Councillors demand free bus travel for asylum seekers

Glasgow councillors are demanding that asylum seekers get free bus travel after the Scottish Government scrapped plans to roll out the scheme.

The city politicians also want people seeking asylum to be able to earn a wage and receive better support. 

Currently, people seeking asylum live on about £8 weekly in hotels or £49 in non-catered accommodation.

Pointing out how lack of transport means people are being isolated, Scottish Greens councillor Anthony Carroll said they are forced to walk miles for Home Office appointments.

Lodging a council motion for free bus travel, he said: “Our asylum system is geared towards holding scores of people in limbo and actively not having them integrated as fully as they can be within our communities through UK Government policies.”

He added: “By not having the right to work, by not having the right to recourse to public funds and restricting them to £49 a week or £8 a week (in non-catered accommodation) how on earth does the UK Government think we can provide equal opportunities to those seeking asylum in this country with such restrictions?”

SNP councillor Roza Salih, a former refugee, said: “To say the least, I am disappointed with the Scottish Government’s decision that the pilot scheme for a free bus pass for asylum seekers will end.

“But can I say we are the first country to run this pilot and to consider it as a policy and I think we should be proud of that.”

The former Glasgow Girl who campaigned for refugee rights while she was a pupil at Drumchapel High seconded an SNP amendment asking for asylum seekers to be allowed jobs, which was added to Bailie Carroll’s motion at a council meeting last week.

Pointing out that the Labour Government under Tony Blair had removed the right to employment for asylum seekers, Bailie Salih said: “My dad’s right to work was taken away and his national insurance was taken away from him.”

She calls on the UK Government to “allow asylum seekers to work so they can earn a living like all of us and contribute by taxation.”

Bailie Carroll suggested lifting the Scottish Government’s council tax freeze could cover the cost of free bus travel for asylum seekers.

Councillor Carroll told the council meeting that when a group of refugees were previously informed free bus travel would be available they burst into tears at a third-sector group.

He said: “Everyone was in tears in the room hearing that this had been announced – it was going to make such a change to all of their lives. I hope it will still make a change in the future.”

There are about 4,500 asylum seekers in the city according to the latest figures.

Holyrood had previously announced it would hold a pilot of the travel scheme for asylum seekers who can’t work under immigration rules. But now that proposal has been scrapped due to budget pressures, it is understood.

The motion brought forward by the Scottish Greens with accepted amendments from Labour and the SNP was agreed last week.

It said: “Council notes its deep disappointment in the Scottish Government’s decision to reverse their pledge to provide free bus travel to asylum seekers nationally.”

Among actions it called for the convener for transport to write to the “Scottish Government’s cabinet secretary for transport to state council’s support for the free bus travel scheme for asylum seekers to ask that the decision to not expand this provision nationally be reversed.”

Council leader Susan Aitken is also to write to the UK Government to ask “that work is carried out and funding provided to roll out a free concessionary bus card scheme for asylum seekers UK-wide, following the successful pilot in Glasgow.”

The motion added: “Council, therefore, calls on the new Labour UK Government to extend the right to work to asylum seekers, and to review statutory support to ensure asylum seekers can live with dignity and respect, and requests that the leader of the council write to the secretary of state for the Home Department and the new Prime Minister to outline the council’s position on this matter.”