Hansard

Imagine a bus stop where a line of people is waiting. They are accustomed to waiting. They have all been waiting for more than a year for a decision on their asylum claims and their status as the refugees they know themselves to be. Some will wait for two years and some will wait for three, while some might wait for much longer.

Each of them has somewhere important to go. Ana is going to see her general practitioner about a lump that she has noticed, which she has been trying not to think about through the long sleepless nights. She has not seen the doctor before, and she hopes that she can communicate what she needs to say.

Ben is going to his English language classes. He hopes to resume his professional career when his claim is finally decided. In the meantime, he is volunteering for a local charity.

Carlos is going to see his solicitor about a worrying letter that he has received. He will have to get a bus again for his next Home Office appointment.

David is going to meet some distant relatives of his wife on the other side of the city. He is wondering whether there will be a discount supermarket on the way, where he can buy essentials at less than the exorbitant prices that are charged at the nearest shops.

Elias and Elisha are both going to pray, at different places of worship. Having been forced from their homes and families, moved between unsuitable forms of accommodation without notice or explanation and barred from working, they sometimes feel that the choice to practise their faith is the only form of agency that they have left.

Fred, who is afraid to use his birth name, does not know where he is going but hopes to find somewhere green and quiet where he can sit in peace for a while, and maybe even sleep. He was tortured in his old country, and now, when he is sharing a small room with a stranger who shouts in his dreams, the memories keep flashing back. If he cannot escape them, he is afraid that he will not be able to carry on.

They might not say so, but they are all exercising their human rights—their rights to healthcare, to education, to a fair hearing and to religious expression and association. They are exercising their right to life itself.

The bus stop that I have described is imaginary. In reality, most of the people who are waiting cannot afford to take the bus. Maybe they will miss their appointments, with all the consequences that will follow. Maybe they will manage to walk there. Maybe someone will help them. We do not really know. We are not really watching.

Why are we talking about human rights anyway? This is the beginning of a transport debate. Human rights, equalities and all that stuff come at the end, do they not? We devise the policy, draft the legislation and then, when we already know what we are going to do, we add an equalities assessment at the end. That is the right way round, is it not?

Seventy-five years ago, the world was wounded and traumatised by war, devastation and the horrors of fascism. Rebuilding was critical and urgent, but the priorities were not just physical and economic; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, three years later, the refugee convention were the moral bedrock on which a better world was to be built.

Human rights are not an epilogue, an afterthought or a niche interest that the right committee and the right third sector organisation will deal with; they are the responsibility of all of us, and we must begin by recognising them and the ways in which they are far from being fulfilled.

The United Kingdom’s immigration system is a disgrace—that is a polite word for it. It represents a systematic denial of the most basic rights: respect and dignity. The huge backlog of unmade decisions—the condemnation of vulnerable people to existential limbo—is one of its worst aspects. We in the chamber can do little, as things stand, to change that system, although we can take every opportunity that we have to try. We can dismantle some of the obstacles that stand between people seeking asylum and their fundamental human rights, one of which is a lack of—literally—affordable transport.

As deputy convener of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, I have had the privilege of hearing at first hand about those obstacles and of contributing to the committee’s report last year, which strongly recommended extending free bus travel to those seeking asylum. As Kaukab Stewart, who was then our convener, said in Paul Sweeney’s welcome members’ business debate on the issue a year ago, in October 2023, that is

“something that would make a huge difference to their lives.”—[Official Report, 26 October 2023; c 31.]

The situation is now even more desperate than it was then, when we held out greater hope that things would be different under a Labour Government in Westminster. Sadly, although the very worst and most egregious horrors of the Rwanda scheme have been abandoned, we are hearing rhetoric that is depressingly similar to that of the new Government’s predecessor. Meanwhile, third sector finances are under unprecedented pressure, inflation continues and the flames of violent xenophobia lick at our very doorways.

Now, if ever, is the time for Scotland’s rhetoric to become reality and for warm words of welcome to initiate acts of justice. It is not at times of plenty that our promises are tested, but in days such as these, when the temptation to abandon them is strongest.

I am so very grateful to all who have stood in solidarity on the issue with people seeking asylum, including those who have written to the cabinet secretary and the minister involved and who have used their voices in faith communities, as third sector experts, human rights activists and human beings. I thank members from across the chamber who will support the motion not just because they must but because it is a matter of basic rights and justice.

I ask the cabinet secretary to provide clarity on detail and a timescale for how, through working together across the chamber and with others, we can make that renewed promise a reality, both urgently and comprehensively, because some of the most vulnerable people in the world are relying on us to do so in order to exercise their rights as human beings.

I move,

That the Parliament believes that the Scottish Government should extend free bus travel to people seeking asylum as soon as possible and at least before the end of the current parliamentary session.