Meeting of the Parliament 17 June 2014
The debate about this country’s relationship with refugees and asylum seekers is too often distorted, too unfair and misleading, and many of the most common assumptions about asylum seekers and refugees are unrecognisable to those of us who have first-hand experience of working with them. The Scottish Refugee Council has tried to challenge those assumptions by setting out simple and clearly referenced facts about the realities of asylum. I want to put some of those facts on the record today.
Eighty per cent of the world’s refugees live in the developing world, many of them in refugee camps having been forcibly displaced. Africa, Asia and the Middle East host three quarters of the world’s refugees, Europe hosts 16 per cent and the United Kingdom hosts just over 1 per cent.
It is true that asylum applications peaked in 2002 but by 2010 they were down to a record low. In 2012 in the UK, less than a third of refugees who applied for asylum were successful. We are no soft touch.
Asylum seekers are not automatically entitled to council homes. There are asylum seekers in “dispersed accommodation” but that is allocated by the Home Office; it is nearly always in hard-to-let properties and the number of asylum seekers in dispersed accommodation is equivalent to just 0.05 per cent of the population of Scotland.
Home Office rules prevent asylum seekers from working, so they are dependent on state support, which can be as little as £5 per day. According to Refugee Council research, asylum seekers do not come to the UK to claim benefits. In fact, most know nothing about our welfare system and have no expectation of receiving any financial support when they arrive.
I worked with asylum seekers before coming to the Parliament. I helped them to get into training, once their applications had been granted and they were able to look for work. They were not scroungers or chancers, and they were not here to take advantage of or abuse our hospitality. They were child soldiers who escaped African war lords, and people who were looking for a home because their own home had been taken from them.
They were grateful for the assistance that they received in Scotland, and they were thankful for the opportunities that they found in a country where they were safe and could make a new life for themselves, and where they could put destitution and persecution behind them. Those are the stories that the public need to hear, and those are the facts that the Official Report must record.
I draw members’ attention to the position of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender refugees and asylum seekers. The Kaleidoscope Trust’s recent report reminded us that homosexuality is illegal in 41 of the Commonwealth’s 53 member states, and documented just how pernicious and malign the inequalities in some of those countries really are.
Next month, athletes and visitors from around the world—including from those 41 countries—will come to Glasgow to celebrate the Commonwealth games. We can send out a powerful message of hope by showing that gay athletes and LGBT people are welcome here in Scotland. We can also make a practical difference by ensuring that our asylum system treats LGBT people with dignity and respect. The review into the intrusive questioning of gay asylum seekers is welcome, but we must ask searching questions about a system in which LGBT people have been deported back to countries in which they face persecution.
The aspiration that the Scottish Government sets out in its motion—the desire for a more humane asylum system—is one that my Labour colleagues and I share. However, we must be clear about the fact that, to build support for a humane and dignified asylum system, we will have to take on all-too-common misconceptions, let people hear the facts and make the case for a more tolerant, welcoming and understanding society.
16:07