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Before I answer that, convener, I draw your attention to the fact that I am joined by Joanna Keating and Alison Byrne of the Scottish Government. They are the experts in the field, and I will ask them to follow on from my own answers if there are any pertinent aspects that I have not been able to share with you or if they have any insights from the constant meetings that are being had at the moment.

We have been communicating with the Home Office on our preferred scheme, but thus far we have not had a response on whether, from its perspective, it is workable or preferable. However, in Scotland, we want to work with local authorities, given the experience of the Syrian refugee scheme in particular, to ensure that there is, de minimis, an understanding of who is seeking resettlement and where. That will allow a local authority to know what people who are arriving in a new country require by way of help and support, whether it be housing—which obviously will be a primary consideration—or other wraparound care and support.

As we are talking largely about women and children, there will, in addition to housing, be questions of access to health service and health visitor support to deal with, and people will need to have an understanding of how nursery and school provision works. Of course, the focus in that respect is on the refugees who require that help and support, but it is also mission critical for our local government partners, in particular, to have an understanding of what they need to be doing, given the very rapidly increasing numbers of people who might well be arriving in different parts of the country. Local authorities will need to know how many additional places will be required in nurseries, schools and so on. That is why we have been sceptical of what appears to have been the UK Government’s preferred approach, which is that people just receive a visa and arrive. There seems to have been no thinking in the Home Office or in other UK Government departments about the primary role that local government needs to play in the process.

Up to now, therefore, the Scottish Government has been trying to impress on the UK Government its view that we have established practices in place, and we have been making it clear that we want to ensure that, as people arrive from Ukraine, we have learned from best practice from the Syrian refugee scheme and all the lessons about what works. My expectation is that the refugee numbers that we are talking about will be multiple times the 3,300 who arrived as part of the Syrian refugee scheme. Indeed, Ireland, which is pretty much the same size as Scotland, has seen more than 1,000 arrive in the first week alone. As I have no particular insight that suggests to me that we would be looking at any significant difference between Scotland and Ireland in that regard, it is quite helpful for us to understand what the Irish are already going through. If the updated UK scheme expedites the ability of Ukrainians to arrive here, we are going to have to stand these systems up very quickly and at scale. As you will appreciate, after this evidence session, I and my cabinet secretary colleague Shona Robison, who has the primary responsibility for the domestic side of this challenge, will be very actively having meetings to understand how things are likely to work and what the impact will be.

Thank you very much, convener. I will read out the first half of my statement and then, because of the very fast-changing situation that no doubt members will wish to ask me about, update the committee on my understanding of a very significant change in UK Government policy towards Ukrainian refugees.

I begin by reiterating that the Scottish Government has condemned Russia’s unprovoked invasion of a peaceful, democratic neighbour in the strongest possible terms several times over the past weeks. Scotland offers its unqualified support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. Russia’s illegal act of aggression has no conceivable justification, and we reject whole-heartedly the premise of the invasion that is being peddled by President Putin and the Russian Government.

I deplore, as I know colleagues right across the Scottish Parliament do, the heartbreaking loss of life, including that of civilians, which is the direct responsibility of the Russian regime. I wrote to the Russian ambassador on 25 February in those terms, and I have spent time with the acting consul general of Ukraine to assure him of the Scottish Government’s steadfast support.

The Scottish Government has so far committed £4 million in humanitarian aid as part of global humanitarian efforts, with £2 million of that allocated to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Ukraine, which launched last Thursday. I thank everybody in Scotland who has also contributed so generously on a personal basis. The DEC appeal has now raised more than £10 million in Scotland alone.

The Scottish Government has allocated £1 million of our humanitarian aid to UNICEF to support its work in providing life-saving services and supporting families, while a further £1 million has been allocated to the British Red Cross and to the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund. Our financial aid contribution will help provide basic humanitarian assistance, including in health, water and sanitation and shelter to those fleeing Putin’s bombs.

On top of the £4 million in humanitarian aid, we have committed to providing around £2.9 million-worth of urgently needed medical equipment for Ukraine. Our first donation of medical supplies arrived in Poland on Thursday 3 March and is destined for the Ministry of Healthcare of Ukraine in Lviv. A second donation worth £1.2 million left Scotland on 4 March containing more than 130,000 items of medical supplies, including bandages and syringe pumps, and a further 32 pallets of bandages, intravenous sets and syringes left Scotland on Tuesday morning. I would like to place on record my thanks to NHS Scotland for responding to the specified needs of the Ukrainian Government with such lightning speed and fulfilling the request for urgently needed medical equipment, supplies and pharmaceuticals.

Like many across Scotland and the world, I have watched with distress the most significant displacement of humanity since the second world war. It is estimated that around 2 million Ukrainians—although that figure is soon to be overtaken—have been forced to leave their country because of Putin’s invasion, and I am sad to say that many more will follow. If I can take any heart from this tragedy, it has been the amazing generosity shown by people here in Scotland who have rallied to provide support for their fellow humans on the other side of Europe. The stories of families, communities, churches, mosques, shops, schools and workplaces across Scotland raising funds and collecting provisions and clothing for Ukrainians show the humanitarian support that has long been a feature of our country.

As is mentioned in the supporting documents for this evidence session, the Polish embassy in London has welcomed our communities’ generosity but has asked those wanting to help to make financial support and contributions instead, given the scale of the logistical effort and to ensure the most effective use of resources. I would echo that: the best way now of supporting people in this crisis is to provide cash to allow agencies to respond quickly in Ukraine and surrounding countries. The Scottish Government has provided information on the Ready Scotland website, where people can make donations of humanitarian support safely and effectively.

I will now briefly update the committee on the resettlement issue. Scotland, as ever, stands ready to offer refuge and sanctuary for those fleeing Ukraine, as we did with the Syrian resettlement programme, in which all of Scotland’s 32 local authorities participated and as a result of which more than 3,300 refugees were welcomed into communities. In recent days, we have been working very closely with colleagues in the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Scottish Refugee Council and Police Scotland to co-ordinate plans and address the practical challenges of resettling Ukrainians here.

However, people need to arrive in the UK for that support to be given, and up to now, the UK Government has not, in our eyes, been doing enough to enable refugees to seek refuge. The UK Government’s planned community sponsorship scheme does not go far enough in supporting all those who seek refuge in Scotland and, instead, places responsibility for resettlement on to the community rather than with the UK Government.

We must also ensure that we learn lessons from the Afghanistan resettlement schemes with regard to providing rapid and appropriate support for those who need it. We absolutely stand ready to offer refuge and sanctuary to those who might be displaced, and we have been appealing to the UK Government to work with us on developing the detail of the scheme to ensure that we in Scotland can build in appropriate support from local government and other partners. We are working on the detail of the Scottish approach to implementing the UK Government’s schemes, but for us to do so effectively, the UK Government must share its plans and the detail urgently. After all, the situation seems to be changing literally as we meet.

We must be clear that the route as foreseen is completely inappropriate in addressing what could become the biggest refugee crisis since the second world war. Reports are beginning to emanate from Westminster that there has been a major rethink of the UK Government’s resettlement and visa scheme, which, uniquely in Europe, requires Ukrainian refugees trying to reach these shores to seek a visa from a UK Government office and to provide biometric data in situ—that is, in the likes of Poland and other neighbouring countries and indeed in France, too. We have all watched the very distressing television pictures of largely women and children, distraught as they wait for hours to register their interest in getting a visa and then have to wait an indeterminate amount of time to learn whether they will receive one.

It has been widely reported that the UK Government is in the process of deciding and announcing a major policy shift on this front, but I do not have any confirmed final details of that announcement. There will be colleagues who, while I have been speaking, have been able to follow updates on social media and might well know more than me, but we have not yet been formally informed of the position. My understanding, though, is that the visa application process is set to change by being dramatically speeded up and by not requiring people to automatically present themselves at offices. The expectation is that that will dramatically increase—and in a much shorter time—the number of people who can reach these shores.

That raises questions for us, and, after this meeting, I and my colleagues from the civil service will no doubt be having very detailed discussions to learn what we can expect as a result of this change in UK Government policy. As somebody who has been very vocal in calling for the UK to change its system, I will welcome anything that makes it easier for people seeking sanctuary and refuge to get it. Yesterday and the day before, I was in Dublin, holding talks with the Irish Government about, among other things, its humanitarian and resettlement programme. I was hugely encouraged by how the Irish national and local authorities and public administrations, including the health service, have been mobilised and are on hand to give people arriving in Dublin airport on a plane from Poland the help, support and guidance that they require from the minute that they arrive in Ireland. We, too, will look at doing absolutely everything that we can to ensure that, when people arrive here, they receive all the help, support and guidance that they require.

Deputy convener, I will stop there. Members will no doubt have many questions, especially in relation to the change in UK Government policy, but I am also happy to answer questions on any other aspect of the Scottish Government’s response to the crisis in Ukraine.

As we are all aware, the work of different charitable organisations will have a different focus and locus, and they have different logistical abilities with regard to delivering in different places. At the same time, we are also getting very strong guidance and requests from our Ukrainian Government partners, and there needs to be a mix-and-match process that takes into account our ambition to want to help as well as we can and the delivery mechanisms that are offered by the different charities.

Usually, when emergencies happen, UN agencies—perhaps those such as UNICEF that are focused on children, but other parts of the UN family, too—are despatched to react to such situations, and then there is also the likes of the Red Cross network. It is important to understand, as I know the committee will, that we are also assisting the countries neighbouring Ukraine, which have taken in the largest number of people. Those countries, which run in an arc from north to east and which include Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova, have seen very significant numbers of people coming in. The number coming into Poland has been very large, but I think that Moldova, which I think that I am right in saying is still the poorest country in Europe, has had the largest per head uptake of refugees. We therefore have to ensure that we are being helpful and supportive to Ukrainians in country as well as those who have already left and to the different geographic areas that those people have fled to, and we will do that by working with the UN and, in particular, partners in the Disasters Emergency Committee sphere. We are also working beyond that, too. The Mercy Corps and Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund are two examples of aid organisations that are not currently within the DEC consortium but which we are also working with, because of their capability and their reach in Scotland, too.

Again, we are talking about a very fast-moving process. It is also an iterative process, because once one has despatched certain types of aid, the need changes. Members might want to follow this up in their questioning, but people have, as we know, been enormously generous here and, indeed, right across Europe in providing what they think will make the biggest difference to people. Baby food, nappies, clothing and toys are literally piling up in warehouses right across Europe. The question, now, is how we get those things to people in Ukraine and neighbouring countries. Indeed, given the numbers of people arriving, it might be best to offer that kind of charitable giving in the form of welcome or support packs for people who will be coming here. At the same time, we should recognise what the aid community and, indeed, Ukraine and its neighbouring countries have been saying about financial aid being the top priority now. The best thing that people who want to help and support Ukrainians in need can do is to give financial support primarily through the 12 or 13 charities in the DEC appeal consortium that are delivering in that area.

On the way here, I heard on the news headlines that the Home Secretary is expected to make an announcement that would see a change to the status of Ukrainians who are in the UK without leave to remain, and that their situation could be regularised because of course they cannot return to Ukraine. That was at 9 o’clock this morning. It is now being signalled that significant changes might be made on a number of fronts. Forgive me, but I have not been sighted on what those might be. Obviously, it would be a good thing for the UK Government to tell the Scottish Government what it intends to do about something that will have a big impact on things here, but I have still not been informed about that.

On no recourse to public funds, that is totally unsustainable. We have to make sure that people who are here, who have lost everything and have nothing, do not find themselves homeless or in penury. I will be looking closely at what the UK Government proposes. I have not seen it yet, but I hope that common sense has prevailed so that those who are here already can remain and will not need to go back, that all of those who wish to seek support and sanctuary here can do so, that they have recourse to public funds and, apart from anything else, that they can earn their keep if they want to work. Unfortunately, Scotland has been losing people and seeing people leave because of the impact that Brexit has had on our workforce.

Our first response is a humanitarian response, but people might stay here for some time. Notwithstanding the fact that most refugees would wish to go home as quickly as possible, looking at the damage that has been wrought on communities in Ukraine until now, we are talking about people going back to cities that do not stand any more. We have to be ready to support people for as long as it takes before they can go home. That will require public funds to be made available to ensure that people are properly supported, as they should be.

We are already working with the consulate, and we are working with the community on a daily basis to work out what its needs, interests, concerns and expectations are. That extends from offering to be helpful and supportive to the consul general, whose phone goes incessantly. I have met him a number of times. Forgive me—I do not know whether you met him in person. I have been on numerous Teams calls on which he has talked about everything that is important from the perspective of the consulate, and the phone has been going non-stop. Help and support has been offered by the Scottish Government and by other consulates. That is a matter for the consul general, because we are talking about the consular responsibilities of the republic of Ukraine. It is for the consulate to work out what the most appropriate support would be. We have made it very clear that we want to help.

At the heart of the work that we are doing in the early stages—this will undoubtedly continue to be the case—is the involvement of the Scottish Refugee Council, which has a lot of experience. In the meetings that I have had with Shona Robison and the Ukrainian consul general and the Ukrainian community, including its organisations, as well as the Scottish Refugee Council, the police and other public authorities, we have tried to work through all the various issues of messaging and communication. As is the way of these things, one just has to make sure that one is using every route possible to make sure that people are hearing and learning about the things that they need to do.

Some of what we are talking about here is a capacity issue. How can we make sure that the consulate has everything that it requires? How can the Scottish Refugee Council have the capacity to deal with the scale of the challenge as it develops? That is very much at the forefront of our thoughts. The Scottish Refugee Council is already providing office space for the Ukrainian communities, and it is co-ordinating and supporting them.

Is there more that can be done, whether on communication or anything else? Absolutely, and we are doing more. Because things are changing very quickly, we will need to make sure that we are doing the right things in the circumstances as they develop.

Our Ukrainian colleagues are very well aware of the offers of help that are there for them, as is the Ukrainian community. The First Minister was with the Ukrainian community in Edinburgh yesterday. We are talking to one another on a daily basis to make sure that we do everything that we can.

Sarah Boyack raises a number of points, which are all excellent, in relation to not only the wider assistance that can be provided to people who seek sanctuary, but the need to be more generally helpful to Ukraine and people who have been forced to leave there. We are receiving reports—I am sure that members of the committee will have heard examples of this—of companies that want to offer Ukrainians positions, should they arrive here. The Scottish Government is co-ordinating those offers. I am sure that members will have examples of that; as a constituency MSP, I have an example of such an offer from a leading local company. I have no doubt that, when people arrive here, they will be able to take up those opportunities.

We also know about—and should acknowledge and praise—Scottish companies that have made principled decisions about divesting from Russia, because they no longer want to work in a market with such a regime and want to join the rest of the civilised world in doing everything that they can to put pressure on the Russian regime. They are also looking at other ways of helping. For example, some have made significant donations to charities and other efforts related to Ukraine. We should recognise that that is already happening.

On the employers front specifically, we already have an excellent working relationship with the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, most recently in relation to the Afghan resettlement scheme, but that will be extended to include Ukrainians. Such co-ordination is already taking place. It is for us to capture the details of those who want to be helpful and supportive

In relation to Dr Allan’s previous question about health, the existing arrangements for refugees that NHS boards and local authorities have in place between them have been brought to my attention. Work is already done to make sure that that connection works to the advantage of people with medical conditions or disabilities who may come to Scotland. The integrated one-Scotland approach that we have taken to Afghans and Syrians is one that we want to take for Ukrainians when they arrive, so that all our public services, along with those in the third sector and the private sector, can be incorporated in the effort to meet the big challenge that we face.

Everybody wants to step up to that challenge, so we are extremely keen that the UK authorities hear that we have a good model that works here, and we want it to work for Ukrainians, too. It would be excellent to hear that the UK Government understands that that is the route that we wish to pursue in Scotland.

I think that might be paraphrased as an invitation to a further evidence session where we can talk at length about what we can do, because I have a lot of views about things that we can think about in the medium and long term after Ukraine successfully repulses the Russian invasion of its country.

In recent days, I had a conversation with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Lord Provost and council leader of the City of Edinburgh Council, whose city is twinned with Kyiv. We talked at some length about the potential for our local authorities, our cities and our towns that do not have existing links with communities in Ukraine to think about partnership and/or twinning going forward, so that when Ukraine has emerged victorious and needs to rebuild its infrastructure, there can be direct relations between Scottish towns, cities and regions and parts of Ukraine. There is quite a lot of opportunity in that.

More broadly on the culture point, we will absolutely be enriched by Ukrainians who come here, and we will learn a lot more about Ukrainian culture, which is a thoroughly good thing, but at the same time we will also have to think about how we can help and support Ukrainians who come here culturally. Of course children will learn English while they are here, and no doubt they will learn Gaelic in various parts of Scotland as well, but we have to think about the educational support that we are able to give them so that their education can also continue in Ukrainian and Russian as their national languages. I suspect that that will be a conversation for a further evidence session. We need to think about all these things. The points about culture are very well made.

There are. Ireland is 2 per cent of the European Union’s population and uses that as a rough rule of thumb for the consequences of what that means financially and in other ways. Ireland is working on the expectation of taking in up to 80,000 Ukrainians. That process has just begun.

At Dublin airport, there are welcome tables from the Irish public authorities that take people’s details. The whole problem with the UK scheme is that it is the wrong way around. The Irish do all the due diligence when people arrive from Ukraine. They take people’s details and then make sure that they can be matched to health provision and local government support. Ireland makes sure that people’s positions are effectively regularised from the moment that they get off the plane.

Ireland is working hard to make sure of being able to provide the housing that will be required. I have already made the point that early indications are that, among the first arrivals are people who have friends, family and relations who they can stay with, but a proportion do not and, in Ireland’s case, those people will have to be matched with local authorities and also religious institutions and other places where accommodation is available. Ireland runs a national portal where people can indicate their willingness and ability to take people in. In addition to people who are friends and family from Ukraine, there are obviously people in Ireland, as there are elsewhere in Europe, and here too, who want to help and take people in. Ireland has a system for that matching process and is expecting numbers to go up quite dramatically.

There is a lot in that question. I, too, have been discussing that with the acting consul general. There are two specific aspects to the Ukrainian community in Scotland.

First, there is a long-settled and long-established Ukrainian community in Scotland that largely goes back to the 1870s and post second world war. In that case, we are already talking about a second or third generation of Ukrainian Scots. They live right across Scotland. There is no geographical concentration beyond the conurbations that we are aware of. For example, there are Ukrainian community facilities in Edinburgh and Glasgow, but Ukrainian Scots are also established right across Scotland. The consul general told me that he thought there were probably up to 5,000 of them.

Secondly, we could add up to a maximum of another 5,000 seasonal workers. Therefore, the figure of 7,000 that Mr Ruskell gave speaks to that 5,000 plus 2,000 seasonal workers. Yes, there will be concentrations of those people in certain parts of the country, and we have to think about that.

During my conversations with Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, yesterday, I was interested to hear that the majority of people who are arriving in Dublin are heading towards the address of a family member, a friend or somebody who they know. Again, given the point that I made earlier, unless somebody can tell me that there is a profound difference between people arriving in Ireland and those arriving in Scotland, I suspect that the first wave of people will arrive knowing where their people are. They might well be working in the seasonal industries, but they might also have connections with the established Scottish Ukrainian community as well as people who have been working here for a number of years and also form part of the community, but who do not traditionally move back and forward every year. We need to be aware of that as a phenomenon.

That shows why the Scottish Government has been keen to work on the resettlement scheme that has emerged from the Syrian scheme of which we have good experience at local government level, to make sure that we are able to match public service support for people who are arriving in situ in localities with the levels of demand.

Mark Ruskell might well be right that a significant number of refugees might head to certain parts of the country because of the nature of work that they do. We do not know that yet, which is why we are still keen to make sure that we are working hand in hand with our colleagues in the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, who have been doing a great job in making sure that there is co-ordination right across the 32 local authorities so that we can be aware of what might be coming.

What might be coming are people in their hour of need and I have no doubt that the response that we will see in this country will be the same as we have seen right across Europe—people wanting to be helpful and wanting to be supportive.

I also draw attention to the fact that—I am sure that members also saw this on their televisions—when people arrive on trains in different parts of Poland or different parts of Germany and even across to France, there are people standing in the stations saying, “I will take in two people,” “I will take in four people,” or “I will take in eight people.”. On a human level, that is extremely moving, and I am sure that those who do not have family here would want to feel that they can live in safety with people who can help and support them. Having said that, though, we have to consider safeguarding and be aware of who is arriving and where they are going, primarily for the reasons of matching the social service support that we want to offer.

That all underlines the reason why we want a resettlement scheme that has local government and the provision of local services at its heart. We are ready to do that, our colleagues in local government are ready to do that and we are just trying to impress on the UK Government that, regardless of the route that it opens up and the preferences that it might have for how it operates in other parts of the UK, we are clear that we have good experience and we want to apply that good practice to do the best that we can do.

Do my colleagues want to add to that? In a nutshell, that is our approach thus far. I know that the situation is fast moving, but that is still where our preference lies.

There is that group of people and there are other groups, including people with disabilities, of whom we are very mindful. That is an issue that our colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy raised with me in the chamber last week. We are very seized of the spectrum of needs that people will arrive with.

On the technical question about Ukrainian medical records, I will have to come back to Dr Allan. Ukraine is a developed country that has computerised data management systems. Notwithstanding the fact that it is in a war situation, it has a functioning medical system, and the largest part of the country is not occupied. There must be ways in which information can still be accessed, but that very much depends on the capacity of the Ukrainian health system, which, as we can all understand, is under huge strain because of the injured—civilians in particular but also military personnel—who will be treated right across the country.

I will take that question away, but I know that our health service and everybody who assists in areas such as disability will be very seized of the need to ensure that we are able to do everything that we can to help.