Chamber and committees

I completely appreciate the points about mental health impacts and support. We are working with a Glasgow-based mental wellbeing project to better support people who are facing such challenges.

On third sector funding, as I said in my opening statement, we have provided more than £2 million from the two funding streams that Maggie Chapman mentioned. Much of the funding from the ending destitution together strategy goes to the British Red Cross to provide crisis grants to people who are at risk of destitution. However, we have to be sure that they are close to destitution due to NRPF, not having a right to work and having difficulty getting appropriate housing.

It is very difficult to continue to fund at such levels to mitigate failures in the UK Government’s immigration system, given that that is not something that we are able to change. However, we have a duty to try to make things better around the edges. I would much prefer to make big changes to the rights and entitlements of asylum seekers by saying that we will remove NRPF and give people the right to work. Given that we cannot do that, we are left to provide crisis grants and other support through different means.

Certainly. The Scottish Parliament passed the act unanimously in 2015, which shows the strength of feeling across all parties about doing more to support victims of human trafficking.

Police Scotland continues to work closely with partners in the UK and beyond to share intelligence and co-ordinate work. We are bringing in as much knowledge and expertise as we can so that we are able to approach that work as widely and effectively as possible. However, we are very concerned that, should the bill pass in its current form, we would be severely limited in our ability to identify then support victims, because they would have the extra burden of not being able to come forward and explain their situation, given the potential for their removal from the UK.

It is temporary, in that most Ukrainians who are living in Scotland would consider any place in which they are currently living to be temporary, but it is not temporary accommodation in the way that hotels and vessels are.

I do not have the exact number to hand. To give a bit of context, I point out that the number is currently changing every day because the disembarkation of the MS Victoria is getting to the final stages; every single day, a significant number of Ukrainians are moving off the ship.

I do not know whether my officials have our most up-to-date figures on that.

As ESOL has been integrated with the adult learning strategy, it is delivered by colleges, but in partnership with community planning partnerships to ensure that there is local engagement and local tailoring.

What I said was that asylum dispersal funding should meet all the services that require to be provided by the Scottish Government or local authorities, so—

I am speaking about the impact on services of having asylum seekers in a particular area. That comes with specific needs that come under reserved matters, but it also impacts on devolved services. Asylum dispersal funding must ensure that it is meeting the extra cost and service provision needed.

Thank you, for the introduction and for inviting me to be here to speak to the committee on what is, of course, world refugee day. Following this meeting, I will be attending an event organised by the Scottish Refugee Council as part of refugee festival Scotland, which is in its 22nd year. More than 120 events are taking place across Scotland this week, co-ordinated by the Scottish Refugee Council, and this year’s theme is hope. I recognise that the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament have a crucial role to play in providing that hope to asylum seekers.

The Home Office is, of course, responsible for UK asylum and immigration policy, including no recourse to public funds and restricting asylum seekers right to work; operation of the UK asylum system, including decisions on how it operates; and provision of asylum accommodation and support.

I recognise that many essential services are devolved and the responsibility of the Scottish Government and local authorities, which play a key role in supporting asylum dispersal. I have been amazed by the on-going and constant efforts of Scottish third sector organisations in making an invaluable contribution to supporting asylum seekers in Scotland. We are proud to support those organisations, and the Scottish Government is providing nearly £1 million to third sector organisations in 2023-24 for refugee integration work.

We have taken a human rights-based approach to our policy on asylum, with our “New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy 2018-2022” being clear that integration should be supported from day 1 of arrival. We are clear that that applies whether a person first arrives as a refugee or as someone who is seeking asylum.

The new Scots strategy was developed and led in partnership by the Scottish Government, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Refugee Council, and it helped Scotland to secure £6 million from the European Union’s asylum, migration and integration fund, which went towards a £6.6 million project to support refugee integration.

I am committed to working with our new Scots partners to refresh the strategy, building on work to date, and ensuring that it continues to be informed by refugees, people seeking asylum and those with experience of supporting both groups in our communities.

The ambition of new Scots is the right one: to support everyone so that they have the best shot at integrating, and to ensure that they are properly supported and able to realise their human rights. However, I stress the difficulty in achieving that fully within the constraints of devolution. For example, we are providing more than £1 million to support the delivery of our ending destitution together strategy, which improves support for people with no recourse to public funds, including many asylum seekers.

We do not believe that anyone should be pushed into destitution, but we have no power over whom NRPF is applied to, nor can we support those with NRPF to access Scottish benefits or the Scottish welfare fund.

The British Red Cross is a valued partner in delivering crisis funds to those who need them, including asylum seekers with NRPF. However, it should not be necessary to resort to crisis funding to make sure that someone is not made destitute, and Scottish ministers continue to raise issues and concerns about NRPF with the UK Government.

At this point, I would like to mention briefly the Illegal Migration Bill and the opposition of the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament to it. The Parliament, of course, debated and agreed a motion describing the bill as “dehumanising and immoral”. The bill is currently at its committee stage with the House of Lords, with a report expected in early July.

The Scottish Government is clear that the bill will prevent people, including those being human trafficked, from accessing safety and support in Scotland, and we believe that the UK Government should withdraw it immediately. We know that trafficking victims are often suffering from severe trauma, that they have little choice about their movements and that they are frequently unaware of their location or how they entered a country. Therefore, removing existing protections based on how they entered the UK is irresponsible and indefensible. It will make victims much less likely to seek help, tightening the grip of perpetrators, and therefore making the job of the Scottish Government in supporting victims of human trafficking—a duty that we take extremely seriously—very difficult.

That is why we are seeking to withhold consent on key clauses that impact on the competence of Scottish ministers and our ability to operate in devolved areas. On Thursday, I will attend a summit on the Illegal Migration Bill that will also be attended by key stakeholders. Convener, I extend an offer to write to you following that summit to share any key insights.

I will end my remarks by highlighting our wider work through introducing a bill on human rights and continuing to pressure the UK Government for further powers to be devolved on, or at least for improvements to be made to, the immigration system and setting out a vision for an independent Scotland that enshrines human rights in a written constitution. We are committed to doing whatever we can to help the people who need it most.

There is more to do and there are significant challenges, which is why we are committed to working with our partners to refresh the new Scottish strategy, building on the work that has been done to date and continuing to ensure that it is informed by lived experience as well as organisations with expertise in supporting people.

I have been interested to read about the important work that the committee has carried out, and I look forward to hearing members’ questions.

I think that I picked up enough of that, convener, if you want me to answer.

First, the resettlement of people from Ukraine was a reaction to a difficult event—the illegal invasion of Ukraine—but we were led there by decisions made at the UK level. Displaced Ukrainians in Scotland and the UK have the right to work and access benefits, so they are in a very different position to those asylum seekers from other areas or those who took different routes in. That is one of the reasons why we have been clear that there needs to be safe and legal routes into the country, because if you do not provide safe and legal routes, all that is left are unsafe and illegal routes.

I can completely understand why someone seeking asylum would look at the support that has been given to Ukrainians and wonder why it has not been extended to everyone else, but the unfortunate answer is that we do not have the ability to treat asylum seekers in the same way.

I know that integration into the community has been successful in relation to Ukrainians who are displaced here at the moment. For example, they have been able to get into work; I think that 85 per cent of those in Edinburgh, for instance, are in work. They have also been able to access services in Ukrainian due to the large cohort that have very similar needs and backgrounds.

We are discussing very different cohorts here, and we are simply not able to do things in the way that we reacted to Ukraine and Sudan in relation to expanding social security access to people with, for example, NRPF.