2. What assessment has the First Minister made of the impact of UK immigration policies on the Welsh Government’s commitment for Wales to be a nation of sanctuary? OQ58848

Llywydd, our commitment to Wales being a nation of sanctuary is undiminished. We work with others to welcome those who arrive in Wales, but, regrettably, many of the UK Government’s immigration policies, such as the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, hamper our efforts to foster integration and community cohesion.

Diolch yn fawr, Prif Weinidog. Your Government, in response to the fifth Senedd committee inquiry into freedom of movement after Brexit, said that

'if the UK Government's future immigration policy does not address the economic, demographic and social needs of Wales then we will further explore options for a spatially-differentiated immigration policy after Brexit'.

As you're aware, Prif Weinidog, that does not necessarily require the devolution of powers over immigration. Only recently, we heard of Rishi Sunak's plans to limit international students. The 21,000 international students in Wales contribute so much, in so many different ways, to our country. The University of Wales tells me that one job was generated for every two international students at Welsh universities. What progress, therefore, have you made, Prif Weinidog, on a different immigration policy for Wales, now that the terrible immigration policies of the Westminster Government after Brexit are so clear to us all? Diolch yn fawr.

Llywydd, it's always been a mystery to me as to why student visas are always reported as part of that global immigration total. If you look at all the surveys of public opinion, even parts of public opinion that have anxieties about immigration are not anxious about students coming to study here in the United Kingdom. So, to include them in that global figure always seems to me highly misleading. It would be much better if it was just taken out of the total and reported on its own merits as a subject by itself. I think that would be helpful to the public, in better understanding why people come to the United Kingdom, or why people come to Wales, and why, certainly, in the case of students, we wish to welcome more of them. They bring income with them, they bring a new source of talent to our universities, and they contribute to life here in Wales.

On the general point of spatially differentiated immigration, actually, that does depend not on the Welsh Government but on the UK Government as well. There was a time when it was possible to have a conversation with the UK Government, but this was a UK Government prior to 2019, where you could have an engaged conversation about whether visas might be directly allocated to Wales, for us to use, so that we could make sure that people who were entitled to come to Wales could be directed to those industries where they were most needed, and to those parts of Wales where their impact would be greatest. In more recent times, those sorts of discussions simply don't take place. It would be very good if the new Prime Minister would be happy to revive those conversations, because they would allow us, closer as we are to the Welsh labour market, to be able to make best use of those people whose skills and talents we're able to attract to Wales.

First Minister, this Government's announcement of Wales as the first nation of sanctuary and as a supersponsor created headlines as you demonstrated that Wales was ready and willing to help in doing more than its fair share in aiding people who were fleeing conflict and persecution. However, sadly, it does now seem that Wales was ill prepared for the overwhelming response, and the system has become clogged while it is dealing with a considerable backlog, hence the repeated pausing of the supersponsor scheme. From what I understand, of the 2,956 sponsored and who have already arrived in Wales from Ukraine, only 698 have moved on from their initial temporary accommodation, which, as you know, poses a significant issue in helping the other 1,640 refugees that the Welsh Government has agreed to sponsor and are awaiting to arrive. In trying to rectify the situation, the Welsh Government has now warned that if refugees continue to decline alternative options, it will deduct up to £37 per week from their universal credit payments in order to cover the costs of maintaining them in their temporary accommodation. First Minister, I'm sure that you agree with me that it sounds very strange that refugees would be declining permanent housing options in favour of living in temporary accommodation, and I'm keen to ascertain why. Is it because the quality of housing is not good enough, or is it because local authorities simply do not have enough suitable accommodation available to offer to them? With this in mind, what assessment has the Welsh Government done of the housing stock that has been made available to refugees? Thank you.

I thank the Member for that question. I think what is absolutely beyond doubt is the fact that Wales has offered a very generous welcome to people from Ukraine. When we opened the Welsh platform, we anticipated 1,000 people coming to Wales as a result of it. We now have 3,000 people who've been welcomed to Wales by that route. The Member is right—that puts stresses and strains into the system. We believe that, in this last 12 months, we've also been able to absorb 1,000 people from Hong Kong here into Wales as well. We have 700 people from Afghanistan who've been welcomed to Wales. All of these things undoubtedly put pressure into the system.

The specific question the Member asked me, Llywydd, was why do some people choose not to take up offers of permanent accommodation that are made to them, and I think the answer is that there's complexity in that. Some people will have settled in their temporary accommodation in the sense they've already found jobs and work. The place that they're offered to live permanently may be in a different part of Wales and they may be reluctant to pick themselves up and start again somewhere where they don't have the things that they've built up while they've been in temporary accommodation. In temporary accommodation, you will be surrounded by other people who've been through the same experience as you. We shouldn't be surprised, should we, that people draw some comfort from that and, faced with moving into independent accommodation where you're necessarily more likely to be on your own, that can be a difficult move for some people to make.

I've no doubt that Joel James is right that, for some people, the contrast between the service that is provided to them in a welcome centre, where they are very well looked after, and being asked to go and make your own future in a flat somewhere in a part of the world you don't know, that's another difficult thing that gets in the way of some people moving on. But, move-on is an essential part of the arrangement. Because the numbers of people coming from Ukraine have declined since August, the system is much closer to being in balance than it was at the height of the flow of people in. So, now the number of people leaving welcome centres compared to people arriving is much closer to being in balance. But, we do have to have that outflow in order to be able to welcome more people into Wales. Challenging as that can be for people, the system is designed to encourage them to make that decision.

First Minister, you've laid out some of the tensions between the UK Government and the Welsh Government and, indeed, I have to say, this nation of sanctuary over the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. But, surely, it should be impossible for the Home Office unilaterally to place refugees and asylum seekers in places without any advance notice with the communities or with Welsh Government or the local community involved, with the health board in the area, with the education authority in the area, because this is about the care of those individuals, for which those services need to be in place there. So, we need the UK to work far better than this right across the policy piste. Can I ask would you support, First Minister, proposals to strengthen the voice of this Senedd Cymru, or even to create a legal duty of co-operation amongst the governments and the nations and regions of the UK, indeed, as was laid out in the Brown report yesterday?

Can I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for that? He makes a very important point. The Gordon Brown report yesterday does indeed propose a legal duty of co-operation between the four nations of the United Kingdom. That legal duty would be something that would be capable of being tested in a court of law, and it would, I believe, act as a very significant brake on the sorts of actions, I'm afraid, we have seen the Home Office take. The Home Office at one point, and actually for quite a long period, kept to an arrangement whereby refugees would only arrive in a local authority area with the prior consent of that local authority. Well, it's abandoned that principle, and not only has it abandoned the principle, but the practice has far too often—well, has too often—been as the Member for Ogmore just suggested. We have had examples very recently in Wales of large groups of refugees arriving at a hotel, certainly no advance notice to the Welsh Government, but no advance notice to local services on the ground either, and that is absolutely unfair to those people who are being asked to live in that place. They are often people who will have health needs, they will have had traumatic experiences, they need services to be provided to them, and unilateral action, simply to move people to an area without any pre-warning, without any preparation, simply isn't fair, either to those services or to the people concerned. And a duty—a legal duty—of the sort that Huw Irranca-Davies set out, and which is, I think, very cogently described in the Gordon Brown report, would prevent that sort of unilateral action from happening.