Hansard

I start by agreeing with my colleague Maree Todd that we need to be careful about conflating migrants and refugees. They have two different statuses and the words mean very different things in our collective psyche.

I welcome this debate. I have been taking part in the wider debate on refugees since long before I was an elected member. It is great that Scotland has welcomed 1,000 refugees. Although that represents only 0.02 per cent of our population, it is definitely a start.

Last week, the Italian coastguard reported that it had saved more than 10,000 refugees who were taking the dangerous sea passage to enter Europe via Libya. Desperate people take to the sea to escape war, discrimination, fear and intimidation, and many of them do not make it to the end of the journey. I ask members to imagine that it was a member of their family.

On Sunday, my friend Lord AIf Dubs, who carried off the political coup that forced David Cameron to accept some unaccompanied children from the Calais jungle, was there on a visit. He is furious that nothing has happened. As a former child refugee who was brought to Britain from Czechoslovakia on one of the Kindertransport trains in 1939, when he was six, he is burning with frustration at the political inaction, and I know that many of us in the Parliament share that feeling.

We also have protests by French hauliers around Calais who find themselves facing violent attacks from desperate migrants or refugees who are trying to survive in flimsy tents and squalid conditions. They have become the victims of the international failure to act. Better care and not higher walls is what these people—our fellow human beings—need.

This is a global crisis and it needs co-ordinated international action. Every safe and democratic nation should be willing and able to offer homes to some of the refugees who are fleeing the violence and chaos of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, but it seems that all that Westminster—including Theresa May—is prepared to do is to talk and to make vague commitments about helping refugees in camps. I see no willingness to bring the promised 20,000 Syrian refugees from the camps by 2020. I just hear words; I see no actions. Let us be honest: the UK is a country of about 60 million people; we have room and there is plenty of opportunity to take more people.

Some would say that the campaign for a Brexit succeeded only because of the ability of its leaders to stoke up fears about immigrants and refugees. Now, Nicolas Sarkozy, the former conservative president of France, has demanded that Britain opens a detention centre for migrants on its own territory. I do not think that bigger walls and more detention centres are what we need. I was surprised but happy to hear that Dungavel is to close at last, but I am filled with horror about what is proposed as a short-term detention scheme, with no recourse to justice, no community support and no family support for people who would be huckled to Yarl’s Wood—where, I am afraid, we do not have the same standards that we have at Dungavel.

A year ago, the First Minister’s humanitarian summit established a task force. We have heard about the funding of £1 million and the co-ordinated response not just from this Government but across parties, communities and local authorities. Vigils were held across Scotland and, indeed, across the world.

Gary Christie, the head of policy and communications at the Scottish Refugee Council said:

“Scotland can be proud of the support it has shown and continues to show. It has offered a heartfelt welcome to those in need.”

Yet, in 2014, the UK made 14,000 positive asylum decisions compared with 48,000 in Germany, 33,000 in Sweden and 21,000 in both France and Italy.

Our local authorities are working with the Syrian vulnerable person resettlement scheme to rehome people who have lost everything—in some cases, family members—and to help them to build new and productive lives for themselves and their children. That is what they crave: the chance to live without the crashing of bombs; somewhere where they can build a decent life for themselves. Imagine if that were one of us. Would we be denying ourselves that sanctuary or opportunity?

I am very proud to say that South Lanarkshire Council’s executive committee had a meeting yesterday to update it on the vulnerable person resettlement scheme. The council has already provided accommodation to 44 families and expects to have reached its target of 60 within the year. I have not heard the details yet, but it is recommended that the council commit to settling another 60 refugees under the scheme during 2017. I give them my whole-hearted support in that, and I hope—we all do—that we can create somewhere for people to live, grow and be safe.

As long as right-wing extremists exist to stoke up the fires of resentment, there will be opposition to human beings seeking safety from war, political violence and oppression. Scots are outward looking, have a more global perspective and genuinely want to extend the hand of friendship and support. No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark; it is time for us to be the sanctuary.