Equality and Social Justice Committee

Welcome back to evidence session 4 on social cohesion, and I'm very pleased to welcome Jacqueline Broadhead, who's the director of Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity, and Migration Oxford and the Inclusive Cities project; and Jonathan Downs, the corporate policy lead at Oldham Council, who are both joining us online; and Kate James, the policy and research officer for Migration Yorkshire. Welcome to all three of you. I'm just going to start off by briefly asking you to explain what you think are the headline barriers and key threats to social cohesion in the UK. Can I start off with Jacqueline in the first instance?

Yes, thanks very much. So, obviously there are external barriers to cohesion in terms of what's happening in communities, and I think that some of the other speakers might touch on that, but I think that what I want to touch on are some of the structural barriers that we see that can impede community cohesion. So, when we talk about community cohesion, we're generally talking about three things: the links and ties that bind communities together, institutional levels of trust and mitigating community tensions. And generally what we've seen in UK-wide reviews, ranging from the Casey review through to the Khan review, is a lack of impetus and overall policy focus on this as a topic.

We know and my research really focuses on the way that this is multi-level in terms of government. So, there is a central Government role, but it's a very devolved responsibility, and that's both at a devolved administration level and also at local government level. And those reviews have found little co-ordination between those levels of government. They found areas of good practice, and there are lots of individual projects and areas of good practice that we can point to and I hope that we will touch on over this hour but, overall, a lack of UK-wide strategy—I know that the situation is different in Wales and there is strategy in place in Wales, but, overall, a UK-wide lack of strategy—a lack of funding directed specifically towards these areas—again, it works slightly differently in Wales—and overall, therefore, a lack of monitoring of what we're trying to achieve and how we're achieving it in cohesion policy.

Monitoring of cohesion is pretty tricky, but we don't necessarily have a clear outcomes framework. I will say, just as a last thing, that cohesion is also—it's an interesting policy area, because it's both an ongoing process and a destination. So, a lot of it is happening and will happen without any proactive Government intervention, but we're also using it as a framework of something that we want to get to and something that we want to achieve, but we're not always that clear in setting out exactly what that is and the steps that we're taking to get there.

Thank you very much. Briefly, Jonathan Downs, what's the view from Oldham Council?

That was an incredibly helpful summary. I think, for me, in Oldham, what we've seen on the ground over the last couple of years has been that social cohesion has been really tested by economic pressure. Deprivation has a massive impact on community cohesion at a local level. We've seen a lot in terms of political divide, both on the back of Brexit and more broadly with some what I call malignant operators who are deliberately trying to stir up hatred across communities. And we've also seen a rise in what I call deliberate misinformation, so, an attempt to undermine trust in public institutions, which is something that the social media, and I'm sure we'll get into this into a bit more detail, but which the social media era has really started to play on. I think there's also a lot around hate crime and discrimination that we're still seeing between certain communities, not just ethnic minority communities, but some of that hatred is now being more directed at LGBTQ+ communities and certain religious groups—that seems to be more on the rise, especially online. So, there are elements of trying to combat that at a community level, but there's also, absolutely, a need to think about how that's combatted at a digital level.

Thank you very much. We'll come back to a lot of that. Kate James.

I'd agree with everything that has been said. I think I'd also like to add that, because a lot of the work that we do focuses particularly on refugee integration, one of the big challenges for that area of work at the moment is a loss of funding. In Yorkshire, we have just recently come to the end of a five-year period of having some EU migration integration funding, which has been quite significant and funded large programmes of work. That has now gone and hasn't been replaced since Brexit, so I think we would see that as one of the big challenges, because without integration cohesion is more difficult.

There are also a lot of challenges in terms of social connection between people from different backgrounds, which I think is one of the key things that's important for social cohesion, and that has come out in pieces of research that we've done. Those can be things like structural barriers like the cost of accessing events and fears of racism and prejudice, individual and relational barriers relating to things like language and low confidence, and place-based barriers. So, there are a lot of different types of barriers for people who may want to meet people from different backgrounds, and that needs to be looked at, I think.

I would echo what has been said about the testing of cohesion in terms of the difficult economic situation, and I think I'd probably add to that that some of the national discourse hasn't helped with that, that we've heard over the last few years, and then we've seen that reflected and sometimes amplified in the media and social media.

Thank you. Just briefly, how important is it that we define what we mean by social cohesion? Jacqueline, you've already said that there is no community cohesion strategy in England anyway. There is something that has been on the table for a while in Wales, but it does need refreshing. I never hear people talking very much about redistribution. How much is this an issue of people who think that the world is not being fair to them?

I guess that they're two slightly different questions. I'll start with the definitional one first, which is that there isn't a full, clear consensus, as there is with a lot of areas of research, to exactly define what we mean by cohesion, but, as I said, there are some key recurring things. So, we know that it's about the links and connections and ties that bind; we know that it's about trust in institutions; and we know that there's something reactive about what happens when things break down.

I think where the research literature sometimes disagrees is exactly to your second point, which is the importance of other factors—so, the extent to which we can divorce cohesion from things like systemic inequality or those questions of redistribution. I think it's pretty clear that you can't, and that, actually, those things do have an impact, but they are slightly different. We know that place really matters, and that's also where you see some of those distributional questions.

Then, also, you can see that in questions of, for example, social and community capital. I think a good example of that was a piece of research that was done during the COVID-19 pandemic that looked at the rise of mutual aid groups, which basically said that, actually, the strength of those mutual aid groups, in lots of ways, was that they weren't state led—you know, that they were led by the community and they didn't have too much external involvement.

But the bind that we have with that is that, at the same, they also were much more likely to spring up in areas that had more social capital and also had less inequality and things like that. So, I think that's where there's a distributional issue, where there's a balancing act for the state in saying, 'Listen, this is not about stymieing community work'. Quite often, actually, it is community groups that are best placed to do some of this work and have the trust on the ground, but there are questions of systemic inequality that mean that some areas are more able to devote the time and energy to this type of cohesion work, but obviously in others it's a lot more challenging, either because they have less community infrastructure, or because people are really suffering, as you heard from other witnesses, and find it hard actually to be able to spend the time on the types of, for example, contact activities that we know are beneficial to cohesion.

Very good. So, Kate, in the work that you’ve been doing in Yorkshire, how much has this concept of social cohesion played a part, or how much is it down to poverty and people feeling that they’re having to share limited resources with new arrivals?

I'd agree with everything that Jacqui said. I think within that context it’s still possible for constructive work to take place, but it is more difficult. We did some research a few years ago called Communities up Close and we took a detailed look at 10 different communities across Yorkshire and Humber and their experience of and response to recent migration-driven population change. On the basis of that—. So, that was done by the Institute for Public Policy Research—we commissioned them to do the qualitative part of that research—they developed what they described as a neighbourhood typology, where they categorised neighbourhoods according to their responses to recent population change, and found that their response was tied up with a number of issues, such as neighbourhood identity. A lot of those places had a rich industrial heritage, which had changed in recent years. Areas with a more limited history of migration struggled to adapt to that change more than some other areas that were more diverse to begin with, and the impact of the local economy was quite stark in terms of the response to migration. So, in those places experiencing decline, community tensions could be heightened, basically. So, just to echo what Jacqui said, really.

Despite that, what we did find, although there were those tensions and people sometimes made an association with their difficult situation and recent incoming migration, there was a real curiosity to get to know people from different backgrounds and to get to know their new neighbours. It was hampered by people’s situations, working 60-hour weeks in different part-time jobs and those kinds of things, but that appetite was there for people to get to know people from different backgrounds. Therefore, one of the big recommendations from that report was for national and local organisations to look at how to facilitate that meaningful social connection more effectively. I think, as was discussed in the previous evidence session, it’s much better if that is done in a co-productive way and a community-driven way, rather than something that’s imposed from the outside.

Jonathan, is co-production the solution?

I absolutely think so. From my perspective, just picking up the point that was made earlier about redistribution, for me, it’s about recognising that redistribution isn’t just about money and resources, it’s fundamentally about shifting power, influence and decision-making down to communities as much as possible. So, a lot of our work in Oldham has really focused on how we can generate more community-led support, how we can work with communities hand in hand to develop new policies that do reduce demand on public services while promoting more cohesive communities. It’s about how we’re worked with our voluntary sector to really tackle inequality and start to bridge some of those gaps between people. I think you can only do that by collaborating, by co-operating.

Thank you. Julie Morgan.

Thank you very much. My first question is to Jacqueline. I understand that there are 12 cities that are participating in your programme, and that that includes Cardiff and Newport. So, I wondered if you could tell us what the work involves and have you noticed any difference at all in the issues facing Welsh cities compared to the other cities in England?

Sure, absolutely. And just to clarify, those 12 cities cover all four nations of the UK, rather than just England and Wales. But, yes, Inclusive Cities has been running since 2017, and it’s a knowledge exchange and research project that, effectively, looked at—. It came from noticing that there was no UK-wide either integration or cohesion strategy, and yet local areas really wanted to understand what the research base was on some of these topics, and also to take action at a local level.

Each of the 12 cities that are involved have developed an action plan based against five different thematic areas, under a framework. Those five thematic areas include telling the story of welcoming and inclusion, how to promote inclusive economic growth, and that includes skills development, connecting communities, which is probably the one that is most linked to community cohesion, access to mainstream services, and finally, representation and co-production, similar to what Jonathan talked about.

That's also underpinned by a number of ways of working, I guess probably one of the most important of which is that this is not work that is solely focused on newcomer communities. It's about the interaction between newcomer and longer standing communities, understanding that inclusion work can't just be focused on one side. We work with an organisation called Welcoming America, and their CEO has a line that plants can't grow in stony ground. So, cohesion and integration work has to look at both sides of the equation, not only one side, and that matches more formal academic definitions of integration and things like that.

It's been fantastic to work with Newport and Cardiff as part of the programme, and also to understand this as an area of devolution, and so where there is difference in the approaches between the four nations. Obviously, we're delighted that they participate in the programme—I'm not going to speak on their behalf in terms of the work that they do—but I guess some of the things that I've noticed that have been distinctive within Wales was, firstly, that the programmes have sat predominantly with the community cohesion co-ordinators that have been funded in Wales, and that's distinctive to what we see in the rest of the UK, because those posts, generally, don't exist, and that means that they have had a cohesion perspective for quite a while, and that's not true elsewhere in the UK.

The leads for the programme—and we have both a political lead and an officer lead in each city—can be based in lots of different departments. For example, in Glasgow, the programme is situated in the economic development department and the focus there is on the inclusive growth. In other local authorities, it can be here, there and everywhere. So, there isn't necessarily, outside of Wales, a natural lead for this work, and that's partly because it's by and large non-statutory, quite discretionary, and local authorities are finding space as and when, rather than having a specific programme. I would say that's probably the major difference in Wales, where there has been this funded support.

Thank you very much; that's very interesting. So, there are no community cohesion co-ordinators in other cities throughout the UK.

Some cities have chosen to appoint those roles. They've done that themselves. I would say that Sheffield would be an example where they take a community cohesion focus to the work, but not in the same way as Wales, where there is this specifically funded network of community cohesion co-ordinators. So, you will find some across the UK, but not in the same way as in Wales.

Thank you very much for that information. This is to all of you: given you've all got the expertise in this area, have you had any engagement with the Welsh Government, or any Wales-based organisations, on any issues related to social cohesion, or are you aware of any other research into these issues in Wales? Could we start with you, Kate?

I'm not aware of anything specific. We do work quite closely with our equivalent organisation in Wales, which is the Wales Strategic Migration Partnership. I know the heads of those organisations meet weekly and they try to work collectively across the UK, and I know there are connections with other parts of the team on topics like asylum and refugees as well. In terms of cohesion, I'm not aware of anything specific, but I could go away and check that, because there may be something I'm not aware of.

From my perspective, we have done some work in the past with Cardiff Council and Swansea Council, through something called the co-operative councils innovation network. I don't know if you're aware of the co-op councils innovation network, but it's a national network of local authorities who are all committed to sharing best practice and working together to tackle some of the big challenges that are facing our communities. When it comes to specific community cohesion initiatives, we've probably shared learning between our respective organisations, but not necessarily worked on something collaboratively, if that makes sense.

Thank you. And Jacqueline, obviously you've had contact with the cities that you've mentioned, but have you had any contact with the Welsh Government?

We've done some work looking at the migrant integration strategy the Welsh Government developed and also Wales's work as a nation of sanctuary. Then finally I'd just mention some of the work that the Bevan Foundation has done also, looking at migrant integration and inclusion in Wales.

Thank you. And again to you, Jacqueline: in your submission to the Women and Equalities Committee you noted that a further review of the community cohesion programme is taking place in 2025. Do you have any more information about this review?

No. I would defer to the people in the room. I guess I was looking at this process and other processes rather than having any specific intelligence on that.

Thank you. That's fine, thank you.

Thank you. Sioned Williams, would you like to come in, please?

Thank you. I just want to talk a little bit about the third sector and strengthening cohesion. What specific barriers or challenges does the third sector face? How could they be better supported, do you feel?

Who would like to come in first on this? Kate, do you want to start?

I think from our perspective we work very closely with the third sector. They are the backbone, I suppose, of support for newly arrived migrants in our region and elsewhere. I think funding is always a huge challenge, and I think that's become more difficult over recent years. I think we heard some of that in the previous evidence session as well—short-term funding streams and a lack of funding, some of which I've already alluded to. We've lost a big amount of integration funding over the last few years since Brexit.

There's also a real disparity in terms of funding for different programmes for people seeking sanctuary. For example, for people who arrive through the resettlement route, they're quite well funded programmes. In recent years we've had the Syrian resettlement scheme and then more recently Afghan resettlement schemes. There isn't the same level of support for people who come through the asylum route in terms of housing, English language and those kind of things, so I think that's a major challenge and the voluntary sector are usually the ones who try to fill those gaps. But it's challenging in the difficult context in terms of funding.

I think the voluntary sector is also doing what it can to support people who are living in hotels, but again that's very challenging. We don't see that as an appropriate environment for people to be living in for any length of time. In terms of what happened last summer, obviously that's a key indication of why they're not appropriate, but for many other reasons as well. People don't have agency if they're living in those situations, and it's very hard for them to integrate into communities if they're not dispersed and living in those situations. They're some of the key challenges that we would see the voluntary sector facing at the moment.

Thank you. Does anyone else want to contribute, or shall I move on to the next question? No. Okay, thank you. In terms of your experience, you've mentioned some strategies that are quite general that you think could be effective in tackling social cohesion. Do you have specific examples of interventions that you could highlight and why some of them have worked in your areas, or perhaps over the 12 cities in Jacqueline's case?

Jonathan, I'm—

Would you like me to come—? Sorry, Chair, we were both being too polite there. Do you want me to jump in first just with a couple of quick examples from Oldham's perspective?

I think Oldham is a really interesting place in the sense that we have a history. Twenty years ago, we had the Oldham riots, which was a really hard time, as you can imagine, for the borough, and they were caused by some really strong community feeling. Following that, over the past 15 years and longer, we've been doing an awful lot of work with the voluntary sector to really build those relationships with the different communities that exist across the borough. We now have a really strong relationship with our local mosque council, for example, as well as the local churches, as well as some of the smaller community organisations. What we've found is that those organisations are actually an excellent litmus test for the mood of the community. So, it's really important to be bringing those groups of people together on a regular basis to share their learning, and to share how they're perceiving things out in the community.

That became really prevalent last year, of course, after the atrocities in Southport when certain parts of the country devolved into violence. Everyone had a bit of an eye on Oldham nationally because they were expecting that, perhaps, Oldham would bubble over again given its history of having had riots here before. And actually, nothing happened at all. We were really proud of the work that had happened across the community to make sure that none of the right-wing narrative that was playing out infected Oldham and infected the communities that live here. It was a real testament to the strength of community feeling that nothing bubbled over.

So, I think it comes back to that point that we were making earlier—it absolutely is about collaboration, it absolutely is about working with all elements of the communities that you represent, and making sure that everyone's voice is heard and has an opportunity to contribute, because it's only through dialogue and discussion that we can really start to crack a lot of these community cohesion issues that we all face. Thank you.

Thank you—very interesting. In terms of that, you mentioned that you have forums. So, what are the structures that maintain that dialogue in your area? What specifically is happening? Do you have forum groups that are convened by the council that meet regularly? Clearly, you're going out and supporting groups in the community, but can you provide us with examples of the structures that are being used to support that?

Yes, absolutely, of course. We've got a really strong partnership structure in Oldham. We have something called our communities board, which is a board made up of key community representatives, voluntary sector partners, police, public health—all the big players—but it gives the community a really strong voice on that partnership to raise any concerns that they're seeing. That's one sort of board that we have. Sat alongside that, we've also got our voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise board, which brings together the VCFSE organisations and, again, gives them a voice that they're able to feed into policy planning and practice.

But on top of that, we've also, in recent years done a lot of work pulling together what we're calling our lived experience groups, so community groups who have genuine lived experience, for example, of poverty, inequality, or have faced things like racial prejudice. We're bringing them together, to really share their learning, because we know that they have so much to offer us in terms of our approach to responding to these issues. So, we've had things like our poverty truth commission in the last couple of years—incredibly valuable; it's changed the way that we're designing services now so they better meet the needs of people in poverty. Our approach to supporting people who've been through trauma, who've faced racial prejudice—. Again, we've completely changed the way that we provide services to those people so we're not furthering or exacerbating that harm.

So, there's a whole load of stuff there, probably more than I can talk about today, but I'd be more than happy to share some written testimony on that, if it would be helpful, just to give you a flavour of what that partnership structure really looks like.

Yes, please.

Yes, please. Thank you.

Just to come in from my point of view, the first thing I wanted to say is that I think Jonathan's given some really great proactive examples, but there are also some, if not reactive, less proactive, examples, which are about creating the spaces for interaction that aren't directly created by the state or by community groups. So, often, we think of a lot of community cohesion work as directly bringing groups together, but there's also a real role for creating the spaces in which people meet more naturally and more frequently every day. So, for example, we know that schools and workplaces can be really powerful sites of community cohesion, because they're places where people from different backgrounds naturally meet. But there's also quite a lot of work that can be done to think about what's happening within those sites. So, there's a programme that started in Bradford called the Linking Network, which is about connections between schools, for example, in order to promote cohesion.

I do think there is a role for employers within communities—a broader role, thinking about, particularly if there are communities in which there are lots of people who are coming to a particular place to work, how do you increase opportunities for social mixing, and then in the way that we design spaces and places. So, there's been a move to create more welcome hubs, using the community spaces and places that we have, and thinking of them as spaces for connection. So, I think there's quite a lot that we can do that isn't necessarily around saying, 'Right, how do we bring group X together with group Y?' Some of that work can be incredibly effective; some of it can also be a little bit clunky, because these are very sensitive things sometimes—actually just creating spaces for natural interaction can be a really effective way of working on cohesion space.

But in the proactive space, I also think there are some really good examples of work. I think, often, we don't look as much as we could towards the work that happens in Northern Ireland. They have a framework for good relations work that's funded throughout the local authorities in Northern Ireland, which has obviously been predominantly focused on the historic challenges there, but, increasingly, is being used to think about the interaction with newcomer communities. There's quite a good infrastructure there that thinks about how we proactively bring together different communities and understand exactly and build exactly the sort of trust that Jonathan was talking about.

There are also examples where you bring people together but you're not bringing them together about the things that they have differences on—you're bringing them together about the things that they have in common. And that's where—. Generally, it's focusing on other things that people are interested in, whether that's sport, music, heritage, culture—anything that's not about talking about the things that are divisive or difficult. Although, I will say that there are methodologies about how you bring people together where there has been conflict, and the way that you create and foster that space.

Thank you very much. Kate, do you want to add anything?

Yes, thank you. I was just going to come in and say that, in terms of interventions, I think one of the things that we try to do is to improve understanding, and we share an awful lot of information about migration. We try to be seen as a trusted source of information, so that people will come to us, and we've tried to do some creative things around that. So, one of the things that we did a couple of years ago was to commission a play called How to be Lucky, created by a company called An Invisible Man theatre, and this explores the journeys of Syrian refugees settling in the UK. It's about a character called Anwar, who's a Syrian man, and the play follows his journey from the troubles starting in Syria to him arriving in the UK, and his experiences of settling here. The play was predominantly aimed at schools, and over 3,000 students at schools in Yorkshire and Humber saw the play. It's also been performed at public theatres as well. One of the things that we did was ask students to complete a short survey before watching the play and then after watching the play, so that we could see if the play had affected their attitudes and their knowledge in any way. We found that, for example, after seeing the play, they were much more likely to understand the difference between somebody seeking asylum and somebody with refugee status, which is something about which people often don't know the difference. Nearly everybody found it really engaging and said they would think differently about what refugees have been through to get to the UK. There were some really interesting comments from students, like, 'It changed my mind about refugees', and, 'Nobody really tells you it's like that. It's horrible what happens to people; we should definitely do more to help them.' It was clear, from reading the responses, that the play had really opened their eyes and improved their understanding. It would've been really interesting if we could have gone back and spoken to them again, after six months, and done that more longitudinal work. But, yes, from our perspective, those kinds of initiatives that can really help promote understanding can be very, very beneficial.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair.

Okay. Thank you very much. Jane Dodds, would you like to come in now?

Thank you very much. I would like to ask, if I may, about the role of Governments in this area. We as a committee are interested in looking into recommendations that we could make. So, I just want to see, in your view, what role would you see this Government in Wales taking in this area, please. Perhaps, Jonathan, if you would like to answer first of all, then Jacqueline and then the witnesses in the room. Thank you.

Thank you. So, it's a really interesting question, and I think there's probably quite a few different roles for Government to take in this space. I think one of the key roles with—. I feel like I keep repeating myself, but there's something about how you do create the space for these conversations to actually happen in Wales, at this moment in time. I think cities like Cardiff, Newport, Swansea have seen increasing levels of migration, including asylum seekers and refugees, and while that does bring cultural benefits, diversity and economic benefits, it does present challenges in terms of housing, employment and integration, and giving people the space to have those conversations and express their concerns is really important.

I also think there's something about how you tackle some of that—what I was talking about before—deliberately disruptive narrative, which is existing across certain communities at the moment, and is being portrayed by some what I call, sometimes, international actors who are deliberately trying to provoke and exacerbate community tensions. I think we need to take a really strong line as Government organisations when it comes to that kind of narrative, and make sure that we are presenting the counter-narrative as strongly as possible, in a really positive way, which gets people excited about the future of their communities and isn't just responding and reacting to that narrative, but is taking a much more proactive approach to creating that sense of community and community feel.

And probably lastly, I think there's definitely something about still thinking about how we tackle things like racism and discrimination, and our own approaches to equality and diversity. I think all local government organisations should absolutely be adopting proactive equality, diversity and inclusion strategies, thinking about how we involve more racially minoritised communities in decision making. So, a really good, proactive example of that, Jane, is in greater Manchester. We have something called the greater Manchester civic leadership programme where people from under-represented communities can apply to go on a development programme, which gets them more involved in public decision making. So, I've recently had a lovely Syrian chap who's been coming in to Oldham Council shadowing me, seeing how local democracy works and operates, because he really wants to represent his community and help shape local democracy, so it makes a difference for him. So, I think doing more of that kind of work from a Government perspective is also really, really important. I'll stop there.

Thank you. Could I ask Jacqueline—? Thank you.

Yes. I agree with a lot of what Jonathan was saying in terms of work on narrative. I'm going to talk a little bit about funding and structural work that I think the Government can do. Firstly, I do think that this is a real multilevel area, so it really sits between central and UK Government, devolved administrations and local authorities. So, I think the interaction between those layers is very important.

I think the first thing I want to start with is the overall funding envelope, not necessarily to say how much, whether it's additional funding that's needed, but the way that the funding is structured at the moment. So, we know that there is an aim to simplify funding settlements for local government. I think cohesion is an area that's particularly bedevilled by this because so much of the funding is bespoke, nationality-scheme specific. There are very few dedicated funding streams for this work. I know the situation is slightly different in Wales. But often, it's work that's specifically for Ukrainians or specifically for Hong Kongers or specifically for Afghans, people coming from Afghanistan, and actually, at the local level, that doesn't necessarily make sense. So, it feels like we're remaking projects. Old projects are being remade, and they tend to be quite short-termist rather than being able to have planning for the medium or longer term.

I would also say that because of the way that these schemes are funded, they tend to focus on upfront orientation challenges rather than longer term questions of community cohesion. So, we don't really have very much monitoring that looks at how successful you as a local area have been in cohesion over the longer term. Those funding programmes, they tend to look at how have you met initial needs for the first days, weeks and months that people have arrived. And what that's meant is that cohesion has dropped in salience, and it tends to rise in salience when something happens like the disturbances that we saw, the riots that we saw last summer, rather than being something that's there, upfront, and where we're taking a strategic review.

I also think that there is a role for Government in terms of learning. One of the things that we found with the inclusive cities programme is that with local government being under so much pressure in terms of responsive service delivery, there's very little capacity for learning and sharing between different places, and I think cohesion is a topic on which actually being able—. Because it's so focused on dialogue and partnership, actually having some capacity to be able to learn between areas feels like it would be very powerful, and there are vanishingly few—. Kate has obviously spoken about the role of strategic migration partnerships, and Yorkshire has done, I think, incredible work in expanding the remit of the strategic migration partnership to include cohesion and integration, but that's not, as far as I'm aware—Kate might correct me—formally part of the brief for those strategic migration partnerships. So, there isn't any formal place to share learning, and one of the things that we've spoken about with our local authorities is whether you would expand that remit for the strategic migration partnerships, and fund and support capacity to be able to share learning.

Thank you very much. I would just like to make sure that nobody else wants to answer. Does anybody else want to add from the room?

I'll just come in briefly, if I may. I haven't got a lot to add, but I think I would just say, from our perspective, on the Government's role, a very well-funded refugee integration strategy, nationally, is something that we would like to see. But, as Jacqui was saying, it's very important that that could then be implemented at the correct geographical level. For example, strategic migration partnerships, as Jacqui was saying, are very well placed to do that work because of our very close links with local authorities—so, Migration Yorkshire, for example, and the Wales strategic migration partnership here. And I think we'd also like to see leadership from Government in terms of messaging. I think the Homes for Ukraine scheme was a really good example of where, when leaders and the media are being very constructive and positive, that can result in really positive action across the board and a clear partnership approach. And I think if that could be replicated in other scenarios, that would be something that we'd really like to see.

Thank you very much, Chair. I'm aware that time is moving on. I will come back if there's time at the end. Thank you.

Okay. All right, I'll bear that in mind. Mick Antoniw.

Thank you. We're moving into an area that is pretty blatant now. Just on the issue in terms of the breakdown of cohesion and destabilisation of society or even civic society, you, right at the beginning, focused on the issue of economic deprivation and so on, and the extent to which that is a destabilising force. That's, obviously, a very macro area that needs to be addressed, but is one we talk about a lot—inequality as being, I suppose, the summary of it. But, of course, that also feeds into the issue of misinformation—destabilisation of society now by the growth of social media and the increasing manipulation and use of social media, and misinformation. Of course, one of the issues is how do actually counter that, how do we address that, because it has now become a very generic form of destabilisation. I'm just really wondering what your thoughts are as to how that might best be addressed, co-ordinated, funded. Are we moving to a stage where we actually need, as a matter of democracy, a counter unit in terms of countering the abuse and manipulation, and that's aside from the broader issue as to legislation and regulation?

Okay. Jonathan's nodding. Do you want to go first?

Yes, absolutely, and I think that's absolutely spot on. I think, responding to the kind of social media misinformation, in our experience, really requires a very strategic and a proactive approach. It’s about making sure that falsehoods don’t take root and undermine the really good work that’s already happening. So, I think, from my learning, I’ve probably got a couple of ideas. I think getting ahead of misinformation is really key, and part of that is that, as organisations, we need to be as transparent and open as possible. You can’t leave room for people to try and say, 'Oh, well, you were trying to hide something.' That’s how misinformation spreads. So, ensuring that we are really transparent and open as organisations is really important, and, I think, monitoring the kind of misinformation trends. So, we use quite a lot of social media what we call 'listening tools' now, which try and help us track kind of the sentiment of our communities and the people on social media. That can be really, really useful when it comes to spotting topics that might be starting to bubble over and cause some of that kind of community concern. And, also, I think that engagement—and I know this will be probably the hundredth time I’ve talked about engagement today, so forgive me—engaging with communities, working with those really trusted local voices, those community leaders, those influencers, those journalists that we work with and do trust, who can help us amplify the correct information, is really important. And when it comes to that point about amplification, it’s also about making sure that we don’t amplify the false narrative too. So, that’s really key.

Can I just ask about that then, because one of the challenges in doing what you’re saying—? I suppose the first thing I’d like to ask you is: do you see any of this co-ordination actually happening, because it doesn’t seem to me that there is anything other than a sort of fragmented and, often, knee-jerk response to the growth of the impact of the abuse of social media? But the other is in terms of the fact that, no matter what you do on it, it's the algorithmic input of it that we see in particularly one or two—we don’t even need to name them, do we—social media channels, where counterinformation is played down, or completely excluded, and contrary information is exacerbated. We’ve seen particularly, we know, the influence of significant elements emanating generically from within what seem to be very deliberate circumstances, from Russia, from the USA in particular at the moment, but also from other countries. So, we’re now part of a sort of international destabilisation process that latches onto impacting within our communities, and not just within the UK and abroad. How do you think we should be addressing that? What do you think needs to be done to begin to be capable of addressing it?

It is, again, a really interesting question. Over Christmas time, December time, we had Elon Musk very directly attacking Oldham, which was really, really interesting, because we suddenly had such a high-profile figure encouraging—. There were hundreds and thousands of tweets coming in every day, with negative press about Oldham, which was being facilitated by this one individual. So, absolutely, we recognise this concern, and we’ve actually started to open a dialogue with central Government departments on precisely that need for a more co-ordinated response. We definitely need more support in this area as a local authority to help us mitigate some of that online narrative.

But just as a couple of practical points from my perspective, and I’ll be quick because I’m very aware of time and I don’t want to hog all the time, misinformation spreads because it plays on fears and frustrations fundamentally. So, one of the things that we try and do is think about how we acknowledge those emotions while trying to provide the truth. We’ve started to do a lot of engagement with partners in schools and community groups to help people spot misinformation, and also to encourage more community fact checking—so, similar to what you have on some of these platforms where you’ve got people who pop up and actually say, 'This isn’t true. This is nonsense.' We’re trying to encourage more of that in our communities, and to create more of a culture where verifying information is the norm. And it’s a sad state of affairs that we’ve had to get to this point where, actually, you can’t simply trust what you see, and even what you see on the mainstream news now can be quite distorted, depending on the channel that you choose to watch. There are plenty of nefarious news channels as well as social media organisations, of course. And so, it is about encouraging people to challenge what they're seeing. It's about education. It's about working with communities. There is no magic bullet to this, though, Mick, in my opinion.

Okay. I just want to know whether there's any other input into this.

I'd largely agree with what Jonathan was saying, but I would just add two things. The first is on the point about trusted messengers. I think that point about finding who the community anchors are and who the trusted voices are feels very central to me, and there was some interesting work that was done, looking at the role of football clubs. It was work that was done with Huddersfield Town and Brentford by British Future, which was looking at what's the role there in having that conversation and that coming from a slightly different place. And then, secondly, I would also just add that, from the cities and local authorities that we work with, this feels like a real gap in capacity and expertise, specifically around strategic communications as a policy tool. So, the fact that we're asking local authorities to tackle some of this—. My expertise isn't in the social media side, but, in the tackling misinformation or trying to develop a different narrative, in our work we've seen that local authorities see the importance of that and they want to do it, but it's not what their communications teams were set up to do or were ever intended to do. I've seen some places that are doing incredible things, but it's something that it feels like they're learning on the fly, rather than it being something that's been proactively invested in.

Just another very, very quick question, then. Do you think there is benefit to looking or exploring the need for a more co-ordinated, centralised, funded counter unit to achieve this variety of things that we've identified that are either good practice or things that should be put into practice?

I think that there could be some benefit in each local authority not replicating all of the work or learning all of this individually. I think a lot of this work happens on the ground and is based on local intelligence, so I would be a little bit reticent to have the starting point be a centralised unit, because I think you would want it to be able to be responsive to local need. But I wonder if there's a way in which, actually, you're able to take some of the learning and, as I talked about earlier, having a place where you can share approaches and intelligence. But, yes, I would be a tiny little bit reticent about the starting point being a sort of central Government unit, because I'm not sure how responsive that would be able to be.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Okay. I think Kate James just wanted to add something.

I know we're very short of time now, so I'll just come in briefly. Just to echo Jonathan's point about the importance of being transparent and open, one of the things that we do at Migration Yorkshire is we publish publicly available migration data in one place in a very easily accessible, user-friendly way—we call them data dashboards—because it can be quite difficult to find that information, sometimes, on Government websites. We're very clear about the number of people who are seeking asylum or are resettled refugees in our region, so that people can't say that we're hiding anything. We're very clear about that, and that information is very useful for our partners in terms of evidencing funding bids, et cetera, but also it means members of the public can clearly see what the numbers are. We've also commissioned opinion polls so that we can see what people actually think in our region, rather than just the voices that we hear in the media, so we can then go to the newspapers, and we've had headlines about the number of people in Yorkshire and Humber who are happy to support people seeking sanctuary in our region, and we can see that, over time, things have changed. People see our region as more welcoming now, for example. So, being able to put out those positive messages rather than—. As Jonathan was saying, it doesn't always work to try to debunk the myths; sometimes you can end up amplifying those negative messages. But we try to put out our positive stories of integration and individual human stories as well, where, for example, fostering unaccompanied asylum seeking children has been very successful, or Ukrainian hosting schemes—nice stories like that that we've managed to get out there. So, I think that's part of the picture. It's very challenging, obviously, with all of the disinformation. But, yes, that's part of the approach, I think, and being very in-front of the messaging. As soon as there's a crisis, we go straight to the media and we'll talk about Yorkshire and Humber being ready to take its fair share and being welcoming. So, we try to get in there first in the messaging.

Thank you. I hope that we can just extend the session by five minutes, so that we can get in two or three questions from Altaf Hussain on monitoring social cohesion.

Thank you very much, Chair. Yes, it's the last section and my questions are on monitoring social cohesion. Now, in one of our previous evidence sessions, Dame Sara Kahn identified the positives behind your thriving communities index. How has this affected community cohesion locally? What lessons exist for other areas adopting similar strategies?

Jonathan.

So, again, it's a brilliant question and I'm glad that you spoke about Sara Khan. Just for context for everyone, she visited Oldham as one of the many places she visited across the country to understand cohesion. And one of the things we spoke with Sara about was our thriving communities programme, which was an initiative that was very much about early intervention, prevention and social action to build resilient communities.

So, there were a lot of proxies for the kind of measures that we looked at. You're right, it's very difficult to measure social cohesion as almost an end in itself; you need other proxies for telling you where, again, that kind of community sentiment is. So, we looked at a whole range, a raft of measures from how isolated communities were feeling, how people would rate their happiness in the area they lived, how they thought about the relationship with their neighbours. Would they say that they had a positive relationship with people on their street? Did they feel that, if they wanted to borrow a pint of milk that they would be comfortable knocking on their neighbour's door and asking for that?

And we did this at quite a hyperlocal level. So, we took sentiment from numerous communities and streets across Oldham, and built quite a good picture of where community sentiment was. And that enabled us then to think about where we needed to target. So, we knew where the areas were where community cohesion was really positive, and we knew the areas where there was still work to do. And that allowed us to get in and do some of that work.

In terms of sharing best practice, that's been a model that, you're right, has been picked up by other places now who are looking to do something similar. Again, I'm not going to pretend that it's a magic bullet, but it's another way of starting to scratch below the surface of what is an incredibly complicated topic and giving you a way to, hopefully, measure some of the impact of your interventions and actions. So, in summary, it's about thinking bigger than just thinking, 'How do we measure cohesion?' It's about measuring all of the proxies for cohesion. I hope that that answers your question.

Okay. Altaf.

Yes. My second question is: what impact is your data dashboard having on community cohesion within Yorkshire and Humber? Would Welsh Government be best advised to adopt this tool?

Thank you for that question. It's hard to measure that specifically, I think, but as I was saying before, I think that the key benefit really is that these dashboards enable us to be seen as a trusted source of information. It brings together this publicly available migration data all in one place. We know that it's being used for service planning by local authorities and voluntary sector organisations, and it's being used to justify new posts, for example. So, it's being used to evidence need and therefore to inform service planning. And I think it just enables open and honest conversations, really, because it's very clear what the numbers are.

We do get queries, sometimes, from journalists and from members of the public, so having that data there just enables us to go back to them with clear, factually correct answers, rather than speculation. So, I think, yes, it's difficult to measure a specific impact, but I think those are the benefits that we see, really, of having that data so readily available in a very accessible format as well, really, and it's possible to see changes over time, and you can look at it at a local authority level. So, they're regional dashboards, but you can pick your particular local authority and it will show the numbers for your area, the number of dispersed asylum seekers, the number of people living in hotels, for example; it can be that sort of detail at your geographical level.

Thank you. Chair, let me ask the last question, really. It is important. How have data-driven initiatives informed a wider working that is addressing any gaps not held already by the public sector services? Are any unfortunate challenges constraining building these things? I think Jacqueline might address that.

Okay. If you could keep your answers brief.

Yes, so I would say that there are significant gaps. There has been an attempt to understand the data availability around integration. The Home Office developed indicators of integration in 2019, but if you look underneath that, what you will see is that when you come to try and do some of that measurement, quite a lot of the data sources aren't active, so it's very hard to measure in certain areas.

Now, in cohesion, I think, we actually do have some good data sources on top of the ones that you have already heard about, so that would be the community life survey in England, and obviously the national survey for Wales, which includes some questions about community cohesion, and that gives this kind of longitudinal data that can be used, and it can be broken down by local authority. But what you don't get from that is some of the ability to do some of the more responsive work that I think that Jonathan and Kate have mentioned. And partly, that's because some of that data goes out of date quite quickly, or that there isn't particularly very much capacity within local authorities to use that data.

So, the important thing, obviously, about having it is what the purpose of it is for. So, is it to monitor the effectiveness of an intervention? We know with cohesion that's very, very hard to do. To basically say, 'We do this intervention and this had a substantive change on a population level outcome' is really hard to do. Normally, what you have to do is match that with some more qualitative work that's based on the types of partnerships that Jonathan talked about. And if you're wanting to do things that are about having more of an early warning system with the type of data dashboard that Kate was talking about, that's very useful in using publicly available data, but how do you integrate that with the data that the local authority holds about, again, what's happening locally? And we have this disconnect between nationally available data sets and then the actual interventions that have been put into place and how you're monitoring how effective they are.

Thank you very much indeed.

That was it, very quickly. [Laughter.]

Thanks a lot.

Okay, thank you, Altaf. We have run out of time now, so if there's anything further that we want to ask you about, we'll be in touch. We'll also be sending you a transcript of what you've said, so that you can correct it if we've heard you wrong. But thank you very much indeed, all three of you, for your really interesting and useful contributions.

So, before we move into private session, are Members content to note the correspondence from Colm Gildernew, the chair of the Committee for Communities in the Northern Ireland Assembly? I see no dissent.

Can I now ask that we move into private session to exclude the public, if you're agreeable? Thank you very much indeed.