Speeches by Murray.

“What is a bridging programme?”

“The problem is, why has that work not already been done? This is not a partisan issue.”

“Are you sure that you will be able to do it quickly enough that you will have options, first when the break clause comes but even beyond that, at the end horizon of these contracts? One of the problems identified in the National Audit Office reports on these contracts was that there was little competition for them in t…”

“Thank you for that. I want to follow up on the ODA point. You said, Minister, that there has been £500 million in savings, but only £74 million of that has gone back into the development assistance budget. Can you explain why?”

“If we think about the experience with these three providers under the contract, when the previous Government tried to task them with setting up large sites, they failed spectacularly. The Northeye example—incredible levels of waste of public money. Are you sure that you have such a grip on the system that if you tasked…”

“Even still, I think that is a bit behind the scale.”

“Thank you. I have one final question. I would like to draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Interests and declare the support my office received from RAMP. I should have done so at the beginning; forgive me, Chair. Before we move on from the question about large sites and the lessons learned fro…”

“No matter what your view is of the asylum system overall, from one perspective to another, there are undeniably very vulnerable people in this system. That is what “refugee” means. So, what are the responsibilities of the Home Office in safeguarding these people in its accommodation?”

“When the providers appeared before us, they told us that safeguarding is not one of their key performance indicators with you in how you manage that contract, so are there any consequences for providers if they do not comply with safeguarding duties?”

“Those are contractual responsibilities, but my question is: what happens if they do not fulfil them? It is not in the KPIs, so there is no contractual implication for them. What is the purpose, then, of the Home Office safeguarding hub?”

“Do you think you make enough use of the data that that safeguarding hub generates? When we spoke to asylum seekers in accommodation and when you listen to some of the third sector reports, there are really serious safeguarding concerns out there. Are you sure that the Home Office is actually doing enough to address the…”

“We touched on the issue of age dispute and age assessment earlier, but these contractors are not statutory services. They do not have the kind of professional qualifications that child protection authorities would have. How confident are you that they are responding appropriately when an age dispute arises?”

“My final question is: given the significantly higher mortality and complaint rates in Clearsprings-run accommodation, what investigations have you undertaken to understand why that is, and what action do you propose to take?”

“Cabinet Secretary, obviously this is a pilot and it is very localised at the moment. It will need to be evaluated in the round once it comes to the end, but one challenge that we have in Scotland is the extremely high number of drug deaths. 1,172 people died last year, and every single one was a tragedy. If the pilot i…”

““The pilot in Glasgow must be jointly funded by the Government and the Scottish Government. The Government must work with the Scottish Government and local partners to establish and operate the pilot. The pilot must be evaluated in order to establish a reliable evidence base on the utility of a safe consumption facilit…”

“Has your own view changed on safe consumption rooms?”

“Do you think that the international evidence around safe consumption rooms is evolving, or do you see it as remaining quite static in different jurisdictions where it is evaluated?”

“We had a discussion with the Cabinet Secretary from Scotland earlier, where we talked about safe consumption as a pathway to recovery, as a step that people need to take before they can begin their rehabilitation. Do you have a view on whether safe consumption can be a step on a pathway to rehabilitation?”

“I understand that it is for local areas to come forward with their own proposals, but you are responsible for the national figure of drug deaths. I wonder whether you have a view on how many drug consumption facilities you would want to see across Scotland in order to make a meaningful substantive impact on the overall…”

“Sorry to interrupt. Are you saying that, even if the project is judged to be a success, you are agnostic on whether any further drug consumption facilities open?”