Meeting of the Parliament 09 October 2024
Unlike Sue Webber, I think that this is a very apposite motion to bring to Parliament, and I congratulate the Greens and Maggie Chapman for so doing.
First and foremost, the motion speaks to our values as a nation. It does not talk about a huge amount of money. I have long called for the extension of free bus travel to asylum seekers and to anyone who is on a refugee resettlement scheme. Why? Because mobility is intrinsic to integration.
The cost of extending the availability of such a scheme would be minutely low in the context of our budget, but the scheme would provide a tangible benefit to those who have arrived here in search of a new life.
In 2022, the then SNP-Green Government promised to work with third sector partners and local authorities to consider how best to provide free bus travel for refugees, because it recognised the imperative of doing so.
Despite the policy’s inclusion in the programme for government, we are still without it, and its delivery has been rolled back. I hope that, after today, the Government will rededicate itself to what it promised.
Dina Nayeri, who was just a child when she was forced to flee from Iran, summed up the imperative that falls to each of us, as decision makers, when she said:
“It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks.”
I feel that sense of obligation acutely, and all the more so because of the dangerous and divisive rhetoric that refugees and asylum seekers have had to endure in recent times. This country has a proud heritage of offering safe harbour and a warm welcome to anyone who flees to our shores.