Hansard

Last night, I had the enormous pleasure of speaking at the launch of refugee week Scotland 2014 at the stunning venue of the Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow. Refugee week Scotland, which is co-ordinated by the Scottish Refugee Council, is now 14 years old and is bigger and better than ever, with more than 120 cultural and community events and workshops around Scotland that celebrate the diversity and contributions of our refugee communities. It was a great spectacle to be part of.

Every year is themed and this year’s theme is “Welcome”. The strong message is given that refugees and people who are claiming asylum in Scotland are welcome to our country. That is an appropriate theme in the year of homecoming and in a year in which 70 nations and territories of the Commonwealth will be welcomed to Scotland and, more specifically, to Glasgow. It is also highly appropriate because of the negativity towards migrants, refugees and asylum seekers that we have heard in some elements of the media and the political structure.

We live in a world in which people travel more and more. However, not everybody who travels has a choice in the matter—they do so because they are searching for safety and sanctuary. As we all know across the chamber, Scotland has a long history of welcoming people from across the world, whether they are visitors, students, migrant workers or those have fled persecution and looked for asylum.

As well as the Home Office’s dispersal of asylum seekers to Glasgow over the past 14 years, we have a history of supporting refugee resettlement. That has gone on for not only years, but for decades and even centuries. In the mid-19th century, at the time of the great hunger in Ireland, Glasgow and Scotland gave sanctuary to those who suffered great persecution and hunger, although that was not without problems and difficulties, of course.

In more recent times, over the past 20 years, we have had refugees from Bosnia, Kosovo and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Asylum seekers from Iraq, Afghanistan and most recently Syria, as many of us know, have come outwith the resettlement programmes. We celebrate the cultural, social and even economic contributions that our refugee communities have made to Scotland.

During my time as a minister, as an MSP before that, and in various other guises, I have had great pleasure in meeting many asylum seekers and refugees, as most members in the chamber have probably done. I have been greatly impressed by their determination to rebuild their lives in Scotland and to contribute to Scottish society. They have left the place that they call home—not out of choice—and I can see in their eyes their determination to succeed in what is their new home. However, it has also been made abundantly clear to me that barriers are built into the asylum system specifically, which do not make integration easy—in fact, they make integration a lot more difficult. In some cases, those barriers clearly exacerbate the terrible traumas that people have already faced and are suffering from.

None of us can imagine what it is like for people to have to leave their homes—in the midst of persecution, in the midst of conflict or in the midst of the threat of sexual violence—but when, on top of that, people have to navigate their way out of a country and into another country, where they face a number of barriers that would be there anyway regardless of the asylum process, such as language, it becomes a difficult thing for any of us to comprehend.

The barriers to integration that are currently cited by refugees and asylum seekers reflect long-standing concerns about the highly negative impact of the United Kingdom asylum system over successive years. Those concerns have been expressed not just by this Scottish Government but by previous Scottish Administrations and are shared by many people from many parties.

I will highlight some of the impacts of the asylum system. People have waited for many years for the Home Office to reach a decision on their cases. All of us, as members of the Scottish Parliament, have had asylum seekers come to us and I have been aghast that some people have had to wait for more than 10 years for a decision. Yesterday, I came across a young lady who told me that she has waited for 20 years and a decision has still not been reached. In fact, she went to the Home Office a couple of days ago and was asked whether she wanted to return home. She said, “After 20 years here, I am home,” and she was quite correct to say that.

Although I recognise that the time that is taken to process new asylum applications has improved slightly, the vast majority of people who seek asylum in Scotland still face a harrowing trip to the Home Office in Croydon for initial screening. It is not a statutory requirement for people to be screened in Croydon. I believe—I think that there will be widespread support for this—that people who have claimed asylum in Scotland should be screened here. There are trained staff in Scotland and it would result in a system that was not only more efficient and more effective but fairer to those who are seeking asylum and refugee status in Scotland. I hope that we can unite on that point across the chamber.

The ethos of the screening process should be supportive and enabling, helping people to tell their story in a culture where the default is not disbelief or suspicion. That is not to say that all claims for asylum should be granted; indeed, no one is suggesting that. However, everyone who seeks asylum should be treated—these are the important words—with dignity and compassion as their case is considered. We are often told by asylum seekers that it is that dignity and compassion that is missing in the system.

In my role as Minister for External Affairs and International Development, I have had the great opportunity of travelling overseas. When a person travels for a long time and is away for days or weeks, the best thing is the flight back home. Once a person arrives back, whether that is in Glasgow, Edinburgh or other parts of the country, they feel like they are at home. They know that there are home comforts and, in most cases, a family waiting for them, along with their own warm bed where no better sleep is to be had. Home is home. Nothing is better than arriving home.

Having a place to call home is a most basic need for everyone. A home that is secure and in good repair provides a substantial contribution to the health, wellbeing and quality of a person’s life. For refugees and asylum seekers escaping the trauma of war and instability, the home contributes to the stability that they so desperately need. Unfortunately, I hear too many cases of poor housing conditions, where repairs are not carried out timeously; of overcrowding; and of people facing frequent accommodation moves, preventing them from settling in to communities.

Another area of great concern is the support that is—or perhaps is not—given to asylum seekers. Those who are on section 4 support do not receive cash, but are given the Azure card to enable them to buy food and other necessities only from certain shops; we have talked about that in a members’ business debate. That is humiliating and dehumanising. The lack of cash makes it difficult for people to access basics such as culturally appropriate food and public transport. It is, at its essence, dehumanising not to trust people with cash; to give them a card, a bit of plastic, is to say that they are not deserving of real money.

As I have said, that makes people’s lives difficult. Many asylum seekers have told me that their children come to them, looking for 50p to spend at the school tuck shop, but what can they do? They cannot cut up the card to give them the money. All they have is what is on that card. I realise that being able to buy something from the school tuck shop is not a fundamental human right, but children need to feel that they can participate fully in their school and in their educational lives. The fear of destitution—and, indeed, actual destitution—is very real for asylum seekers who cannot work.

We have proposed that, for asylum seekers, there should be integration from day 1. As members know, we do not have full control over immigration and asylum policy, but where we do have some control, we ensure that integration happens from day 1, not from when a person’s status is settled or otherwise. Many in the chamber will be familiar with our “New Scots: Integrating Refugees in Scotland’s Communities” strategy, to which the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Scottish Refugee Council and, more important, asylum seekers and refugees themselves contributed, and we have also produced a clear framework for the next three years for all those who are working towards refugee integration.

The projects that have been supporting asylum integration include the unique Scottish guardianship service, which works with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who have been separated from their families, and the family key worker pilot for newly arrived asylum seekers, which embodies the ethos of ensuring integration from day 1 by providing support from the day of arrival and ensuring that asylum seekers get the help that they need right from the start of the process.

We are 92 days away from the referendum on Scottish independence, and people are debating our country’s values and what is important to us as a nation. This debate on asylum and how we treat those who are fleeing persecution and prosecution who seek it is an important part of that bigger debate. In our white paper, “Scotland’s Future”, we make it very clear that asylum too often gets politicised, and as a result, we propose to separate the issues of immigration and asylum.

We want a system that is built entirely on compassion. To that end, we will close Dungavel detention centre, which represents an incorrect and inhumane way of treating those whose asylum applications have failed. We will also give asylum seekers the right to the dignity of work and end the practice of dawn raids.

In conclusion, I pay tribute to all the organisations and individuals who, for many years now, have worked hard to support refugees and asylum seekers and help them rebuild their lives and integrate in Scotland. Our desire for a more humane system reflects our vision of a society and a country that we very much aspire to: an open, welcoming and tolerant nation that protects people who are fleeing persecution and violence, treats them with the sensitivity and compassion that they deserve, does not add to their trauma and helps them to rebuild their lives in our vibrant, diverse and inclusive country.

I move,

That the Parliament welcomes the celebration of Refugee Week Scotland 2014 from 16 to 22 June, co-ordinated by the Scottish Refugee Council; notes that the events highlight the vibrancy and dynamism of Scotland’s many cultures; understands that refugees, many of whom have been victims of violence and ill-treatment, are seeking a place of safety to rebuild their lives; believes that asylum seekers and refugees should be integrated into Scotland’s communities from day one, as set out in New Scots: Integrating Refugees in Scotland’s Communities, developed in partnership by the Scottish Government, COSLA and the Scottish Refugee Council; recognises the excellent work of local authorities and third sector organisations in supporting asylum seekers and refugees; believes that more must be done to ensure that the asylum system treats people in the most humane, fairest and holistic way possible, consistent with the aspirations of the New Scots report and respecting human rights, and believes that, for many asylum seekers, the current system exacerbates the traumas that they have already suffered.