Migrant Workers (Highlands)
The final item of business today is a members' business debate on motion S2M-4411, in the name of Maureen Macmillan, on migrant workers in the Highlands.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes the increase in population in the Highlands over the last five years; welcomes the contribution made to these figures by migrant workers who are taking up job vacancies in Inverness, Badenoch and Strathspey, Lochaber, Easter Ross and other parts of the Highlands; commends the initiatives of agencies in the Highlands to support the migrant workers, in particular noting the forthcoming "Information Day" in Inverness on 22 May 2006; expresses concern regarding the capacity available in the Highlands to support increasing numbers of migrant workers, and notes that more needs to be done to give language and other support to the children of migrant workers in our schools.
I open the debate by saying that we warmly welcome migrant workers and their families to the Highlands. We are sure that they will make a great contribution to the economy and diversity of the Highlands. Alasdair Morrison, who cannot attend the debate, has said similar things to me about the welcome that migrant workers get in the Western Isles.
I have asked the Deputy Minister for Education and Young People to respond to the debate, as I feel that the children of migrant workers have been somewhat overlooked in the strategy for integration. I am sure that Robert Brown will relay our other concerns to the appropriate ministers.
In 2004, 1,235 foreign nationals were registered for work in the Highlands and Islands Enterprise area; in 2005, there were 2,555—the number is increasing year on year. We are all aware of the circumstances surrounding the case of Sakchai Makao, which I will not go into now, but it emphasises the precariousness of a foreign national's position.
In conjunction with research carried out through the UHI Millennium Institute's policyweb and the national centre for migration studies, the local enterprise companies have been engaged in developing capacity to support migrants through statutory and voluntary agencies such as citizens advice bureaux. Language classes have been set up, and training courses and careers advice are on offer. Two housing-related initiatives are being worked on with Communities Scotland.
That is all good news, as was the recent information day in Inverness, which I attended. Dozens of agencies and voluntary bodies took part in it, covering housing, policing, health, language classes, careers, equalities and faith groups. Two hundred people came through the door looking for information. I hope that such information days will be repeated elsewhere in the Highlands.
A UHI research document states:
"Mechanisms need to be in place"
to prevent exploitation, and those should be
"linked to the provision of clear information and advice".
There are a lot of horror stories out there of exploitative middle men and agents, docked wages, overcrowded accommodation, rough sleeping and so on. There have been two deaths among the migrant workers.
We must work harder to break down the barriers behind which unscrupulous people operate. I commend Fergus Ewing's suggestion of holding surgeries in Polish for the migrant workers—many migrant workers in the Inverness area are from Poland. However, we, in the community, need information, too. Highlands and Islands Enterprise has provided graphs and pie charts on countries of origin, age profiles and industry sectors, which are very helpful, but there are no data on the number of children who are arriving with their migrant worker parents. We must find a way of providing some advance warning of the number who are coming and of ensuring that proper support exists when they arrive.
Until recently, there was little realisation that many migrant workers brought their children with them. In Highland schools, there are 60 different first languages spoken by children from Asia and from Europe. At the last count that I am aware of, there were 160 new pupils needing intensive support on top of the 500 or so who were already there. Those pupils pop up without warning and cannot be planned for. They pop up in schools throughout the Highlands—in small rural schools as well as in Inverness.
The number of specialist teachers of English as another language in the Highlands is 2.8. That number has not changed in 10 years. They are part of the additional support for learning team and do not even have their own department. By contrast, Moray has four EAL teachers—including one principal teacher—and two language assistants for a workload of around 40 pupils. Members can work out the ratios for themselves.
The minister will be aware of the 2(+) document, which is the bible of good practice. It points out the need for awareness that good social English skills do not necessarily mean that a child can cope with the vocabulary that is demanded by a school subject. It also points out that learning should be done in the mainstream classroom, with the peer group; that translation of worksheets and so on is essential, as are dictionaries in the pupils' own languages to help them to translate.
Highland Council can no longer offer hands-on help in the classroom from EAL specialist teachers, nor the resources for translation. EAL specialists are now being used only to give advice from a distance, sometimes over the telephone, because of the sheer number of children involved. Three language assistants are promised for school-family liaison, but it is uncertain whether those will be classroom support assistants or whether they will work in the community.
Ordinary classroom teachers are faced with the task of coping with non-English speakers—sometimes in double figures, such as the 14 Latvian children in St Mary's primary school in Fort William—when they are not trained to do so. Of course, they cope to the best of their ability, and they are doing so well; however, we must provide much more specialist support in Highland and elsewhere for schools that are teaching these newly arrived children. I do not want to hear funding arguments. I suspect that Highland Council has spent some of its allocated £157,000 EAL money on other priorities, but I believe that the Executive needs to make much more of a commitment to EAL education. We need an audit of what we have and a projection of what we will need in the future if the trends continue.
What use is a fresh talent initiative if we do not educate these children properly? What future is there for the integration of our communities if we neglect this and other pressures, such as I have already mentioned, that affect incoming families? When the deputy minister visited my old school, Millburn academy, he was surprised at the number of such pupils who were there. We have a problem of capacity in the Highlands. We are doing our best to overcome it, but we need resources. It is an attractive place for migrants to come to, but if resources are not put in place, we will begin to have the sort of problems that will sour the warm welcome that we presently give to this new workforce. I do not want that to happen.
First, I apologise to members for the fact that I have to leave the debate early to travel north. I, too, congratulate Maureen Macmillan on raising a topic that is now well and truly on the radar screen of every politician in the Highlands.
There is no doubt that there is a huge number of people who have come to work in the Highlands from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and further east in Europe. They come because they can earn far more here than they can in their own countries. They tend to be hard working and they have the courage to come here. They may want to stay here and they will usually want to send back home a large proportion of their earnings.
The Highland economy is reliant on tourism and on fish and food processing, and many of our eastern European visitors come to do jobs in those sectors. Some of those jobs might be regarded as being too menial or too low paid for local people. One hears that comment a great deal. However, our eastern European visitors are here and as long as they are here, they are our responsibility. We accept them into our country and they have a right to be treated fairly and with dignity. I hope that the surgery to which Maureen Macmillan referred can be made available for some of the many Poles who have made Inverness their home, so much so that there are now 2,000 Poles in Inverness. I had to think carefully about whether to retain my allegiance to Trinidad and Tobago in those circumstances.
The pressures on housing are immense. Homelessness applications to Highland Council have nearly trebled over the past four years. Maureen Macmillan referred to the effect on education and I do not think that I need to repeat her exposition. The Deputy Minister for Education and Young People recently visited Inverness. Once it was pointed out to him that it is, in fact, an urban centre, I am sure that the minister was made aware of the pressure on our education and housing services in the Highlands. If it is the case that the Highlands receives proportionately more eastern European workers than do other parts of Scotland, I say to the minister that it follows logically—he is shaking his head, but I think that what I said is true. I would be interested to know what his statistics are, if he says that I am wrong. If I am right and more people come into the Highlands from eastern Europe than go to other parts of Scotland, that means that our public agencies require a fairer deal in order to discharge their duties on housing and, in particular, education.
When I discussed this issue with the Scottish Council for Development and Industry three Fridays ago, I heard about the practical, nitty-gritty problems that migrant workers face in obtaining employment. A new migrant worker must do three things: register for a national insurance number; open a bank account; and register with the Home Office under the Department for Work and Pensions scheme. Each of those involves serious problems. I hope that the Scottish Executive can establish some kind of formal arrangement with the Home Office, once it is functioning again—partially—to try to solve those problems. I will write to the minister about that.
However, the Home Office is doing more for the cause of independence than just about anything else at the moment, particularly among those who are trying to take on staff. They are met with a Home Office that routinely loses documents that are sent to it and which is incapable of functioning. It leaves employers worried about whether they should shop and report people because they are illegal immigrants, having overshot their stay. Those are serious problems, but I cannot tackle all the nitty-gritty elements of them just now.
I remind members of the novel by Albert Camus, "L'Etranger", which is a most chilling and clinical account of the darker side of human nature that fears the outsider. I think that in Scotland we want to welcome the outsider and not fear him. However, we have a lot more work to do to live up to that objective.
I thank Maureen Macmillan for bringing this valuable debate to the chamber.
The history of the United Kingdom, Scotland and the Highlands and Islands has been characterised by millennia of migration from all over the world. That has been fused into our culture and it has created the economic and social wealth that we enjoy today. The elevenfold increase in the registration of overseas nationals in the Highlands over the tax years 2003-04 and 2004-05 shows that the majority are from the new European Union accession countries in eastern Europe. It is that burgeoning community to which I now turn.
The rapid influx of new workers has been a great boost to the Highland economy. It is unfortunate that many of the available jobs in the region have previously lain dormant and not attracted much of the indigenous workforce. The new migrant workers have stepped into that vacuum. If they were to disappear overnight, our hospitals, restaurants, building sites, shops, service industries, public transport network and factories would grind to a halt. In short, many aspects of day-to-day life that we take for granted would collapse without a sufficient number of willing people to take their place. Therefore, I firmly associate myself with support for the motion, reiterate the point that migration is nothing new in our islands and reiterate the great value of the current phase of migration to the Highlands.
Despite its positive impact, migration can lead to many negative side effects. We have seen in towns and cities throughout the UK how the perception of immigrant communities can lead to social upheaval and a rise in racist agitation. If migration is to survive and continue to have a purely positive impact on the Highlands, it is important that the correct support networks are put into place, and I will focus on that approach.
It is unfortunate that past immigration has often led to the ghettoisation of communities along racial or ethnic lines, so I applaud the Government's attempts to address that by introducing citizenship lessons and ceremonies. It is important that we properly welcome migrants into our communities from day one. However, as EU citizens, the migrant workers whom we are discussing will not be involved in such activities. Therefore, it is important that we create the same results through different means.
Many migrant workers encounter a number of obstacles when they come to the Highlands, and I will highlight the most important of them. The first is language and communication. Not only is not being fully able to communicate with the society in which they live a huge obstacle to integration, but it can prevent migrant workers from offering their full potential in the employment market. A language barrier will only encourage them to look to each other for support and social interaction and encourage the local society to regard them as others. That can create a dangerous level of division, so we need to provide easy-to-access language classes and translation and interpretation facilities for key services.
The second obstacle is accommodation. Many migrant workers who have come to work in the Highlands and Islands end up living in substandard and often overcrowded housing. If we are to create a positive impression of the country as well as a good and healthy workforce, it is important that we address that issue. It would not be right simply to reserve the better housing for them—the perception that that happens has often damaged social cohesion and integration in other parts of the UK—so we need to increase the stock of good-quality affordable housing.
Access to information and advice is also a problem. It is important that workers who come to the Highlands are given easy access to proper information about the new society in which they find themselves. Simple matters, such as banking, can pose a brick wall for some people. Employment regulation and legal duties and responsibilities also need to be properly explained.
The Highlands needs migrant workers, and they deliver a net contribution to our economy. It is therefore right that we give them something back. It is also important for our whole society that we do not allow the situation to evolve into different groups living separate lives with tensions existing between them. If we provide a good infrastructure for migrant workers while they are here, they are more likely to stay and keep much of the investment that we have built together in the Highlands. Therefore, I applaud the fact that the area that I represent has had such a rich level of investment from migrant workers from the EU accession countries.
You must finish now, Mr Petrie.
Okay. Investment and support for migrant workers will only help to bring further benefits and maintain our long tradition of welcoming all cultures to arguably one of the most attractive locations in western Europe—no bias intended.
I, too, congratulate Maureen Macmillan on securing the debate and join her in welcoming the new accession state migrants, the vast majority of whom are good, talented, skilled and hard-working people. I am particularly happy that they are working in the Highlands and Islands, because they know that independence has changed their countries and that their lives are better for it, and that is a healthy contagion to release in Scotland. They will also monitor further the progress that is made at home and compare it with what is happening here, which will help us to inform our future. However, it will probably mean many of them will eventually return home.
The migrants are here and they are doing the valuable jobs that members have mentioned in sectors such as food processing and hospitality. It is hard to socialise or do business in the Highlands without meeting such people. They are galvanisingly bright young people, but they are filling a space that our young folk who have left the Highlands have created. It is important that we consider why that has happened. There is a low incidence of matches between skills and career opportunities in the Highlands, especially for our best and brightest. Another issue is low pay: a third of working people in Scotland are on less than £6.50 an hour, but I suspect that, in the Highlands and Islands, the figure is more like 50 per cent of working people. As has been mentioned, we lack adequate and affordable housing. Another issue is the expectation growth that has been naturally inculcated in our kids—they now expect to do as well as or better than their parents. That is logical and reasonable, but it does not allow us to keep our own in the Highlands and Islands. There is no reason to assume that the accession state people will not follow that example. They are bright folk who have shown the gumption to get here and get a job, so their expectation levels will grow, too.
At present, the practical impact is mixed, but the positive aspect is that these people are helping many businesses in the Highlands and Islands to cope with labour shortages—which exist for the reasons that I have just mentioned—and the high fixed costs of transport rates, water charges, raw materials and supply. People who are willing to work for relatively modest wages are attractive to businesses. However, the negative aspect is that, in the long-term, the situation will hold down wages for longer and further and will make it even less likely that we will retain a good proportion of the children who are educated in Highlands and Islands schools. Another element is that political advantage is being taken of the situation. The fact that we are exporting youngsters out of the Highlands gives a false indication on unemployment. The fact that we have the accession state people working means that we have a high level of labour participation, but that is in part because we have exported our young people from the area.
There is an upside for business, but it is achievable only if we respect the people who come into our country; pay them fair wages; give them decent terms and conditions and decent accommodation; provide the infrastructure, training and support that Maureen Macmillan mentioned; and provide the educational support that their children need. We must acknowledge the disproportionate pressure on Highlands and Islands education services that results from the disproportionately low wages in the area's economy.
In the long term, we must keep an eye on the objective of making the Highlands and Islands a premium destination and a source of superior goods and services. We aspire to a high-value, high-wage economy that overcomes distance and generates real growth in the Highlands. To achieve that, we must encourage employers and Government to level the playing field, so that we attract staff through terms and conditions that exceed rather than trail the UK average. We need to get businesses working together to become more viable and to deliver real value. However, that will be hard to do with the limited powers that we have. Ireland, which has immigration and tax powers, has 120,000 accession state people working there, whereas, throughout Scotland, we have only 23,000, which is about one fifth of the number in Ireland. We have a huge distance to go.
The balance is that, by all manner of means we should have such people in, but we must also take action to allow our kids to stay in the Highlands and Islands and have a successful and rewarding career.
I will refer a lot to a Highlands and Islands Enterprise report entitled "Migrant Workers in the Highlands and Islands: Research Report", which is dated October 2005 and has a lot of information. I am sure that other members have mined that report for the debate, which is one that I welcome, because the subject is important. Interestingly, the report shows that the number of national insurance number registrations for overseas nationals in the HIE area has gone up sixfold in five years and that there was an elevenfold increase in the registration of EU accession state nationals in the HIE area in the tax years 2003-04 and 2004-05. The movement of people is increasing. More migrant workers are coming to the Highlands and Islands, particularly from the accession states. We are not necessarily talking about a homogeneous group of people or about a group of people who all have the same aspirations.
As has been stated, many of the migrant workers in the labour market are employed in relatively low-wage and unskilled jobs, often very much below the level of their qualifications. Sometimes employers recruit staff from eastern Europe because of local skills shortages, but sometimes a combination of unattractive wages and poor working conditions makes particular jobs unattractive to local people, which means that employers have to recruit elsewhere. Given that we are bringing in people with skills that we lack, should we not be trying to develop those skills ourselves rather than plundering other countries for their skilled people? Is it reasonable to pay people low wages just because the place they come from means that such wages do not seem so bad to them?
Around 40 per cent of the migrant workers from eastern Europe are under 25, which is an interesting statistic. Many of them are employed in jobs well below their qualifications and experience. Their long-term intentions about whether to stay in the Highlands and Islands are mixed. For some the future is uncertain, because much depends on how the situation in their home countries develops in the short to medium term. Perhaps more important, for many there is an emphasis on having positive experiences as well as access to good-quality accommodation while they are in the Highlands and Islands. Others have mentioned that and I will come back to it.
There is an assumption that all migrants want to learn English, but some of those who responded to the HIE study said that they wanted simply to come and earn as much money as possible while they were here. While they are young and doing jobs to which it would be hard to recruit otherwise, I do not think that there is anything wrong with that. However, there is a need to support those who are staying longer. Maureen Macmillan mentioned the children of migrant workers. She and I visited a school in Fort William that had had quite an influx of children of Polish origin. The staff mentioned one child in the Gaelic-medium class who was being brought up trilingual—speaking English, Polish and Gaelic—which I thought was stunning.
We have to acknowledge that integration is an interactive process that involves migrants as well as the host society. There is a need to develop a comprehensive information pack for migrant workers and employers, which should be undertaken collaboratively by all agencies and should involve migrants, employers, local authorities and trade unions. That is not my idea, but a recommendation from the HIE report. There is also a need for an independent source of advice and information that migrant workers can access, whether in person, by telephone or electronically, with supportive interpreters who are competent in a range of languages.
Employers should be encouraged to use only well-regulated recruitment agencies—we want to avoid exploitation.
The First Minister has described Scotland's declining population as the single biggest challenge that we face as we move further into the 21st century. We want to retain our own people, as has been the tradition, but we also want to welcome other people, as has been the tradition, and we need to provide for them.
I do not have time to go into the schools issues that Maureen Macmillan mentioned, but I endorse fully what she said. We can give people who come to work here, and who we are glad to have working here, a good experience of working in the north of Scotland, which is a great place to be. We want to ensure that people are not exploited but are welcomed and catered for so that they can add to the richness of Highlands and Islands society.
I, too, thank Maureen Macmillan and welcome the debate—I know that she knows how important it is.
I will talk about migrant workers and their children in the community throughout Scotland. In the past few years, tens of thousands of new citizens have arrived in Scotland. Many of those workers have filled gaps in hospitality and food processing and some work as bus drivers or dentists. We have gained nurses and cleaners—you name it, our new citizens are doing it.
I know from local folk that when they first set out for the UK they imagined that they were heading for the land of milk and honey, with good housing opportunities, but the reality is very different. Many migrant workers have reported that they were given false information and expectations about prospective employment and opportunities in Scotland. That is not a new phenomenon. My father came here from the Republic of Ireland in his teens with the same dreams, but the reality was racism, poor housing and low-paid, exploitative labour.
Often, when new folk come to our communities they are viewed with suspicion, which is fuelled badly by some of the reactionary media that enflame that suspicion. Different customs are not fully understood and explained, which can lead to isolation and even conflict. Where I live in Glasgow there are families from Latvia, Poland and Slovenia. The adults enjoy standing and chatting on street corners, which they used to do at home, but people are already talking about them. I have heard comments about how they look at people and their being an eyesore. People say that they rake through bins and that their children sometimes do not wear shoes. As far as I know, those things are not crimes yet. People attack such communities because of a lack of understanding and poor communication. Such suspicions and fears could be bypassed if time were taken to educate the entire community.
I will stop you for a moment, Miss Kane. Members' business debates are usually on specific topics. This debate is specifically on migrant workers in the Highlands, so I hope that you will talk about them.
I will.
You are taking some time getting there. You have only four minutes.
Members have talked about migrant workers in general. My expertise lies in what is happening in Glasgow.
Members have spoken about the Highlands, Miss Kane, which I have been clear they should do. You have a minute and a half to speak about the Highlands.
Okay. I will do so.
According to Citizens Advice Scotland, an increasing number of migrant workers are complaining about problems such as low pay, long hours and poor accommodation in the Highlands and everywhere else. Language barriers mean that our new citizens' awareness of human rights is limited, which adds to their exploitation. Does the Executive have plans to ensure fair treatment at work? Would it benefit from working with the trade unions to ensure that migrant workers have access to trade union membership and all that comes with it?
It has been projected that Scotland's population will fall. We should see people who come to Scotland and the Highlands as a gift and as people who are coming to our aid, and they should be treated as such. It can be hard to come to a new country with few possessions and little knowledge of its language, customs, culture and so on. Our new citizens are often vulnerable and ripe for exploitation.
Citizens Advice Scotland, which certainly knows its way around the issue, has said that there are few options for people who are exploited to complain and that they could lose their job as a result of complaining. They could then be sent back to the country they came from. If that is not exploitation and abuse of workers, I do not know what is. Emotional and psychological problems, which could impact on their families, could result.
We have an opportunity to grasp the nettle and to get on top of things before people get lost in the system and lose heart. I say to Maureen Macmillan that I want to live in a mixed and diverse Scotland, whether in the Highlands or elsewhere. I look forward to hearing what the minister says about creating such a place for everyone who comes to live here.
I thank Maureen Macmillan for raising the subject. It is essential that we discuss in the Parliament the concerns of people whom we meet in surgeries and those of people whom we hear about through the citizens advice bureaux who come to our part of Scotland and find that they have displaced other workers from their jobs because they can be hired more cheaply or that they are being discriminated against in some way.
I will try to put things in context. The arrival of European Union accession state nationals in Scotland represents a small part of a much greater exodus of people from eastern Europe and elsewhere who want to find economic improvement in higher-wage economies. That wave of nationals is one of many waves of people throughout history who have made Scotland the proud mongrel nation that it is. There are experiences that are common to previous waves of immigrants to Scotland and the current wave. I want to explore the things that the past and current waves of immigrants can teach us about how to handle things.
Maureen Macmillan's motion focuses on the population increase of the Highlands and Islands, which is partly due to migrant workers coming into the country, but is also due to relatively wealthy and elderly retirees. The figures mask the outward movement of young Scots who seek education, wider experience and well-paid work in other parts of Scotland, Europe and elsewhere. Our people are part of the migrant trail for the same reasons that people come from eastern Europe to this country. The people who leave do not have things such as affordable housing, which they would hope to have if they ever return, although the fear of not having such housing might deter them from returning. Likewise, the likelihood that there will be enough well-paid jobs that can be supported in a balanced Highland economy is missing.
The incoming migrants obviously suffer from a shortage of well-paid work and of affordable housing, so the people who are forced to leave and the people who are coming in face the same problems, which the Government has yet to address. Across the parties, we recognise that providing homes for those on modest incomes is a huge issue. We want to ensure that affordable homes are available, but we have not managed to solve that problem for the people who are already in the country, so it is doubly important that the minister finds ways of tackling those problems and that the Scottish Executive recognises that everyone in the Parliament wants that to happen. Otherwise, we will never be able to welcome people on a more permanent basis.
The taxi firm that I use to get to Inverness station on the way to Parliament cannot find drivers for the wages that it is prepared to offer. Immigrants would be able to do those jobs if it were not for the language barrier, but we do not have enough teachers to help those immigrants to do those jobs and many others. Young Scots go abroad and teach English as a foreign language. We need to recruit them to teach here, and I hope that the minister can tell us a bit about what he intends to do in that respect.
When we consider the experience of migrants to our country, we should not forget that some of them can fall foul of other rules. Maureen Macmillan mentioned in passing the case of Sakchai Makao. The problems created for migrants is not an issue that we have a great deal of time to deal with in detail in this debate, but they must be taken into account in the overall picture. I would like to think that we can take a more comprehensive approach to housing and well-paid jobs but, when people want to stay, the fundamental thing is the ability to have their children educated in our schools and to be taught the English language. We must have people who are capable of teaching them. If we are to make progress on the migrant issue for the Highlands, that is the area that needs the most investment.
This has been a debate of unusual significance. I congratulate Maureen Macmillan on securing it and I welcome the tone of the contributions that have been made throughout the evening.
It might be helpful to begin by settings things in context. The widening of the European Union has led to a significant increase in the number of people coming to the United Kingdom from the new-entrant countries of central and eastern Europe. As has been said, by far the largest number come from Poland.
Migrant workers from the new member states are required to register with the Home Office; 20,000 are registered as coming to Scotland. I am not aware of the figures being broken down further than that. Many enter the hospitality industry and, particularly in the Highlands, they may go into agriculture, especially for seasonal work. There are, of course, migrant workers from other parts of the world; the other main language groups are Cantonese, German and, to a lesser extent, French and Bangladeshi.
The issue is not unique to the Highlands, nor does it appear that the numbers are disproportionately higher in the Highlands, although there may be an element of the Highlands catching up with other areas. The numbers that several members have mentioned indicate the trend. Fergus Ewing said that more are coming to the Highlands than to other places, but I do not think that that claim is borne out by existing figures.
I will concentrate on education, as Maureen Macmillan asked me to do. At the time of the most recent school census, in September 2005, Highland had 1.2 per cent of what are known as "white other" pupils, compared with 1.3 per cent elsewhere. That figure obviously accounts predominantly for the eastern European catchment.
In the same census, there were 468 pupils whose main home language was not English, but for 75 of them it was Gaelic. There were 48 pupils with eastern European languages, some of whom had some knowledge of English, but information about the extent of their knowledge is a little bit patchy and we need to dig down a bit deeper into that.
There is anecdotal evidence that the number is rising. Figures from the Scottish English as an additional language co-ordinating committee suggest that the total number of pupils whose main home language is not English may now be around 600, out of a total of 32,495 pupils in publicly funded schools in the Highlands. We will get a more accurate view shortly, when the next school census is available.
As members have said, the trend is both a challenge and a major benefit for Scotland. Migrant workers support the current growth in the economy in Inverness—and FirstBus, for example, has a training depot in Poland to train bus drivers for employment in Scotland.
Immigration introduces more younger people and is a source of future strength as it helps to reverse pessimistic predictions about a declining population here. The Scottish Executive is totally committed to encouraging people to continue to come to live and work in Scotland. Tom McCabe was in Warsaw as part of the fresh talent initiative on Monday to launch a Polish information pack that will be widely available—in Polish, I hasten to add—to intending migrants from that country. It is designed to give people proper information and prepare them better for coming to Scotland. Transmigration from Poland is driven by high unemployment rates, particularly among young people.
Tom McCabe also attended the Highland population summit in May. Maureen Macmillan has communicated with and met Peter Peacock to talk about various aspects of the issues. There have also been exchanges with other members, such as Christine May and Jeremy Purvis. Jamie Stone mentioned the issue to me, although he was not able to stay for tonight's debate.
It is clear that the educational challenge in accommodating the children of migrant workers falls into several areas. The first is the problem of unpredictability, on which Maureen Macmillan rightly touched. In light of the Presiding Officer's earlier rebuke to Rosie Kane, I hesitate to say this, but I went to a Glasgow primary school that had approximately 20 Slovakian children materialise in the school in the middle of P3 or P4. That is more difficult to plan for than a known number arriving at the start of P1. We need to dig down through the question of what notice we can get. I do not think that it is easy, because of the individual choices involved.
The second area is the lack of information about the children, about their competence in English, about their past attainment and the teacher's knowledge of them as children. They need to be assessed and their learning and any additional needs, predominantly in language, have to be planned.
The third area is the lack of teachers with experience in teaching children who have little or no English. That is clearly a problem of capacity, particularly in the Highlands, that goes beyond other capacity issues. We reformed the policy framework through the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 and backed it up with substantial resources so councils could support their implementation of the act. The needs of children who have English as an additional language were recognised when we considered the bill.
As Maureen Macmillan said, Highland Council is in the process of recruiting to three new bilingual language assistant posts and I believe that it is considering more. We also heard that there is a parallel with Moray. I hope that those assistants will be fluent in English and one other language and that they will work across agencies and services to provide support where it is required.
The issue is primarily one of expertise rather than resources, although councils will have to adjust their priorities as necessary to meet the new challenges. For example, Highland Council has £191.3 million in grant-aided expenditure for education in 2006-07 and various other GAE lines to support additional support for learning. When we take into consideration the number of staff we are talking about, I do not believe that this is an issue of resources.
Highland Council has not specifically approached us for advice, but I would be happy for my officials to discuss the issues with it if it wishes. There might be ways in which expertise can be gained from HM Inspectorate of Education, Learning and Teaching Scotland, SEALCC or indeed from other councils that have relevant expertise.
Maureen Macmillan's motion mentions the recent information day for migrant workers in Inverness, which was a helpful initiative. Fergus Ewing mentioned the links with the Home Office. Dave Petrie spoke about interpretation services. Maureen Macmillan and Rosie Kane mentioned unscrupulous employment practices. Eleanor Scott rightly raised the issues of long-term prosperity here and in migrants' home countries and talked about the potential for partnership with trade unions.
Rob Gibson touched on housing, which is probably the second biggest issue in this context. I could say something about the resources that are going into the Highlands on that score, but we know that it is a continuing challenge there, as it is in other areas. Ministers from all departments will have to examine those issues.
The debate has raised a number of issues, particularly in education but also beyond it, and I want to reflect on the points that have been made and, if appropriate, discuss them with other ministers. Peter Peacock and I will be happy to engage with Maureen Macmillan on any aspects of how we can help, bearing in mind the fact that Highland Council has the primary responsibility and the resources for developing the appropriate responses in its local area.
This has been an important debate—it is an emerging issue. I am sure that the 2006 figures will suggest that there has been a substantial increase in the number of adults and children who have little or no English. The issue requires a co-ordinated response. We want to consider how we can best work together across the board with local agencies to ensure that such a response is in place. I stress that the issue has emerged in other areas, albeit not so quickly, so there is some experience there. I am sure that we can learn from what has happened in those areas and that that will assist our response in the Highlands.
Meeting closed at 17:49.