Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:23 pm on 16 October 2018.
Yes, as it happens, I had the opportunity to meet with the UK Government Minister for Immigration, Caroline Nokes, only yesterday, and this was on the agenda for discussion. She confirmed that the taskforce is coming to Wales, and we had some discussion about what the situation was here in Wales. Only 62 people from Wales, she has confirmed back to me, have accessed the helpline, and whilst we don't know the true scale of the affected community, I personally think, from conversations in the community—and I know Julie Morgan has had similar conversations—that that's only a small fraction of those who are actually affected.
I had quite a robust discussion with the Minister and with my counterpart from Scotland about the situation, and about what information people are expected to produce and how reasonable that is, and what they were testing that against in terms of transparency and reasonableness and all those sorts of things. She assured me that the taskforce was very interested in supporting individuals throughout the whole process, and we had an exchange of views around the fact that the community needed to be thoroughly reassured that the process was there, both to protect their interests and to compensate them for any difficulties that they might have encountered. So, the Minister did assure me of those things, and I look forward to seeing how the taskforce progresses.