The SNP’s bus passes for asylum seekers is a dangerous misstep
Generous Scottish tax-payers are to spend £2 million on a pilot scheme to give free bus travel to asylum seekers. The largesse is being provided by the Scottish Government and a range of publicly-funded civic society groups who want to demonstrate their support for new arrivals in Scotland, who must hereafter be referred to as New Scots.
The justification? In the words of the SNP’s equalities minister at Holyrood, Kaukab Stewart: “Scotland has a proud history of welcoming those fleeing war and persecution, and we are dedicated to helping them integrate into communities from the day they arrive. It is vital…people seeking asylum…understand their rights and access employment and services to help them to rebuild their lives in Scotland.”
The Scotland Act, which denotes which policy areas are reserved to Westminster and which are devolved to Edinburgh, makes asylum and immigration the responsibility of our national parliament in London. This is a point of frustration to the SNP, who, despite having lost their battle for independence, frequently behave as if Scots voted ‘Yes’ in 2014. Their ministers gallivant around the globe on the tax-payers’ shilling pretending to have responsibility for foreign affairs and defence, while at home, they connive to trim away any authority the UK government might have north of the border.
This latest public relations initiative is an example of such. No one in the Scottish Government has the authority to make asylum policy or to authorise asylum seekers to work while they await the decision on their applications for refuge. So instead they use devolved powers to signal their virtue on the issue.
Yet the initiative is a risky one. Especially in the council housing estates which turned their backs on the SNP at last week’s general election, the nationalists’ performative sympathy with asylum seekers is not wholly reflected.
As an MP I frequently had to challenge misconceptions that were regularly spread in those communities about how well off asylum seekers were, that they were being favoured in the queue for social housing, that they were being given unlimited benefits but were nevertheless cheating the system to fatten their bank balances. It was pretty appalling stuff, but to be expected in communities that are suffering the most in the economic steeplechase and where decent, quality housing is a rare and much sought-after thing.
Which is why the SNP’s latest initiative is dangerous, because it risks fuelling simmering resentments that are already there, not far below the surface, in exactly the areas in which asylum seekers are housed while they await a decision on their applications. Unlike housing, there is plenty of room on most local buses for new arrivals in the country. But most Scots don’t have the privilege of free bus journeys, and might raise an eyebrow at asylum seekers receiving a benefit that they do not.
If this were a simple act of charity rather than an obvious virtue-signalling attempt to emphasise the exceptionalism of Scots, it would be bad enough. But included in the Scottish Government’s new strategy for welcoming asylum seekers and refugees is a commitment to seek permission from the UK government for asylum seekers to have the right to work while they await their decisions on refugee status.
This has long been a demand by those who are employed in the refugee industry, who claim that having a job would help applicants integrate more easily into their new country. But such an assertion is surely based on the assumption that every applicant will be successful. What about those applicants who manage to secure a job but who are then informed that their application has been refused, that it has been discovered they are not, after all, fleeing “war and persecution” but are in fact economic migrants? Would those fighting for asylum seekers’ right to work then accept with a shrug of their shoulders that that’s just too bad and have a safe journey back to your own country? Hardly. Then the campaign against the “injustice” of removing someone from the country – someone who’s actually working and paying taxes – would begin.
Governments of both colours have refused to allow asylum seekers to work because it would inevitably act as a magnet to other asylum seekers. SNP ministers don’t seem to disagree with this risk; rather, they welcome the prospect of many, many more asylum seekers choosing to make Scotland their home.
Except that while the SNP are welcoming all those New Scots and promising them homes, jobs and free bus travel, the Scottish Parliament has declared a “housing emergency” due to the scandalous shortage of available homes for the existing population. Earlier this year, Jim McBride, the head of homelessness at Glasgow City Council told Holyrood’s Social Justice Committee that the authority was attempting to house up to 10 households per day. “We’ve identified the fact it’s going to be an almost impossible challenge for us to manage,” he said.
That challenge will only become greater if, as the SNP Government hopes, asylum seekers can use their free bus pass to get to work, and even greater if others in the same boat (as it were) head for Scotland to sample the tartan utopia being constructed here for asylum seekers. The competition for housing may be about to get a lot worse, and racial tensions may become inflamed.