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The next agenda item is petition PE242 from the Action of Churches Together in Scotland, the Scottish Refugee Council and Amnesty International, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to give asylum seekers rights of access to various support services and to amend legislation to restore the entitlement of asylum seekers to accommodation and cash-based support. Members have a paper from the clerks, which outlines the petition. I understand that members have also received briefings from the petitioners, which give further background. I invite comments on the substance of the petition and on the clerk's recommendation.
I am convener of the Public Petitions Committee, which dealt with the petition and referred it to the Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee for its information. At the time, Sandra White, I think, pointed out that many of the issues that are raised in the petition fall within the remit of this committee. The Public Petitions Committee passed the petition to us only for our information and the recommendation is just to note it. However, we have all received a number of subsequent petitions from various groups, including the Action of Churches Together in Scotland, Amnesty International and the Scottish Refugee Council, asking the committee to take up the matter, because it relates to a number of serious social exclusion issues, for example excluding asylum seekers and refugees from cash-based support, restricting them to certain areas of the United Kingdom and denying them access to expert legal immigration help.
I suggest that we do not simply note the matter. Some aspects of the petition are clearly within the remit of the Parliament and of this committee. The letter from Iain Gray—in his previous role as Deputy Minister for Community Care—is clear, but it talked about undertaking a review after 18 months, which would be about this time next year. John McAllion raised a number of issues. Various groups, including Friends of the Earth, and individuals have also raised issues in e-mails that we have all received. I propose that we take evidence on the matter.
I am very sympathetic to that idea.
I would certainly like to take evidence from some of the organisations that have been involved, which have been mainly in Glasgow and the surrounding area. I have a further, more specific, suggestion. Unless Lee Bridges tells us differently, the draft work programme says that the business for Wednesday 13 December is still to be advised. I suggest that we slot in an evidence-taking session on that date.
I would like to hear any other comments that members may have on that, especially if anyone has a contrary opinion. There might be another possibility: given that we will be taking evidence from Church organisations on the proposed housing bill, we might be able to schedule evidence on both matters on the same date.
I am not thirled to the date; it was the principle that I wanted to push.
I sympathise totally with what has been said: we can and should deal with the matter.
From my work on the Local Government Committee, I understood that there was a commitment to examine this whole issue, in particular the support that is available to local authorities, the pressures that they are under and the experience that people have been having with local authority services. I was not able to speak to the convener of the Local Government Committee before today's meeting, but it might be worth contacting that committee to clarify exactly what it intended to consider. We may be able to work together with the Local Government Committee, as this is a big issue for local authorities. That committee would be more involved in the delivery of the services that we might identify as important.
The mood of the committee is that we want to do something—it is a question of whether we hold an inquiry or take evidence. If we do, we will have to contact the Local Government Committee.
I reiterate that I think it would be useful to work with the Local Government Committee in a co-ordinated way.
I agree with what has been said, but what we do must be fairly narrowly focused, and we need clear guidance about the extent of our powers on the matter. There is a question of overlap. That does not stop us investigating the matter, and we could make incidental reference to other things, but the emphasis must be on the housing side, with perhaps a look at advice and other issues that are raised in the documentation that we have received.
It is a question of social exclusion: we need to find out about people's experience and whether any of it has been racist in nature.
To return to Johann Lamont's suggestion, I appreciate the idea of our liaising with the Local Government Committee. We want a short, sharp report, which could be passed on; members of other committees might then be able to get involved.
I concur largely with what has been said; clearly, issues of concern are raised in the petition and in the correspondence that we have all received over the past couple of days. However, I emphasise that any inquiry that we undertake will have to fall within clear, narrow parameters. There will have to be liaison with the other committees that are involved. I suggest that we seek to have one evidence-taking session and that we define beforehand exactly which aspects of the matter we want to investigate. Our report could be complementary to that of other committees.
I agree that it is important for us to consider the representations that have been made to us by the many organisations that work in this area. We should also consider carefully how to ensure that we are focused, so that we can promote some positive recommendations and make some suggestions about how to proceed. It might be good if the deputy convener could speak to the convener of the Local Government Committee, as Johann Lamont suggested, and draw up a work programme to suggest to the committee. That would avoid any overlap in our work and in the taking of evidence.
Basically I agree with the sentiments that have been expressed by all members, but I agree particularly with Karen Whitefield about focusing on the areas for which we have responsibility. If we find anything wrong in those areas, we can act on it. We need to take action quickly. We need not have a long drawn-out inquiry as long as we set ourselves targets and focus on the most important aspects; perhaps we should invite written evidence from the people involved. As Bill Aitken said, we could also have one oral evidence session.
That is a good suggestion. When we examine our work programme under agenda item 5, we will consider the possibility of holding an evidence session before Christmas. I ask the clerk to request written evidence from the relevant organisations. We could deal with the remit of the inquiry at our next meeting. We should make the inquiry tight and focused, and relevant to our committee remit, as Robert Brown suggested.
It would be relatively easy for us to liaise with the Equal Opportunities Committee on the matter, given the overlap in the two committees' clerking personnel. This matter has also been referred to in the Equal Opportunities Committee, and it might be useful to reflect with members of that committee on how our work might fit in with theirs. They might wish to read our report later.
We now have a good sense of how we want to proceed.
I have one point to make from the perspective of convener of the cross-party group on human rights. In essence, human rights is the counter-side to social inclusion. The most definitive angle to take would be to ask how we are treating people, and how we are fulfilling our international and other obligations in this sphere.
I will work with Lee Bridges to draw up a remit for an inquiry. We can return to this matter in private session, when we discuss our future work programme under item 5.
Meeting continued in private until 12:18.
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