To ask the First Minister and deputy First Minister whether they have given further consideration to improvements that can be made to the transparency of governance in relation to asylum seekers support since assuming the functions of the Northern Ireland Strategic Migration Partnership.

The Executive Office (TEO) has agreed with Home Office to take on some of the Strategic Migration Partnership (SMP) functions. These relate to engagement and coordination, encouraging multi-agency support for asylum seekers, and ensure ongoing engagement with Home Office on matters which impact locally. These fit with TEO’s co-ordination role.

The purpose of Strategic Migration Partnerships is to facilitate and enable collaboration between central and local government, civil society and regional and local stakeholders for the benefit of both migrants and the wider community. TEO achieves this through the Strategic Planning Group on Refugees and Asylum Seekers and through its Council Engagement Group. In order to ensure that voices from civic society can feed into this programme structure, TEO has recently established a Voluntary and Community Sector Forum which includes representative from organisations supporting and working directly with refugees and asylum seekers.

We will keep our approach and role under review.