country and as Annika said not necessarily with the right support services do you have any confidence that the private contractors can run these hotels actually do the work to find out what support is available whether that's the third sector organisations or anything like that is there any community discussion that happens when hotels are selected as to what might happen when however many asylum seekers are accommodated there what communication takes place with the local community by those private contractors our experience is next to none gets done in advance of a hotel being procured within an area by the home office and or the private contractor we described it in previous or 11 sessions and written evidence to this Parliament of a ffata completely practice that on the part of the home office and the private contractors where the best that they'll do by way of consultation is talk to the local community after the event and say right this is we're here now ffata completely you know how can we make this work one thing I've personally observed in one of the early hotels procured in Scotland and sadly this practice that was back in October 2021 and that's continued this practice across Scotland and indeed the UK is that the contractor will sit in this case mirrors and it will best set up a network a forum or it may be more commonly become part of a local forum and then you look round the table see I'm mirrors so I'm sitting here and then round the table is going to be really well-intentioned public and particularly community sector organisations basically knocking their panin working as hard as they possibly can to help people in need so I was talking to one of the local support workers from one of the areas in Scotland about a month ago or two months ago it was now we were just having a coffee and what she said to me it says how, what you've been up to today it was the afternoon having a coffee and she says I was going round sports direct with four of the guys from one of the hotels just like four adult guys and getting some essentials in because there's a local football club that has come forward to try and help with some community sessions they've got no funding to do this they're just doing their very best as well-intentioned kind people whereas I keep going back to this contractor the contrast of this juxtaposition where you've got a company mirrors 2021 made 21.6 million pound profit and this arm accommodation is just one of their contracts and then I'm sitting listening to a support worker shattered telling me a story about walking around before adult guys who probably want to go around shopping themselves if they're only allowing to work in a bit of independence in their life so that's the reality that's actually what's happening here that's out-order if you're telling a pal going for a coffee and saying this is what's happening that's all about it's powerful institutions being at the home office of private companies doing what suits them and then being quite happy after they've done the fate of complete practice put people into a hotel the hotel gets its money as well gets its guaranteed revenue stream because as Andy and Philan and others have said you've got a chronically slow asylum decision making system that's good business to have a chronically slow asylum decision making system because the company from the home office gets one fixed price per person per night how the company procures the accommodation is up to them if they can make a cut if they're packing people in to let congregate style accommodation then they will do that if they can make a cut in terms of doing a deal with a food production company to provide people with a free square meals a day that's what they'll do and lo and behold that's what they have been doing and the home office are fine about them doing that because for the home office they are not bothered about how in reality about how people are actually being treated so there's a fate of complete practice and it's continuing across the UK so we've got 400 hotels 55,000 people 55,000 people in those ex hotels and I would say pretty much all of them including in Scotland have been done procured through a fate of complete practice with nothing going to local communities I've got a brief question just on the community element there but you mentioned food can I just ask to your knowledge is there any effort made to produce and provide culturally sensitive food to be fair I'm aware that in Glasgow there's a lot of efforts made I can't say it's as much confidence that that has been replicated in other parts of the country but the thing that I would note about that is it's after people raised concerns so it's after the event and if people hadn't raised those concerns I very much doubt that that would have been done which gets to the point the most powerful institutions who know this population better than MD omit to actually provide people what they know they need so you've got to ask yourself why is that and is that not a form of racism I don't want to sound as if I'm getting too strong but you think to yourself this is people of colour and with very limited socio-economic rights £1.30 a day very little power and then you get powerful institutions that omit to provide or require in the home offices case such stuff to actually happen in practice and you go what is going on in there and I'm not saying that people are being racist but what I'm saying is it's legitimate in our view to raise that question because there seems to be a sin of omission going on here by titling the part of the home office and that has profound as Phil touched on profound impacts because every one of us will be looking forward to what we have for our dinner the night I'm sure that Samseekers don't have that choice and they're stuck in these places and he said for years so yeah there's something very very scandalous going on here so yeah one final point I'm aware not in Glasgow in the north-east at one of the hotels that Mears runs that community people were actually banned from going into the hotel to support to talk to to try and befriend and they were banned by Mears do you know if that is replicated elsewhere I've not come across evidence of banning in such like but just when you touch upon befriending I think any of us know that befriending is such an important thing to happen within systems where people don't have much social contact with others much positive relationships asylum is sadly one of those systems so that would seem really perverse as well not only the banning if that's what's happened but also banning around a befriending scheme you know it shouldn't be beyond the whip of the companies and the home office to be to be putting something like that in place I mean that kind of thing doesn't cost much money but it has such value in terms of people's mental wellbeing in such like it wasn't a formal befriending scheme but yeah it was people were doing it in terms of their own generosity and work have been blocked from going in I'll leave it there thank you Pam Gosall did you want to come in with a small supplementary I'm just watching the time and if I could please ask folk to focus on the questions and the answers I'm sure that other areas will be covered thank you convener thank you panel for your opening statements today following on from hotel usage my question is around the source of tension within the community so it touched on what was said earlier on obviously we all seen what happened in Erskine so my question is asylum seekers are in the hotels what is it that organisations are doing to help integrate them into the communities when they're in there what sort of works happening and I think my question can go over to Graeme and Graeme touched on it and probably Andy I'm probably actually going to kick this question over to my colleagues I don't know whether Annika or Phil if you want to come in because that's more to do with the day-to-day ground support I mean there's a couple of points where obviously the length of time inside hotels is a significant issue when you're thinking about integration practice and also so we hear of situations where people are unable to concentrate and the life is on hold for example so if you have ESOL practice you have other opportunities for doing integration type activities inside a hotel actually when you've got your life on hold when you're still concerned about your family abroad when you're still concerned about living on £9 a day where you can't access health services and all that kind of stuff that can fundamentally impact your ability to take up on any sort of wider integration activities as well and also the very nature of hotel accommodation isn't community-based accommodation from an integration perspective so if integration from day one takes place actually the scale and recognising on the point that was just made around social connections inside hotels the visibility of larger institutional accommodations does create additional risks from community-based accommodation like I mentioned in terms of the risks of traffickers, the risks of exploitation taking place and there is needs for additional safeguards in an institutional accommodation that can undermine some of the integration practice unless that's also considered effectively so there is a nature of the institutional accommodation that doesn't necessarily effectively support integration from day one from taking place just to ask that, convener so what you're saying is there's nothing in place after what we've seen what happened in Erskine so the third sector organisations or any organisations today you're representing that there's nothing in place because it doesn't work, is that what you're saying? No, I think the mix just quite mixed across, I'm not able to advise specifically over Erskine I can check and come back to that speaking from a general perspective Thank you, thanks very much Can I move on to I'm going to move on to Rachel Hamilton please that might work in here I think where it would work, your line of questioning Yes, sorry I had issues with the traffic earlier co-cab but it may work with the new Scots strategy I've got some questions around the Ukrainian super sponsor scheme Okay If you bear with me then I'll go back to your colleague Pam Gosol and then come in after that I think it might fit there, thank you Thank you, convener Just touching on there was a mention about third sector not being funded properly and just asking the question what kind of resources do you think that need to be in place and distributed so that third sector can be ready to deal with asylum seekers coming here integration we spoke about and everything else so what sort of plan should be in place to support the third sector and that question would go on to I think, Annika you spoke about the third sector In 2021 the Scottish Government published an ending destitution strategy which is a very well thought out and very well considered it was peer researched strategy it has action points against all the harms that people face in the asylum system and at the end of the asylum system and all the people who are regularly arrived or are regularly documented it has the plan is there it includes an action around providing accommodation it includes an action around providing access to travel it includes an action around providing access to education and support it includes an action around providing legal advice and case work my personal observation is that the implementation of that strategy is constrained by funding it's not constrained by the goodwill of the public sector who can do their part and the third sector who can also do their part but it is constrained by a lack of available funding to fully implement that strategy across a country that has increasing numbers of people forced into destitution by the asylum system and by irregular documentations anybody else want to answer that one? thanks Pam just to follow on from what Annick was saying I think what we would really need what we would really like to see hopefully the committee can consider this a recommendation is for the Home Office system but also the Scottish Government system to really involve the third sector from the inception and development of policy but also involve us from the inception and development of funding mechanisms too and I think that's going to be really needed more than ever in terms of if the illegal migration bill which we're expecting will be brought into effect from mid-July this year as soon as that that will have a really foreseeable consequence of destitution and increasing as others have said the chance for organised crime exploitation to really take root among a wider population who would have otherwise been in the asylum system but are not now because the asylum is being effectively abolished for them so I think the role of the third sector is going to be absolutely pivotal now and when I talked in the jargon about a new radical humanitarian based strategy what I was trying to really get at is that successive legislation and now this illegal migration bill in particular are effectively closing off protection routes and pushing people to the most dangerous margins of society they will be met there by people who are minded to exploit them and the public sector apart from emergency situations in my experience won't actually be there systematically day in day out because the third sector will be which is part of what the third sector is there to do so we do really need to take the refugee and trafficking third sectors really seriously in Scotland really from now on in terms of inception not just of policy but also of funding mechanisms because people will need to have low accessibility trauma informed organisations to access in order to be at least have a chance of safety within Scotland the other thing just to mention just in this vein is that we really do need the Scottish public sector bodies who experience an uncontact with people in crisis situations to really be on it so I'm thinking particularly the police to lessen the Crown Office and the health service to really understand what this illegal migration bill will do and it is imminent as I say mid-July it does have retrospective effect which means that anybody that's come in since the 7th of March through irregular means deems this such by the Home Office they have this marker over their head where any sort of rights they're enjoying between now and the bill becoming an act in mid-July is no more than a temporary preave and then those rights of support will just be swept away from them so I suppose I'm just trying to paint a picture sadly of real imminent at scale increases in destitution and risks of exploitation and we really need the public sector to be on it and not just to pass people over so I'm thinking in terms of Police Scotland not just to pass people over to the Home Office find other more person centred ways to pass information to inquire about some of these immigration states perhaps with a lawyer or a trusted NGO because as soon as people touch the Home Office system under this new bill when act they've got no rights Shall I ask my last question? I'm just looking at the time officially we have 15 minutes left and I do have colleagues if I could plead again I think to answers that would be extremely helpful Mr O'Neill not looking at anyone in particular not in any way undermining the valuable contribution that you are making by the way put that on record a small question and then we will move on to Pam Duncan Glancy some of this has been mentioned but it's very important we look at basically what the Scottish Government's doing as well so that's why I want to focus on this question much of the challenges we've talked about surrounding placements or refugees asylum seekers due to accommodation and housing shortages for example there are around about 14,000 households living in temporary accommodation the number of homelessness applications are at the highest since records begin and the Scottish Government failed to meet their affordable home targets last Parliament so I want to ask the panel what changes should be made by the Scottish Government to improve the situation and also what can Scotland learn from other places that you may know of? Annika This actually doesn't relate to housing but I want to speak about access to travel for asylum seekers in Scotland I believe that that is within the gift of the Scottish Government the Scottish Parliament to make happen and together with colleagues at Maryhill integration network and other peer led organisations we hope that the Scottish Government will make a decision to make access to free public transport available to asylum seekers in Scotland it will make that £1.10 a day go a whole lot further and make it much more likely that you will access healthcare and see your lawyer Thank you for following us I want to make the point that there needs to be a funding strategy alongside that dispersal to consider and then the other part is about the impact of the illegal migration bill we would support some scenario planning to really understand what that impact means in more detail across Scotland and by doing that we would be able to understand a bit better around how to respond and the types of support that is going to be needed for the exceptional work that Just Right Scotland have been doing and during this period of change through so many legal changes that are taking place it's absolutely imperative that people understand the impact of it things like expanding dispersal across Scotland with so many changes taking place it's absolutely essential that people can get their rights through legal support and that requires public services also to understand those legal implications Andy wants to say something if you can say it in a sentence otherwise the convener lawyers are very good at being brief I'll be 30 seconds and it's a point that ties together all the things we've just been speaking about a well supported third sector is absolutely essential a well supported statutory sector is also absolutely essential because where the latter falls down the third sector has to move in to provide the support so my organisation are now making plans to go into the hotels and try and send information around as much as we can what we see is a really difficult situation with the local authorities are blindsided and don't have the resource to actually respond to what happens when hotels pop up in their areas children are in unaccompanied children are in the hotels the Helen Bamber Foundation just released a report it said 1386 referrals have been made from the hotels for potential children local authorities and 867 were accepted as children that means that two thirds of kids referred were accepted as children under the illegal migration bill that would be too late they're gone those are kids that are dispersed as adults by the home office it's a really important point about bolstering the statutory sector I'm afraid to say that the council has an unaccompanied minors hotel it's something that we have now I'm working with a social worker who's just the allocated worker for the hotel that's not a normal situation it wasn't this way before and those poor social workers I work with them every day they're absolutely on their knees and I think that this is a point that segues into the discussions around the bill and the removal of support from the bill for trafficking survivors because the same problems are just going to replicate there as well thank you thank you congratulations on your election of the committee good morning to the panel thank you for sharing the evidence you have so far I think it's grim and I'm angry I'm really really angry I can't believe we are where we are I agree wholeheartedly with the panel today that this is an emergency a human rights catastrophe it represents an end to our standing in the world as a place of protection for refugees by breaching the UK's obligations in the 1951 act and on the European Convention of Human Rights I think it would and I agree run a coach in horses through the protections passed by the Scottish Parliament in human trafficking and I believe it is a traffickers charter and it will end up with children locked up as we've just heard from Andy I think it's not just a sickening and draconian response to the arrival of small boats in the channel but I think it's an assault on Scottish Parliament legislation and other one by this Tory Government and I think it's threatened to undermine the human rights of vulnerable people so I'm raging I'm proud that UK Labour voted against the bill in the Commons we'll do the same here we'll vote to withhold legislative consent for the bill and I agree with many who have briefed us today that including the Children's Commissioner's Office that it's incumbent on the Government the Scottish Government and public authorities here to act in compliance with their own human rights duties to mitigate wherever possible the harms caused by it it's in this vein that I'll approach my questions which are short today my first question is around the powers that this Parliament has in the human trafficking act and indeed that piece of legislation Andy you just touched on some of this a moment ago can you tell us a bit about whether you think the Scottish Government has done enough within the powers it has in that act what more it might need to do as a result of this impending disastrous legislation that's a very very very good question support to victims of trafficking adult victims of trafficking is provided through the human trafficking exploitation Scotland Act 2015 it's provided mandatory for 90 days once you've received a decision from the Home Office that says you could be a victim of trafficking and the Scottish Government provides you know support beyond the 90 day period for other groups it's provided primarily through migrant help and through TARA they operate safe houses they provide additional stipends it's a system that's not perfect but it works well it's better than that in England the recovery period through which mandatory support provided is 90 days as opposed to 30 days in England the illegal migration bill strips the Scottish Government's power to provide that support it strips it that the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Act is Scotland discharging its obligations under article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights and article 12 of the European Convention Against Trafficking and they are prevented from doing so by the bill now this is a constitutional quagmire for the Scottish Government because the Scotland Act prevents the Scottish Government of Scottish ministers from acting in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights but the illegal migration bill is compelling them to do so so this is actually a situation where victims entered support in a devolved area being provided for the last eight years working fairly well with the stroke of a pen in Westminster using the words do not apply is being extinguished it's extraordinary it's something we're seeking legal advice on and it's something that will most definitely most definitely be litigated if it comes to pass but when you think about functional Government I'm not interested in the politics of it when you think about functional Government and lawmaking we have a situation wherever your politics of the section 35 case that's about to be on-going that is following a process section 35 exists in the Scotland Act there are reasons given for it it's following a process we'll see where that goes this is simply Westminster passing a piece of legislation that takes Holyrood legislation in a devolved area and just snuffs it out with the stroke of a pen I'm not aware of this ever happening before there's a constitutional angle and it's legally complex I don't know how you're supposed to do your jobs as lawmakers in Scotland when you know that can happen the people that are forgotten in the inevitable well we will make sure they're not forgotten but in legal challenges they can be forgotten sometimes is the people who are going to lose out and those folks will be stripped of their support or women who are survivors of sexual exploitation in Scotland often on industrial scales supported by amazing colleagues at TARA their young lads who are forced into cannabis cultivation serving organised crime in your communities and they are being effectively thrown on the scrap heap consigned to Rwanda or Albania I'm not even sure how to follow that thank you I thought earlier that it was grim that's pretty concise we've also today had a briefing from the Children's Commissioner's Office that has said that it's really important now that we do everything we can in human rights terms in Scotland how important is it for this particular bill that the UNCRC is brought back to this Parliament and enacted as soon as possible Andy, if that's all right because you mentioned earlier on I'll be quick I appreciate that we're a bit doom and gloom this morning to put it mildly but there are things that we can do within your competence there are funding streams that you can activate or reallocate in order to combat these things the provision of support to victims of trafficking we can be creative in how we provide that support via other means there are ways around this bill we absolutely must not give up we absolutely must think creatively and innovatively and try our very best to make things better the UNCRC is a very helpful instrument if it comes to be incorporated I would encourage you all to move things along if I'm honest with you because once it comes into force it will provide an extra layer of protection in devolved areas so not necessarily it's not going to prevent a child being removed to Albania or a young person being subject to the sharper parts of this particular act however it does prevent things like mandatory scientific age assessments forcibly subjecting children to MRI scans to determine their age and subjecting them to determine them an adult if they refuse consent that's an amendment in the bill that's going to be spoken about next week so there are CRC protections that can come into place and really bolster what we can do here families with children in particular we can think creatively we can use local authority resource and statutory duties there as well there are ways around it and the CRC is a really important one thank you and I appreciate the slightly more optimistic if we can call it that out looking and I'm sure that colleagues around the table will do what we can to push that forward thank you again to the panel and thank you convener for finishing my questions thank you Rachel Hamilton on the new scot strategy please thank you convener and welcome to your role thank you one of the first questions I will ask is what new issues need to be delivered in the new scot strategy I was slightly concerned that I'd heard was listening to gms a couple of weeks ago where Olga Popova had said that she was asked to leave her flat her family had been settled through the super sponsor scheme she was offered a hotel accommodation in Dumfries and Galloway but it meant that her family would have to start over again with work and education etc so I just wondered whether you had any experience of what more local authorities could do considering that the super sponsor scheme was paused particularly for those who are stuck in temporary accommodation or cannot imagine starting their life over again after they've already flown a water on country and then having to start again in a new region of Scotland who would like to come in on that Greg thanks Rachel I mean obviously I can't call in the specifics to the case but I suppose we've been quite heavily involved at Scottish FG Council in the Ukraine work that the Scottish Government have been taking forward including the super sponsor strand of that I suppose one of our observations has been that first of all it would be really good if much of the work that's been done in relation to Ukraine the infrastructure if you like in the different accommodation who are kind of forgotten in a lot of this including here in Scotland very much and also people in the asylum process which is what the population would be mainly talking about here we're all international protection professionals here we're all trying to work with people who have needed protection from in this case the UK and they've came through different strands at relocation in terms of the Afghan or resettlement or other protection based routes or asylum so that's really what we would like to see as part of Scotland's future in relation to this is to take the fact that it did take on a bit more responsibility as a sub-state actor in terms of Ukraine work and actually extend that experience which has not been perfect and you touched upon the other questions from yourself and Pam around housing you know people from Ukraine have hit the same housing crisis that people in the asylum system as well as people who were born and bred in Scotland have hit around the provision of inappropriate accommodation and we touched upon that in the previous evidence session I know when you asked the question around housing a few months back so I suppose in that aspect we would like to see that learning actually applied and that infrastructure applied to all protection populations in Scotland and we think that that would really help if that was to occur The only thing that has been allocated towards the new scot strategy is enough to deal with the issues some of the issues anyway that perhaps you would like to see the new scot strategy addressing It's not enough but we've got to also remember that the levers that are available to the Scottish Government aren't as significant as those that are available to the UK Government that's just a factual point as opposed to a political point and the whole strand of what we've been talking about around asylum is one of those areas like social security I would say as well it's one of those areas of like reserved policy where it's done two areas or it's done without adequate consultation with areas in this case we've devolved Government so we've got a legal migration bill to increase destitution and exploitation including in Scotland that's going to have profound consequences not only in people but in terms of budgets and those budgets so to answer respectfully and robustly it's not enough but I can't just say that and not say what I've just said around the wider socio-economic context that the Scottish Government and any Scottish Government are in I don't know if that kind of helps in terms of like a response because the new Scots we've said in our briefing for this in today's debate the new Scots refugee integration strategy is clearly not going to cut it as is ending destitution strategy not going to be to cut it when you've got a legal migration bill about to arrive in town in mid-July and actually just decimate like a meteorite is like as Andy said just decimate very vulnerable populations in a way which will either leaving them detained, destitute and exploited or dying that's what it's going to do so the £1.6 million isn't the thing that we should be focusing on what we should be focusing on is how policy and law has been generated across the UK in this case the illegal migration bill is a case study in how not to do it both in terms of like disrespecting devolution much much more important than that disrespecting vulnerable people's human rights so just when you were asking when Pam was asking earlier on 93 per cent of the 2,000 Trafficking survivors in Scotland in the last seven years have been supported under our powerful, it's very powerful legislation we have and Trafficking are not from the UK those people will not be getting support after this, now I'm aware I don't want to talk to us but there are things that our Parliament has done that are just being decimated by this current UK Government namely Trafficking Exploitation Act on the point about the Ukrainian refugees do you get involved with Just Right with some of these cases is that her case the case of Olga Kupova is that becoming more prevalent so Just Right Scotland operates Ukraine Advice Scotland where the Scottish Government funded central advice agency for all Ukrainians in Scotland so through our helplines and email advice line that is not an unusual query that we receive hotel accommodation is I regret becoming normalised like even in our discourse here today it's not something that should be normalised it's not an appropriate environment for a Ukrainian family who have just fled a desert wherever they've come from and we are seeing systemic problems where they spend a long time in a certain area in Dumfries for example and then somewhere in order to get them out of the hotel there isn't enough social housing or an available area that they can stay locally you're right that takes kids out of school problems with health you're registering with GP losing your friend network etc and it's a fairly common place issue around the country one of the challenges is that the private rental sector is not particularly accessible so private landlords are demanding six months rent up front we're hearing a lot from Ukrainian families I don't know whether that's a common thing across the market or whether that's just them seeing Ukrainian families trying to make a buck but six months rent up front I couldn't afford that so you're right it's a really challenging supply chain problem okay can I just quickly ask what would you like to see to address that particular issue I mean obviously none of you can do anything about the housing stock in Scotland but would you like to see a relaunch of the super sponsor scheme for this particular group of people I know obviously there's been other areas addressed by Graham but I'm asking specifically about this super sponsor scheme my thought was an excellent initiative we can reflect on it as a model for future or in some circumstances as a model for future resettiment programmes etc it was a shame when it was paused where we deal an awful lot of family separation as a result of the super sponsor scheme where mum and dad have got a visa didn't realise they needed to apply for their kids the scheme paused and now they don't have a visa for their kids and the way the other schemes operate they can't we're having to make outside the rules applications and go through all sorts of problems or try and solve all sorts of problems so the super sponsor scheme was a good initiative it was reopened obviously numbers and supply of housing and accommodation etc that's an intractable problem that's beyond my remit but to answer your question yes I think it would be positive thank you we'll move on to garden Adam please thank you convener and congratulations in your new post I'd like to thank the panel for this morning it has been incredibly hard to listen to but absolutely necessary and I'm glad that we've been given this opportunity to hear from you all I think anybody with a keen sense of justice would just feel how absolutely devoid of any form of human rights this new bill is bringing to to this country and it is extremely concerning and in fact as far to say I really feel for Pam Duncan-Clancy and everything that she had reiterated earlier in terms of the anger towards this and I'm just thinking how can we now focus those energies in some kind of positive way and what action we need to take here as legislators in the Scottish Parliament and what can we do I know Andy you touched on a few things earlier but I'm thinking if I can use my question slot at this time to give you all an opportunity to I suppose wrap up wind up and have some final words in this session as to what you would really want to get across today if I start with Andy and work to my right thank you good question and a good way to end the session I think thinking about solutions you know we're looking hoping for cross-party opposition to the bill this is not politics this is real life for your constituents we would hope to see a legislative consent motion debated through the Parliament on the basis that it's a clear encroachment on devolved issues which ordinarily would require some form of consent I would expect the Scottish Government to be seeking fairly urgent legal advice on the constitutional challenges of the bill in terms of what you can do within your local authority areas, within your constituencies what levels of power that you have as lawmakers there's a few different options and my colleagues will speak more eloquently than I on these but I think that we need to be thinking about the current of accommodation sites do you want detention facilities in your areas is it even remotely compatible with your humanity I suppose and in terms and we would also advocate for serious consideration to a devolved national referral mechanism for the identification of victims of trafficking I think that's a clear thing of the Government and the Parliament in terms of trying to get around the punishment of victims of trafficking because that is one of the root problems that we're seeing here if we punish victims we increase exploitation you're increasing the supply for organised crime and that has ripple effects all across your communities zero chance of prosecutions about law and order or those types of things then you need to give serious consideration to pulling that particular lever thank you Andy just to follow on from Andy we want this Parliament to reject politically the bill in its entirety we want it also to refuse legislative consent to those clear intrusions into trafficking and unaccompanied children respectively as Andy said and hopefully be prepared to take litigation if needed on those intrusions it's been a long standing position for Scottish Refugee Council that we want to see a human rights based identification and decision making system for trafficking survivors that would complete an N10 process in Scotland that was started with our 2015 legislation in its support and assistance rights so that we have that N10 anti-trafficking protection system we think that that is one of the best ways to maintain compliance with article 4 of the European convention human rights article 12 of the European convention against trafficking and taking the form of legal instrument the most powerful binding hard law legal instrument the ECHR there's clear anti-trafficking duties that flow from that article for prohibition in slavery and trafficking on states and one of those is to have a legal and administrative framework that survivors of this crime in human rights abuse of trafficking can access and my question partly rhetorically is where is that legal and administrative framework for a person who has been trafficked into the UK including here in Scotland who can actually under this illegal migration bill if it becomes an act access or rights unless which is why I made the bystander comment in open remarks unless the Scottish Government in this Parliament takes steps that are available to it so the identification and decision making system is something you can do it's section 9 subsection 8 of the 2015 act up here it should be used it should be seriously considered to maintain compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights itself similar steps need to be taken to protect unaccompanied children within or looked after child system because they are not being spared under this illegal migration bill and some of you may have saw the briefing that we circulated yesterday morning to members both for this and the debate this afternoon in the chamber but we've said we need to institute a new and radical humanitarian strategy I'm the last to just mean in jargon there I was saying jargon it's not it's much more serious than jargon this is an anti human being bill the illegal migration bill and unless there's something commensurate I want to emphasise commensurate with the gravity of risk and harm that will stem from that UK bill then actually we're not going to be doing all we can in a policy level that we so I've articulated it in the briefing we need to have a look at it New Scots for example is a good strategy but it's not going to cut it with what we're talking about I've mentioned seven national strategies that need to be knitted together around the two targets of the illegal migration bill refugees and traffic and survivors so the policy intervention does need to be in our base of explicit and proud humanitarian based strategy and it should include serious consideration of has worked such the things that Andy just mentioned there around alternative accommodation you know what have we got to lose we need to try and make sure that we protect people from exploitation so we should be thinking about these things the UK Government aren't holding back the Scottish Government need to do all they can and backed up by this Parliament on a cross-party basis because as Andy says this isn't about politics this is about people and not people in positions are privileged but people in positions of extreme precarity so we really want serious consideration rather than peripheral to a Scottish humanitarian strategy given I don't work for a policy or influencing organisation we do grassroots work on the ground with people who are in crisis every single day so I think my ask is that you go to those places you go to those emergency support centres you go to those accommodation small accommodation charities you go to people who are doing work with people who are rough sleeping or at risk of rough sleeping and you go to people who are I've actually survived the system my organisation 70% of us have survived the asylum system and actually talk about what would work when you're designing that humanitarian system so that people approach in Scotland we need to get this off the paper and get this into the real lives of people in Scotland that's the only way that you won't see me here again time and time again telling you the same stories we totally support what's come before just picking up on this point it's so important to engage with people who have lived experience right now relationships and trust is being undermined by the legal migration bill and fundamentally any part of safety and protection starts with a trusting relationship where you can disclose issues that's being fundamentally undermined there's no, as we've talked about previously the issues around it so engagement with lived experience is essential humanitarian strategy we support things like the ending destitution together strategy the new scots integration they're great it doesn't cut it for what's coming it needs a wider protection base looking at humanitarian strategy inside that and we also think that linked into that there's discussions from a legal perspective around what can be done our perspective is we really want to not undermine any protections that's there and to do everything that's possible and to think about contingency planning exercise inside that to actually understand what the impacts would be like if there's automatic detention, indefinite detention what does that do in terms of for Scotland looking at what happens if there is not an effective national referral mechanism for the population in Scotland so some contingency planning to work through those scenarios in more depth thank you thank you to all our panellists very powerful contributions lots of food for thought at a very timely and topical time regarding asylum seeking and refugee status we of course have the debate this afternoon that is taking place in the chamber and I would encourage anyone to tune into that and watch and you may even hear some of your contributions amplified within that arena so my thanks once again to all the panellists and that concludes our formal business this morning and I thank everyone for their support at my first convened meeting good afternoon