Chamber and committees

The minister is making an interesting speech. It is important to maintain Scottish ownership of that value chain. I was disappointed when AAC Clyde Space, one of the real stars of the Scottish sector, was bought by a Swedish company in 2019. Do we understand the reasons why that happened? It might have been due to a lack of access to capital or to scaling restraints in Scotland. How do we address those challenges in order to maintain control?

To ask the Scottish Government what the average waiting time is for neurology patients who are seeking an appointment with a physiotherapist. (S6O-02162)

Glasgow’s Helping Heroes, which is run by the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association—Forces Help, offers a vital service across greater Glasgow, offering holistic support to veterans and their families via its one-stop shop in Govan. For every pound that is invested in that service, Glasgow’s Helping Heroes delivers £6.63 of social value back to the Scottish economy. What assessment has the Scottish Government made of that service, and will it consider allocating funds to scale up the programme as a model of exemplar quality in providing support for veterans in Scotland?

Will the member give way?

I thank Alex Cole-Hamilton for making such a typically astute intervention. Every case involving immigration that I dealt with as a member of the UK Parliament broke my heart: the waste of life, the desperation, the feeling that they were in an open prison and the psychological torment of not knowing what their destiny would be. It absolutely appalled me at every turn. There were young children who were not able to progress their life and deeply angry young people who had spent 18 years in a form of purgatory, yet the system costs us £1.5 billion a year.

It is a waste of life and a waste of money, particularly when we consider that 75 per cent of the initial asylum decisions that were made last year resulted in a grant of asylum. When we add in the result of half of the appeals that were made on the balance of those decisions, we see that applications had an overall success rate of 87.5 per cent.

It is not a problem that we need to fix; it is a problem of the system failing those people. They are not the problem; we are arbitrarily punching down on some of the weakest people in our society, and I have nothing but contempt for what the British Government has done in this matter. However, as is always the case with the Tories, it is never their fault. Their modus operandi, like the MOs of populists that have gone before them, is to point the finger of blame at minorities rather than to accept their own shortcomings.

It is important to remember the context in which this is occurring. There are no legal safe routes to asylum in this country other than one or two country-specific schemes such as the Afghan scheme, which has already cruelly failed people, including those who have helped our armed forces in Afghanistan and who are now suffering the threat of death or torture as a result. Of those limited schemes, every one has failed. Is it any wonder that people try to reach these shores via unofficial routes?

The bill is full of disgusting provisions. Those that I think are the worst are the criminalisation of victims of human trafficking and modern slavery, the criminalisation of survivors of torture and the criminalisation of survivors of domestic violence and domestic slavery. It is the thin end of the wedge.

I had to deal with the case of Duc Nguyen in north Glasgow. He was arrested when the police raided a cannabis factory and discovered him; he was imprisoned in Dungavel and then moved out of Scotland to deny him access to justice. He was almost deported, but his local church intervened to get him legal representation. That happened before the bill was introduced, when there were already provisions in place to protect victims of human trafficking and modern slavery. He was a victim of human trafficking and modern slavery, yet he was detained and punched into the Home Office’s labyrinthine system of detention.

Bob Doris makes an important point: if we cannot provide a basic interface for people, they will disappear into the black economy, making them even more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

We have a legal responsibility and obligation to those victims and survivors who we have just referenced. For example, the Scottish Parliament passed legislation that obliges Scottish ministers to provide support and assistance to the survivors of trafficking. The heinous and grotesque Illegal Migration Bill modifies the very legislation passed here that places those obligations on Scottish ministers and so, as legislators elected to this Parliament, we should unreservedly reject the bill, regardless of our political affiliation.

There are countless reasons for rejecting this rotten bill. I could stand here all day picking apart its potential illegalities and the dog-whistle politics that it represents, but I am conscious of time. We have the opportunity today to stand as one and to send a resounding message to the UK Government that this Parliament whole-heartedly rejects the bill. I urge colleagues from across the chamber to join us in that call.

The member makes a point about the cost of accommodating asylum seekers. Surely, giving asylum seekers the right to work would allow them to pay for their accommodation and pay their way using their skills, which would give them dignity. That would dramatically reduce the cost of the immigration system from the current £1.5 billion a year that it costs us all.

I am in my final minute—is that possible, Presiding Officer?

The member is making a powerful speech. She mentions the absurdity of the prohibition on working. Does she recognise that 1,200 asylum-seeking doctors are registered with the British Medical Association? That would be a sure-fire way to immediately improve capacity in our national health service. It costs only £25,000 to train an asylum-seeking doctor to practise in the UK, as opposed to £200,000 to train a medical student from scratch.

Will the member give way?