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19 Jan 2006 : Column 1068
 
Pete Wishart: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again—he is being very generous with his time—and I am very encouraged by the tone of his remarks. I would encourage him to go further down that road, but does he not feel that the general debate is soured by the way that enforced removals are carried out in Scotland? He is right to identify some of the people who are involved at the fringes of such activity, but the First Minister, the Communities Minister and the children's commissioner also have great concerns about it. What possible improvements can the hon. Gentleman suggest that would be of comfort to them?

Mr. McNulty: I would tell all those to whom the hon. Gentleman refers to sit down and work with us in trying to reach a consensus on how to do things better than we do. Enforced removals are part of the process, as I have now said probably to the point of tedium. I agree with my hon. Friend that it is simply not good enough for the children's commissioner—a public official—to talk about inhumane conditions and terrorising children. Again, I said that in terms in the public domain.

Of course the language, emotions and so on used will be heightened because families and children are involved, but we need to talk in rational terms. The more that we can do with the recently announced package, which has increased the assistance available to those who remove themselves voluntarily, the better. The more that we can get people more broadly to understand what the asylum process is about—rather than confusing it with immigration, which feeds into the public debate, as my hon. Friend suggests—the better. To that end, the head man at Festival court spent the best part of a couple of hours with the girls at Drumchapel school going through how an asylum policy differs from an immigration policy. That sort of public awareness is very important. We need to do more of that work. We also need to turn things round and look at what we are doing in public policy terms with refugees.

I absolutely applaud all that Glasgow council has sought to do, as I told its leader when I was up there. As everyone knows, that is the main area not just of dispersal but of the asylum seeker population, for want of a better phrase. I have huge praise for what those involved are doing—often, in the early days, in very difficult conditions.

I implore Scotland as a body politic to talk about these issues. Let us have a proper, legitimate debate about asylum, immigration and all the other concerns about population. We are already revisiting the processes. I will go to Scotland in the next couple of months to report on how far with have got with that, and I am more than happy to engage further in the Scottish dimension of the debate. However, UK asylum policy is rooted in the 1951 convention and our new asylum model is the way forward—

The motion having been made at Six o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr Deputy Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at half-past Six o'clock.

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