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You will appreciate that I am working closely with the anti-racism interim governance group co-chairs on what the observatory will look like, its functions and its constitution. I am not in a position to share all that with the committee at the moment, but I will keep you updated as things move on. As I have said, we are moving at pace and, as is reflected in the programme for government, we expect to launch the observatory by the end of the year.

That is a fantastic question to kick things off. Thank you, convener. I am very aware that the citizens panel members are behind me, and I feel a bit rude to be facing away from them. I apologise to everyone who is behind me, but I need to address the convener.

I completely appreciate the work that has been put in here and the fact that the questions come from members of the public. That possibly means that they will be even more difficult to answer than usual. I emphasise that my portfolio is equalities, migration and refugees, and I will do my very best to answer the questions within the scope of that remit. Equalities is so broad that it might be quite difficult to tie things in, but I am more than happy to bring in my officials and we are happy to write to other ministers and directorates, as appropriate, to get the committee fuller answers if we go into depth on colleagues’ portfolios.

When it comes to working with Natalie Don around the Promise, convener, you will be aware of the programme for government commitment to set up a Cabinet sub-committee on the Promise. Its membership is still a work in progress, but it is a demonstration of our wider mainstreaming approach. Although the Promise is not my area of responsibility, I am committed to ensuring that equality and human rights are embedded in all that we do in government, including the delivery of the Promise.

We are delivering that change in a number of ways. You will be aware of the proposed human rights bill, our consultation on which has recently closed. Among other things, legislating on those human rights will ensure that the Scottish Government takes a human rights-based approach in how we legislate and how we treat our citizens. We are reforming the public sector equality duty, which will make sure that other public bodies are acting in the same way. We are focusing on building capacity and changing culture within Government, on strengthening leadership, including at senior levels, and on making better use of the equality data that we have.

I will continue to work with colleagues, including the Minister for Children, Young People and Keeping the Promise, to ensure that, across all our services—for example, in care, health, social services and education—we meet our ambition for Scotland to be an equal and fair place for any child to grow up in, no matter their background. That will require lots of portfolios to work together, which is reflected in the need for the Cabinet sub-committee.

I suppose that all policies come up, because we are keen to constantly scrutinise what we are doing, including any measure specifically aimed at supporting children and families out of poverty. After all, that is a core mission of the Government, and a substantial amount of our budget is currently focused on it. For example, we are spending more than £3 billion on policies aimed at tackling poverty and supporting people, which will have an impact on how people make it through the cost of living crisis and other events that they are facing.

As for working with other ministers, my portfolio lends itself to that. A lot of the work that we, including Robbie Priestley, are doing is about mainstreaming—that is, encouraging other ministers to think about things through an equalities and human rights lens and requiring them to do so through the changes that we are making to the budget process and the equality duties.

I hope that you will appreciate that that is not something that I can go into in great detail, because that is not an area of responsibility that sits with me. However, I know that the Minister for Children, Young People and Keeping the Promise is as keen as the rest of Government is to ensure that we do all that we can to promote diverse culture in schools. I am more than happy to pass on any comments to her from the committee and any others in the education portfolio to make her aware of the asks from the committee and the citizens panel.

In my area of responsibility, we are doing lots of work at pace to launch the anti-racism observatory. I think that the data, guidance and evidence base that we can get from that institution will allow us to respond to the systemic issues that we know exist, and that policy that is based on that new evidence—such evidence has perhaps previously not been collected as much as it should or could have been—will allow us to be truly anti-racism as well as simply not racist.

Thank you, for the introduction and for inviting me to be here to speak to the committee on what is, of course, world refugee day. Following this meeting, I will be attending an event organised by the Scottish Refugee Council as part of refugee festival Scotland, which is in its 22nd year. More than 120 events are taking place across Scotland this week, co-ordinated by the Scottish Refugee Council, and this year’s theme is hope. I recognise that the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament have a crucial role to play in providing that hope to asylum seekers.

The Home Office is, of course, responsible for UK asylum and immigration policy, including no recourse to public funds and restricting asylum seekers right to work; operation of the UK asylum system, including decisions on how it operates; and provision of asylum accommodation and support.

I recognise that many essential services are devolved and the responsibility of the Scottish Government and local authorities, which play a key role in supporting asylum dispersal. I have been amazed by the on-going and constant efforts of Scottish third sector organisations in making an invaluable contribution to supporting asylum seekers in Scotland. We are proud to support those organisations, and the Scottish Government is providing nearly £1 million to third sector organisations in 2023-24 for refugee integration work.

We have taken a human rights-based approach to our policy on asylum, with our “New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy 2018-2022” being clear that integration should be supported from day 1 of arrival. We are clear that that applies whether a person first arrives as a refugee or as someone who is seeking asylum.

The new Scots strategy was developed and led in partnership by the Scottish Government, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Refugee Council, and it helped Scotland to secure £6 million from the European Union’s asylum, migration and integration fund, which went towards a £6.6 million project to support refugee integration.

I am committed to working with our new Scots partners to refresh the strategy, building on work to date, and ensuring that it continues to be informed by refugees, people seeking asylum and those with experience of supporting both groups in our communities.

The ambition of new Scots is the right one: to support everyone so that they have the best shot at integrating, and to ensure that they are properly supported and able to realise their human rights. However, I stress the difficulty in achieving that fully within the constraints of devolution. For example, we are providing more than £1 million to support the delivery of our ending destitution together strategy, which improves support for people with no recourse to public funds, including many asylum seekers.

We do not believe that anyone should be pushed into destitution, but we have no power over whom NRPF is applied to, nor can we support those with NRPF to access Scottish benefits or the Scottish welfare fund.

The British Red Cross is a valued partner in delivering crisis funds to those who need them, including asylum seekers with NRPF. However, it should not be necessary to resort to crisis funding to make sure that someone is not made destitute, and Scottish ministers continue to raise issues and concerns about NRPF with the UK Government.

At this point, I would like to mention briefly the Illegal Migration Bill and the opposition of the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament to it. The Parliament, of course, debated and agreed a motion describing the bill as “dehumanising and immoral”. The bill is currently at its committee stage with the House of Lords, with a report expected in early July.

The Scottish Government is clear that the bill will prevent people, including those being human trafficked, from accessing safety and support in Scotland, and we believe that the UK Government should withdraw it immediately. We know that trafficking victims are often suffering from severe trauma, that they have little choice about their movements and that they are frequently unaware of their location or how they entered a country. Therefore, removing existing protections based on how they entered the UK is irresponsible and indefensible. It will make victims much less likely to seek help, tightening the grip of perpetrators, and therefore making the job of the Scottish Government in supporting victims of human trafficking—a duty that we take extremely seriously—very difficult.

That is why we are seeking to withhold consent on key clauses that impact on the competence of Scottish ministers and our ability to operate in devolved areas. On Thursday, I will attend a summit on the Illegal Migration Bill that will also be attended by key stakeholders. Convener, I extend an offer to write to you following that summit to share any key insights.

I will end my remarks by highlighting our wider work through introducing a bill on human rights and continuing to pressure the UK Government for further powers to be devolved on, or at least for improvements to be made to, the immigration system and setting out a vision for an independent Scotland that enshrines human rights in a written constitution. We are committed to doing whatever we can to help the people who need it most.

There is more to do and there are significant challenges, which is why we are committed to working with our partners to refresh the new Scottish strategy, building on the work that has been done to date and continuing to ensure that it is informed by lived experience as well as organisations with expertise in supporting people.

I have been interested to read about the important work that the committee has carried out, and I look forward to hearing members’ questions.

I think that I picked up enough of that, convener, if you want me to answer.

First, the resettlement of people from Ukraine was a reaction to a difficult event—the illegal invasion of Ukraine—but we were led there by decisions made at the UK level. Displaced Ukrainians in Scotland and the UK have the right to work and access benefits, so they are in a very different position to those asylum seekers from other areas or those who took different routes in. That is one of the reasons why we have been clear that there needs to be safe and legal routes into the country, because if you do not provide safe and legal routes, all that is left are unsafe and illegal routes.

I can completely understand why someone seeking asylum would look at the support that has been given to Ukrainians and wonder why it has not been extended to everyone else, but the unfortunate answer is that we do not have the ability to treat asylum seekers in the same way.

I know that integration into the community has been successful in relation to Ukrainians who are displaced here at the moment. For example, they have been able to get into work; I think that 85 per cent of those in Edinburgh, for instance, are in work. They have also been able to access services in Ukrainian due to the large cohort that have very similar needs and backgrounds.

We are discussing very different cohorts here, and we are simply not able to do things in the way that we reacted to Ukraine and Sudan in relation to expanding social security access to people with, for example, NRPF.

First of all, the Home Office is responsible for matching refugees to properties. On health and social care support, the Scottish Government has always been clear that asylum seekers and refugees have access to NHS services. They can register with a general practitioner. The same goes for other devolved services, including education: a child who is seeking asylum or who is a refugee has the right to an education, just like anyone else.

I go back to funding for local authorities. We have long highlighted that the UK Government’s asylum dispersal funding is inadequate. Having met partners in COSLA and local authorities, I know that that is being felt at the moment. There is a great deal of fear about increasing asylum seeker provision without having extra funding. If the committee were minded to back our calls for the UK Government to provide more funding and clarity around that, that would be very welcome.

We had the debate in Parliament, which informed our way forward. The Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice wrote to Robert Jenrick to reiterate the Scottish Government’s opposition to the bill on 25 April, then we led the political debate in opposition to the bill’s provisions in the Scottish Parliament.

On 30 May, we lodged our legislative consent memorandum in the Scottish Parliament. There will be an opportunity to discuss that in a parliamentary debate. The LCM recommends that consent not be given to clauses 23 and 27 of the bill, which are the clauses to which I referred in my opening statement. We believe that they would significantly alter the competence of the Scottish ministers and our ability to meet our international human rights obligations to support victims of human trafficking, including children. Officials and ministers have continued discussions with the UK Government to make it clear what we oppose and why.

That is the specific funding that was made available for local authorities to use only for empty and void properties. Once Ukrainians move out of those properties, they will be available for social use by the local authorities.