5. Statement by the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip: Making Wales a Nation of Sanctuary

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:40 pm on 29 January 2019.

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Photo of Jane Hutt Jane Hutt Labour 5:40, 29 January 2019

I want to thank Joyce Watson for that very moving and personal account. It's an account I haven't heard before and I don't think, possibly, those in this Chamber have heard it. It's an account that is on the record about your father's experience. It says everything that we want to do to address and to enable us, in tribute to the memory of what he himself has stood up for—. And you are the product, Joyce, and you're here, I'm sure, because of him. 

It's important that you mentioned the Dubs scheme, because it did actually offer a very small but very crucially important signal that, actually, in the UK, we care deeply about the plight of these children, and there was such a strength of feeling when the decision was made by the UK Government to close the scheme. We need to go back to reopening that scheme, to calling for that scheme to be reopened, but we can do things in Wales, and that's why we have responded to the committee inquiry recommendation, as I said, to develop this guardianship service for unaccompanied asylum seeking children.

And the 'Nation of Sanctuary' plan does innclude this action. It's going to fund local authorities this year, it's going to support a pilot measure in respect of guardianship and it does aim to establish the legal needs of those unaccompanied asylum seeking children and explore the demand for a guardianship service and what such a service should look like. And we have already agreed funding; we've provided £550 million over the past two years to assist local authority social services, funding placements, social work training and foster care training. So, this is a very important outcome of the committee's work and of our consultation with those in the Welsh Refugee Coalition to lead us to this point.