Good morning, and a warm welcome to the fourth meeting of the Constitution-Europe external affairs and culture committee in 2023. Our first agenda item is a decision on taking business in private. Members content to take agenda item 3 in private. Our second agenda item is to take evidence on Scotland's humanitarian response to the war in Ukraine, and we are drawn this morning by Lorraine Cook, policy manager at COSLA, Gavin Sharp, lead officer, Ukraine refugee response, City of Edinburgh Council, Pat Togher, assistant chief officer, public protection and complex needs, Glasgow city health and social care partnership, Hazel Chisholm, housing policy officer, resettlement team, Highland Council, who is attending committee virtually. I begin with questions. I'm sure you've all seen the evidence from the Ukrainian consul last week. It was a very mixed bag of experience, but it was very resonant to me as being very much like my surgery is, not just from Ukrainian people, but from lots of people at the moment. There seemed to be perhaps fundamental gaps in signposting for Ukrainians that are here to be resettled. I just wondered what information is given in the packs and how do we ensure that cultural understanding of elected representatives in our role in supporting people is included in signposting Ukrainian people to issues with DWP, issues with access to health and dental treatment, and if I could, Ben, Mr Togher? Of course, no problem. First of all, the entire operation in its own right has been a very impressive endeavour with everybody involved. For example, and I can speak from a Glasgow perspective, we've got just over 2,000 Ukrainian displaced persons now in the city. It's a fairly consistent approach to everybody in terms of the offer and the offer of support and the offer of accommodation. For everybody who resides currently within either a host family arrangement, the hotel or MS ambition, which has about 1,100 folk on there, we have a presence of our asylum bridge and health team, a presence of our asylum refugee team on the ship and in the hotels. We also have our asylum refugee team outreach into all the families that are currently in host family arrangements. Everybody who has arrived in the scheme has got full entitlement to recourse to public funds. Everybody in that regard has full entitlement to healthcare and to access to social care support in precisely the same way anybody else does. It's currently living in Scotland. So the arrangements are in place also extend to education. Education provision is provided to 300 school-age children on the ship just now.  And also DWP are both on the ship and in the hotels making sure that people have got access to all of their entitlement and done as fast as possible. All of those arrangements were all put in place at very early doors when the scheme had commenced. And certainly from a Glasgow point of view, we stood this up really early on. And it also extends to the support of third sector partners as well, who have a presence in all of the various schemes within both the ship, the hotel and for host family arrangements. There's also health isn't provision for the zero to fives. And very early on when we envisaged that there was an increasing demand coming through into Glasgow, including the ship, we were really quite quick off the mark to make sure that there was an enhanced resource and skill set there to make sure that it complemented all of the needs of everybody who had arrived under the scheme. I can't speak for every individual local authority but I know all local authorities that have hotels and welcome accommodation in their areas have a presence in the hotels. They provide information, there's a lot of wraparound services. I suppose it's relatively new as well to a lot of councils there but it's experienced, knowledgeable. I mean some have went back a decade to the Syrian refugee programme and they've worked on that. So we've got experienced teams in terms of reassessment teams and they're the ones that are in the hotels and know about wraparound services, engaging with wider services, third sector as well. And it is a different picture across Scotland because we do it in different ways, depending on different areas, access in different services, but there's very much a wraparound service within the welcome accommodation for those local authorities that do have that. I'll bring in Mr Sharpe and Ms Chisholm, but are you aware of a one-stop shop web page or a single point of information that people can go to to get a comprehensive list of some of the information that they might need or is each local authority doing their own thing? I mean I can come back. We can do a scoping exercise on what is actually provided for the relevant local authorities, that's not a problem, so we can actually do that and come back to you with further information, but some I know do have websites, access, translators in the hotels as well, actually bringing the services to the hotel or directing people to, or its welcome packs, translated welcome packs. So it's quite varied, the body of wraparound services in the way that that's facilitated is quite different, but I'd be happy to do that. We have regular contact with all our resettlement leads, and I could do that pretty quickly. Mr Sharpe, what do you want to come up with? Yeah, no, just to back up what Pat and Lorraine have said, I think in Edinburgh, so the welcome hub at Gogerburn's scene just around 10,500 individuals come through the triage process. Each and every one is given a welcome pack digitally and a hard copy, and within that welcome pack that's the Scottish Government wider welcome pack, but there is access to different information within that. Those staying in Edinburgh as well are an Edinburgh specific one, which is available on the Edinburgh.gov website, and that gives information for access, education, health, social care, DWP, capital city partnership, jobs front, so we're quite in-depth information within that itself. Similar to what Pat said, we've got that wraparound support in place, third sector playing a key role in Edinburgh, and also AUGB running drop-in sessions on almost on a daily basis as well and job fairs, so we're seeing quite a good take-up in that, but it's still early stages and still need to work through. I think we've been here in Highlands, yes, similar approach wraparound services provided in the hotel, resettlement team meeting with arrivals initially, linking them in with education services, our welfare team, our website does have a list of our contacts for our welfare team education, the health registry of child for school, et cetera, and we also provided links in welcome packs that we sent out to everybody, printed and digitally. We also provided phone books or iPads or mobile phones where necessary, so people could link up and get access to information if there's any gaps there. We also signed post them to the Scottish Refugee Council, just right Scotland, so there was any pieces of information for individuals that we weren't meeting the up-person legal advice that we weren't able to provide. We tried to sign post that through the Scottish Refugee Council and just right Scotland, so we endeavored at all times to provide that wraparound service for everybody. A bit more challenging up here in the Highlands with the geographical area that we cover with quite rural community, but most of our hotels were spread across two main areas, which allowed us to visit on alternative days. It's quite a challenge, but I think that we learned as we went along, I think that it was a learning exercise for us all, even though we're quite well versed in sport and Syrian and Afghan resettlements since 2016. It wasn't as planned and approached as we usually like, so that was the challenge in itself. We've been working closely with COSLA and other local authorities on picking up good practices as we go along to make sure that we deliver the best service that we can for the Ukrainians in our area. That's good to know. I know that my office has been involved in a number of inquiries where people have been using the DWP service as a benefit entitlement, very often professional people who just want to get into jobs and the involvement of skills development in Scotland. A process has been absolutely vital and our colleges as well, because, as you say, they are entitled to, as adults, to attend some of our colleges and courses. It's good to hear that the work is going on in this area. I guess what we want to try to do is identify any gaps and ensure that we can provide a service as well as elected representatives to people who are here from the Ukraine. I wonder if I could also ask about those who are not arriving through the welcome hubs and are not arriving through the Scottish Government scheme that may have been matched through the UK Government scheme. I know that you don't get informed about it, so is that a situation that is leading to gaps in people's knowledge how to access the wraparound service? Are you concerned that there are people out there who are lacking in this support from everyone? I think that it is probably fair to say that we are fairly far down the line with this. This is a population that has a number of social media platforms in which to communicate with each other. The Ukrainian community is coming together. I am becoming much more familiar with what they are entitled to, what the support is and where they can access that support. Touching on the question earlier on, certainly from a Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership perspective, we have a very comprehensive website that has a list of frequently asked questions. We routinely consult on those questions to make sure that they remain contemporary and up to speed, given the shift in sands around all that. People's questions have tended to shift as well. It is more focused now on longer-term properties that are available to allow them to settle. I would fairly confidently say that it is well and truly out there and that people who have arrived in the scheme or otherwise, as you describe, have got fairly easy access to all that support in the same way that anybody else has. We only match under the Scottish Super Sponsor, but in terms of homes for Ukraine, so people are directly coming to their host. They have their name on their visa. Local authorities will have done property checks, disclosure checks for the host. That is where we would view in our normal humanitarian protection schemes, where the resettlement happens. Resettlement teams know that they are there and can get on. Because they are settled, it is still temporary. We struggle a little. It is a very new situation for us having hosts. Any other humanitarian protection programmes, it is people coming directly into long-term accommodation. It is quite a different situation, but resettlement officers are aware. That is where the resettlement work is happening, because they are relatively settled, rather than hotels or ships. I think that, in Edinburgh, we have around 3,000 Ukrainian-displaced persons within temporary accommodation, host properties and private let-ins that we know of. I think that, being honest, there will be people who have slipped through the net, not necessarily from homes from the Ukraine scheme, because, as Lorraine said, we get the list, we do the home checks, we do the safeguarding, but there will be private matches that we are not aware of. When you look at the numbers of arrivals from the supersponsor scheme, it is around 17,000. We have seen 10,000 people, 10,500 through the hub. There will be people arriving directly to Glasgow and Aberdeen, but there could still be a cohort that has come through private matches from England or Ireland. Again, similar to others, the website itself has all that information. We sign post as much as we can, word of mouth as well, crucial, but we also use the information that we get from the education team, DWP, capital city partnership, and just pull together all that information to try and, if there is anyone who has slipped through the net, have a contact, speak to them and offer the support that we can. I do think that there will be, we know that, not huge numbers, but we just need to do everything that we can to support them and get that information out there. Ms Chisholm. I would just end with what has been said there. The resettlement team works closely with our environmental health officers who carry out their property checks in the first instance and some of the business support team who carry out the disclosure checks in homes for Ukraine applicants for hosting arrangements. We are very much trying to keep the communication up with hosts right from the start. Sometimes people privately match and we only find out when they contact us after the event, so there may be a small number of people, I think, in Ireland who have done this. I think that the fact that most hosts under homes for Ukraine want to access the £350 thank you payment to support them in their costs encourages contact, even if it has been a private match and people have their guests arrive, then they will contact and say, my guests arrived last week. Mostly when I look at any of the examples of contact with hosts, generally it is early on and generally it is a communication from hosts to say, my guests are due to arrive, I have made contact, their flights are arriving, how can the council assist? We have a website and a resettlement team mailbox that anybody can contact us with any general queries, but that is usually where the contact starts. I can say that there are no instances where we are not connecting with people under the homes for Ukraine, but I would say in the majority of cases that contact is made early and we are looking to support people in all our rural communities because we have a lot of rural homes for Ukraine hosting arrangements up here in Hyde. Thank you very much. I am going to move to questions from the committee and all.drall and hit interest in an area that we have already covered. Thank you for that. You have mentioned the background checks and the home checks that are being done by local authorities. I just wonder if you had a picture of how varied that situation was across the country. It is certainly anecdotally that we have had an idea that some local authorities, possibly for very good reasons, have taken some time to do that work and appreciate that they are not doing it on their own and that they are having to cooperate with other agencies. However, how varied is that picture across different local authorities? I think that, to be honest, when it was EOIs, we did see significant numbers. I do not want to say the original, but it was thousands. I can go back. To be honest, a lot of them were quickly taken off the list, but there was huge pressure on environmental health officers and disclosure to get those checks done. There was a lag. Nobody was matched until, under Scottish Super Sponsor, we did not receive any hosts until they went through those two checks. I would say that the majority of that has been caught up. Some were very rural and remote. Councils were looking at that as a prioritisation. It has been quite difficult to match people, to move more rural and remote areas. When environmental health officers take maybe two days to do the check or three days in some cases, there is a bit of priority of who we do first. However, there was a lag. I would say that the majority have a discussion group that we meet monthly with environmental health officers. I can go back to them, but I am pretty confident that most are. I know that we have the offers of accommodation campaign, but we are seeing smaller numbers coming in around that. It is not that overwhelming numbers initially that we were slowly working through. I think that, as you say, others have probably covered this area, and I will come in on other subjects later on. Does anyone else want to comment on Dr Allan's question at this stage? You do not need to answer every question, but if you have a particular address that we indicate to me, I will bring in on the answers. I should have explained that at the top of the meeting. Could I bring in Ms Minto, please? I know that we have touched on the rural issues there. Thank you for joining us today. Like Dr Allan, I represent a rural constituency. I am interested to know, because we got some comments last week from the council about the difficulties that Ukrainian families perhaps were experiencing being in a more remote area. I wonder if you can comment on that, Ms Chisholm, and if you can perhaps explain what is a more rural local authority and what you are doing to support Ukrainian families that are outwith our cities. Thank you. With the rural community up here in Highland Council, it has been quite challenging for those families who have resettled outwith the main cities. However, what has been quite helpful is when we are trying to work with, when we know that there are three or four families, even if they are not very close to each other, in an area, we are trying to look to support them to link them up. What we have found is that a lot of the main hosts, if they find that they establish a small community in their area, are setting up very well-established Facebook groups for people to share information. We have been allowed to join and pick up any queries that need to be provided assistance with. They have also been holding regular events, so that Ukrainians in the area can attend and socialise. We have been quite good in supporting that to enable people to be aware of those events being shared, making sure that local officers in the areas, the local council officers, are aware of Ukrainians in their area. It is not just the resettlement team. That is quite key. When they can live with any queries if they need support, that is there for them. It has been challenging because sometimes there are a few families, some areas just have one family on their own. However, I have found that the local community support has been excellent and they are very good at inviting Ukrainian families to attend events, to become involved in their local churches. Working closely with the community and the third sector has been key. Providing the holistic support needed for families to try to integrate into the communities because we can help them with their welfare support. We can make sure that they have access to the local schools and transport. Transport in rural communities has been quite challenging. All Ukrainians and Highlands now have access to free bus passes until the end of the year. That has been really helpful. However, that will not make buses run more regularly, or maybe more services to more local communities improve. That is again where the community has come in. They have been quite good at offering transport to people where they are required. I think that we really have to engage with our third sector to make sure that we are connected with those in hosting arrangements in rural communities. That has been the key to success in our communities for this to date anyway. Thank you, Ms Chisholm. I recognise some of what you have described with regard to bus services. That was something specifically that the council raised with us. If I may, I would like to move on to a couple of other things that the council said to us. He mentioned on a couple of occasions working with the Association of Ukrainians, which I believe have branches in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee. I would be interested to know what work you have been able to do with them and what contact you have had with them. Slightly connected with that is how we are ensuring that the Ukrainian families, the children that are here, are not losing contact with their Ukrainian roots. The council described children as being sponges. We are very quickly taking on English as their first language. I am just interested to know what the different areas are doing. I was brought in by the council on 10 March last year to lead on this. The following Friday, we held our first oversight group in Edinburgh, which multi-agency, including third sector, has played an absolute key role in that from the start. Really close relationships. We have assisted with them for them to get a co-ordinator, along with Evoc and volunteer Edinburgh. We meet weekly. We work in conjunction with them for various events, such as in AGB, hotels, MS Victoria and other civic receptions. To me, that is one of the partnership of that link-up. I know that, over the last few months, they have helped to set up the GBA in Glasgow, which Pat will touch on as well. We are really supportive of them. They are an absolutely fantastic support to us. Close links with the previous council general are still to meet with the new council general as well. However, we have forged good work in relationship from the start. Education-wise, we have appointed an education co-ordinator specifically for Ukraine, who is part of our team at the City of Edinburgh Council. She has been in post now for a couple of months and is doing a lot of work, both one-to-one with families and across all educational establishments. She has a meeting with the independent sector today, because we know that the independent sector in Edinburgh has Ukrainian pupils, so we are working. They have again been a great support to the council. We have also got good links with further and higher education in Edinburgh College and the Dnieprow children at the moment, but we are doing a lot of work with the other establishments as well. We think that there is around between 400 and 500 Ukrainians enrolled in further and higher education as well. It is working with that and making sure that, as you say, those routes, given all the support that we can, English lessons are key, but so is everything else. There is a mixture of online learning still and actual face-to-face in schools, but we have more than 650 pupils enrolled in schools in Edinburgh as well, so a lot of work is being done there at the moment. It is a very similar picture with the meeting structures that we have set up in Glasgow going back to February of last year. That has now developed and evolved. The relationship with EUGB is firmly there in place in terms of the interface that we have. Glasgow has a number of representations that meet every single Monday morning. We have key partners around the table, including the third sector education, health and social work. There is an interface arrangement there that we feed in and feedback to EUGB. Of a critical point here is that this is the additional version of the service user's voice, so we routinely are issued with questions that people are involved in the Ukrainian programme. Perhaps we feel more comfortable in feeling questions elsewhere, so we are there to pick that up. It is effectively an additional point of safeguarding for us, but, similarly to Edinburgh, it is a very well-connected arrangement in Glasgow. If I may, Ms Chisholm, the connection from Highland. Yes, thank you. We recently recruited somebody to sit within our Highland third sector interface to work closely with the Scottish Refugee Council and a representative from EUGB. We also invite those who support groups in the community that meet every fortnight, and it is a great platform to share what is going on in those rural communities and to raise gaps that we can identify and provide support for. In relation to what you mentioned, Ukrainian children are linking back to making sure that they are keeping their contacts up. It was key, especially for children hotels, that they had the devices to be able to do this, to have face-to-face contact. The group was key in setting that up to ensure that everybody had that access, but also to make sure that the community groups supporting those in temporary accommodation, as well as anything else, were getting support on weekends to take a break from the devices that children were finding at school all day. Joining Ukrainian lessons in the evening was a lot, but they placed education so highly that they were very keen to keep folks going. We were working with the third sector to arrange events at weekends to give children a break to get them away from their devices out of the temporary accommodation and out into the lovely highlands to make sure that they are making the use of that rural community around them. Key meetings with the Scottish Refugee Council and the HDSI have been really important for us to make sure that we are sharing all that information. I would like to go back to your original question about services in rural areas. There are definitely different situations compared to the cities, but I would not like it to be overlooked by the services that are there. For example, in Argyll and Bute, there is Esall for everyone. There are career pathways. I believe that they have already got people into teaching. They have someday gone through a career pathway adopter. It is about recognising people's skills and making the most of people's skills in rural areas that need those people. There are a lot of good services in rural areas, as well as some of the challenges that we may not face, although there are different challenges in cities. I will briefly stay on the rural aspect. I wonder whether you have encountered particular challenges in enabling people to make that transition from temporary accommodation to more permanent accommodation in rural areas. You might have seen some of the early concerns around the Collin hotel, in which Ukrainian people had moved into the hotel, had become quite settled there, and had got jobs locally, sending their kids to local school. The early concerns around perhaps having to move out of the hotel and move to more permanent accommodation and what that might mean in terms of having to perhaps move job and having to perhaps move to school. I wonder how that transition is being managed in Highlands. I have had a lot of conversation with Stirling Council about how they are doing that relation to Collin, but generally how rural local authorities are trying to manage that. We also heard last week from the council that there are travel issues, even just in terms of re-registering cars for use in the UK. There is a quite complex set of issues there. Do you have any brief insights that you can give on that? I think that we need to look at that. There needs to be a reassessment of accommodation strategy, because we are finding that there is a centralised model for us. The majority of people are coming into Edinburgh or Glasgow. When people are settled, it is very difficult, but what we are finding is that when people quickly move to different parts of Scotland, Aberdeenshire is a really good example of that, a pretty rural area. However, when they have people in their hotels and they are moved quickly into their hotels, their matching is—I could not say of the top of my head—the percentage of successful matches, but it is pretty phenomenal how quickly they are matching people and supporting people into their host accommodation or longer-term accommodation. There is a different strategy in terms of accommodation. I agree that, for us, matching can be difficult when people have spent time and settled into the cities and then asking them to go to a more rural area. There is the unknown as well. People have fled the war and they become settled. They link with their community and then to ask them to move against. There is something about moving people quickly. I know Pat in terms of the ship. Local authorities are coming on to the ship and they are bringing people who are living in the areas with displaced people and promoting the area. It is a complex situation in terms of matching people. Hazel Cheson. Thank you. It is complex. It has been challenging. You are right that people move into certain areas, find jobs, children go to school and there is a reluctance to accept an offer of accommodation outwith the area that they are living in. The majority of our temporary accommodation is in areas where there is a high demand for housing and very little availability for longer-term housing. My team has been working closely with COSLA on a local level to match people to accommodations outwith the hotels. We have had successful matches, but not nearly as many as we need. We have a lot of people in hotels that we could possibly find some short-term accommodation for, but it may not be in the areas that they wish to live in. This is where the issue lies. We have offers of accommodation in rural communities and we have had host contact us saying why have I been matched with a Ukrainian guest. They are offering nice facilities with local schools and shops. However, a lot of people do not go to those rural communities. They do not know enough about them as much as we try to explain to them that they have become quite settled in the area that they are in. There are communities that are developed in hotels and people feel comfortable in their surroundings. They have come to the areas that they live in, so trying to sell them another area is trying to tell them that if they leave that community that they have established is quite challenging. Highland Council is currently assessing the purchase and refurbishment of HMO and care home properties, but we are aware that that will take time to do this, to find the funding that has been offered from the Scottish Government to make those properties available. If it is six or nine months before that comes fail, it will not answer the need that we have now, which is that we have a high number of people in temporary accommodation that we do not have longer-term solutions for. That is one of the biggest challenges that we have as a council in front of us now, so coming up with solutions for this will be one of our biggest challenges. There are no two ways about it. Thank you for everything that you are doing in fact for Ukrainians in Scotland. It is right to say that we are witnessing a transition now in many areas from temporary accommodation to long-term accommodation. As that move happens for Ukrainians and Ukrainian individuals, families and households, it seems to me that it is vitally important that they are able to continue already established education and employment opportunities or wherever they are. Can you reassure the committee that there are measures in place to enable that to happen? Can I start with Lorraine? I think... Sorry. Take your time. I mean, did you want to let someone else in? I'm happy to answer that because I can speak specifically from a Glasgow City Council point of view. Whereas we will endeavour as much as possible to ensure and ensure that the connection with education and employment, for example, and particularly those people with on-going treatment, healthcare needs, complex needs, is retained in the local authority of their choice as much as possible. We will attempt and endeavour that as best as we possibly can. Glasgow will not have the capacity to provide accommodation to everybody who wants it in the city centre of Glasgow. There is an excess of 2,000 Ukrainians. It is important to highlight that this should be seen in the context of a much wider homelessness pressures perspective. For example, in Glasgow, when the Ukrainian dispersed persons started arriving, we were in the process of Covid recovery, and Covid recovery put sharp focus into the requirement for housing association properties in Glasgow. It will be an enormous challenge, a very difficult challenge, and it would be remiss of me not to highlight that here today. It would be disingenuous to give any kind of commitment that we can do that for everybody. So what we can do is prioritise wherever we possibly can and mitigate risk wherever we possibly can, but it will not be possible for everybody, given the scale of what we are describing just now and given the context of the housing pressures that currently exist in Glasgow and existed well in advance of the super sponsorship scheme. I fully endorse what Pat is saying for Edinburgh as well. I think that people are well aware of the housing crisis within the city itself. We are working similar to Pat as well on a city region basis, so we are working with our neighbours to look at all availability across the piece, but I think that something that is really key is the definitions and the terminology about what is long-term. I think that there is mixed messaging that hosting arrangements could be seen as long-term in certain areas. It is not long-term and I think that that has to be key as we move forward from this. I think that touching on Mark's point as well earlier when we are moving people, I think that some people now are seeing hosting as an intermediate as well, so they are seeing that as another move and then they will have to move again, which I think is a very difficult territory when you have those conversations with people at the moment. There is not enough accommodation across the country when you look at that. I think that we were talking yesterday that it is almost a housing crisis within a housing crisis and I think that that has to be recognised. That is the key for this at the moment, for properties. We are doing everything that we can, pat side of things with the ambition at the moment and the disembarkation. We have got the Victoria contract ending in the summertime as well, so we are working very closely along with COSLA as well. I think that the rain will touch on the matching side of things, maybe a little bit more now, just with the numbers, but I think that it has to be recognised, the definitions, terminology but also the fact that there is not enough accommodation across the country at the moment. Just to elaborate on the mixed messaging that you mentioned, where is that coming from? I think that it is difficult to say because it is not just a Scottish Government, it is a UK wide. When you look at the Home Office information, you look at what is on the Scottish Government website at the moment, the discussions that we are in in different meetings, there are not agreed definitions of what is long-term accommodation at the moment. Is that agreed with at local authority level? So I can speak for ourselves and Glasgow as well and possibly Highland here, that we would not see hosting arrangements as long-term accommodation. Before I turn to the rain in Hazel, I fully acknowledge that the housing pressures are entirely cognisant of that. I suppose that my question is really in the event that you do move someone from quote temporary to quote long-term within a local authority area and that necessitates a child moving school or someone changing their job. How is that managed? How do you deal with that, Gavin? Do you want to come? So in Edinburgh at the moment, if they are staying within the city boundaries, the child will not be asked to move school. They have their place at the school, so we will support where we can bring in, as I said earlier, the education coordinator is absolutely key to that, to manage that expectation across the city. Discussions will take place with the family and the school to say that this is your local school, we will do introductions, but if they wish to stay at the previous school, we will support that move. We have obviously got free bus passes for children within the city. It would be dependent where they moved in the city, but we will support where we can and having that education coordinator in his key. On the jobs front as well, we are working very closely with capital city partnership, so there will be discussions with the individual and the company to look at what is possible, but they will have the support of our downstream team as well as the transition in. I wanted Glasgow and Edinburgh to set the context before I can go into this, but I suppose it goes back to the centralisation model of accommodation, which is exacerbating those challenges and just the sheer scale of asking the cities to try to accommodate people. Everybody, the best will in the world, we would all want children not to be moved out of schools, people not to have to move from their work, but there is a huge challenge that is facing the cities, and it is exacerbated by that accommodation model. There are so many people in the cities and maybe we do need to be looking at it. It is not a complete fix, this is across Scotland, but there will be other resources. If people went straight to Aberdeenshire or wherever, there is more chance of them being able to stay within that area, whereas it is just a huge challenge at the moment in terms of the cities. I think that I will echo what everybody else said. It is more of a challenge in a rural community of removing somebody from a hotel to a longer term, or even a shorter term, let's say, hosting arrangements, because unless it is very local to them, they are going to have to change schools, they may have to change jobs. I think that that is why we are getting a lot of refusals for the offers that we are making people, because they are really reluctant to do that, because we have very few offers in close to our temporary accommodations, and those that we have have been exhausted, so it is a move out of area for people, and that is where we are finding the challenge. Some people will accept if it is a social tendency, those providing them with a longer term option, but if we do not have that for them and we only have a hosting arrangement, which is a shorter term option, even the private rental sector is a shorter term option, really. People are quite reluctant, so it is quite the challenge to find a solution for matching people into accommodations, because the ones that we have are maybe in not in locations that will match their needs. It is trying at the moment to find that longer term accommodation with the pressures that have already been identified and current stock and demand and pressure on homelessness in all areas across all local authorities. Thank you for that. I have one final question, and it touches on private rented accommodation, Hazel, that you just mentioned. Last week, the consul said that Ukrainian households are having difficulty accessing private rented accommodation because landlords are asking for guarantees and credit checks that Ukrainians are simply unable to provide for fairly obvious reasons. The consul suggested that local authorities could act as guarantors. Is that feasible, realistic? It is something that we can offer. We definitely have a rental guarantee scheme that has been offered, and we are looking to put that on our website and make it available if Ukrainians need it. However, up here in Highlands, we do not have a very buoyant private rental market anyway, so there is really huge competition for any accommodations that do become available. We have had Ukrainians access and move into private rental accommodation, so it is doable, but I think that there is so much competition on the few that are available that we cannot support them with a rent guarantee scheme. That is no problem at all. I do not know if it is all the solution to the challenge there in that area. Thank you. Do any other members of the panel want to come in on guarantors? What I would probably say to that is that there are a number of various governance structures in place that are considering all of those options, so any of those options would need to give consideration to the consistent application across all the local authorities. What is just as important is parity with what we offer to our domestic homelessness population. That is key to that, and that is part of that discussion. As we move forward, there are a number of options that are being considered. Certainly, from a Glasgow point of view, the private rented sector seems to be a market that is contracting, and that is a market area that we did look at as part of our recovery from Covid. That is a very fat point. Just to echo Pat's, we are looking nationally. There is a working group looking at that. We are meeting with colleagues up at St Andrew's house after this to discuss. In Edinburgh, similar to Pat again, we are looking at all options. We are looking to invite private rental sector in. We have had discussions with several letting agents. We are seeing some limited successes. On Pat's point, there is parity across the piece, which we are working hard on at the moment. That is a work in progress both nationally and within the local authorities, but I think that the key is parity, as Pat has said. Small supplementary for Dr Allan, then I will bring in Mr Boyack. Again, it is on housing. Mr Sharpton mentioned that housing crisis, and there certainly are real pressures there. I realise that planning decisions do not deal immediately with the here and now, but I was keen to know from any of you how addressing the problems around housing for displaced people fits into the planning policy or planning approach that you have. Obviously, you will be aware that swathes of suburban Scotland have large private developers building houses that are beyond the reach of anyone who lives within 50 miles of them or has not sold a house in a large city or somewhere else. What is being done to try and factor the needs of displaced people into planning decisions that are made around issues such as that? I do not know perhaps Lorraine and Gavin. Again, that ties into the group that I have been talking about, the long-term accommodation working group. I am very much so with planning. We know that there are developments within Edinburgh that could be an intermediate and social rent. It is discussions that need to be added. Across the country, that has to be led by the working group individually as local authorities. We can have those discussions with developers, but we are really looking for a steer nationally. Hazel, as we have all said, is a national response. We do again back to that parity word, but we need that across all local authorities when decisions around especially planning are being made. It is something that is being worked on and looked at at the moment. It would be great if it had been looked at for a number of months, but we need to increase the pressure on that working group. We need to start getting answers. We need to start getting those policies in place. We are coming up to the first anniversary, so we need to start looking at that and implementing those as we move forward. I think that we are straying into concerns of rain and local government as well. I do not want to pursue that much more, if that is okay, Dr Allan. It is a timely reminder that, a year ago, we all thought things would be better for the Ukrainian people by this point in time. Obviously, all the policies have had to adapt to the length of the on-going situation. It is to go back to the last issues that have been raised about homelessness and housing. If I can declare an interest in terms of my register of interests, I take the point that it is a long-term issue, but we have been raising the issue of what is the long-term solution for about six months now. It is to go back particularly to the evidence that we just had from Gavin Sharp, Pat Toker and Lorraine Cooke in terms of COSLA. I want to focus on the access to housing issue because we have a housing crisis. What is the opportunity to accelerate bringing homes into use? I just wanted to focus on the empty homes issue. The reason that homes are quite often empty can be a multiple of reasons, but 43,000 in Scotland, 9,000 in Edinburgh and nearly two and a half thousand in Glasgow, I know that there is a £50 million fund and some of that is being used to repurpose housing. I know that our cities tend not to have lots of available housing just waiting empty, but is there an opportunity to actually get homes back into use, as well as accelerating new homes? Particularly for the crisis that we have to support Ukrainian people, but it fits into that longer-term housing shortage, which people from Afghanistan, for example. I know of families in temporary accommodation years after they arrive in Edinburgh. Is there something to sharpen that getting things moving that we should be looking at as a committee? Do you want to start off, Pat Talker? I would say that the offer of the £50 million investment is being extremely well received and very welcomed. Glasgow is a non-stock holding local authority, so we are absolutely reliant on the relationship with all of our registered social landlords. We have sound relationships and partnerships with RSLs, but it is fair to say that RSLs are under considerable pressure at the moment, and we know that we have a substantial shortfall in available lets to our own domestic homelessness population. What I think is encouraging is that the £50 million investment is translated into four principal bids in Glasgow. One of which looks like it will be on-stream by the disembarkation of MS Ambition, but that will come in at around 250 properties for 250 households. You can see the scale of that that we described earlier on. It is helpful that it will not be the entire solution, so certainly for the disembarkation of MS Ambition, we are very reliant on the contribution for all of the capital funding bids across all 32 local authorities. That would be our continued focus, but to answer your question, yes, that does need a programme of works in the longer term, but I repeat what I said earlier on. There has to be a read across here with our domestic homelessness population and the requirement and an acknowledgement that all of this work has really brought an awful lot of that into sharp focus. Some of the discussions that we have had previously are on-going work, and as Pat said, the £50 million fund is very welcome. It is not the solution to all the issues. There are other pockets. It is the capital fund. We have got to also look at long-term leasing and other areas as well. We are working, as I said, within that city region. We are looking to identify the void properties across the city. We are looking at that parity again. We are also looking at repurposing across the city and beyond, so we are including East Lothian, West Lothian, Middle Lothian Borders, Fife, Clackmannanshire, Falkirk, as a city region. Interesting, another avenue that we have been exploring and we are continuing to have discussions with is the future use of decommissioned MOD sites, especially in Edinburgh. I think that it has been highlighted up at Redford recently, but there is also Craigie hall to the north of the city, which we are working on. I am hoping to meet again with MOD later this week or next week to look at that. That has family homes. It needs infrastructure around it, but it is certainly an avenue that we are very keen to progress on. We are helping the family homes side of things. As Pat said, back to parity, it has to encompass the homelessness side of things, as well as the Ukrainian population. However, we are actively working on that. I know that we will have discussions over the coming days and weeks with others on what is being done and what can be done in Edinburgh in the city region. Lorraine, do you want to come in from a cosly perspective about making sure that money is spent and delivers ASAP? I just add that it has been very much welcomed. We are seeing accommodation now. Families are in the accommodation. I am North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire and North Ayrshire, as well. It is moving quickly, as quickly as it possibly can. I know that there are issues around the relief for getting the skills and getting the people in place and how long the process can take, but we are seeing it, and it is moving pretty quickly. I think that, to add about domestic homelessness and that parity, we are also looking at this in a holistic way, including other humanitarian protection schemes and dispersal of asylum seekers. We need to look at it as in terms of afghan. We are also looking at the widening of dispersal of asylum seekers, so there is more of a holistic look and demand on accommodation that we need to take rather than, I do not mean to say, a silo of Ukraine that is wider than that. In a way, that is why I was keen to raise it, because I take the comments from the convener about not going into other committees areas, but if you just take that people moving to Scotland for whatever reason, we have potential Hong Kongers as well in the future. It is both a now issue and someone who has been there for quite a while, so it is trying to keep that on the agenda. I will follow up. One of the comments in the COSLA paper is about the potential cut to support for people in local authorities. You said that it is nearly a 50 per cent cut from the UK Government. Can you say a bit more about how that impacts, because it sounds a lot £10,000, but just even looking at the education and the housing side, that is nothing in terms of the crisis that you have got? Can you say a little bit more about how that could impact? I think that it will be a huge impact, to be honest. The tariff funding for those coming in, the finance is not my, but from 1 January, will be cut to £5,900. That is a significant cut, and then no year 2. In terms of other humanitarian protection schemes, that is quite a significant cut, even compared to other funding mechanisms. That £10,500 was very important for the resettlement work that we have talked about at the very beginning, ensuring that those wraparound services, ensuring that the resettlement teams are there and supporting people into whether it is host accommodation, long-term accommodation, as they move. We have significant concerns. Funding in the whole, there is still negotiations happening in the Scottish Government as well. We are concerned about that. I think that there is no education tariff funding for year 2, and there has never been a health tariff fund associated with that. That is something that we have been pushing, and I know that the Scottish Government is pushing with the UK Government as well. We need to continue, because, as Lorraine said, the impacts to that will be felt across all local authorities in a negative way. We need to look at that. That is really useful feedback, because the Ukrainians are so grateful to be here, and they do not like to raise difficult issues when they arrive. It is months afterwards, and in particular the issue that people have mentioned is PTSD, not just for adults, but for children as well, and what people have gone through. That gets parked because it is a fresh start, but there are families back home. It is useful to have that flagged in terms of mental health and NHS support. Is there anything more that could be done in relation to linking with GPs? We know that they are under pressure. Pat Togard, you want to comment on that? I can answer that. I touched on that earlier on. Glasgow is a dispersal city and has got in excess of 20 years of resettlement, and, whilst we are continuing to support the Ukrainian arrivals, at the same time, we continue to support the arrivals of Syrians and Afghans. We have done this very successfully, in something that we are particularly proud of in Glasgow. We have an awful lot of experience in this area of work. We also recognise that the priority for families that are arriving, particularly from war-torn countries, is to feel safe and secure in their accommodation with the correct support around them. The other issues associated with trauma can then be supported. That is the experience that we have through our asylum bridge and health team and the enhancement of mental health support and provision in that service that we have continued to reflect on over the more recent few years. In that regard, it is an area that we are particularly experienced in and very halfway with. It is an area that we will continue to support people with. I touched on that earlier on. There is provision for GP registration for everybody who requires it, and we proactively support that. The frequently asked questions website that we have for Glasgow health and social care partnership are quite clear about how to access that. It is an area that we are very much focused on. From our side of things, in Edinburgh, NHS Lothian, both the resilience side and the operational side sit on the oversight group that meets. We also have regular health meetings every two weeks. Again, there has been an appointment with someone who is going to co-ordinate the response. We have been very fortunate with boriloc practice coming in. A lot of work has been done previously with that for those on the ship. Yesterday, we were in discussions with NHS Lothian about that on-going support for GP practices as people transition across the city, moving away from the Victoria or hotels, and how that will materialise. Again, the health funding side has been brought up on numerous occasions within the health group and is something that we are actively pursuing for the future. That is really useful feedback, because the message that we get from NHS Lothian and from GPs is that they are at capacity. Even marginal increases can be quite challenging, so that issue of needing additional funding is well made. Thank you, if I could move to my circles. Bina, just following on from access to healthcare, the console last week highlighted access to dental care as a particular issue, and I just wondered if the panel had any reflections on that. Pat, you are looking keen at that. Yes, it is described earlier on that I am at the experience that we have in this area. Carries are a long way in that regard. The priority of healthcare needs is always at the top of the list. In dentistry, there is no exception to that, and it is a requirement to support people to access dentistry where it is required for children and for adults. I touched on the provision in the investment of pre-five and child smile and everything else that is familiar with anybody else. It is an area of work that we continue to be focused on. I am not aware of any associated issues that have been flagged up where that has been a point of pressure or indeed a gap. That is something that we are very close to. Given where we have come from in the past best part of 12 months, we are all very close to the operational delivery of that. Dentistry is not an issue that has been flagged up that I am aware of and Glasgow has always been a particular gap. Similar to Pat, it is not being flagged up. We know that there are issues within the city. Again, coming at the end of Covid and getting an appointment at the GP and dentistry is very difficult. It is something that we are going to follow up with the council general to gather a little bit more information. We know that there are pressures within the city, but that is something that we are going to take away and follow up on so that we can come back to you on that one. Another question for the panel. We have touched on parts of this, but in your experience, how important is the third sector being in supporting displaced Ukrainians here and do they have the resources that they need in order to fulfil this vital role? I am an absolutely key partner, as I said previously. From day one of our response, they have played a key role in the oversight group in Edinburgh's response. Volunteer Edinburgh from welcoming people through the transport hubs. I think that the number of hours overnights, each of the three within Edinburgh that we have been working closely with, have appointed a co-ordinator, but they need continued funding. It has been a struggle at times on the funding aspect. There has been movement on that over the last month, month and a half, which is positive. Applications are going in, but for us, as Edinburgh's response, it is absolutely key. It is one Edinburgh response in the third sector to play a key role in that there has been frustrations from the third sector, both nationally and locally, about allocation of funding. As I said, it is something that is progressing, but it is something that we are keen to push on behalf of the third sector, specifically in Edinburgh, to continue that. As the convener said, coming up to the year anniversary as well, the third sector plays an even bigger role in moving forward. We have AEGB, who were a small organisation a year ago. Now, the growth in that and the support that they require. We are doing everything that we can from our side, along with Scottish Government colleagues and other colleagues in local authorities, but that has to continue that financial support for the third sector to enable us. Pat, do you like to hear? Of course, if the third sector is absolutely critical, we always have been in this space supporting asylum refugees into Glasgow, and that is no different than the support that they provide to Ukrainian arrivals as well. They augment all of the service provision and the support that we have in place, and they are absolutely key partners in that. I would second the comments that were made about the long-term plans around all of that, and the funding arrangements in the third sector have been provided with some investment. There has been some enhancement to their service provision, but given where we are just now and where we are likely heading in terms of longer-term support, that will have to be recognised. I second the absolutely critical third sector in that space. Thank you. That is very helpful. Just to add, Pat mentioned, that the revised governance structures in SRC have been an important voice. During the revision of the governance structures, we were asking for more local Government representation, particularly from the resettlement side, that has that knowledge and expertise to influence how we go forward in the next steps on this. SRC has played an important part in the governance structures and in representing that voice. I agree with Lorraine that SRC has been a key organisation in our delivery of a third sector in a rural community. We do not have as many face-to-face volunteers on the ground on trying to keep that communication going and to make sure that we fill any gaps that the resettlement team are getting to deliver that holistic approach. SRC has been key from the beginning of the Ukrainian resettlement. Third sector organisations such as Red Cross and Bernardo have been essential in our delivery, particularly to those in temporary accommodation to make sure that we are delivering that holistic support for people. Third sector, I do not think that we would be able to deliver the full service without them. I think that you have touched already on some of your experiences of working with the other resettlement programmes. Pat, you are talking about the experience of dealing with PTSD with people who are coming here through Afghan and Syrian schemes and wider asylum seeking population within Glasgow. I wonder if there are any lessons learned from particularly the Syrian and the Afghan schemes that are fed into the way that you are approaching Ukrainian displaced people and recognise that there is a difference in the circumstances that people are often under. In terms of the way that these schemes have been running, how they have been resourced, how you are configuring teams to welcome and support people. Is there anything in there that would be useful to share with the committee? I can cover quickly and then hand over, but I think that there has been a huge body of knowledge and expertise in the resettlement leads within councils that have worked on other programmes and they bring with it. We wanted that knowledge to be embedded into governance, as I said, and the next steps, which it is starting to do now. There is a lot of learning, but there are also a lot of new situations. We have never experienced anything like this on this scale. We have never experienced so many people in hotels and ships. We have never experienced dealing with hosts, which makes it a very different situation that we are dealing with in other humanitarian schemes. It was into social housing, as people were immediately put in there. Resettlement could start from the very first day and people were in the long-term accommodation. They were settled in their schools and they had their work. It is a very different environment, but I believe that the resettlement teams come with a lot of knowledge and expertise that should be recognised. When they say that certain things will not work or that they should be listened to as well, there are a lot of skills there, but we are also in a very different situation that we are dealing with. Hazel, do you want to come in on this? Highland Council had already supported Darien and Afghan families to resettling Highland, so that framework was there on what was needed from employment to education working closely with all our partners. However, Lorraine touched on it there. The Ukraine resettlement has been so very different from the involvement of hosting arrangements and the resettlement team not driving the model right from the start. I think that we have to use all the experience that we had from previous resettlements and we have had to adapt it to fit the huge difference that arrived in the shape of the Ukrainian arrival with home to Ukraine and super sponsorship. I think that it is just building, definitely building on what we know, adapting, picking up good practice across all 32 local authorities and really listening to what others are doing so that we can learn from each other because this is so different. However, I think that we have done great work so far and with all the new working groups we are developing working on new guidelines and policies that hopefully take the way that we do resettlement going forward. It is a challenge but we are getting there. To follow up, it is the scale and the unknowns around this that is different and has been from the start. The arrival numbers, not knowing the arrival numbers, the visa applications, everything is unknown. We still do not know on any given day how many people are arriving, the previous schemes that was known in advance. Housing arrangements were made in advance. The first thing that we know is that when someone comes off a plane, train, car, vehicle for Edinburgh at Gogarburn and to gather that information and to have that triage and that initial safeguard and that conversation with them to understand circumstances and what the requirements for each individual are. It varies hour by hour, day by day and continues to it. I think that that is probably something that needs to be recognised as well. People are still arriving, not in the numbers that we saw in the summertime, but people are still arriving. There is a lot of unknowns over the coming months on how that will be impacted. For us, that has been the biggest shift. It is just the sheer scale of the response that is required. However, as Hazel said, all local authorities are coming together using the skills and expertise at the disposal of all the local authorities and really working, currently, as one. It has been very difficult. It is different in Edinburgh and Glasgow than it is in Highland and Aberdeenshire. It is bringing together the different pockets of expertise from local authorities across the country. I cannot look at the national picture not just in Scotland but in the UK, the impact from England, Wales and particularly Ireland and the knock-on effect that anything happening in Ireland may have to Scotland due to EU travel. There are a lot of complexities in that. I think that it is important to highlight that the arrangements in the scheme are very different to what we are familiar with in terms of the other resettlement schemes, in the sense that we have advanced warning, we can manage that, we can co-ordinate the support that is required and we can certainly co-ordinate the accommodation that is required. Unfortunately, the scheme does not allow for that for a number of very obvious reasons and very practical reasons. Certainly, from a Glasgow point of view, there are probably two or three key points from our learning from 20 years as a dispersal city. The first is that it is not to carry too many assumptions about what people require when they arrive at its correct and proper to acknowledge the sense of trauma, but the priority that people will tell us is that they want to feel settled and secure in the first instance. Secondly, we have learned that we need to keep an eye on the complexity that we need and make sure that support is proportionate to that. In the third point, I would say, is that making sure that there is an infrastructure in which to support people to integrate into the communities and also to acknowledge the skillset that people bring and to make sure that we continue to capitalise on that. The last question that I had was about the criteria for reopening the super sponsor scheme. Do you think that those are close to being met? Can they be met? Is there a sense that that could be met at some point? I mean, I guess we're all hoping that there won't be a need to reopen that scheme, but again, there's so much uncertainty in a situation. Lorraine, can I get a call to the view on that? I would be very surprised because when we look at figures, particularly if we look at the numbers of people who have came to Scotland and we're talking about accommodation, we're also talking about people getting into host. That will end. People will not open their homes for infinite time, so we will be looking at—and we are at the moment—looking at rematching as well. It's still an on-going process. We also have a lot of visas that are still there. People haven't arrived, so there's still potential for a lot of people to come. Also, homes for Ukraine are still receiving people under that scheme, the family scheme. There are still people coming, and we are certainly not in a comfortable situation, as we've been saying. I would be surprised if it was to reopen any time soon. I think that I'll hand back to convener with that, thanks. A very brief question to follow up on that one. Just to clarify about host accommodation, that comment about people who won't open their homes for infinite times, I've certainly heard from quite a few people who had volunteered, but it wasn't picked up at the time. Are there still people who have volunteered to be hosts who are not—who's accommodation isn't being used? Is that a potential route, given the other huge challenges that you have in terms of providing temporary accommodation? For us, in terms of national matching, it's about suitable accommodation and also the expectations of hosts. It's such a complex area that we decided to—we are matching, but it's a very different—we have experience, but I would say that we have experience in resettlement, not necessarily matching at the beginning. As Pat was saying, it was about very controlled—we knew who was coming. We had decided where the accommodation was, what the support was. This is a very different situation. What we're dealing with is very much two human elements of people who are arriving in their expectations. As we said about staying in a place for longer than everybody assumed in settling, so there's that and the expectation of staying where they are and creating routes there, but there's also expectations of hosts. There's also what is suitable, so we've had quite a lot on our list, if you like, of accommodation of very rural remote—no transport links, you would need it. You can look at the list of EOIs and say, oh, there's still quite a lot, but when you actually go through how suitable are they and also balancing it with people's expectations because they're refusing, they're not wanting to go to other places. It's quite a complex situation, definitely. We were just talking about this this morning and maybe it's unfair to say breakdowns because it's not that. For a lot of people, they've been very supportive. Everybody has been very happy with each other. There's not been a breakdown, so to speak. It's just, well, that's been so long and time to move on. Just to come back in the reopening, it won't be our decision, so I was just giving an opinion of the situation that we were in in terms of reopening. Matching is phenomenally complex, and it goes right down to what you wouldn't have expected, so pet issues has been a huge one. Things like that, we get down to such nuance because you're dealing with people living with each other. On one level, that's nuanced. On another level, if somebody's got an allergy, it's fundamental, so those things are not to be ignored. We have case bills, and they're very in-depth interviews that councils carry out on people, so it's very detailed. That, again, is how difficult it is to match. Pets are one of those questions. I thank you for all the work that you are doing in opening. I think that that's echoed by the whole committee in what you have been doing. On the initial period for matching was six months, so a lot of those will be coming to an end now. While people have sustained that, they may not be willing to carry on at the moment. That's one pinch point that you will be expecting. There's also the end of the contract and march for the ambition, and there's also the contract for the coming to an end in the later in the year about June to later. With all the issues that you've already raised, what flexing do you have in your organisations to deal with those pinch points as they arise? I'll go to Pat. Thank you. I'll answer the question in relation to the MS ambition, if that's okay, first of all. Yes, MS ambition is due to disembark 31 March, and that is pretty much your principal focus right now. That is, as we've already discussed, a national scheme. The responsibility to provide accommodation for everybody on that ship does not sit with Glasgow, so we are engaging with all 32 local authorities. There's been a very productive meeting in that regard, so the aim of this and the first instance will be to match, to host family arrangements wherever we possibly can, but there are limitations on that, particularly limitations that we have described. For example, people with pets, for example, and host families with allergies, but there's also the limitations of larger families. That's unlikely to take place with a match to a host family. There's an acknowledgement around the limitations, and there's also an acknowledgement around how limited we are by way of housing association properties, and we want to take full advantage of that across all of the offers, across all the local authorities. So as we near 31 March, we won't know what our situation is going to look like, but it's suffice to say that there will be a lot of people who will transition from the ship into hotel accommodation, and hopefully, as an intimate arrangement, until something more permanent can be found. That will take place across all of Scotland. As I touched on earlier on, we just don't have the housing provision available to us in Glasgow, given the existing homelessness pressures that we have, but the arrangements are well under way in terms of working through priority of need. We are prioritising some families to remain in Glasgow for the reasons that had been outlined earlier on, but principally in relation to wherever possible employment, education and complex health needs. We are working with the Glasgow team across all the local authorities for the joint insurance review, and how the disembarkation of the ambition goes has a direct impact to the disembarkation of the Victoria. If you are looking at it purely as numbers, the number of properties available for those who leave the MS Victoria in the summertime will be less. As we stand at the moment now, that will hopefully change as we move forward. For us, as we are looking at that, there are multiple risks from different areas. There are continued arrivals, there are continued matching, there are matches ending for whatever reason, there are hotels having 10 contracts, possibly, plus the ambition of disembarkation. There is a lot to consider with partners around the country and with Scottish Government colleagues. As I said, we are up at St Andrew's house today to discuss our joint insurance review for predominantly Victoria, but we are looking at Edinburgh as a whole. There is a lot of work to be done. There is a lot within the working groups to touch on the accommodation piece again. We need further accommodation to accommodate everyone. That is absolutely clear. We have a fantastic group working on this across the local authorities and with COSLA that are doing absolutely everything and our powers at the moment to have good outcomes for that. However, as I said, the unknown people still to arrive as Lorraine touched on. Thousands of people have had visas approved that have not arrived for whatever reason into Scotland yet. They may arrive and the other visa schemes are still open as well. We will support everyone who comes through our door, but we need to work collaboratively with the Scottish Government and the UK Government in order for that accommodation piece to improve. Ms Chisholm, can you give us an indication of what Highlanders are doing in anticipation of those, particularly the ships in their contracts? We have been attending meetings with Pat to support MSN vision disembarkation and we will support wherever possible. We are, as a council, reaching a bit of a pinch point within the coasting range that is coming to an end. I think basically every day we have a communication about hosting. I'm just nearing the end of my hosting period. It's worked well however I feel I need to return my home to me and my family or the family we've been hosting need to become independent and move on. That's generally the vibe. We've had a few breakdowns but generally that's where people are. Some have extended and some say that we will keep families with us for as long as we can. However, there is an expectation from a lot of hosts that the council will therefore provide a social tendency. It is a big misconception at the moment that that would be the offer. We have some matches that we can move people into but we know that that's only a short-term answer to the accommodation needs. That's where we start with people when they need to be moved on from hosting accommodations. We've put another call out for ourselves asking for other offers of accommodation and we're just trying to identify any potential housing gaps that are there. It's really challenging because that six to nine month period is just about ending for a lot of people. I think that we'll just continue to try and work with solutions and work with the properties and put a lot of time and effort into checking on behalf of hosts. A lot of hosts are very keen to still consider families and invite them into their homes and provide that support. If we can, in the short term, use those offers as best we can and in running parallel with that, try and identify some longer-term solutions for people as a council, I think that that's our way forward. As the MSP for Motherwall and Wishap is at the North Lanarkshire project, which is wider than just my constituents for North Lanarkshire, I want to bluntly say that it's a national project, whereas the cities have been most involved in that until now. Add the other local authorities stepping up to the mark and doing as much as they can to deliver. I would say definitely that, as Pat was saying, it was an incredibly positive meeting that he chaired two weeks ago and the offers of local authorities to come on the ship and work with people and match has been incredibly positive. Second, I would need to say that the contribution from all the local authorities that have been involved in the last meeting and the meeting that is due to take place tomorrow has been exceptional. Every local authority is feeling the pressures of the living crisis and everything else that goes with it.  A number of local authorities have been very proactive in coming on to the ship and some are coming on the ship with Ukrainians that have managed to integrate into those local authorities. That scene has been very, very favourable. That will take us only so far by way of any available options that we have around housing association properties on the back of the capital funding arrangements, but mostly through the host family arrangements as well. Just to reiterate, the local authorities so far in this space have been excellent by assisting the disembarkation of MS Ambition. I think that that is probably a useful, hopeful note to end the today's session on here. I thank you all for your attendance at the committee today and we now move into private session.


Thousands of years ago, some yeast floated down into our flour and drinks, and we were like, hmm, yummy, and we've been regularly exposed ever since. Not a problem for most people, but even non-disease-causing microbes could potentially trigger autoimmune diseases like Crohn's disease in people who are susceptible because their finely-tuned immune balance is somehow off. Maybe that's why bakers have the highest Crohn's disease mortality, from a different data set among the highest rates of Crohn's disease. Perhaps a hypersensitivity to yeast may be playing a role in Crohn's disease. If you take people with Crohn's and remove from their diets the three foods to which they have the most antibodies to try to calm the disease, and then you add those foods back, you can provoke the symptoms back, re-stimulate the inflammation. So anal fistula off these foods, nice and dry, but then starts oozing again once the foods are back, but then the spigots turned back off once the foods are removed again, to which I say, why is that doctor not wearing gloves? Anyway, without a control group you can exclude the possibility of a really powerful placebo effect, but there haven't been any such randomized control trials until now. A brilliant design, they tested people with Crohn's for antibodies to 16 different foods, and then randomized the people into two groups. Both groups were told to avoid four foods, but one group was told to avoid the four groups they most reacted to, and the other group told to avoid the foods they least reacted to. But it was all done with sealed envelopes, so no one knew who was in which group until the end. So did it matter? Yes. More than twice the probability of major clinical improvement in the group that was told to stay away from the things their blood reacted to. But this wasn't just yeast. In fact, it was the exclusion of milk, pork, beef, and egg that was most strongly associated with clinical improvement, leading the researchers to suggest that, look, maybe instead of doing all the fancy blood tests, we should just tell our patients to cut out meat and eggs and see how they do, which would be consistent with both population studies that associate animal fat with an increased risk of inflammatory bowel diseases, as well as interventional studies showing that a plant-based diet in which you cut meat down to like one serving every two weeks can drop relapse rates as low as an extraordinary 8% over two years. OK, but what about the whole yeast question?  Why yes. Yes, you can. They tested rectal exposure to six different foods in Crohn's disease patients, including yeast. Kind of like a skin-prick test, but instead of pricking the skin, they pricked the inside of people's rectums with various foods. And you can see in this example the various prick sites, cabbage, milk, citrus, cereal, peanut, but woe yeast. Yeast gave the most significant reaction in Crohn's patients. So it appears that baker's yeast, which is the same yeast as brewer's yeast and nutritional yeast, may indeed have disease causing importance in Crohn's disease. But the good news would then be, hey, it may have therapeutic relevance. Maybe if you put Crohn's disease on yeast-free diets, they'd feel better. You don't know, though, until you put it to the test. In fact, that's exactly what the original study linking yeast and Crohn's disease suggested back in 1988, a controlled trial of a yeast-free diet for Crohn's disease patients may be worthwhile. So why did it take years before such a study was done? Who's gonna fund it? Big soda bread? Thankfully, there are charities like the National Association for Collitis and Crohn's Disease willing to put up the dough, the yeast-free dough, that is. 19 patients with Crohn's disease ate their regular diet and then switched to a yeast exclusion diet. And there was a significantly higher CDAI, Crohn's Disease Activity Index, assessing symptoms like abdominal pain diarrhea during the period when they were eating yeast compared to the yeast-free period. So worse disease activity with yeast than without. Yeah, but what was this yeast-free diet? They didn't just cut out bread and beer. They like switched people from dairy milk to soy milk, from white flour to whole wheat. Just cutting out milk can sometimes help with inflammatory bowel disease. So with so many dietary changes, how do we know what role the yeast played? This is how we know what role the yeast played. After placing them on the new yeast-free diet, they then challenged them with a placebo or a capsule of yeast. Tiny amount of yeast, like giving them a quarter teaspoon of nutritional yeast a day, and that made them worse. Suggesting yeast may indeed be important in the disease process of Crohn's Disease. Now, for the vast majority of people, yeast is not a problem, but in susceptible individuals it may trigger an abnormal immune response in the gut. But wait, I thought it was that paratuberculosis bug that was considered a trigger for Crohn's Disease. Well, hey, maybe infection with ParatB is what induces the hypersensitivity response to dietary yeast. Who knows? The bottom line is that people with Crohn's Disease should not go out of their way to add bakers, brewers, or nutritional yeast to their diet.