Meeting of the Parliament 17 June 2014
I associate myself with Margaret McCulloch, whose speech stuck to the facts and put in context the problem, which is sometimes overstated—perhaps not in the chamber but certainly in the press and in the wider context of Scottish society.
In his opening remarks, the minister said, “Welcome.” We should be a country that opens its doors, and we should open our hearts to asylum seekers and people who seek refugee status in our country.
My Aberdeenshire West constituency is in the north-east of Scotland, which probably does not see the same numbers of people who seek asylum or refugee status as other places in Scotland do. That was not always the case, of course. In the past, because Aberdeen is a harbour port, many merchant seamen used to jump ship and seek asylum, certainly back in the 80s and 90s.
Aberdeen has always welcomed people from all nations and migrants from all parts of the world. I remember my very first encounter with someone from a different country. My aunt’s husband came from Lagos in Nigeria. Unfortunately, when he returned to Nigeria, he died as a reporter in the wars there. My nephews were deemed to be different at that time, but not because of a sense of annoyance or hatred; they were just seen as different. In the early 60s, there were very few people from a black ethnic minority in the very small place where I lived.
Before the debate, I wondered what the process is for someone who wants to seek asylum, who perhaps underwent horrendous difficulties in getting to these shores. When they get here, who do they turn to? What is their first thought? Where do they go? When they want to seek asylum, what is the process? I applaud the wonderful strategy put forward by the Scottish Government, COSLA and the third sector, and I thought that if I was an asylum seeker fleeing a country where I was in fear of not just the military but the police, would I want to go to a police station to ask for asylum? Perhaps not.
Would I use modern technology to find out what the process was? I might have access to the internet if I had just arrived in Glasgow, Edinburgh or Aberdeen. However, I looked at the websites of Aberdeen City Council and Aberdeenshire Council, which make absolutely no reference to asylum seekers or people seeking refuge. I contacted one of the councils, pointed that out and asked it to investigate. It came back to me and said, “You’re right. There’s nothing on our website.”
If I was someone coming to this country who was in fear of going to the police because of past experience, who would I turn to? I ask the minister, in all sincerity, whether we have thought about how people who seek asylum and refuge in this country embark on that first step. It might be that we do something as simple as putting something on the internet—Google or whatever—but we need to ensure that people have access to the first step of the process.
I condemn the Azure card system, which is absolutely dreadful. We moved away from the voucher system because that removed people’s dignity and stigmatised them. The card system does exactly the same—it does nothing other than stigmatise people. It does not give them the freedom to go into a shop and buy what they need, when they need it, and it does not give them the freedom to use public transport, because it is not accepted on public transport.
I believe that the strategy that has been put forward by the Scottish Government in collaboration with COSLA and the third sector is the right way to go, and I commend the Government’s motion.