Equal Opportunities Committee, 26 Jan 2010

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Official Report 282KB pdf

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Migration/Trafficking (Economic Impact)

Our main item of business is a round-table discussion on the economic impact of migration and trafficking. It is worth reminding everyone that, although the round-table format is less formal than normal, this is a public meeting of the committee and a transcript of the meeting will be produced. With that, I welcome all the witnesses. I ask everyone around the table to introduce themselves.

I am a member of the committee.

I am a portfolio manager with Audit Scotland.

I am a member of the committee.

I work within the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities team known as the strategic migration partnership.

I am the gender reporter on the committee.

I am the head of policy and parliamentary affairs at the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

I am an MSP.

I am the deputy general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress.

I am a member of the committee.

I chair the STUC women's committee.

I am a member of the committee.

I am the committee's deputy convener and race reporter.

Thank you very much for that.

By way of background, let me explain that the committee decided to embark on this round-table session as a kind of fact-finding exercise to give us a feel of things. We know that migration is essential for Scotland. We hope that, by looking at the experience, we can dispel some of the myths and concerns that surround the issue.

The best place to start is with the first question. How have recent increases in inward migration to Scotland impacted on spending by devolved public bodies? Perhaps COSLA will kick off on that one.

As far as we are aware, no Scottish local authority has quantified its spending in response to inward migration.

Our member authorities generally support the principle that inward migration to Scotland is a positive thing that should be encouraged. Our team has been tasked with developing strategies to help local authorities to attract and retain migrant workers and integrate them into their communities. That positive dialogue within COSLA is partly because local authorities recognise that migrants enhance cultural diversity, contribute economically and, in some areas, make the continued provision of services viable. COSLA also recognises that migration is a key mechanism for counteracting the problems associated with having an ageing and declining population.

Although local authorities inevitably face additional costs from translating materials, providing English language support to children in schools and adapting services to meet the needs of growing populations, we get the sense that the benefits of migration generally outweigh the costs on Scottish local authorities. Obviously, responding to the demands of new communities is challenging in the current economic context, but we have found that the rate of inward migration has also slowed as the economy has slowed. I should stress that local authorities need to be adequately resourced if they are to provide an adequate response to migration. Therefore, it is important that resources follow migrants wherever they happen to settle in Scotland.

You mentioned the problem that spending in response to migration is not quantified properly. Is there an issue with how the data are collected or with the divergent ways in how local authorities record the use of their services?

Especially early on, we faced a big challenge because of the limitations with the data. We have quite a lot of information about how people come into the country—especially those who come from the eight accession countries, or A8 countries, of the European Union—such as where they were when they registered to work and applied for a national insurance number. However, once people have done that, we have very little information about where they move within Scotland and whether they move elsewhere in the UK to work or leave the country to go and work elsewhere.

Over the past couple of years, we have done quite a lot of work with the General Register Office for Scotland to try to improve the quality of the data available. GRO started by speaking to public sector bodies in Tayside about the different sources of data available so that those could be pulled together into a report for the area. That has now been rolled out across Scotland, so there is now a GRO report that pulls together all the sources of data for each area. GRO is committed to updating those reports yearly, which is a great help to Scottish local authorities.

We have also worked with GRO on a forward-looking proposal that uses administrative data sources, such as council tax records and registrations with general practitioners, to pull together all records about people in an area to create a more complete picture of who is in the area at any one time. Obviously, that raises a range of issues associated with data protection and privacy, but we have worked with GRO and with local authority legal officers to work through those issues to see whether that might be a viable way of producing a picture of a population. GRO hopes that such data will supplement the census and might even eventually be able to replace it by producing a dynamic picture of who is in Scotland at any point in time.

Is that being rolled out across all 32 local authorities?

That is not happening at the moment because we are still exploring the legal issues. However, we hope that GRO will be able to pilot the scheme in a couple of local authority areas in the next while.

But the intention is to take the best from that proposal.

I know that Audit Scotland produced a paper on this subject. Does Gordon Smail perhaps have any comments?

I will talk about the issue of costs.

A year and a bit ago, Audit Scotland produced a report called "The impact of the race equality duty on council services". We can talk later about the report's findings about the data on the composition of communities and their needs, but the main thrust of the report was to look at the extent to which policies make a difference in practice and have an impact on minority ethnic communities.

A small part of that work looked at the cost element, in particular by trying to collect information on interpretation and translation costs. As is our experience in other bits of work, we found that it is quite difficult to collect consistent data that give an overall picture. In this context, there is generally a need for consistent data on which people can make informed decisions when they look at options for different types of service delivery. Without such cost information, people cannot know whether, for example, economies of scale might be achieved by collaboration among councils.

That is helpful.

If we look at this as a balance sheet with inputs and outputs, for any cost that is put in, is there any recorded data that will give us an equivalent output in terms of the social and economic benefits? Has any work been done on that?

One of the key messages from our work on the race equality duty was that councils need to be better at demonstrating what impact their services have. It is about having consistent, reliable data with which to make connections. We found pockets of good practice, but there was no consistent good practice across all council services. There was certainly an absence of reporting on the impact of working with minority ethnic communities. From the data that we collected 18 months to two years ago, it is difficult to determine the connection between inputs and outputs, as Hugh O'Donnell put it. Councils need to be better at public performance reporting of basic best-value principles.

I echo what has been said about the problem with the baseline data on who lives in an area at any one time. However, that is compounded by cost and service-use issues. The EHRC would normally want to look at the ethnic monitoring data that an organisation collects as part of its responsibilities under the Race Relations Act 1976. However, it remains a challenge to many organisations to get basic census data from the 2001 census. Clearly, as eastern Europeans were not included in the 2001 census, there is a gap, because they would be classified just as other Europeans.

The national health service, for example, is one of the major sources of service provision to new migrants, but the best-performing health board in Scotland has about an 84 per cent data capture, while the figures for the worst-performing boards are less than 1 or 2 per cent. There is therefore a huge issue to do with what happens when people start to move into service use but, beyond that, there is the question how we quantify cost or cost benefit, which we are probably more interested in.

The vast difference that Chris Oswald highlighted—between 84 per cent in one board and 1 to 2 per cent in others—is an example of the benefits of having a round-table discussion.

I want to follow up what Chris Oswald said about the use of public services. How do migrants use public services? Is it significantly different from the way in which established communities use public services? Do service providers have full information about specific needs that migrants may have?

I will give a brief answer to that, but I am sure that people who are more directly involved in service provision can give a fuller answer. The STUC's perception, which comes from our experience of speaking to migrant workers in the workplace who are members of trade unions or with whom we have a dialogue anyway, is that migrant workers generally tend to use public services less than other people do. There is a range of reasons for that, which may be developing. Our initial impression was that migrant workers, particularly those from the A8 countries, regarded themselves as temporary workers—people who are likely to come for a relatively short time. In addition, in the early days, their lack of children and dependants suggested that they used public services less than others did. The proportion of those still in the country for whom that is the case may be changing. However, our sense is that our members who are A8 migrant workers use most public services less than other people do.

Is that because of their age?

The demographic is a key part of that. One would be surprised to find people in the 20 to 40-year-old age bracket using public services, particularly health services, to the same depth as older people.

If migrants are older, does the whole family tend to move over or do the migrants just work here temporarily and go back? What is the balance?

It is difficult for us to be definitive because of the number of people we deal with and the proportion of those who have dependants under 18. There may be better surveys, but our impression is still of a relatively low dependant base among our members who are A8 migrants. Others may have better data on that.

Does Elaine Dougall have anything to add?

From the women's point of view, there is a lack of trust of public services, a lack of information and an issue with language. Many women migrant workers feel isolated and feel that, if they use public services and make complaints to the police, they could be in a vulnerable position. Therefore, they tend to come to the trade union and ask for advice that should be accessible within the public domain. We often have to steer them into the avenues that they do not seem to understand or trust.

My trade union has been dealing with migrant workers for the past five or six years and those issues have become a bit less prominent. However, there is confusion about, and a lack of guidance on, using public services.

So migrant workers are likely to use the union as a third party to get information.

Yes. It is about trust as well. That is a big issue.

Marlyn Glen asked whether migrants use public services in significantly different ways. We suspect that they do, but we do not know. It is conjecture and we must continually remind ourselves that we do not have an evidence base from which to draw. She also asked whether service providers have enough information. It is clear that they do not and that that is a gap that we need to fill.

On 17 January, the commission published a UK report that suggested that service use among European migrants was 60 per cent less than among settled UK residents, but I do not think that we are confident about those figures. I suggest that, given the age dynamic, which has already been raised, we would expect the take-up of services such as sexual health, maternity, education and perhaps further education services to be greater among eastern European service users. Clearly, we would not expect a great take-up of geriatric services. However, the broad 60 per cent figure can be misleading. We want to disaggregate the figure by age and type of service before we quantify the impact on services.

The paucity of accurate and reliable statistics seems to be a recurring theme of various matters that we discuss in the committee. The statistics that are available are often spun negatively. We need to address that.

My question is about the figures from COSLA. Does COSLA have a unified approach? How will it deal with the disparity of data collection? We hear time and again about that disparity across a range of local authority activities. What is happening to provide the information that we need to make some assessment of such matters?

I would not say that it is solely the responsibility of local authorities. We have been working closely with GRO for 18 months to examine how local authorities can contribute to improving the quality of data available about migrants. There are discrepancies in the ways in which different local authorities collect information because they are independent of one another, but we hope that the work that we are doing with GRO will enable us to merge all public records held about people who access services in an area. We hope to include not just local authority data but information from the health service—all public records about people accessing services in an area. That is a medium to long-term aim, because of data protection issues and legal issues relating to sharing of data. For example, in some areas there is resistance to the idea that the health service and local authorities should merge their data to provide the picture that we seek. We are working closely with GRO to tease out those issues and, we hope, get a resolution.

I want to respond from an audit point of view to a few comments that have been made already. I mentioned the work that we have done on the impact of the race equality duty. In other work that we have done, we have looked at other issues. A consistent theme of our work on the health service, for example, is the lack of reliable data on two levels: first, on the composition of minority ethnic communities; and secondly, on their needs. The issue of people's experiences—what they have found and how things have been for them—has not yet been raised. That information should be fed back in so that it can inform changes and revisions to service delivery over time.

One of the key messages from the race equality study was that

"Councils lack full and robust information about minority ethnic communities and their needs."

We highlight that point in the report. As part of the work, we held a number of focus groups with people from minority ethnic communities. The response was that, generally, people were aware of what councils were there to do and pleased with some aspects of services—for example, migrants were complimentary about councils' provision of interpretation and translation services and library books. However, when we asked people what they felt about how councils engage, the picture was less positive. There was a sense that councils needed to do more to understand people's needs and to ask them about the likely impact of initiatives, instead of putting initiatives in place and asking later how they have been. Much of our work on race equality focused on the important question of the quality of data.

We made recommendations, quite a number of which were directed to councils. There were specific recommendations about putting policy into practice and ensuring that best-value duties are observed. We also made a number of recommendations to national bodies, on which we have followed through. For example, we recommended that the Scottish Government do more to make data available on a more consistent basis, moving beyond the census to more real-time data. Beyond the issue of having data is that of having up-to-date data. The experience with migration has been that things can happen quite quickly and in council areas where they are not expected and where, traditionally, councils have not had large minority ethnic communities to serve.

The impact of the work that we do is important to us—it is not just about publishing audit reports. We know from following up with colleagues at the EHRC that it has been working closely with the Government on definitions, to get consistency of definitions that will ensure that questions are asked on a more consistent basis in the 2011 census. The EHRC may want to say more about that. We are also doing more analysis of the information that is currently available.

Those comments are helpful. We have received written submissions from you, which is great, but it is good to get comments on the record at a round-table session.

I will make a wee statement and then a contribution that I think may be useful. When people come here from other countries to work, they are contributing to our society. We benefit from that. In this country, we have certain services that are available to citizens; those should be equally available to people who come here to work and contribute. It is important that the people who come here as migrants, however long they are here, know what services are available, because they may be completely different from those that are available in the places from which they come, or completely new. The only way of doing that is to identify people and to inform them about the services.

It seems unreasonable that local authorities should have to use their resources to try to identify who is moving between their area and other areas, and who has come into the country. That should be down to the Department for Work and Pensions. People get a national insurance number when they come here, and they may travel around and use it in order to avail themselves of work, so we need a greater tie-up between the information on where those people first enter the UK, and the details of where they end up working. We will then know which resources are required in which places. That is the big problem. Some local authorities have a good identification system but, in other areas, it is very poor. The system is far too loose in that respect. Does anyone have an opinion on that?

I have a list of round-table participants, but if anyone wants to respond quickly to that particular point, they can do so.

We would obviously welcome input from the DWP and the United Kingdom Border Agency on better tracking of people's movements. It is a particular challenge. Many local authorities will, when migrants initially arrive, develop services based on population surveys that they have carried out. However, those quickly go out of date, and it is resource intensive to keep on doing that type of work. Anything that would enhance the available data on where people are would be welcome.

It is important to remember that migrant workers are not a homogeneous group. It is not only A8 migrants who are coming into the country; people from beyond the EU are as significant a group. In our experience, migrant groups access services in different ways. People who come in through the points-based system are likely to have very good English, and will perhaps not access services in the same way as other migrants do.

We stress to our member authorities that good, accessible and translated information is key, so that people know what services are available and how to access them appropriately.

That is helpful.

I suppose that we would like to dispel some of the myths around the subject, to which there are two parts. First, we need to emphasise the economic benefits of migration; it would be interesting to hear from Dave Moxham and Elaine Dougall about their experience of that. We need to flag that issue up, although I know that we are focusing on public services today. That is part of dispelling the myths, because we know what people sometimes say about these things.

It is important for a local authority to know how many people are in an area, because, as people should realise, the money that areas receive for services such as health depends partly on population. As the number of migrants rises in a particular area, it will get more health money. The local health board may even benefit, because, as has been mentioned, migrants tend to be younger and do not use the health service so much.

One area that has been particularly controversial—more so in England, but we must face the fact that it has been a bit controversial in Scotland, too—is housing. Research that was carried out in England indicated that a very small percentage of migrants accessed social rented housing. We could perhaps ask why that is the case, but it is a very small number in contrast to the myths that are circulated.

Is there any information on that in Scotland? I am sure that we have all heard from a few individuals on that particular issue.

Malcolm Chisholm touches on an important point. We should essentially frame this discussion in terms of service planning rather than resources. We had one very specific migration spike; I am not saying that such a thing will never happen again, but the A8 surprise was quite enormous, and it clearly resulted in some planning difficulties throughout the UK. However, those are very different from resource difficulties. As Malcolm Chisholm pointed out, we have not seen any reliable evidence anywhere to suggest that migrant workers are, overall, anything other than a positive benefit to the economy.

There are two ways of looking at the issue. One, which involves the immediate economics, we might describe as the Confederation of British Industry view, to which we do not fully subscribe. In that view, we have a reliable source of very effective labour, some of which is short term and some of which is long term, that is very helpful to the economy. The other view, which the STUC takes, is that all that is true, but it is more important that we maintain part of that population as a stable population, which will have children and contribute to Scottish economic and social life in the long term. In either case, the net fiscal effect is positive and the net social effect is positive. The only question is how we plan the services.

On housing, we are not a public census-style organisation, so we can give information only on the basis of how our members respond to our questions. Our A8 members are overwhelmingly in the private housing sector; a very small number are in the public housing sector. There is a public perception that that is not the case, but that is based on the mistake that people make in confusing asylum seekers with migrant workers. Economic migrants, if we want to categorise eastern European migrants as such, are overwhelmingly in the private housing sector.

The paper from the Scottish Parliament information centre that we received in preparation for the round-table discussion was good at laying out all the different categories. We are of course talking about migrant workers.

Do you have information on how we could reach some of the more difficult-to-reach members of the migrant workers communities and their families? Are we not reaching them at all? I am thinking particularly of women in that context. We are talking about informing people and consulting on what they need now and what they might need in the future. In some communities, traditionally the men are the community elders and they are the ones who sit on consultation groups and working groups.

The STUC, in conjunction with Unison Scotland, has a project worker based in the Highlands and Islands who is looking predominantly at encouraging migrant workers through education, and is seeing what their needs are and interacting with them. That is in its early stages. The STUC women's committee and the STUC itself are getting quarterly reports on the specific needs of those groups of workers and how best we can engage with them. One of the main points is that we are trying to encourage trade union participation and membership, given the supportive role that trade unions play, particularly for women who tend to be in the lower-paid catering, cleaning and caring roles, such as in factories in the Borders or the Highlands, where Unite has a high density of members. That is one of the ways that Unison and the STUC are trying to reach out to groups of migrant and predominantly women workers.

We have been trying to tackle the issues over the past four or five years. We have tried to engage with women who come to the trade union to ask for help, particularly when they are pregnant or are having difficulties at work with bullying and harassment. It would be good to get statistics on that on the table to see how best we can support, through public services and other bodies, this group of valuable and needed workers.

I want to go back to something that Bill Kidd said earlier. It is important to remember that we are, in effect, talking about a competitive market. We are seeking migrants to come in to help the Scottish labour market. Perceptions of discrimination and equality are messages that go back and forth across Europe. It is important that we remember that what we are talking about is part of an attraction and retention strategy. Malcolm Chisholm made a point about housing. We were involved in some data collection for myth busting in England in relation to the perception that migrants were taking public housing. We looked at doing that in Scotland, but the data simply did not exist, so we could not. We knew from the start that we would not be able to get a meaningful response on that, which is worrying, because the trends in the Scottish social attitudes survey show that attitudes to migrants, particularly among young Scots, are hardening. There is a perception that migrants are taking public services and jobs away from young Scottish people, although there is no evidence to refute that or, equally, to back it.

One of the things that the commission would be keen to see happening now that the Equality Bill is working its way through the House of Lords—we had a response from Westminster yesterday about the shape of the specific duties down south—is the placing of evidence gathering at the core of work on equalities. Evidence is the absolute cornerstone of good equalities work. Obviously, there is an opportunity for Scottish ministers to decide on those specific duties here, and the commission is clear that, without that robust evidence gathering, the lack of which is bedevilling this conversation today, we could be here in five years, having the same conversation about the same lack of data.

There have been several references to access to services and the lack of translation services. Does anyone know what the UK Government does to provide information in other countries about what services potential immigrants can access? I am guessing that few people simply pack a case and get on a plane here. I imagine that they first do some research, particularly in relation to job opportunities. Is there a leaflet that people can—whether they intend to come here as a temporary migrant or a permanent new resident—pick up from their British consulate, for example, that would tell them how the country works?

I do not know whether the UK Government offers that service, but it sounds quite like what the relocation advisory service does in the Scottish Government. Although it is a quite small web-based service, it aims to inform migrants about living and working in Scotland.

I know about the web-based service. It is fine and dandy as long as the migrants have access to the internet in their own countries and have a sufficiently good grasp of English.

I will just leave the issue hanging for the moment.

I was going to ask about costs, benefits, population predictions and data collection, but Hugh O'Donnell and Bill Kidd have covered those areas. That gives me an opportunity to explore the issues that Malcolm Chisholm asked about.

We know that the reality is that migration brings benefits not only in economic terms but in terms of diversity and the other issues that Dave Moxham has mentioned. Why, though, do the myths still exist? In trying to decide where to take our inquiry, the committee needs to try to unpick that issue.

The housing issue comes up time and again. People always say, "We can't get houses because immigrants are coming here looking for houses." Rather than recognise that the problem is a lack of socially rented housing resulting from previous policies, it is easier for them to blame other people. The housing problem has to be addressed as a separate issue, but how can we tackle people's attitudes? Are people being racist or is it to do with media messages? This committee needs to consider why those myths persist and endure and how that situation can be changed.

Chris Oswald said that we do not have data, which worries me. Why do we not have the data? What can we do about starting to get data on, for example, the housing issue?

I have already spoken in general terms about this, but I can make a brief addition.

The depressing response would be to say that it was ever thus, which means that there will not be any easy answers. In my experience of a workplace a couple of years ago, two common things were said about immigrants. One was that they were taking jobs and housing, as Elaine Smith mentioned, and the other—which was positive at one level but was equally unhelpful—was that they work harder than our lazy folk who do not want jobs. In the context of the recession, the attitude that Elaine Smith mentioned is becoming slightly more prevalent.

On busting the myths, it is important to remember that people are quite lazy when they talk about population. They talk about the need for Scotland's population to grow—at least, that was the case until a year or two ago. However, it was never the case that it was the size of Scotland's population that mattered; what was important was the balance in the population between young and old. That is the case down south, as well, where the population issue is even bigger. Sometimes, we have the relevant statistics but talk about them wrongly. We need to talk about the balance between young and old in our population, not the size of our population.

On housing, we have heard anecdotally that migrant workers tend to live in private sector housing. We are working on a toolkit that will help local government to respond to migration. One element of that is the role of local politicians as opinion formers. To underpin that, we suggest that local politicians get information about what services people access in their area and on what the actual pressures are on housing so that they can challenge the myths and speak in positive ways about the reality of the situation.

Most migrant workers have limited rights to access social housing, and the ones who access social housing have probably been living and working and contributing economically here for a number of years, so they have earned the entitlement to do so. Local politicians can do a lot to get that message across.

I cannot add much based on the audit work that we have done other than to re-emphasise something that I said earlier. One of the ways in which we can help to address the issue is by having councils improve their public performance reporting as part of their best-value responsibilities; in other words, giving honest and balanced views about how they are performing in relation to their equalities responsibilities. That might help to put more good information into the public domain.

I agree with Gordon Smail. The consequences of decisions need to be understood and communicated far better.

The Equality Bill will place on 300 public organisations in Scotland a good-relations duty, which involves the reduction of prejudice and the promotion of understanding between communities. That duty will fall on every local authority, health board, police force and so on across Scotland. The commission has been charged with writing the code on that duty. We are interested in producing a document that is not sterile, so we are going around Scotland and consulting on issues such as migration, where we see the potential for shortages in housing, health and education services to create situations in which bad relations can flourish. We want where possible to take a bottom-up approach, in order to learn from best practice and to spread it around Scotland so that people can start to think about what happens in local circumstances. Essentially, bad relations involve quite local issues—they flourish on small, micro levels. We need to understand how we can dampen down those fires, should they start.

Mhoraig Green talked about the responsibilities that politicians have, and many of us are sitting around this table because we feel that we have a responsibility to deal with some of the myths. One thing that has worried me and pushed me ahead is the tone of the public debate, especially over the past few months since the British National Party won its European Parliament seats. The language has become negative and discriminatory. How can we bust the myths, such as those that appear in Daily Mail front-page headlines?

We have big joint responsibilities as well. Last week, I was honoured to be asked to address a seminar in Northern Ireland, where a welfare-based immigration system, similar to how we do things in Scotland, is being considered. There was a difference in attitudes between the two countries, but there was also a similar attitude to being more welcoming, understanding and tolerant and about changing the language to positive language, as well as there being a hope that politicians would take a lead in that change in language. That is against the backdrop of some politicians in this country vying for the top spot on who is the toughest on immigration and asylum issues.

We have a joint responsibility on that: if we do not sort it here and apply a welfare-based, positive attitude throughout the world, we will have a huge issue with migrants, trafficking and everything that comes along with that. Politicians, all the organisations that are represented here and the communities have a responsibility in that.

What mechanisms exist for people to report trafficked individuals and illegal, unregistered migrants in communities in a way that gets support for those individuals rather than getting them into trouble?

I chucked a load of things in there. For me, the big issues are negative language, how we support the change to more positive language and how we take responsibility for some of the problems.

The core of it is probably an understanding of what an economic migrant is. Various terms, such as asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, seem to be lumped together. More care needs to be taken on that. By virtue of having this round-table discussion, we are already starting to dispel the myths. There is no question but that the BNP had some resonance with people. Part of today's task is to explore why on earth that should be and to try to dispel some of the myths that may have attracted people to vote for the BNP in the first place.

How do public bodies predict the migrant population in population projections? We have already said that we need analysis of real-time data. How on earth do public bodies take that into account and try to make some kind of provision for the future migrant population?

To my knowledge, the best source of predictions is the population projections from GRO. The way that local authorities work at present is partly demand led; it is based on who is in their area at the moment and putting pressure on their services. The bits and pieces that we can pull together from sources such as the UK Border Agency and the population growth predictions are the best that is available at present.

Do you talk to other organisations, such as trade unions, to establish a trend? Is sufficient dialogue going on to use that information for real-time data? The point was made that the GRO data relate to a point in time and may show trends, but we could go wider than that.

Are you asking whether there is enough dialogue?

Yes. Is there enough dialogue to get other people's experiences and work from them to predict what services might be impacted on more than others?

It is difficult to answer that, because different local authorities have quite different experiences. I do not know much about the current flows. I imagine that community planning partnerships would be an important source of local information about who is going into and out of an area. We have a board of private, public and voluntary sector organisations that meets at national level, but most of those organisations have too wide a remit to be able to understand what is happening on the ground.

So—more localised intelligence is needed.

Yes. It would have to happen at local level.

I associate myself entirely with Christina McKelvie's comments. The more rabid elements of the media are using unsubstantiated information and very small data sets to play on public sensibilities, which is not helpful. That is not new, of course—we need only go back to the Irish immigration in the 19th century and the highlanders being cleared into central Scotland to find that the stranger coming into the community is always blamed for the ills.

From listening to the debate, it seems that our problem is that we do not have ammunition. Until some people or bodies get their act together and get ammunition that supports what has been said today and allows us to deal with the myths, the myths that are shouted the loudest and are the most negative are likely to be the ones that are heard. We need to find ammunition to deal with them.

Would you like to move on to the next question, Hugh?

Indeed. My question has in part been answered and I suspect that we will come back to the point that I have just made. How do we know how successful local authorities and public service providers are at meeting the needs of immigrant populations, whether they are here temporarily for economic reasons or permanently, as new settlers? My understanding is that we are not particularly good at recording who leaves the country. How good are we at knowing when services meet or fall below expectations?

At the risk of repeating myself, one key finding in our work was about the connection between policies on the input side, as it was referred to earlier, and the outcomes for people. There are opportunities, for example through the new single outcome agreements, to be more direct about the impact of equalities work on communities and to achieve a balance between cost and quality, as is required by best value. That is the essence.

We heard earlier about the language that is used. One thing that we found and which we feel strongly about is that it is not particularly helpful to consider equalities in isolation and as a bolt-on. We use words such as "mainstreaming", which are probably not particularly helpful, but are really important. Councils have a responsibility to try to achieve best value, which means that they must be responsive to the needs of their communities, citizens and service users. The issues that we are debating are just another part of the communities that they serve. Councils should try to understand needs and connect to the issue that Hugh O'Donnell raises about how that is demonstrated through public performance reporting and other outputs. That means that council officers and elected members have information available to allow them to demonstrate to the public generally the impact of their work in striving to meet their equalities responsibilities.

In the comments in your report about processes, you said that we are good at ticking boxes, but perhaps not so good at going beyond that to look at the real people and outcomes.

That is right. I talked earlier about pockets. We found examples of good practice in individual councils, but we need a systematic approach that moves from the corporate centre into services in a comprehensive and consistent manner. We often found that good practice is happening at the behest of local officers in particular parts of services, rather than because the policy intention is being driven down. A good way of summarising the situation is that there is what we would call a policy-to-practice gap.

Do the unions feel that there is a role for them, given that migrants will come and talk to them?

To follow on from Gordon Smail, it is important to speak to the people whom the public services impact on—the migrant workers. It is great to have nice shiny policies and procedures and the tick-box exercises that local authorities must use, but who is policing that from the trade unions? We would like to see more work being done with some of the organisations that are around the table, and we would like there to be somewhere we can bring evidence from our members. There is a lack of trust and there is fear of reprisals around engaging in discussions, so people have to be won over. We in the trade unions know that that engagement does not exist at local level. Many people are coming into the country under the radar through agencies, for example, and they do not get any information whatever. Those are the vulnerable people that end up coming to us for real support when they are at their lowest ebb. There is a huge job of work that we could all do together.

We are not even talking about their experience of the existing service; it is about asking them what they think is missing.

The fact is that we need migrant workers. People are coming into this country as we go to other countries because there is a need for their speciality or job, and they have to feel appreciated and that they are needed. Quite frankly, they do not get that because of negativity relating to issues that have been spoken about this morning: the media, communities, housing and jobs, for example. There is a big job of work to be done.

That is coming through loud and clear.

To get back to what Gordon Smail said about the role of single outcome agreements, we see that as being a key. We are working on a policy toolkit at the moment, one of the aims of which is to support local authorities to integrate migration issues into their single outcome agreements, with particular attention to attracting and retaining migrants and integrating them into the community. Dave Moxham made the point earlier that we do not just need to grow our population, we need to change the balance within it by encouraging migrants to come and settle and to bring up families in Scotland, because that is what will shift our ageing demographic. In a way, part of the proof will be if people remain in Scotland. If we can get it right and make Scotland's communities welcoming places, the outcome will be that people will settle and build their lives here.

One thing that would really help—I flagged this up when I met the committee before Christmas—is clarification of migrants' rights and entitlements. At the moment, migrants to the UK can have any of a vast range of legal statuses, and they can access a range of different services. There is also the intersection between devolved and reserved legislation, which makes it very complex for local authorities and other public sector bodies to make decisions about what people are entitled to. When that is unclear, it is difficult to communicate the situation to the public, which affects people's understanding of the pressures on our services and whether those pressures are legitimate. If we had clarification of migrants' rights and entitlements, the message could be clearly communicated about what people can access, and local authorities could promote that message. That would help to challenge the idea that people are accessing services to which they are not entitled.

That would probably mean that some inter-Government work could be done quite usefully to establish those guidelines.

We will move on to Christina McKelvie's questions.

Margaret Mitchell and I attended a conference last year on the issue of trafficking and the impact that it can have. Our questions are about the economic impact, but that might not be quite the right way to couch some of the issues. There is an economic impact on services and service delivery, but there is also an economic impact when people are exploited and are working for less than the minimum wage.

I am heavily involved with Stop the Traffik, which is a worldwide organisation that deals with trafficking within the UK and in other countries; for example, it works in countries in which the chocolate trade is prevalent. The committee is concerned that the upcoming Olympic and Commonwealth games might lead to an increase in trafficking. How have your organisations identified the issues and developed strategies to deal with them and to provide support? Can you give us, as politicians, some tips on how we can take the matter forward?

I am glad that you want to look at trafficking in the wider sense. We were a bit concerned when the committee asked about the economic impact, because the impacts of trafficking are wide and it is an awful practice that involves people being turned into property, traded as a commodity and sold into domestic servitude or for sexual exploitation. The biggest impacts of trafficking are often felt by the victims themselves—they end up in a foreign country, they perhaps cannot communicate properly with people and they are scared of the authorities, because they have been told that they are here illegally and they are worried about the implications of seeking help.

COSLA supported the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings before the UK Government signed up to it. We had promoted the principles behind the convention and signed up to them, so we were glad when it passed into law and the national referral mechanism, which is the UK Government's way of implementing it, was set up in 2009.

The national referral mechanism is an agreement on how victims of trafficking will be dealt with in the UK context. When a victim of trafficking becomes known to a public body, a voluntary sector support person or whoever, they can make a referral into the national referral mechanism to one of two competent authorities. The UK Human Trafficking Centre deals with most claims, apart from those that are dealt with by the UK Border Agency, which deals with claims in which other immigration issues are at play—for example, when the person wants to claim asylum. Those two competent authorities decide whether the person is a victim of trafficking and, if they are, they can access a range of support. There is a 40-day reflection period in which the person has time to come to terms with what has happened to them, speak to the police about taking criminal action and consider their options: do they want to lodge a claim for asylum or would they prefer to go home?

During that period, the people who are responsible for looking after the victims of trafficking are, in the case of children, the local authority, and, in Scotland, in the case of women who have experienced sexual exploitation, the trafficking awareness-raising alliance project, which is hosted by Glasgow City Council. Both men and women who are the victims of trafficking for labour exploitation are looked after by a voluntary sector organisation known as Migration Helpline.

I will not speak about TARA's work, because I think that the project will be represented in the next round-table session. However, it has made nine referrals since the national referral mechanism started and only six children have been uncovered and have accessed support through local authorities, so the number of cases is very small. We are concerned about whether that reflects the scale of the problem, or whether we are uncovering only a small proportion of all cases.

I was interested to learn from Chris Oswald that the EHRC will be doing work on victims of trafficking who are not victims of labour exploitation. That could be useful, as there could be another gap in knowledge in that regard.

On that point, members will recall our discussions when we met before Christmas. The EHRC's intention is still to use our formal legal powers of inquiry to look at the human rights implications of trafficking in Scotland. I cannot say much more than that today, because we are developing the terms of reference, which will then be open for comment from parties who have an interest in the matter. We hope to move that along swiftly, because we want to launch the work soon. A few legal points prevent me from saying much more about that work today, but we will bring it to the committee's attention as soon as we can. The emphasis is very much on what happens to the victims in respect of human rights, and on what the responsibilities of public authorities are towards them.

The STUC's women's committee and the STUC have been extremely concerned about trafficking and the exploitation of women and children for a number of years, to the extent that we held a seminar on the issue at the end of 2008. In relation to Christina McKelvie's question, we are deeply concerned about what could happen at the Olympics in 2012 and the Commonwealth games in Glasgow. We are also concerned about the acceptability of lap-dancing clubs, the fact that their presence on city centre streets is the norm and how easy it is for people to get a licence for such premises. Are the public aware of the vulnerability of the people who work in that industry? Taxis in our city centres display advertisements for clubs in which women are being exploited and have been pushed into that position.

We have challenged Glasgow City Council, for example, on its policies on licensing. I know that the council has had difficulties with loopholes in European law, whereby it has been challenged by potential licensees who have made ridiculous claims about their human rights being impinged on. Trafficking and the exploitation of women and children is a far bigger issue. The statistics on the trafficking of women and children into the UK and Scotland are extremely poor—according to them, 800 women were found to have been trafficked in the whole of the UK, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. We have to take a close look at the issue.

There are things that local authorities can do with regard to licensing and perhaps the Scottish Government could give them some support to challenge the loophole that seems to exist in the European courts, which I was unaware of until quite recently. The end prostitution now campaign, which is about tackling the buying of sex and dealing with the buyer rather than the seller of sex, was launched in Glasgow just before Christmas. The point about the legal loophole was divulged to me by one of the people who launched that campaign. There are many issues that we need to take a good look at. Given that many people are doing good work, perhaps we could bring them together and get information from them.

I have little to add, except to say that we very much welcome the focus on trafficking, the wider focus and the inquiry that is about to be launched, which Chris Oswald outlined. However, we must always be careful with terminology, as trafficking is not the only route to sexual exploitation and other forms of exploitation and illegal activity involving migrant workers—if we can still use that term—in Scotland. Many of the people who present to those who deal with such situations are A8 migrants for whom the registration process has gone wrong, or asylum seekers for whom the asylum process has gone wrong. It is extremely important for us to have a focus on trafficking and the potential for it to increase when the Commonwealth games come to Glasgow but, at the same time, we must maintain the knowledge that the majority of people who are involved in such exploitative activities are the product of other unfortunate phenomena in Scotland.

It is good to have that flagged up at a relatively early stage, so that we are aware of it.

Does anyone have anything to add on trafficking before we move on to the final question?

We have probably covered this, but do any of the witnesses have any final thoughts on what it would be most useful for us to focus on if we decide to hold an inquiry?

Quite a few interesting issues have been raised, but I have a wee wish list. We thought that it might be useful to look at how public bodies can be effective in integrating migrants and meeting their equal opportunities duties at a time of economic decline, when resources are particularly limited. That would involve considering shared services, for example, and how people can work together to reduce costs while still delivering good-quality services. For example, a migration impacts fund was set up by the Home Office, but the Scottish Government has decided to use the £2.9 million of Barnett consequentials from that for its own priorities. Obviously, that decision is up to the Scottish Government, but perhaps some of that money could be used to develop shared services and to help public bodies to respond to migration in a difficult financial context. As I explained, there is a need to clarify the rights and entitlements of migrant workers, especially in the context of an economic slowdown.

On trafficking, if the EHRC's investigation is about sexual exploitation, perhaps the committee could take an independent look at labour exploitation, which is a different process. Particularly in rural areas, there has been evidence of large-scale trafficking, whereby one employer brings a large number of people into an area to use them for cheap labour. Obviously, that drives down local wages and is enormously exploitative of the workers who are brought in. Although those two types of trafficking can be linked, they can also be seen as separate processes.

Again, that goes back to the point that local knowledge and intelligence are fundamental.

On the migration impacts fund, I have written to three different ministers about that, but they have all said that the money has gone into the pot. One consequence of that decision that is relevant to our discussion—I am not just having a cheap hit at the Government—is that one of the biggest agencies that provides legal advice to ethnic minorities and immigrants does not have access to that money. Regrettably, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has now also removed that agency from its funding stream. Therefore, while we sit round the table legitimately discussing the economic impact of migration, in other places money is being removed from organisations that are designed to help migrants.

Further to Mhoraig Green's point, funding is a crucial issue, particularly given the rapid population movement, which might continue, and its impact on local services. For example, a school's income is based on a census that was conducted on a particular day. If the school's roll increases significantly during the year, no funding is available for it to buy in additional support teachers. That has a potential consequence for good relations. In situations of rapid population movement and fluctuation, central Government funding does not seem to be able to support communities at particular points of stress.

Like others, I am fascinated to know what has happened to the migration impacts money, which does not seem to be available anywhere on the ground.

But your first point is that there is a need for more flexibility.

That is certainly my feeling. We need to look at the dynamics.

In our final few minutes, I will go round the table to find out whether colleagues have any last point that they want to add to the debate. If people had something on their mind that they did not mention, now is their opportunity. I will start with Hugh O'Donnell.

I think that I have said enough today, thank you.

On where the committee might go from here, I emphasise that there is a lot of commonality of views about the availability of local data. I did not mention earlier our finding about the lack of co-ordination between different services, even within councils. When we spoke to ethnic minority communities and groups, they said that they were asked the same questions by the same council but in different ways and at different times. There is a need to co-ordinate that.

As others have said, there is a need for organisations to work together better. That has been a finding in some of our work on national health service bodies and on community planning partnerships. At national level as well, there seems to be different activity so there is a need to look across that to see where the common ground exists and what common lessons can be learned.

Finally, as one might expect from Audit Scotland, I think that there is a need to promote accountability in councils, which need to be a bit clearer in their public reporting about how they are responding to their responsibilities. That information would add to the discussion about the impact of migration and the outcomes that people feel from the work that is being done.

I would just like to thank everyone for coming. The session has been helpful and positive.

Thank you for inviting us to give evidence. The discussion has been interesting. Everything that you are considering is interesting and valuable. I have learned things from the contributions of the other people round the table that will inform our work.

I have one final point on the back of some things that I said earlier. Many of the attitudes around the issue are ignorant and people are misled by reports in the media. That relates to what Christina McKelvie said about language. If we are to hold an inquiry, we should consider whether a public education programme is needed on the distinction between an economic migrant and an asylum seeker. The term "illegal asylum seeker" is often used and bandied about by the media and by people, but there is no such thing. We must get a message out there and bust the myths. Considering how we do that should perhaps be part of what we do.

We welcome the committee's focus on migration. It is exactly the right issue at the right time. This is about Scotland's future.

Something that I might have mentioned but did not is the interface between the points-based migration system as it develops and Scottish need in terms of skills and public service provision. Perhaps we could drop something to you specifically about the impact of that on public service provision in Scotland as it develops.

We would be happy to receive that.

I thank everyone for coming and contributing very well. As has been said, it is important that we emphasise to people the positive sides of migration into Scotland. We are all proud of our relatives who have emigrated to other countries. We ought to think along those lines, in a positive way, when people come here.

On behalf of the STUC women's committee, thank you for allowing us to come and give evidence. If the committee undertakes a full inquiry, we will be happy to submit fuller and more in-depth evidence.

I have learned a lot from the contributions today. It is heartening that we all have the attitude of a really positive, welfare-based system that supports everyone. If, as politicians, the committee can take forward that ideology, change the language and perhaps change the way in which the media deals with the issue, we will have done a good job.

I thank everyone for coming. The committee should be looking forward to a busy work programme.

I thank you all for attending. The common themes that emerged include data, co-operation with local organisations, dialogue at national level, awareness raising on some of the terms, and the need to focus on outcomes. SPICe and the clerks will draw up an approach paper for the committee's inquiry based on the evidence that we have heard in today's round-table discussion, and the committee will discuss the paper at a meeting in February.

We will have a short break to allow the next panel to move into place.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—

I welcome all the witnesses to the second round-table discussion on migration and trafficking. I am Margaret Mitchell, convener of the Equal Opportunities Committee. I invite everyone to introduce themselves.

I am a committee member.

I am a committee member.

I am representing the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland.

I am the gender reporter on the committee.

I am from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education.

I am from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

I am a substitute member on the committee.

I am project co-ordinator of the new migrants action project at Positive Action in Housing.

I am a committee member.

I am director of the south-east Glasgow community health and care partnership, representing NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

I am a committee member.

I am deputy convener and race reporter on the committee.

We will go straight to questions. How have recent increases in inward migration to Scotland impacted on spending by devolved public bodies? I am grateful for the papers that have been submitted. It is now our task to tease out some of the information and get it on the record. Would anyone like to begin with that question? If you do not volunteer, I will pick on you.

From an ACPOS perspective, and having listened to the discussion with the first panel about lack of data, I would say that we have a similar difficulty with quantifying cost. The little that we can quantify relates to a comparatively small financial outlay for our interpreting and translating services, which member forces across Scotland use. We have seen a three-fold increase in the cost of those services in recent years, because of dealing with new communities with new languages and having to employ new interpreters. However, that is a very small cost in the overall policing budget. From an ACPOS perspective, an unquantifiable aspect is the amount of additional time that it takes for police officers to deal with victims, witnesses or even accused persons whose first language is not English and who come from a different cultural background. We have to ensure that they clearly understand our processes and what is happening to them. However, it is difficult to quantify the complete financial impact of that on us.

Is the increase due specifically to migrant workers rather than to any of the other categories that are sometimes lumped together?

It is due to everything. Over the past 10 years, the migrant population in our major cities has been fairly stable, but the influx of migrant workers, particularly from the A8 states, has brought a new dimension and additional challenges.

I want to make it clear that, notwithstanding my comments in the previous evidence session, the observation that I am about to make—and it is nothing more than an observation—is not meant to be particularly negative. Following on from our discussions about language and tone, I suspect that the negative elements in the media will pick up in ACPOS's written submission the percentage increases in spending. The superintendent has very helpfully clarified those data, but the problem lies in how they will be interpreted. I acknowledge that it will be difficult for you to mitigate those effects, but I can see the headlines now about a 265 per cent increase in costs for Strathclyde Police and Grampian Police. We need to find a way of putting information into the public domain that does not make it so easy for it to be spun.

Do language problems tend to come to the fore more rapidly during investigations into criminal or civil offences than they do in, say, the education or health services?

The police tend to engage in times of crisis of one form or another but, to be fair, I point out that as far as our day-to-day interaction is concerned, police forces across Scotland are keen to work with all our partners to engage and to develop positive relations with all communities. The fact is, though, that formal interpreting and translation are usually required because a crime has been committed or because someone has witnessed something. Perhaps the increase that Mr O'Donnell highlighted simply reflects an increase in the number of migrants rather than an increase in demand for services. Without sounding overly defensive, I should also point out that we were asked to highlight the financial impact of all of this. As I say, it is a very small amount in Scotland's overall policing budget.

I suppose that it is up to the committee to tease out where those figures fit in.

Do you ever share interpretation and translation services with, for example, the local authority?

Depending on their size and the demands on them, forces tend to have stand-alone contracts, although those in areas that have less of a migrant population tend to share services more. There is certainly an opportunity in that respect. The previous evidence session highlighted similar themes about the need for partnership working to understand the dimensions of the migration issues that we face, and I believe that as we go forward we need to give more consideration to sharing services.

I wonder whether Cathie Cowan has any views from a health perspective.

I can speak from my very live and real experience of Govanhill, where, of the 12 communities in the south-east of Glasgow, there has been a significant influx of Slovakian Roma people. I was interested to hear the comments in the previous session about data collection; we have had similar difficulties simply because that community is very nomadic. However, we estimate that between 3,000 and 5,000 people have come into Govanhill, which has created significant problems for the community. People who know Govanhill will know that its population of just under 16,000 is very geographically confined and that, as a result, people live very closely together.

People come into Govanhill through a variety of routes. Those who enter via gangmasters usually pay a fee—and in fact pay money on a regular basis—in return for the promise of jobs, good housing and a better life. Sadly, those expectations are burst when the people discover that there are no jobs and then have to deal with the housing issues. They are extremely vulnerable because of the lack of income, and the private landlords in Govanhill—not all of them, but some of them—operate in a way that exploits the issues that those people face. I say that in the context of health and wellbeing, on which such issues have a significant impact.

We have worked closely with our partners on the health aspects. I lead the neighbourhood management group in Govanhill, and bringing partners together has had a tremendous impact. It does not just bring intelligence around the table; it brings resources, and those resources have helped us—in a time-limited way—to set up projects and initiatives. We would not support that approach in the longer term, but such initiatives do help with social integration.

We invested from a health point of view through a drop-in centre, although we have now disbanded it as we no longer need it. Extra health visiting staff worked in the centre with mums and children, and education staff also came to the table, which helped to get kids into education. That was important for both the Slovaks and the community.

We would make an initial investment like that for any new group or new condition that was presented to us. The longer-term issue is one of sustainability and working together to use our resources. The mention of the migration impacts fund earlier pricked up my ears. If that were available to help with such initiatives, it would be extremely useful—but on a short-term basis, as it would not be sustainable in the longer term.

Was there a trust issue? Were people quite happy to use the drop-in centre, or did you build up your reputation by word of mouth?

We did some work with Oxfam, and the CHCP and Oxfam published a report through the University of the West of Scotland. We used Oxfam to bring across two key workers. One of them, Marcela, was from the village where the majority of the Slovak Roma people come from. Those workers have helped to build trust.

We do not have the same misgivings as far as health is concerned. That is normal, as a health service is seen as a universal, supportive organisation. Other organisations have difficulties, however, and people bring those difficulties from their own country, where there has been extreme mistrust with regard to education, the police and so on.

It is useful to understand that. In our first round-table session this morning, the question of how to gather intelligence arose, and the issue of trust came up. If trust can be matched with resources, it seems that things can be dealt with effectively.

David Stewart has stated clearly how the costs of interpreting services and such like fit into the overall budget. It is useful to explain that such costs are not just incurred because there is criminal activity among some people who are being interpreted for. Interpretation is also required for witnesses and for those who have suffered from crime. That has already been put on the record, but it is important to emphasise it.

I have a question about the circumstances in Govanhill. Cathie, you mentioned that you opened up a community centre or hall, which is no longer required. The population movement into Govanhill is not permanent, is it? Is it more cyclical, with people coming but then going away again?

It would be wrong of me to suggest that this is the norm, but any research studies that I have looked at suggest that the Slovakian Roma population are very nomadic. They come into communities—Govanhill, areas of Bradford and so on—but subsequently go back home, for example for family events. They do that much more often than other minority ethnic populations, and they stay longer. That is what we have found in Govanhill. When those people go away, others come in. The overall number that I quoted—3,000 to 5,000—is pretty static.

The drop-in centre that we established was intended to deal with unmet need. People who did not know about the systems that we operate for accessing health centres, for example, would drop in and expect to be seen at 6 o'clock and so on. That was absolutely fine, but it caused chaos in organisations. We asked whether we could open a drop-in centre, use our Oxfam workers—who were known to the community—to register and signpost people, and have interpreters on site to build up trust in the community. We found that the numbers at the drop-in centre began to fall as we got to know the community extremely well, and we then thought that there was no need for it. Sometimes nobody came, although initially the numbers were anything between 70 and 100 a day for food parcels, clothing and the like.

I do not mean to pick on the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland submission, but it contains a perfect example of language that could be changed. It mentions 100 Slovakian kids

"being involved in benefit fraud"

and that an operation

"uncovered a fraud of £8 million over a 2 year period."

Some newspapers will pick up on that and say that all those kids were on the make. I know that David Stewart uses legalistic language, but how can politicians and communities change things so that the focus is not on young people working the system, but on their having been trafficked or used in organised crime? The focus should be much more on organised crime.

Our responsibility is to get away from the monetary costs of supporting people and get back to human costs. To be brutally honest, I am much less interested in the X thousands of pounds that it costs to support people; that money is worth it if one person is saved. Obviously, as a politician and a member of the party in government that has a budget to work with, I need to balance my idealistic approach with the reality of the situation, but I have picked out from the submission a perfect example of something that could be used. How can we work on changing that?

In fairness, we asked for the submission to concentrate on the economic aspect. Perhaps we would not have covered that matter if that had not been asked for, because, as Christina McKelvie says, a much wider issue is involved.

I am happy to address that issue. It was interesting to listen to what was said earlier, when Christina McKelvie and Hugh O'Donnell talked about media representation. Following the production of our submission last week, an article appeared in a newspaper on Saturday, which, from that information, led with a headline that stated that the police had smashed a child sex ring. That bears no relation to what our submission says. It is interesting that those 100 children were not trafficked into the United Kingdom or Scotland; either they were already here—although there has been no clarification on that—or they did not exist. There was a large-scale benefit fraud, which is how the financial impact came out. The case was referred to in the submission to highlight the fact that there is a motivating factor—financial gain—for organised crime groups that support trafficking.

I am sorry; I realise that I am jumping ahead by talking about trafficking. The COSLA strategic migration partnership highlighted the fact that the number of evidenced cases of trafficking in Scotland that the police can take to court is very small. The example in the submission specifically relates to the fact that organised crime groups can open up vulnerable people or migration in general to abuse and take advantage purely for financial gain. From a police perspective, we are not overly concerned with their financial gain; we are concerned with the victims. In the case in question, there were not 100 children who were victims of trafficking. The example was given to show how organised crime groups will utilise everything to do with migration to their advantage.

We will try to ensure that we cover everything in this discussion. Seonad Forbes, would you like to comment specifically on the impact on devolved public spending?

I want to raise issues that are linked to interpreting and translation, which are, of course, crucial. However, it is also crucial to ensure that migrants have access to learning English in English for speakers of other languages classes. The Scottish Government has invested heavily in that, but there are still gaps in provision. Particularly in rural areas, it can be difficult for migrants to access classes. In some city areas, such as Glasgow, there are also quite long waiting lists for classes. More work must be done to map the need for ESOL classes to ensure that provision matches migrants' needs. When migrants learn English, it is easier for them to understand their rights and ensure that they can enforce them, so there is less risk of exploitation.

Cathie Cowan spoke about some of the most successful work that is being done with migrants, in which migrants are employed to work with migrants. That reduces the cultural and language barriers, which can save money that would otherwise be spent on interpretation and translation. The voluntary sector and some public bodies have been quite good at that, but local authorities need to be more aware of their duty to reflect the communities that they serve by employing more migrants to work within them and in other public bodies.

Jane, do you want to comment from an education perspective?

Yes. I bring to the table this morning the findings of two specific reports that we have produced over the past two or three years. The first was carried out at the request of the then Minister for Education and Young People in 2006 and was a joint inspection of services in the Glasgow City Council area. It was published in June 2007 and addressed a specific group—the children of asylum seekers in that city.

The second report was more recent—it was published in September—and was on how schools and education authorities were meeting the needs of newly arrived children and young people and was about how schools were dealing with children who had English as an additional language. The report found that almost all education authorities were experiencing unpredictable patterns of immigration—it is the Govanhill factor. Having inspected a school in Govanhill not long ago, I know exactly what Cathie Cowan is talking about.

The services that education authorities provided through specialist staff who were able to teach and meet the needs of children with English as an additional language varied hugely. The report showed that all but two authorities had between one and eight full-time specialist teachers, in proportion to the overall school population, to advise teachers and to provide specific support in schools to pupils with English as an additional language. Several authorities also employed bilingual assistants, some of whom were immigrants themselves. The two largest authorities had the equivalent of 140 full-time staff to support children with English as an additional language. However, in some authorities—sometimes as a direct result of unexpected immigration and big numbers of people moving in—those services were under pressure.

There is the flexibility issue again—is it built in? Can you give us an overview from the social economics side of things?

Yes. We reviewed the evidence on the impact of migration into Scotland, which focused on the research that has been done. We found that there is a shortage of firm evidence on the impact, particularly in terms of the costs, of which I am sure that you are aware. Nevertheless, there are lots of indications of the problems that migrants experience. The implication is that not enough is being spent on services for migrants at the moment and that migrants are not accessing services as they should.

The research suggests a number of reasons for that. First, there is a low level of awareness among migrants of their rights to public services. I agree with Seonad Forbes's view that there is an information issue. A lot of migrants rely on word of mouth and their own networks, some of which may be quite effective in telling them where they can find support and services, but we do not know that and a lot of them may not be. Secondly, of more concern, some services have a low level of awareness of the rights of migrants, particularly in the area of housing. For example, are new migrants entitled to social housing? Some migrants may have lost out on services because of that.

There is evidence that migrants do not access health services. Those who come and go often access health and dental services when they go back, typically to Poland, rather than here. There is also evidence of a lot of unmet health needs among migrants, particularly in relation to mental health services. That is probably less prevalent among the eastern European migrant population, but it certainly exists among the asylum seeker population.

The key issue that we picked up from the research is that there is a need for migrants to be more informed about the availability of services and support in Scotland if their needs are to be met, and also if they are to stay here in the long term, which is the Scottish Government's aim.

That is helpful as it puts the matter in perspective.

There have been some interesting responses so far. I ask anyone who knows—perhaps HMIE will know from experience—how many of the people who come to this country, probably from the A8 nations, have literacy problems in their own language, which will compound the problems? Cathie Cowan and Seonad Forbes made points about local people and immigrants who have experience. There is a good project in Maryhill that seems to be successful, which I endorse.

Once again, we are talking about gangmasters. We need to find a mechanism to let people know what they are coming to, and that it is not the land of milk and honey that they are promised by gangmasters or others who wish to traffic in the more generic sense of that word, as David Stewart said.

Finally, I give a plug for the University of Edinburgh's project on the new immigration information pack that is due to be launched. That will be okay for those who have access to the web, but not necessarily for those who do not. There are issues around that for the Slovakian Roma population.

The question about literacy is interesting. It harks back to the theme of service variability throughout the country, which came out in the previous session. There is good practice in some education authorities, which have processes for the induction of newly arrived children and young people when they enrol in school and for finding out about their prior learning and their literacy levels. However, the picture varies hugely throughout the country.

We are trying to share and encourage the adoption of good practice. I brought an example of a particularly good welcome pack. It was prepared by an education authority that is taking a lead on ensuring that there is good induction, that schools find out about the child's needs when they enrol, and that their needs are met as their education proceeds.

We will be interested to see that. We always hope that one strength of devolution is that we will find good practice and cascade it to the rest of Scotland, but it does not always work like that.

I will just mention Aberdeenshire Council, because that is where the welcome pack comes from.

Convener, in thinking about English for speakers of other languages, I was thinking not just of children but of adults who have trouble with literacy in their own language. Who finds out whether people can read in their own language? There are pockets of illiteracy in migrant communities, particularly in the case of women. Is anybody doing anything about that?

It may come up when parents enrol their child in school. It may surface there, or in the health service. Are we aware of anything more formal?

Not really. I think that Hugh O'Donnell said that the issue applies to A8 migrants, but there is a separate issue for them, because they are often overqualified for many of the jobs that they do in Scotland. I know that that is at the opposite end of the scale from what you are thinking of, but there are graduates working in fish processing. Some employers are reluctant to provide migrants with training, because they think that they will leave and they want them to stay in their current position. Underuse of migrant skills from the A8 migrants is an important issue that must be addressed if we are to make use of their skills in the Scottish economy and encourage them to stay, progress and settle in Scotland.

I apologise, as I must leave in a minute to go to another meeting at 12 o'clock, although obviously I will read the Official Report of the meeting with great interest to find out what you say. Heather Rolfe's comments a few moments ago about migrants not accessing services were interesting. That is an important issue for us. I am interested in whether that relates to the work that Seonad Forbes's project does. Most of the witnesses whom we have heard from this morning are from mainstream public services, but Seonad's project is a voluntary sector one that is funded by the Scottish Government. I imagine that it is trying to address, among other issues, how migrants access services. I hope that Seonad has an opportunity to describe what her project does, perhaps now or later, in which case I will read about it. It seems to fit with what Heather Rolfe said about people not accessing services.

A lot of the work that we do is awareness raising with new migrants. We have a drop-in service in our office every week and an outreach surgery in Govanhill with the Romanian Roma community every week. The aim is to ensure that people are aware of the restrictions that the UK Government has imposed on them and that they are registered with the Home Office, because if they are not, that has serious implications for their access to housing and benefits. If they lose their job, they can become completely destitute. Because of the recession, we are starting to find people who have come here and have not been fully aware of the restrictions that the UK Government imposes and have not registered with the Home Office and who, as a result, have no safety net when they lose their job. That is starting to be a big issue.

We work with local authorities throughout Scotland to raise their awareness of the rights and entitlements of new migrants so that when they approach local authorities and housing associations, they are given the right information and interpretation facilities are in place so that the services are more accessible. We have worked with various local authorities to run large-scale information events for new migrants, at which we bring together local service providers and provide interpreters. New migrants can come and meet people from various services. That breaks down barriers and means that people are more aware of the services that are available. When people have had initial contact with one or two members of staff, they might be less wary of approaching them in future. Those are the strands that the project works on.

I am confused about an issue that Seonad Forbes raised and would like to follow it up. When new migrants are in work, I presume that they have a national insurance number, but the difficulty seems to be that there is no connection between that information and the Home Office.

That is right.

I have a question about services, although it has in part been answered already. How do migrants use public services and do they use them in a way that is significantly different from the established community? To refer to a comment by Heather Rolfe, is there an element of choice? For instance, I am not saying anything against our dentists, but might a Polish migrant choose to go back to Poland to see a Polish dentist rather than go to someone new? I am attempting not to criticise anybody, although perhaps I am not succeeding—I hope that my dentist does not find out about that. More widely, do service providers have full information about migrants' specific needs and rights?

Our report of June 2007 entitled "Joint inspection of services for children of asylum seekers in the Glasgow City Council area" points out that United Kingdom immigration legislation sets out exactly the services to which those seeking asylum are entitled. Glasgow City Council has a contract to provide those services, which dates back to the year 2000.

Our report painted a fairly positive picture about the extent to which asylum seekers could access various services:

"All children and adults were registered ... and had a health assessment within 48 hours of arriving in Glasgow."

It noted:

"A number of leaflets and information—

for example, a "Welcome to Glasgow" pack and the useful leaflet, "How to take medicine"—

"were produced in a range of languages".

There was also a downside, as

"some services lacked appropriate translations of their information",

so the picture is not wholly positive.

Is that because the children of asylum seekers are a specific group who receive all of the information that you have mentioned when they seek asylum? Does the same apply to economic migrants?

I suspect that asylum seekers are a specific group.

That is the case. Asylum seekers go to Glasgow on a specific programme—the resettlement programme—so they are linked to services, including schools. A8 migrants are not. They have the right to come here, to get national insurance numbers and to register for work, but many of them come over through either gangmasters or existing contacts, on which they rely.

It is difficult to say whether service use is a question of choice. Language and lack of information may be barriers—we just do not know. In the case of dentistry, cost is extremely likely to be a barrier, because even NHS dentistry is expensive—probably more expensive than dentistry in Poland. That may be a specific case. Other services here are not expensive and do not involve costs, so the issue is probably that people are not linked to information networks. A great deal of information is available to migrants: local authorities have produced wonderful welcome packs and employers are often helpful in informing migrants of where they can find accommodation, how to set up a bank account and so on. However, it can be hard for migrants, other than asylum seekers and those on specific programmes, to get information as there are no formal networks for them.

That is interesting.

I echo Heather Rolfe's comments. The information that our clients have tends to come from friends and family members—it is not official information. That has dangers, because if the friend or family member has got it wrong the person to whom they pass on information will get it wrong. The Polish community is becoming quite well organised, because it is the largest community. Much more information has been translated into Polish and people have become quite well informed. There are some useful Polish-language websites, although again there is a danger that wrong information will be posted on those websites and people will get bad advice.

We are more concerned about the smaller communities, such as Lithuanians, Latvians, Bulgarians and Romanians, which tend to be more isolated. People in those communities may not work with people from their own country, and sometimes they are deliberately exploited by their employers. People working in the agricultural sector seem to be particularly isolated and unable to access services. They lack the information that they need to learn about and to exercise their rights.

The mobility of migrant workers can make it challenging for the police to build the bonds with communities that help to develop trust. Police forces throughout Scotland have gone to great lengths to introduce new technology to overcome that barrier—online reporting of hate crime is available in a variety of languages. I agree that the Polish community, in particular, is starting to become more settled, so links are building. It is harder to establish initial links with some of the smaller communities. It is a question of working in partnership, engaging with other organisations that deal with the issue and trying to build trust.

One challenge for the police is that the lack of trust sometimes relates to people's perception of the police in the countries from which they came rather than the style of policing in Scotland, especially community-based policing. It is important that we differentiate between migrants and workers who are in the country legally and those who are here illegally. Legal migrants are perhaps more willing to speak to the police than those who are here illegally, who may not wish to come forward, even if they have been victims of crime, because of a fear or misperception about what will happen. ACPOS's concern is the probable underreporting of crimes within those communities and the fact that we have victims in them who are not coming forward because of a misunderstanding about what the police can do for them.

So there is a cultural aspect.

Yes.

I will pick up on the conversation on information and focus on the Polish community.

Working in Govanhill with my side job, I have become more and more concerned that we continue to produce more and more information but do not seem to be doing the joined-up bit—we do not seem to learn from other organisations but continue to churn out information. The Polish community is much more organised, is much more active, has community leadership and is turning things round and taking control of what it requires.

We are trying to build that community capacity in Govanhill and hand over power to the community so that it leads some of the work instead of us leading it—currently, we are assuming that what we think people require is what they require. That is difficult because all parties in Govanhill say that they need to be involved. We are saying that, if we hand over power, people rise to challenge extremely well. We have done some of that and tested it out.

I have a wee concern about duplication and individual agencies producing the same stuff—interpreters are one example; information is another. In Govanhill, we are pooling those resources. We have also learned hard lessons: for example, if Aberdeenshire Council has a really good induction pack, why are we spending so much energy and time producing the same? The needs are similar, although the addresses and so on in the service directory might be different.

That is an observation and a plea. On partnership working, we have equally well test-site status from the Government. We are focusing on that to find out what lessons we are learning that we could share with colleagues throughout the country.

One point that arose from the discussion with the earlier panel of witnesses was the need for local intelligence. The value of this discussion is that we are getting some really good information about what is happening locally. I hope that we can use that to good effect.

With the previous witnesses, we discussed briefly whether public bodies can use population projections to plan future services. There does not seem to be much ability to do that. Do any of the witnesses have any comments to make on that?

Is it done at all?

We have two potential sources of information: the Home Office workers registration scheme and the national insurance records from the Department for Work and Pensions. We know that many migrants are self-employed, so the exact science of the numbers is extremely difficult.

We have only two workers in Govanhill, working with a population of 3,000 to 5,000 people, but they have been invaluable. We know that, at a point in May 2007, we had registered 50 per cent of the Slovak Roma to a GP. That is extremely important for access to health services so that if, for example, families are having new babies we can put in place services to support them.

Local intelligence is important and, sadly, our organisations and bureaucracies get in the road of that. The Govanhill experience shows that we have to work closely with and almost infiltrate—perhaps that is the wrong word—communities to pick up their requirements and information on who is coming in and going out. We have a far better handle on what is happening in Govanhill than we had in 2006-07.

That is interesting. Part of the reason for asking the question is to consider how public bodies can plan for the costs that potential changes in migration patterns might have for service delivery. Jane Renton mentioned, for example, supporting children who do not speak English in schools. We also need to support the teaching staff to teach those children as well as the others.

There are issues in that planning—if you cannot predict demand, how do you consider what the future costs might be for your budget? How do we, as a country, consider what longer-term benefits we might get from people who settle here with their children? Would anyone like to comment on that wider issue?

As part of our report on how schools are meeting the needs of children who have English as an additional language, we sent out questionnaires to all 32 education authorities, and we got 27 responses. Only nine of the authorities that responded had been monitoring the numbers of newly arrived children and young people year on year from 2005 to 2008. We are pretty far from being able to make predictions, as there is, in many cases, a lack of monitoring of the current situation.

That brings us back to what was discussed in the previous round-table session: the need for baseline data and monitoring of trends so that predictions might come out of that. The whole issue has been characterised by a lack of predictability, which has caused real pressure in some areas.

Perhaps awareness needs to be raised among those authorities that did not bother to respond to the questionnaire at all—transparency and accountability in local government could sometimes be a lot better.

We will move on to the next aspect.

There are two angles to this issue, and I will take the second one first. What challenges do the various organisations that are represented here today face in fostering good relations between migrants and established communities, and between different migrant communities? I am thinking of Govanhill in particular.

There have been significant challenges in Govanhill, given the nature of that area. The Irish population came into Govanhill many years ago; they were very much the outsiders and went through that transition. The Jewish community and more recently the Asian population have come into Govanhill, and now the Slovakian Roma community is arriving. On reflection, I wonder, "Gee, why don't we learn things?" The issues around the arrival of the Irish, Jewish and Asian communities were, to a certain extent, similar to those that there are around the Slovaks.

One of the big issues in Govanhill was evident in a recent Government-commissioned social study that we undertook. I do not have the figures in front of me, but the number of minority ethnic groups that we found living in Govanhill was staggering—there were more than 50. The other significant issue is the transient population: people do not hang around in Govanhill. A lot of people move in, they get a flat and they use it as somewhere that is a good distance from the city centre. A significant challenge for us is to engage with a very transient community in the wider sense.

There are many myths around Govanhill; everything that goes wrong there is seen as being down to the new Slovak community. One of the things that we have picked up from our police colleagues, as part of our neighbourhood partnership approach, is that a lot of the youths hang about on the streets. You may wonder why, and I will tell you. The flats have two bedrooms, and there are usually 10 people in a flat, so there is nowhere to hang about in the house.

There are a lot of perceptions and myths, not only in the community but among our partners. When the Roma community came across, we spent a significant amount of time educating our own staff about welfare entitlements and the myths that people are over here to exploit the welfare system. They are not, and we have the evidence for that, but the myth is alive and real.

The issue is how we achieve social integration in Govanhill. It is a real problem, and we have to deal with it day in, day out, through the kids and the schools. If children are in schools and mums drop them at school gates, we have kids in schools and we can engage with mums. Whether we like it or not, females can bring about cultural changes in communities—lots of research supports that statement. We are taking measures, which cost money initially, but that is money well spent. We would take such measures with any community that came in—we would run a pilot initiative until work was sustained.

We have kids entering schools in Govanhill—particularly primary schools—who have cultural differences. Slovakian Roma children do not go to secondary school. How do we break that barrier? How do we say that being educated to a certain level presents job opportunities and so on?

In leading the work in Glasgow, I have picked up that many of the same people are on ESOL waiting lists with different organisations. We have a big overall waiting list, but it is not as huge as we think. In the city of Glasgow, the same person can be on five waiting lists.

On information, the big challenge for us is how we go to communities rather than have communities come to us. It is not easy for people who have many cultural and language barriers to turn up at, say, Langside College, to mix in and to find their way around. What should we do to create an environment in which we bring services to people? The economic argument for that is sound, because I am sure that the benefits would play out in any impact analysis.

There are lots of challenges. Through equally well and other initiatives with partners, we in Govanhill have had the opportunity to test measures, and Glasgow City Council's leader and all the parties have allowed us to do that without the blame culture when we sometimes get things wrong. Support has been given: the council's leader has stood beside us at public meetings, as has Nicola Sturgeon. That cross-party political leadership has been extremely helpful in overcoming some challenges.

Thank you for that comprehensive and useful answer.

You said that migrants are not here to exploit the system and you referred to good news stories. How do we promote those stories?

Tragically, we have had almost to buy advertisements—I must watch what I say here—that allow us to produce our own material in newspapers but which are not presented as adverts. In contrast to the articles in the Evening Times—the local paper—about slums in Govanhill and ground zero, I have been heartened that The Herald has published a really good and positive article more recently. It is unfortunate that it was tucked away at the back of the paper—

On page 45.

At least the article was there, Hugh. We had people out working with us and seeing what was happening. As officers on the ground, that article gave us a wee boost.

We will look for the article.

Various issues need to be considered in fostering good relations. Public attitudes are crucial. We have spoken a lot about negative media portrayal, which needs to be tackled.

When asylum seekers and refugees started to arrive in Glasgow, a project called positive images, which involved Oxfam, Amnesty International and other organisations, was created to make journalists better informed about why asylum seekers came to Scotland and about the differences between asylum seekers, refugees and economic migrants. The project gave journalists the facts and figures that they needed to encourage more well-informed and sympathetic reporting. That was quite successful—the change in the tone of newspaper articles was notable. Oxfam also established an awards scheme for journalists, which continues to reward positive reporting every year. Perhaps such measures could be considered for different categories of migrants.

Work in schools is important. The Scottish Refugee Council has asked refugees and asylum seekers to go into schools to talk a bit about why they came to Scotland. That is another way to highlight the difference between people who come here for humanitarian reasons and people who come for economic reasons. Perhaps it would be worth while for a refugee and a European Union national to go into a school, to highlight the different categories and the issues that people face when they come here.

In Govanhill there is a storytelling project that allows people from different cultures, faiths and nationalities to talk about their own culture, which has done some positive work. There is also myth busting through the Govanhill integration network, which put together a leaflet to show some of the positive aspects of migration—there has always been a history of migration in Govanhill—and the contribution that migrants have made, to bust some of the myths around access to housing and migrants stealing people's jobs and to show the reality for migrants when they arrive. A variety of public-attitude work can be done. The integration networks in Glasgow have been crucial in integrating refugees and asylum seekers into the city. Perhaps that model could be used in other parts of the country for other types of migrant, too.

Migrant community organisations can play a really important role. Such organisations are springing up across the country. Lots of them are Polish, but there are groups for other nationalities, such as Lithuanians, and some international community organisations have been set up by migrants who want to play more than an economic role in their community and to get involved in community life, to make Scottish people more aware of their culture and to run joint events with Scottish people.

A couple of years ago, we were involved in an event in Govan. There was a new Polish community group there, which realised that St Andrew was the patron saint of Poland as well as of Scotland—there was an immediate connection. It organised a St Andrew's day event, which was very popular—lots of Scottish people and lots of Polish people attended. It encouraged people to try Polish food and Scottish food and to hear Scottish music and Polish music—there was an interchange of cultures. Such things can be positive.

That is excellent. You told us so much that I wonder where to start. Was the award for journalists within Glasgow or was it Scotland-wide?

I am not 100 per cent sure, but I think that it is a Scotland-wide scheme.

How long did it run for? Did it involve local papers and national papers?

There are different categories in the awards scheme. I think that there is a section for local papers and a section for national papers. Oxfam runs the awards every year—I think in April or May.

How long have the awards been running for?

I am not sure. I would say four or five years, or maybe longer. I can check the details for you.

Is it specifically for economic migrants and good news stories?

I am not sure. I think that Hugh O'Donnell knows.

Hugh O'Donnell and Christina McKelvie are both saying that they know.

Amnesty runs a similar awards scheme, which is not just about economic migrants. A couple of years ago, it ran the Congo to Motherwell programme, which involved two families who were resettled in Motherwell. The reporting was harsh, raw and good—it was about integrating the families with some typical Motherwell folk. It was an excellent piece of work. It is something that we do not see enough of.

The Oxfam programme runs nationally. It is about positive reporting on immigration matters, whether asylum seekers or economic migrants. Two years ago, the awards ceremony was held in the Tron theatre—I know that because I presented one of the awards. The awards go to national journalists, local journalists and journalists from the free sheets that we find circulated in local communities. The programme is very good and is the sort of thing that we have been talking about—putting out a positive image.

Along with politicians and bankers, journalists do not always get the best press, so it is nice to highlight something good that is going on.

There are lots of good examples from across Scotland of initiatives that have taken place. Although it is somewhat dated now, people will remember operation reclaim, which operated in the Sighthill area of Glasgow when the first asylum seekers arrived and there were significant issues with the indigenous Scottish youth of Sighthill and the asylum-seeking youth. The key is to find a link that joins two groups together, and in that case it was sport.

The challenge for organisations is the maintenance of those programmes and how they are resourced. Numerous programmes have started, but, through a lack of resilience, have folded at a later date, only to be resurrected again. That is key for all the public sector bodies and all the voluntary sector bodies. When we identify something that has worked, we have to consider how we transfer it somewhere else and how it is supported through funding. Often, initiatives are funded through a specific funding stream that might not transfer to an alternative location.

The funding stream often finishes after three years.

Perhaps Heather Rolfe can comment on the issue of fostering good relations. I recently helped my union, Unite, to encourage a particular workplace to become unionised. The workplace employs local people, but loads of people—from Glasgow, I presume—are bussed in to work and then away again. Generally, they do not speak English. That gives the impression, whether true or not, that those people must be getting paid less. I assume that they may be agency workers. If that is the case, what do we have in place to ensure that there is not a "Grapes of Wrath" situation, whereby although the factory pays the agency a reasonable cost for the workers' labour—it may even be the same as the factory pays local workers who come in and out of work every day—the agency takes most of that wage for accommodation, food and so on? Do such situations exist? How do we find that out? Obviously, that is easier to do in a unionised than a non-unionised workplace. Part of what needs to be done is to get information out so that we can destroy myths about people taking other people's jobs or undercutting workers' wages. I see Seonad Forbes nodding, but Heather Rolfe might want to respond first.

There is a lot of evidence about the use of agency workers. You are right about agencies undercutting and paying below the minimum wage. Agency workers get paid only for the days that they work, and obviously they may not be needed on a particular day.

All such practices pose real problems for integration in the workplace. The workplace is a key area for integration and lack of integration, and we must address the problems there. Many employers will employ migrants only in specific roles. For example, migrants will be employed on the fish-processing side in a factory, but none of the clerical or administrative staff will be migrants. There is also a huge issue around gender segregation in the recruitment and deployment of migrant workers, which is a particular equality issue that has not been recognised in research. We know that stuff is going on because a fair amount of research has looked at employment practices, including quite poor ones, but that gender issue needs to be addressed.

Another effect of employment on integration is that many migrants work long hours, which means that they cannot even integrate into their local communities. Many of them will have two or maybe three jobs, so they spend very little time outside the workplace. How do they integrate with their local community in that case? There are particular problems in rural areas, where migrants report feeling very isolated. That is a shame and a particular issue of concern, because rural areas need additional employees and population. If migration is to benefit the Scottish economy and communities, migrants must go to rural areas, but the problems of integration and isolation seem to be most serious in such areas.

Seonad Forbes and Jane Renton mentioned work in schools. When we looked at evidence in the education area about the impact of migration, we found very little of the celebration of diversity that we might have expected to see. There seemed to be an idea that pupils should all be treated the same and that it should not be acknowledged that they have different heritages and something to bring to education that might benefit other pupils. If there is good practice out there, it would be helpful if it was given a bit more publicity, because we did not find any when doing our research.

Unfortunately, the situation that Elaine Smith described—when agencies take staff on and technically pay them the minimum wage, then make deductions for transport and accommodation—definitely exists. At a recent conference, I heard Ian Japp from the Gangmasters Licensing Authority speak about some recent situations in which those kinds of cases have been reported to the authority. The difficulty is that a lot goes on that is not reported because migrants are not sufficiently aware of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. The authority provides translated material on its website, but not all migrants have access to the internet so they are not aware of it. In addition, people might not report their employer or employment agency for fear of losing their job or of suffering some kind of recrimination. That is a massive problem. The Gangmasters Licensing Authority is an important partner with which those issues should be discussed.

Christina McKelvie will move us swiftly on to our next question.

Before I move on to trafficking, I want to make just a quick observation from my experience in the Glasgow North East by-election that perhaps picks up on what was said about Sighthill. When I was out canvassing there, I found that in areas with large migrant communities—especially around the Fountainwell flats—the neighbours' response to migrants was much more positive than that of those in some of the more affluent areas on the constituency's outskirts. Obviously, I was only briefly involved in political canvassing there, but a really interesting analysis for me is that a change in attitudes happened after Firsat Dag was murdered—perhaps due to some complicity in the negative reporting that resulted in that. However, I found that the communities that were perhaps better off and that should have been a bit more informed were much more negative. There was quite a marked difference.

As those who were present for our earlier discussion will realise, we are interested in trafficking and in the impact of trafficking. Obviously, trafficking issues could arise in the context of the Olympic games in London and the Commonwealth games. Another issue is how to address the trafficking of people that can take place within Scotland, within the UK, within the European Union and much further afield. How can we as a committee raise awareness about that to take matters forward?

I have no specific evidence to share with the committee, but I want to make people aware that we have just embarked on a second cycle of inspections of services to protect children. As part of the procedures for that new cycle of inspections, we are asking service providers about their arrangements for identifying and supporting children who are brought into or moved around the country illegally. As far as I know, no information or evidence has been collated from that cycle, which started in April, but we will be able to share that information in due course.

We are aware that trafficking is not just an interstate but an intrastate problem, because people are moved around within the same country. Does Heather Rolfe have any information on that?

We looked at that only briefly in our research, but I know that Save the Children has produced research on the matter.

I believe that Barnardo's also recently produced a study on some of the wider aspects of the issue.

Does David Stewart have anything to add on the wider issue of trafficking in addition to the points that are made in ACPOS's written submission?

Trafficking is recognised as an issue of significant concern. In August last year, Strathclyde Police pulled together a dedicated unit to deal with human trafficking under the broader perspective of public protection, child protection and so forth. Our main concern relates to the links to serious and organised crime. Although opportunist traffickers no doubt exist, serious human trafficking is generally connected with serious and organised crime groups that are motivated purely by financial gain. As I said earlier, ACPOS's concern is about the victim and the challenges that victims face in coming forward to the police and being prepared to give evidence. Strathclyde Police's dedicated unit liaises closely with the UK human trafficking centre and our colleagues south of the border. Such units have not been set up specifically for the Commonwealth games or the Olympic games, but because trafficking is developing. As we try to tackle serious and organised crime head on, these sorts of discussions on how partners engage with each other and share information will be key to helping to take matters forward.

For intelligence sharing, perhaps some of the organisations that are represented here today might act as third parties to whom people who are exploited can go. Might they be another source of information?

Absolutely. I do not have the evidence to back this up, but it seems sensible to think that many referrals will come to the police via third-party organisations. If someone has been trafficked, it tends to mean that they may not be in the country legally. Therefore, even though they are victims, there is less chance that they will come forward. It may be that the police can become involved when the person discusses the issues with a health service, a voluntary organisation or another partner organisation.

Does Cathie Cowan want to comment on that? Is there a confidentiality issue here?

In Glasgow, we are addressing the sharing of information. We have a joint protocol that helps GPs and doctors in particular to know what they can and cannot do. We would always encourage victims of trafficking who come forward through our addiction, mental health and sexual health clinics to make that step. As David Stewart says, these people are often in the country illegally.

A number of women are trafficked for prostitution, and I am especially interested in David Stewart's opinion on the fact that those women might not come forward because they have been told that they may be arrested for being involved in prostitution. You could try to stop the demand, but how would you do that? Do you target the men who use prostitutes? Do you decriminalise women and criminalise men?

That is just a small issue to put into the melting pot at the end of the discussion.

If David Stewart wants to pass that issue up to me, I will keep it going round the table.

It will be interesting to see the effect of the work that is being done in Glasgow. The ACPOS position is that we understand people's reluctance to come forward, especially in relation to the sex trade. We are targeting the people who are running the organised crime groups. It is in everyone's interests to root it out at that level. If we can do that, the victims of prostitution and the sex trade will be taken away from that environment. That is one of the challenges about trust, and about people from new communities understanding the legal process and being given confidence. That relates to general comments about the issues that would need to be addressed if the committee discussion went to a further inquiry; for example, how we share and gather information.

If people who use trafficked prostitutes have an attack of conscience and realise that a woman or young man is being trafficked or exploited, is there a mechanism for them to whistle-blow anonymously?

Anyone can call anonymously at any time, but it takes it to another level of complexity if we have people coming forward who are concerned that they have been doing something illegal. For example, if we talk about changing the onus of the crime to the man as opposed to the woman, people might be reluctant to come forward.

Taking that approach would, for example, make it difficult for the media to report on the sex trade and trafficking in relation to prostitution in a way that would positively encourage people to come forward. Perhaps a challenge for the committee is to look at how we can better engage with the press and the media to get these stories out without a negative slant on them.

Your comments raise huge issues, but I am conscious that time is running out, and I want to give everyone the opportunity to say whether they have any firm ideas about what the remit should be, and to make any closing remarks.

We have talked about the role of the media and the poor journalists. We need to remember that they are not the ultimate arbiters of what appears in the newspapers. Perhaps the people we should be dragging round are the owners and the editors who make the final decisions.

I thank you for the opportunity to talk to you. I want to be absolutely clear, so I will return to the start of the meeting and some of the questions about costs. From the police's perspective, the majority of people who come to this country, whether they be asylum seekers, migrant workers or refugees, are law-abiding and make a positive contribution to our society. As in any society, there will be one or two who do not do that, and the police's role is to engage with the community and get its support so that we can root those individuals out.

That is certainly worth putting on the record.

As we said at our previous meeting, we are talking about busting myths. We need to get the correct information and perhaps some real-life stories out there. Cathie Cowan talked about there being too much information on certain things and duplication of services. We need to get the right information out, so we need to explore how we do that.

On the issues that we have just finished discussing, I make a plea for the opening of the crime campus at Gartcosh in my constituency to be sooner rather than later. That might also make a difference.

I have a couple of points about some of the issues that have come up.

I saw a really good example of a school being used as a hub and a support for the community in Govanhill, where a Slovakian translator was coming in, ostensibly to support mothers and help them to better understand their children's education. That service was widening out to help mothers access services such as banking and health. We are also seeing a lot of good practice in schools that have support groups for parents to help them to develop their English skills; the schools are supporting not just the children.

Similarly, there are lots of examples of schools promoting other cultures. As always, the picture is mixed, but we could share many examples of good practice where schools are taking the opportunity of the presence of young people who need additional support for language to promote cultural and linguistic diversity.

Finally, if the committee will allow me, I want to make a specifically educational point. I want to draw the committee's attention to the document "Learning in 2(+) Languages" that the Scottish Executive produced in partnership with Learning and Teaching Scotland and others in 2005. It sets out a framework that can be used to assess someone's competence in English when they arrive in the country, and it can be a good way of assessing and monitoring people to ensure that they are making proper progress. It can also help authorities to target the deployment of staff, which is important. We sometimes find that if a child's progress has not been properly assessed, they could be doing with less support, which could be deployed elsewhere. It is linked up with the effective deployment of the sometimes limited resources that are available.

The remit of any inquiry into the issue should cover employment in detail, particularly the fact that employers, in many cases where they hire migrants, are not following the law and regulations. The inquiry should also cover migrants' awareness of their employment rights. Employers use informal practices when they are recruiting and the fact that they recruit by word of mouth and speculative applications is obviously poor equal opportunities practice.

I mentioned earlier the allocation of migrants to jobs based on gender stereotyping. In the fruit-growing industry, for example, women are doing packing and men are employed more in the picking and tending of the plants. There is evidence of more gender stereotyping in jobs where migrants are employed than in other areas, for various reasons. Another area of inequality in employment that needs to be addressed is when employers express and practise a preference for employing people of one nationality or language group, which is obviously contrary to equal opportunities. Earlier I mentioned the underemployment of migrants. There are graduates in law, accounting and so on employed in routine jobs and employers making few attempts to use and develop their skills. That is a key issue to address if we are to encourage migrants to stay in Scotland.

We have heard about many examples of good practice from both panels. It would be interesting to explore why that good practice is not being rolled out. I am sure that most of the reasons will come down to funding, but that is sometimes used as an excuse. Is the real issue a lack of leadership? Is it unwillingness or a level of ignorance in some places? We need to find out why good practice is not being rolled out. Funding is not necessarily the only answer.

I echo what Mhoraig Green said. It would be good to issue good practice guidelines for local authorities regarding the rights and entitlements of new migrants and what local authorities can do when new migrants have no recourse to public funds. There are things that local authorities can do in that situation. Some local authorities are doing those things, but there does not seem to be a joined-up approach to that.

I take the opportunity to plug the Scottish migrants network, with which I have been involved for a couple of years. It is a network of organisations from across Scotland that work with new migrants. A range of organisations are involved in the network, including local authorities, voluntary sector organisations, migrant community groups, the police and the Health and Safety Executive. The network meets every six weeks and it has a conference coming up on 23 February about migrants and the recession. That will be a free conference and will cover a lot of the topics that we have discussed this morning. It will be held at the Discovery Centre in Dundee—I can circulate the full details of it—and everybody is welcome to come along or contribute to it in some way. That would be great.

The discussion has been incredibly interesting and has covered a huge range of areas, highlighting both good and bad practice. The inquiry should try to cover both of those as much as possible, to show the positive side of immigration and how we can tackle the issue of trafficking.

I want to say a big thank you on behalf of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. I have been very encouraged by the positive discussion. Sometimes, when we discuss this subject it becomes depressing.

For the committee's inquiry remit, I would be keen to explore how we can create a positive leadership attitude to partnership working. In Govanhill, we have brought together health, community safety and police, employment and other agencies around the table. What is it in that practice that makes a difference? I think that the funding issue is a myth. If there is willingness, we can make it work. Sometimes, we just need something to kick-start it and it can be sustained in the longer term. There should be something about leadership and something about attitude around wicked, complex problems. There is good practice around this table, as there was at the other session. What is the ingredient that makes the difference? I am sure that it is people and attitude, but it would be nice to tease out that learning.

I have found this session—like the first session—incredibly useful. It has given me lots more to think about. I follow Seonad Forbes's lead and plug Stop the Traffik, a global project that acts locally and has a great resource. I encourage people to look at what that project is doing.

There are loads of interesting avenues that the committee could go down. As Cathie Cowan said, there are things that we can investigate and, as others have said, there are myths that we can explode. That is what I want to take on at the start of the process, and I am delighted that we are going that way.

I thank everybody around the table for a fascinating exchange of views and information, and I look forward to taking this work forward.

I thank all our witnesses. In the first session, we identified common themes and some of the problems that exist. In this session, I am pleased to say, we have got some examples of good practice to show where we can go in starting to tease out what can be done to get the local intelligence that we need out there to raise awareness and be used to good effect. The committee will return to the subject at its next meeting, once SPICe and the clerks have got together and produced a paper on some of the issues. We may consider asking some of the migrants themselves to come before the committee, so I ask members to think of people whom we might hear from. The committee would appreciate any suggestions.

I thank you all for a fascinating and extremely worthwhile session. We now move into private.

Meeting continued in private until 13:02.