Chamber and committees

Thank you, Professor Miller. I will come on to housing in a—

That is fine. I think that the convener got it wrong. I was saying that I would come on to housing but that I will stick with my original question for now. Sorry—maybe I was not very clear.

Convener, can I ask the housing question now?

I was just saying that I will come on to housing in a minute.

Is it a tailored service, or do you tell people when they come where the mosques, gurdwaras and churches are as part of the induction? Do you identify someone from a Muslim background and say, “This is what is available for your faith”? Is it individual, or do you just provide the information in group settings?

I will come back to the issue of vulnerable people and traffickers a bit later on. Last week, representatives of COSLA and local authorities spoke to the committee about the work that Mears does with them, and they said that they had a great working relationship with you. However, we have heard lots of concerns from the third sector, which delivers many of the key services that asylum seekers rely on. Would you say that there has to be a good working relationship between Mears and the third sector? How do you feel that that relationship should be improved?

You said earlier that you signpost. In other words, you work with the third sector to bring in whatever is needed for an asylum seeker. Is that right?

I have just one more question, which is on religious settings. John Taylor said earlier that, sometimes, you will have to go out of the city centres and provide accommodation in hotels in rural areas, but what we have heard in evidence is that, for people coming from a foreign country, where they feel at home is in their religious settings—their mosques, their gurdwaras, their synagogues, their churches or anywhere else they feel that sort of comfort. As we know, a lot of rural areas do not have many such places of community. Do you take that into account when you move people around? Moreover, does the data that you collect on people’s backgrounds tell you what they require with regard to community settings and houses of prayer?

To go back to trafficking, we have heard evidence that women—and certain individuals—may not always go to the police but will sometimes trust third sector organisations and go there first. The police also identified that. That may be because, in the countries where those women come from, the police have a different system. I will not say what kind of system, but it is perhaps not trustworthy for those women, so, when they come here, they are scared to go to the police. Do you find that, sometimes, those women come to Mears for help before going to the police?

Okay. On the issue of trafficking, we have heard from witnesses over the weeks that, typically, hotels are targeted by traffickers in order to exploit vulnerable individuals in that accommodation. It was great to hear from TARA and Police Scotland about the work that is being undertaken to safeguard asylum seekers and refugees. How has your working relationship with TARA and Migrant Help changed your operation to help protect individuals who might be vulnerable to traffickers?