Asylum Seekers

Part of 2. Questions to the Leader of the House and Chief Whip – in the Senedd at 2:35 pm on 18 July 2018.

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Photo of Bethan Sayed Bethan Sayed Plaid Cymru 2:35, 18 July 2018

A few weeks ago, I spoke at the Centre for African Entrepreneurship's Women in Politics event that they had, about trying to get more diverse candidates in the National Assembly. But a few asylum-seeker mothers came specifically to that meeting to meet with me because they were telling me about the fact that their children are wanting to go to Gower College Swansea in the new term, but because they can't get access to the education maintenance allowance, and they can't afford the transport there, they're potentially going to be disenfranchised from actually getting an education because of the fact that they can't afford it. Now, I was at an event where they had people like Malala and Nelson Mandela all on display, and it seemed ironic to me—we all know what Malala had to go through—that in Wales, in the twenty-first century, we may be stopping asylum-seeker children, who are actually women, from getting access to that education by virtue of the fact that they have no recourse to that public finance. So, please will you look into this issue, because I would not want to see us stopping those young asylum seekers while they're here to access the education that they rightly deserve?