Chamber and committees

I am in strong agreement with that stand with Ukraine sentiment. I can tell that your having been across to Poland and seen the reality on the ground has had a personal impact on you.

My questions are about how you are monitoring the supersponsor scheme. What does success look like for you? The feedback that I have had and the submissions that we have had from representatives of different organisations, such as JustRight Scotland, COSLA and Glasgow health and social care partnership, indicate that there is a real gap between our collective ambitions and the capacity of local authorities to deliver.

What monitoring are you doing on the impact of people being stuck in hotels for weeks before they are linked up with a sponsor? We got feedback from the consul general that there is a particular issue for women with children, for whom being stuck in a hotel is totally wrong. I have also picked up the particular issue that, when people get stuck in a hotel, the roots that they put down are with the Ukrainian support community, which makes it even harder once they are given an allocation if it is not in the same area because they have already put down roots and have support.

What are you doing to speed up the matching process? I would like a comment from you about people being stuck in hotels. The experience of the Afghan and Syrian communities is that people are still stuck in temporary accommodation, which causes huge issues for access to schools, health services, post-traumatic stress disorder support and, particularly, NHS dentistry. Hosts have got in touch with me who are really worried about the Ukrainians they are trying to support. They are asking who they should contact because it is hard to get those links on the ground.

That is a useful commitment. To be specific, Highland Council said:

“The lack of funding instructions from SG prevents the Council from planning ahead for this resettlement scheme.”

My second question is about that need to plan ahead. When I visited the Ukrainian community last week, I heard of someone who has been given their two months’ notice for leaving their sponsor, because it is a six-month scheme. We are not just at the point of matching people with their supersponsor—in the next few weeks, people will start to come to the end of that six-month period. What is being done to think ahead?

Before I ask my next question, I declare an interest in terms of my former employment and as a Lothian MSP, on account of the lack of affordable social housing in Edinburgh, which is already a huge issue. What work will be done not only in the medium term but in the short term to address that issue of accessible housing? The consul general talked about temporary accommodation and the fact that people fleeing from Ukraine would tolerate slightly lower standards of housing, but we have our own health and safety standards. What will be done to get those people access to social housing and to get longer-term placements for people so that, in particular, women with children can get their kids stable and settled and can access employment and things such as post-traumatic stress disorder support?

Regardless of how enthusiastic people might be to get back to Ukraine, we know that, for many of them, not only have their homes been bombed but their whole community has been eradicated. Where are we going to put people up and what can we do now in terms of access to affordable housing so that they can make their home in Scotland, even if it is only for one or two years? The hosting process does not tick that box, so what is next? What are you doing?

Thank you.

[Inaudible.]—but it is just the feedback that I got, and it seems to be one of the things that we might need to fix.

That is useful as far as it goes, but it is the detail of those issues that is important. For example, Highland Council tells us that the lack of guidance from the Scottish Government is creating a major problem for it now in relation to the supersponsor scheme and contingency planning, and COSLA has sent us a big list of problems that it has with the matching service at the moment. I hope that you can be given a copy of those papers, and it might be helpful if we could have a briefing back from you on those issues. I could not possibly ask you today about all the issues that have been raised, because there are so many of them.

I have a brief supplementary to Alasdair Allan’s question about war crimes. I understand that people who are fleeing the war will not have been interviewed before they arrive in Scotland. I presume that doing that once they get here could have a role in enabling them to record their experiences. They can be interviewed so that they can give evidence while their memory of what happened is still sharp. That would mean that there can be accountability in future for what is happening in Ukraine.

I have a supplementary question to Mark Ruskell’s comments about access to buses. The COSLA paper includes statistics on the number of people already in Scotland through other asylum and humanitarian schemes. I just wanted to add a human touch. Last week, I met Ukrainian people who had come to Scotland, and one of them told me that, in Ukraine, the cost of a bus trip is the equivalent of 10p in Scottish money. There is a cultural and financial gap for them, which I think is making people quite anxious.

That was really helpful feedback.

Another challenge that I have clocked is things not working out after people get allocated a host. It is not the fault of the family or the host—it is just that people have different expectations and there is a reality check when people settle in. It could be pets and allergies, food choices or anything else that would normally be taken for granted. It was an issue that I picked up from people who are trying to support Ukrainians—there was a real nervousness about it. My sense is that Ukrainians are so grateful to come here and get support that they do not really want to complain, and there is an issue in how we support Ukrainians, particularly those with kids, when the first match does not work out. Loads of hosts are volunteering, but we need to make sure that we can match people up.

It is good to see you. I want to follow up on questions about support from the local community. I have visited the Ukrainian support network, and it is really impressive to see what it is doing on the ground to provide food, advice and even clothes—many people have come with just one small bag, so they are rebooting their lives. What really struck me was meeting two psychologists who had just started supporting people.

My question is about the support that people are getting once they arrive, not just from the Ukrainian community in Edinburgh, which is clearly really strong, but in other parts of Scotland. Are there networks that people can tap into? Is the support mostly in Edinburgh and Glasgow?

I think that we agree with that. [Laughter.] Whether we are talking about environmental and rural issues, economic issues or trade issues, we cannot be experts on all those areas. The question is how issues in those areas are flagged so that we achieve effective cross-parliamentary working. That is really important.