Chamber and committees

As Bob Doris said, we have had some interesting exchanges this morning, which covered a lot of the ground that I am interested in. However, I would like some information and clarity on transitions for young people, particularly young people with a learning disability. The age of 18 is a crucial point in young people’s lives in terms of their transitions more generally. What interaction has Social Security Scotland had with third sector support organisations that are helping young people at that point in their life, when they are going through all kinds of transitions, to focus specifically on their application to move to ADP?

Could we do more to streamline the process and make it more passported or automated? Given that we know who these people are and when their birthdays are, and that, at that stage in people’s lives, their conditions have not changed considerably, could we do more to make the process far more automatic? We know that the Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill—a private member’s bill—is currently before Parliament, but how can we ensure that we do everything possible to make transitions, in a broader sense, easier?

I thank my friend Paul Sweeney for bringing the debate to the chamber. I pay tribute to him for his long-standing work—in this Parliament, in the House of Commons and in the communities of Glasgow that he represents—on this issue and wider issues that have an impact on people who are seeking asylum.

As we have heard, the issue that we are debating sits in the context of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 and the backlogs in asylum processing, which demonstrate—I think—a lack of support and dignity afforded to people who are seeking asylum from the many dangerous situations in which they have found themselves in their country of origin.

I spoke on this subject on behalf of Scottish Labour in the debates on the Illegal Migration Bill, and I have expressed my view of the callous approach that the UK Conservative Government has taken in passing that bill. It is vital that the Scottish Government uses the powers and resources that it has at its disposal to alleviate the structural problems that people seeking asylum face when they are living in Scotland.

As we have heard, access to transport is one of the most fundamental and basic barriers with which we can provide help. We have heard that asylum seekers are not allowed to work and therefore have to live off an allowance that amounts to only £6 a day. That leads to there being little money left for travel, once basic essentials such as food are taken into account.

We should make no mistake about it: travel is essential. Seeing a general practitioner or a solicitor, attending support appointments, seeking advice or just seeing other people to feel a sense of community are all fundamental things that every member in the chamber takes for granted; it should be no different for those who are seeking asylum.

Over the past year, the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, on which I sit, has heard a lot of evidence on the subject through our inquiry into asylum seekers in Scotland, and, as we have heard, it has highlighted the issue of free bus travel. Just last week, the committee’s report made clear recommendations on that issue, and the evidence in that report is compelling. Along with committee colleagues, I was greatly moved by the evidence that we heard, both formally and informally, about the impact that a lack of access to travel has on people.

During the committee’s work, it was particularly helpful for us to visit the Maryhill Integration Network and hear directly from people who experience those barriers daily. I thank my colleague the committee convener, Kaukab Stewart, for taking the time today to share some of those experiences.

I will add to that some of the formal evidence that we heard. Pinar Aksu of the Maryhill Integration Network told the committee that free bus travel

“would make life a little easier for people who are living in such horrific conditions”,

and that

“in cases in which people are put into hotel accommodation in rooms that have been described ... as their cells, it would literally save lives.”—[Official Report, Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, 2 May 2023; c 22.]

The observations that I have quoted hold true for asylum seekers across Scotland; in particular, for those who live in rural communities, such as many of the rural areas in my West Scotland region.

Obviously there are higher costs for providing concessionary travel for individuals in rural areas, which is why the committee wanted to recognise the importance of ensuring that the scheme is properly designed, tested and costed. I think that every member in the chamber agrees that we have to do that.

I welcome the recognition in the motion of the calls by the Scottish religious leaders forum for access to free bus travel for asylum seekers. When I spoke to people who are currently in the system, I heard that there are challenges with getting to a place of worship, for example, which—as we all know—is a fundamental human right. I also heard about the ability to access services that are provided by faith organisations such as the Jesuit Refugee Service in Glasgow and the excellent English for speakers of other languages classes that are run at St Aloysius’ church in Garnethill. I look forward to visiting that service soon and discussing the work that we are doing to try to improve access, not least by ensuring that people can get transport to such services.

I am conscious of time, so I will conclude. I welcome the debate, the work that the committee has done and its strong recommendations. I look forward to hearing from the minister how we can move forward quickly with an enhancement of the national concessionary scheme to ensure that people who are seeking asylum are afforded the basic human rights and dignity that I think such a scheme would provide.

I am pleased to wind up the debate on behalf of Scottish Labour. We started with a characteristically funny and wide-ranging speech from Jackson Carlaw as convener of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee. He commented that this debate might be seen as taking place in the graveyard shift, but I do not think that that is what we saw this afternoon. He spoke about wanting to inject suitable jollity into proceedings in this place, and I think that, this afternoon, we have had a bit of that—we have had a bit of serious debate, but we have also had some levity, which I think is important when we are considering these matters.

Seriously, though, I pay tribute to Jackson Carlaw and the committee for their work on this inquiry and, indeed, on the report, which is important for us all and which people across the chamber are keen to engage with more fully. Also, of course, we should thank all the committee clerks, the staff and the people who were involved in the public participation elements of the work, who I know are in the gallery today.

We on this side of the chamber welcome the recommendations that seek to improve the scrutiny of Parliament and Government and public engagement and trust in parliamentary processes. We welcome the report’s acknowledgement of the fact that Parliament’s current methods of engagement with the wider public do not always go far enough, especially when it comes to engaging with harder-to-reach people in our communities. More should be done to engage with and listen to citizens from across Scotland and to ensure that we do not put off that work and that we seek to do as much as we can in the remaining years of this session, and then look to what we can do in future sessions to move that work forward fully.

I was taken by many of the international examples that were cited in the committee’s work. I declare an interest, in that I am a dual citizen, as I also hold Irish citizenship, although I do not live on the island of Ireland, so I do not expect to be asked to join a citizens panel there any time soon. In any case, as I think Maurice Golden said, politicians are the people who should absolutely be furthest away from that sort of work—there is truth in that.

The work that has been done in Ireland is particularly interesting, particularly on issues that have been difficult in the public discourse. Since about 2010, the way in which to proceed with regard to issues that have led to wide social or constitutional change in Ireland has been widely debated and decided on by citizens assemblies. Issues such as abortion, equal marriage, changes to the voting age or reform of Dáil Éireann, the Irish Parliament, have been debated and discussed through those mechanisms, resulting in proposals being brought to the Oireachtas.

I certainly do not think that we should rely on other people. It is about us saying as a Parliament, “This is the direction. This is the vision.” It is also for the Government to propose its direction and vision, which should be scrutinised and underpinned, as I said in response to Jackson Carlaw’s question, so that we are not solely led or instructed by groups, but go hand in hand so that there is scrutiny of what is already taking place in the chamber.

A lot of recommendations that have much merit have been discussed. There have been interesting exchanges about how we can bring people closer to the Parliament, particularly people from rural communities, as Edward Mountain mentioned, young people, and people from ethnic minority backgrounds, as Foysol Choudhury, Kaukab Stewart and others mentioned. We have looked at how we can ensure that things do not become tokenistic. John Mason made some contributions in that regard. Questions should be meaningful. Participation is not just about saying that we are going to ask questions on people’s behalf. People should help us to shape our understanding of questions and the sorts of responses that we can have.

There have been interesting contributions on the role of the Presiding Officer and the absence of the Presiding Officer in the judgment of the quality of questions and answers. As someone who often falls foul of verbose and long questions, I might avoid any comment on the quality of my contributions being judged. However, there is merit in having a fuller discussion and debate about that issue. I was glad to hear Martin Whitfield speak in his contribution about how his committee might look at that.

Having just made a comment about time, I will wind up.

In his poem for the opening of the Parliament building, entitled “Open the Doors!”, Edwin Morgan said:

“We give you our consent to govern, don’t pocket it and ride away.”

That gets to the essence of what we are seeking to do through the report and the work. It may take time to get there, but today’s debate and the report and the recommendations are an important first step, and we should all work together to move those recommendations forward.

On the really important point about accessibility, does Ruth Maguire agree that the materials that we provide as a Parliament—in particular, education materials to help people to understand what we do here—have to be accessible and include easy-read formats that would be recognised by people who have a learning disability?

The mechanism could certainly be viewed as an easy way out for all of us sitting in the chamber grappling with some such issues. However, it is right that we should underpin decisions about such issues not just with social attitude surveys and polling but with a structure that shows that the Parliament has taken time to engage and to listen and to find out what people think.

Ruth Maguire’s comments chimed with my thoughts about some of the contentious issues that we have debated in this place, in relation to which the representation of competing interests by third sector organisations, lobbyists and various groups in society has resulted in people saying, for example, “We are right; you are wrong—there is no middle ground or room for concession”, when, if we had had a more participatory structure, we could have considered the issues in more detail.

I will in a moment.

Perhaps we are meeting in that context rather than for the wide-ranging, constructive debate that we could be having about challenging poverty in communities across Scotland and the Government’s own record in that regard.

I have said that the policy is a pernicious policy. I am committed to—and the Labour Party is committed to—examining every part of the universal credit system to make sure that it works. If the cabinet secretary wants to roll her eyes and not listen to the fact that we need to reform universal credit fundamentally—which will take time—that is up to her.

I am proud that the previous UK Labour Government lifted 2 million children and pensioners out of poverty. That includes 200,000 children in Scotland alone. How did we do that? We did that through a new social contract that included the national minimum wage, child benefit and tax credits. It is clear that we need that level of change now to tackle poverty across Scotland and the UK, because things have got so much worse since then.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s annual state of the nation report highlighted just two days ago that the number of Scots still living in poverty is more than 1 million, that the level of deep poverty is on the rise—it is just shy of half a million people—and that 24 per cent of children are living in poverty after housing costs.

Under the Tories and the SNP, inequality and poverty have soared. There are 40,000 more children in poverty in Scotland compared with a decade ago, and we are not seeing action on the scale that is required. Our amendment outlines the new deal for working people and the importance of ensuring that it is there to lift people out of poverty.

An estimated two thirds of children in poverty live in working households; 60 per cent of families impacted by the two-child cap are in work; 10 per cent of all employees in Scotland are stuck on low pay; and 72 per cent of that group are women. That is why the new deal for working people would be transformative, and it was endorsed by the Trades Union Congress.

We heard derision from the cabinet secretary regarding a document and a policy that are backed by the TUC. What will the new deal do? It will ban zero-hours contracts, outlaw fire-and-rehire practices and raise the minimum wage to a living wage in order to tackle insecure work and ensure that work pays as a key route to ending poverty. Indeed, the TUC called it

“the biggest upgrade of workers’ rights in a generation.”

I hope that the Government will be able to support a document and a policy that are supported by the TUC and back our amendment.

Does Bob Doris accept that there are significant challenges in delivery of social security in Scotland, not least in terms of the wait times that exist for adult disability payment and with getting the right advice and support for people across Scotland?