I whole-heartedly welcome the excellent report from the Equalities and Human Rights Committee. The recommendations that it has made and the oral evidence that it took will make a significant contribution to the Parliament’s work in an area that many of us care deeply about.

More than that, I do not think that the report could have come at a more crucial time. Its call for an anti-destitution strategy, which many of the recommendations refer to, could not be more timely.

As other members have said, the world that we live in now is one that we are perhaps not proud of but one that we helped to create. It is one in which 65 million people have been forced from their homes and 21 million people are refugees. Staggeringly, half those refugees are under the age of 18. There are also 10 million stateless people who are denied a nationality. We know that 53 per cent of the refugees come from countries such as Syria and Afghanistan, where we have had involvement, as well as Somalia.

Until recently, the Palestinian refugee population was the largest refugee population in the world. Tragically, many Palestinian refugees who fled to Syria in 1948 and 1967 have now been displaced two or three times because of the Syrian conflict.

As others have eloquently discussed, there are many reasons, such as domestic violence and persecution on the ground of sexuality, why people flee their countries and seek sanctuary in a foreign country with which they have no connection. Such people are so desperate that they brave it all, including risking their lives, to arrive in a foreign country with nothing. There must be a lot of darkness in the life of any person who is prepared to do that to get a better life.

As the report says, destitution is built into the UK asylum process. It is inevitable, because the immigration system is designed to be hostile to those who do not have a legal right to be here. There has been consensus among some speakers this afternoon that a human approach is not built into the system, which lacks humanity. Once a person is destitute, they are much harder to find.

The report refers to the evidence from Graham O’Neill of the Scottish Refugee Council, who said that

“there was significant risk of exploitation” of any new person who arrives in a country. Annie Wells talked about young girls who have been human trafficked from other countries and who are extremely vulnerable. We have a moral obligation to those young women.

Graham O’Neill also said:

“they go into a twilight world and we do not know how they get to Croydon”.—[

Official Report, Equalities and Human Rights Committee

, 16 March 2017; c 17.]

Neither do we know how they fund travel. When we think about it, the question arises of how a person who has never been to the UK before and who has no friends or connections finds Croydon in the first place—I could not tell members where it is without looking on a map. How do they find the funds, travel there and make their application? The system is designed to put such a person off.

I am fully behind the committee’s recommendation of registration in Scotland; that is a basic human requirement. Whether someone’s legal claim for asylum meets the test is what really matters; where they turn up to make the claim should not matter. The law will decide whether, under our rules, someone is an asylum seeker and should be treated as a refugee.

The report explains really well the important issues of age-disputed children and children travelling alone. When a young person arrives here, they have an age assessment. As the report says, many children fear telling their stories. We have to get the conditions right to get that information out of a young person or child. Being designated a child asylum seeker affects the type and level of support that someone gets, so it matters that we have a system that can determine that.

I have talked before about a young eight-year-old boy called Najim whom I met in the Calais refugee camp two years ago. I was asked to help to find his family in London and he is now safely with them, not particularly because of my efforts but because the system actually worked. Children are being reunited with their families and I am so pleased about that. However, the issue of unaccompanied asylum-seeker children requires more attention.

There is no one who is more passionate or compassionate on that subject than Lord Dubs, as the Cabinet secretary said. The scheme that he helped to create means that even more children are coming to Britain, although not enough, as far as I am concerned. I believe that Britain can take many more child refugees, and while I welcome the 480 we have agreed to take, I would prefer that number to increase dramatically.

I will mention three of the committee’s recommendations. The advocacy service is a superb idea that I whole-heartedly support. I have already talked about the right to make an application in Scotland. The right to do paid or unpaid work has long been an outstanding issue that needs to be addressed.

An advocacy service is important when we are trying to prevent destitution in an asylum system, because it would give every person access to guidance, distinct from legal representation, to help them through the system. That would play an essential role in preventing more people from becoming lost or hidden and from becoming destitute, because they would be signposted along the way in the process and shown how it works.

I have talked about the right to make an application in Scotland, and I have believed for some time that there should be the right to do paid or unpaid work. Anyone who has had an insight into the life of someone who is seeking asylum will know how despairing they feel about being unproductive and will understand how important the committee’s recommendation on the right to do paid or unpaid work is.

I see that my seven minutes are up, so I will conclude, Presiding Officer. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention met members of the Scottish Parliament earlier this year and it convinced me that we have a poor record on how we detain people. In that regard, I, like Sandra White, have campaigned for Dungavel to be closed. I believe that every democratically elected member has the fundamental right to inspect conditions in any prison or place of detention. I have written to David Mundell about that, but I have not had a reply. I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that that is because of the General Election. However, following that election, I expect, as an elected member of the Scottish Parliament, to be able to inspect the conditions in which people are being detained in our country.