Housing Secretary Mairi McAllan has refused to pause a policy on housing asylum seekers despite pleas from Glasgow city council.
Scotland's largest local authority is facing soaring demand from homeless refugees which The Herald revealed in August could cost it £66 million next year.
Currently, 44% of all people presenting as homeless to Glasgow City Council come from refugee households.
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Appearing on the BBC Scotland's Sunday Show today, Ms McAllan was asked if she would pause a policy which Glasgow city council leader Susan Aitken has raised concerns over.
The presenter asked: "The city council leader, Susan Aitken, says asylum policy is to blame for soaring homelessness costs, she has raised concerns about Holyrood legislation which allows a homeless person with no connection to the city to apply for short-term accommodation and she has asked the Scottish Government to pause the legislation several times... why aren't you helping them?"
Ms McAllan said: "Well it's quite niche but we can go into it, so it's local connection and basically it means is that somebody who has a local connection to another authority in Scotland, if they present in Glasgow, couldn't be sent back to, say, Inverclyde or Edinburgh or Highlands.
"That's all that that policy does. It is actually a much older piece of legislation which says that Home Office accommodation can't constitute a local policy... it's quite complicated."
She called on other local authorities to take their share of asylum seekers to relieve the "considerable strain" on Glasgow.
Pressed again if she would pause the policy the Cabinet minister replied: "I will not roll back on the homelessness rights of people in Scotland... in order to mitigate the failures of Home Office policy, I'm just not going to do that, not least because Scotland should continue to be a welcoming place."
Scottish Conservative shadow cabinet secretary for housing Meghan Gallacher said: "Màiri McAllan's complacency on this issue beggars belief.
"The SNP leader of Glasgow council says that the city is in crisis because of the Scottish government’s reckless decision to ditch the local connection rule, yet the housing secretary arrogantly doubled down on it.
“That policy has made the city a magnet for illegal migrants and exacerbated the housing emergency that had already been caused by the rent controls introduced by the SNP and Greens, and Ms McAllan's dismal failure to provide anything like the new housing required."
In September, Ms Aitken called for asylum seekers to be spread out more evenly around Scotland as it emerged Glasgow was taking 20 times as many as Edinburgh as she voiced concerns about the strain on overstretched social housing stocks.
Ms Aitken said at the time: “I would like to see other local authorities step up more. I would like to see the spread of asylum seekers and then subsequently refugees across Scotland more evenly.”
Asylum seekers are housed by a private firm called Mears but are still being placed disproportionately in Glasgow.
Figures reported by the Daily Record in September show that Glasgow has 58 asylum seekers for every 10,000 citizens, compared with Edinburgh’s three, ten in Dundee and 19 in Aberdeen. A third of local authorities — including East Lothian, East Renfrewshire and Fife — have taken none.
Councils, including Glasgow, do not house the asylum seekers but provide other services, including schooling and social work support.
They are also responsible for providing accommodation for people who are granted leave to remain as refugees and then told to leave Mears properties.
Ms Aitken and her Labour predecessors have long praised the positive impact of newcomers on the Clyde.
But this summer she said the cost of housing such refugees was driving up the council’s homelessness costs, by a projected £66 million next year.
She said: “The UK’s asylum policies have, in effect, become a machine that creates homeless refugees, with the government then washing its hands and leaving local authorities to deal with the consequences as best they can.”
