Hansard

We recognise that, unfortunately, asylum policy is currently reserved to the UK Parliament under the Scotland Act 1998. The Scottish Government has been clear through our building a new Scotland paper “Migration to Scotland after independence” that, in an independent Scotland, we would take a very different approach to asylum and migration, building a new system that is based on treating people with dignity and respect and on upholding our international and moral obligations.

The purpose of holding the debate today is to discuss and to highlight the impact that UK Government asylum decisions have had in Scotland on national and local government, as well as on the third sector’s ability to support asylum seekers who live here.

As the Scottish Refugee Council is fond of saying, powers are reserved, people are not. In Scotland, we are determined to support everyone who lives here to integrate into and contribute to our communities. We want to respect and protect the human rights of everyone and provide opportunity and equality, regardless of anyone’s background. Supporting asylum seekers and treating them fairly when they engage with devolved services is our responsibility, and we have made it our business. However, it is undeniable that UK Government decisions—I will soon speak to a few recent ones in particular—impact on our ability to do that successfully and in the best way.

Earlier today, I spoke, as I regularly do, with representatives from the Scottish Refugee Council and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities about exactly that issue. I will lay out some of the most concerning examples that they have shared of the impact of UK Government decisions on their ability to do the work that they do. We discussed how seriously councils take their responsibilities to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and how lack of adequate funding to support that work is impacting how well it can be done. I have also heard how lack of funding to support councils to work with newly recognised refugees is forcing people into destitution and putting councils in the difficult position of dealing with sudden spikes in homelessness presentations.

The UK Government claimed on 2 January that the legacy asylum backlog had been cleared. It published data suggesting that, in the four weeks from 10 November to 17 December last year, 20,481 initial asylum decisions were made. That is more than were made in the whole of 2021, and we know that thousands of cases remain unresolved. Through the Women’s Integration Network in Glasgow, I have heard from people who have been seeking asylum for more than a decade—women who have not left Scotland since before Facebook launched, holding babies who were born here while they have no idea when they might receive permission to stay and to work to support those babies or what they might do if their application is refused.

We have long called for improving the speed and quality of decisions, but the approach of doing so without support or co-ordination with local councils has left people destitute and homeless. It means that receiving a positive decision can be as stressful as receiving a negative one. Suddenly, the very little support that people have disappears, and they have a very short move-on period. For many, the only option is to present as homeless to the local authority. Without communication and financial support from the UK Government, councils are struggling to do right by those who have been given positive decisions but have nowhere to turn and nowhere to live. The new Minister of State for Legal Migration and the Border confirmed to me on 3 January that the UK Government will not provide any additional funding as a result of the increase in asylum support cessations.

In this incredibly difficult situation, local authorities across Scotland are engaging with asylum dispersal; nearly half of Scottish local authorities are now taking part. There are, of course, housing pressures in many of those council areas, but that does not prevent Scotland from doing its part in continuing to support refugees and people seeking asylum. What it does is increase the importance of genuine engagement from the UK Government with local authorities on asylum dispersal and related matters to give them a fighting chance of supporting people to avoid homelessness and destitution—genuine engagement that is, sadly, still missing.

Similar difficulties arise in third sector support. I want to acknowledge, as always, the vital work that the third sector does in Scotland to support asylum seekers. It is one of the privileges of my role to be able to work so closely with the Scottish Refugee Council, which is one of our partners, along with COSLA, in the new Scots strategy. The new Scots approach has now been in place for a decade. It is in the process of being refreshed, with a new strategy expected to be published at the end of March, to be followed by a delivery plan in the summer.

Throughout its life, the new Scots approach has held the core principle of supporting integration from day 1 of arrival in Scotland. However, it cannot directly address issues that are outwith the scope of the Scottish Government, Scottish local authorities and other Scottish organisations. UK Government decisions therefore have a significant impact on what can be done to support people seeking asylum and communities in Scotland, even in devolved areas. We are limited in that aim of supporting integration from day 1.

In a debate last year, I highlighted a comment from the Global Refugee Forum, in which I had been told that there are asylum seekers living in Scotland who have never heard of Scotland and are unaware of which country they are in. If someone is unaware that they are in Scotland, it becomes nearly impossible for us and for the third sector to communicate to them their rights and the Scotland-specific services that are available to them. All the while, the UK Government is seeking to restrict the right of people to seek asylum in the UK at all through the Illegal Migration Act 2023. The third sector and the Scottish Government are keen to mitigate, wherever possible, the worst impacts of that act, but UK Government plans to implement it remain unclear, which makes it challenging for us to consider the best way to do that.

That act, of course, follows the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. Two clauses in the Nationality and Borders Bill triggered a need for legislative consent, which the Scottish Parliament voted to withhold. The UK Government then made no changes in response to the views of, and the lack of consent from, the Scottish Parliament. Then we got the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, which is the second piece of asylum legislation that was introduced last year that the Home Secretary could not guarantee would be compatible with the European convention on human rights. That led to flippant comments from some politicians down south about whether we should get rid of ECHR responsibilities altogether.

The Scottish Government has opposed plans to relocate people to Rwanda and to have protection claims considered there since those plans were announced in April 2022, because that undermines the 1951 United Nations refugee convention. The Supreme Court decision in November to reject the Government appeal was important, but we have been disappointed with the UK Government’s reaction since then, in doubling down and introducing emergency legislation to try to force through the measure anyway.

The UK was a founding signatory of the 1951 UN refugee convention, which is hard to picture now, given the current UK Government’s constant attacks on the rights of people to seek safety and sanctuary here. We have a duty to uphold that convention instead of constantly trying to find ways out of it. However, it does not look as though we are anywhere near having a UK Government that will accept those facts. Files that were recently released by the National Archives in London outlined consideration given by the former Labour Government to accommodating asylum seekers in Mull.