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Again, Mr Ruskell asks a very pertinent and timeous question. I raised that issue directly with Felicity Buchan, the new minister with responsibility for the Ukraine scheme in the UK Government. I am concerned that we are approaching a year since the start of the latest invasion by Russia; therefore, we are approaching a year since some people will have received visas. That means that they are a third of the way through their time here in the UK, because it is a three-year visa. Mr Ruskell is right that some will want to return to Ukraine as soon as it is safe for them to do so. They have property or family there, or they have jobs to return to. There is an emotional tie there, understandably, and they want to return to help to rebuild.

I know from speaking to Ukrainians that others want to rebuild their life here in Scotland. They have enjoyed their stay thus far and they want to stay for the longer term. I raised that question with Felicity Buchan. I am not confident that that thinking has progressed yet in the UK Government, but I will continue to raise the issue because we want to ensure that people who are here right now have the certainty of knowing what their status is. Again, I encourage colleagues, if they have evidence of where concerns have been raised, to ensure that I am aware of that, so that I can continue to raise them with UK colleagues.

On international and intergovernmental co-operation, any international visit that I have been on of late—whether that has been to Brussels, Dublin, Poland or Germany—has involved discussion about the country’s particular response to the situation in Ukraine. As I set out in my introductory remarks, it has been evident to me that the movement of people is the largest on the European continent since the second world war. People could not have prepared for the crisis, and they are responding to it as well as possible. We all face a Europe-wide challenge, and we are all looking to examples of best practice elsewhere to see where other countries, including our own, are trying to ensure that they are responding in the best possible way for those who have fled war.

There is very strong co-operation and discussion with Welsh Government colleagues, for instance. We are, on responding, very much on the same page as they are on. Obviously, there is a difference in the scale of people’s arrival and, from the discussions that we have had with the Irish Government, we know that there is a difference in the scale of arrival in the upward direction in Ireland. Ireland is one of the European nations that waived visa requirements, so a very large number of Ukrainians have arrived there, compared with the number in Scotland or elsewhere in the UK.

There are shared challenges in ensuring that our response is appropriate in respect of access to housing and services and other similar issues. The challenges that we face in Scotland are not unique.

The financial situation that Ms Minto has described is a huge worry to me. I know that it is a major worry to local authorities in Scotland and that that came through in evidence last week. It is also a huge worry to Welsh Government colleagues and, I believe, to the Local Government Association in England.

Ms Minto is right: local authority tariff support reduced from £10,500 per person to £5,900 per person as of January. Thereafter, there is no year 2 tariff support for local authorities, unlike in the Syria and Afghan schemes. The support has been replaced by a one-off fund of £150 million across the UK. We still have to understand what the allocation will be, but our assumption is that the funding will be a tenth of the value of the year 1 tariff funding per person.

The £10,500 already represented a stretch for our local authority partners, which we are asking to provide a significant amount of education, housing, social work and trauma support—you name it. In the conversation that I mentioned with my counterpart in the UK Government, Felicity Buchan, she suggested that local government should or could be doing even more. That was met with some frustration from me because, while we are asking our local authorities to do more, people are still arriving, and we are seeing funding from the UK Government to support that dropping to as low as a tenth for the year coming.

I hope that it is not too late and that we can impress on Treasury colleagues the fact that, although they have done a huge amount in respect of the military support grant—I take my hat off to the UK Government for the world-leading military support that it has provided to Ukraine; credit where credit is due for that. We must ensure that we are appropriately supporting the humanitarian response. I have grave concerns that the cut in funding will mean that the expectation of meeting the humanitarian concerns will not be met.

I am happy to bring in my colleague Will Tyler-Greig at this stage.

A conference was held at the Scottish Parliament with heritage and cultural organisations from Ukraine in which we heard—you and the convener heard these, as well—harrowing accounts of cultural vandalism and destruction of monuments and other sites of cultural significance in Ukraine. There is clear targeting of those sites by Russian forces to try to wipe Ukraine and everything that Ukraine stands for from the face of the earth. I suggest that investigating that should be in the category of investigating for a war crime. We will continue to work directly with colleagues from Ukraine on the culture side on what we can do to support that.

On rebuilding, when I was in Brussels at the end of last year, I had a meeting with the European Committee of the Regions about what we can do in partnership on the rebuilding work. That committee has taken a leading role to co-ordinate the recovery support. We have not yet had advanced discussions because we are still in the war situation, but we will be looking to do what we can, depending on what the demand is, to offer special practical support or otherwise, to ensure that Ukraine can rebuild when the war is over and it has maintained its borders and boundaries.

Again, as I did in my opening remarks, I pay tribute to the third sector, as I have done to our local authority partners. The Scottish Refugee Council is a key partner for us with regard to implementation, the welcome arrangements and delivery of our response; it enables us to ensure that everything that we do is sense checked. In individual communities and across Scotland, third sector organisations—as they do for people who are already resident in Scotland—do a phenomenal job to help and support people who have arrived from Ukraine.

I have seen wonderful work in my constituency of Airdrie and Shotts and in wider North Lanarkshire, as well as across Scotland, when I have been out on visits to places such as Aberfeldy. The community there has done an incredible job of providing help and support for people from Ukraine.

As regards whether third sector organisations are getting the necessary support, I would say that they can always come and speak to us if they need more support. We provide funding to third sector interfaces across Scotland to make sure that money and support can be distributed. Will, do you have the exact figures?

The situation is under constant review, as would be expected. In my most recent statement to Parliament, I confirmed that the supersponsor scheme would remain paused. Discussions will be had with the programme delivery board in the coming weeks and a decision on the current status will be required this month. I will make sure that the committee is furnished with the outcome of those.

You are absolutely right that, sadly, everybody expected at the beginning that the war was going to be short. We have to pay tribute to the resilience and the bravery of the people of Ukraine for the fact that they have defended their country so incredibly well against the illegal Russian invasion—of course, it is the latest invasion, because Russia annexed the Crimea in 2014. I think that everybody’s expectation was that it was going to be a short and temporary situation. We are now in a very different situation. We are approaching a year from the start of the war, which will be a poignant moment. I am happy to talk about some aspects of what we are planning to mark that particularly tricky anniversary for Ukrainians who are in Scotland.

As a result, there has obviously had to be a change in approach, and you have seen that in the way that the supersponsor scheme has been organised. We had a review of the supersponsor scheme when I had to pause it due to the unprecedented demand that was placed on it during the summer months, when it was the only viable route through which to come into the United Kingdom. There were 16 interventions proposed as part of the review, which was led by Professor Linda Bauld. In the very short time since that review was published, we have made significant progress on the majority of those areas, including the £50 million fund to bring forward longer-term accommodation, support for people through the private rented sector and modular accommodation. We are doing a number of things to make the scheme sustainable and durable for the long term.

Sadly, Ukrainians will have to be in Scotland, for their safety, for longer than was anticipated. We will continue to ensure that we are doing everything possible, reflecting on some of the areas that the head of the consul office in Edinburgh, Mr Kuslii, has suggested, and reflecting on work that we are doing with our local authority partners and the third sector.

A number of events, including church services, are planned for that week by the Government, the City of Edinburgh Council and the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain. There will be an event in Parliament that will be co-sponsored by me and the Presiding Officer on the Tuesday night. On the Thursday, which is the day before the anniversary, the Scottish Government will lead a debate on the issue. There will be wreath laying and processions, not just here in Edinburgh but across Scotland. There will be a number of events that will, I hope, allow the people who are here from Ukraine to see the solidarity of feeling that exists in Scotland.

I also hope that the events will remind people across Scotland that the war continues. As you say, convener, there are more than 13,000 people who still hold a visa to travel who are yet to travel. We still have people arriving from Ukraine every day, although the scheme has been paused. It is important to ensure that the issue is high in the public’s consciousness and that people are aware that it requires significant intervention and support. Not least, the events are for our friends from Ukraine who are here and who have suffered great trauma. They will still be worried about family members or will have lost family members and they will want to make sure that they mark that event appropriately.

I have full sympathy with that. When I was in Krakow, I met Alun Ruznik, who is originally from Bosnia and fled the war in Sarajevo when he was 13 and his family moved to Slovenia. He moved around the world for work, feeling very transient, and ended up working as a chef in Barcelona.

At the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, he felt a calling to do something to help. As he knew Slovenia, he thought that returning there would be his way of doing that. Having got to Krakow, with a seven-hour stopover before his next train, he asked around and ended up at the world food kitchen outside the disused shopping centre that I mentioned. He is there now, alongside displaced Ukrainians, and is sleeping on a camp bed in the accommodation that has been provided and volunteering his services. He is an incredible man, and I found speaking to him really emotional. I pay tribute to the work that he and others from around the world are doing to help on the ground.

That feeling of transience—of someone not knowing where their home actually is, as a result of having fled one, two or however many conflict zones and having to find and rebuild their life—must be incredibly challenging. That is why I am so determined that we do everything that we can both to provide people with initial sanctuary and safety in Scotland and to give them the support that they need to enable them to rebuild their lives and ensure that they can call Scotland their home for as long as possible.

I will bring in Will Tyler-Greig to give more detail on the worker support centre to which we have provided funding. It is important to ensure that people have access to employment support, to give them the resource and the independence that they desire. From the conversations that I have had with Yevhen Mankovskyi over many months, it is clear that the desire for independence and their own sustainability is very strong among people arriving from Ukraine. Sometimes, it is not possible. I understand that people are arriving with horrendous trauma. In my constituency, I have seen children for whom that has had a profound impact. However, for people who are able to and who want to achieve that, we want to ensure that we are doing everything possible to provide such support.

I am keen to bring in Will to provide more detail on the worker support centre and integration support.

We have been doing a huge amount already, but there is clearly more that can be done. I was at the solidarity rally a week past Sunday, which started at the Russian consulate and ended up outside the Scottish Parliament. The support on the streets was incredible. Like you, as I go back and forth in my constituency of Airdrie and Shotts and around Scotland, I see Ukrainian flags and colours everywhere, as Mr Mankovskyi mentioned. I am wearing the Ukrainian tartan, as is the convener.

We are doing everything that we can in ways that feel small. However, as Mr Mankovskyi articulated, every small gesture—when we use the hashtag #standwithUkraine or the phrase “Slava Ukraini!”—matters to the people I spoke to in and around Poland and to those I speak to in Scotland. The situation is incredibly challenging, as we have heard. People are worried about their family members, their property and the future of their nation, so everything that we can possibly do to support them and show solidarity is worth doing.

I understand all those concerns. We do not want people in hotel rooms any longer than necessary. We are working with local authorities to build the capacity of the matching service and have committed resource to that. We are in constant dialogue with our local authority partners to ensure that there is as much clarity as possible around how that process works, that we get feedback and that we can ensure that there is flexibility around local matching. Where possible, that will allow the local authority teams to use their local knowledge to take matches forward more quickly. I am looking for us to do anything and everything to ensure that things get moving as quickly as possible.

There is no judgment from me over what Wales has done over the past couple of weeks, because I understand the pressures that they will have been under, but it shows the challenge that we face. The challenge is a result of the scheme being an immigration one rather than a formal resettlement one—the two approaches have different levels of support. However, we will certainly do everything that we can to ensure that we are responding appropriately.

You are absolutely right that, even in hotel accommodation, people start to put down roots and make community connections and their children start to make friend networks. That is great, but that makes it challenging if there is a need to move people on to other areas. We want to be as sympathetic as we can be to that issue, but it shows why it is important that we get the matching service operational as quickly as possible, so that we are able to provide people with a settled community that allows them to put down those roots as quickly as possible. I am alive to all those issues. We are constantly monitoring the situation. We are in constant dialogue with our colleagues in local government and the local authority teams, and will continue to provide the support that they feel is necessary to ensure that we get people into longer-term secure accommodation as quickly as possible.