 Dwy saved. I welcome to this, the 14th meeting of the Equality and Human Rights Committee, 2018, can make usual request that mobile devices are switched on to airplane mode, the mobile phones are off the table. Agenda item 1, this morning, is a continuation of our human rights in the Scottish Parliament Inquiry. We have two panels of witnesses this morning, but first with us this morning is Angela Constance, who is the Cabinet Secretary for Communities, Social Security and Equalities, and she is supported this morning by Duncan Isle, who is the head of the human amser, ac Mauressa Struth, who is a human rights policy adviser at the Scottish Government. Good morning, cabinet secretary, and welcome back to committee. You'll understand that this is an incredibly important piece of work that we're undertaking right now, and we're really keen to hear from you this morning on the Government's position on many of the areas that we've been pursuing on the committee. I believe that you've got a brief opening statement. Rondon, gwrs, yn fawr, byw i fod y fawr o'r fawr. Rwy'n gwybod i gyd, mae'n rhaglen i'r cymdeithasau. Rwy'n gwrs, mae'n cymdeithasau. Rwy'n gorydd gyrfaennau maeth ymddiol i gael ffasilydd, ac i gael i gael i'r ffasilydd, y mae'n fawr i gael i'r fawr i'r fawr i'r fawr. safegards delivered by a sophisticated framework of national legislation and international treaty obligations. Those safegards include the familiar statutory protections delivered by the Scotland Act, the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act. They include the vitally important guarantees, which are delivered by EU law and EU charter of fundamental rights guarantees, which, as we know, are under threat as a result of Brexit. They also include the fundamental human rights identified in the much larger body of international treaty commitments, which apply in Scotland also. Those obligations are real and those obligations are substantive. As the ministerial code makes clear, at least in the Scottish version anyway, we have an overarching duty to comply with the law, including international law and treaty obligations. In key respects, the choice that we have is not whether to secure the right set out in the treaties that apply in Scotland. Instead, the question is how to do so in a way that works, in a way that reliably delivers for individual right holders and communities across the whole of our society, including those who suffer disadvantage and are at risk of discrimination. That question of how to implement human rights in ways that really matter is central to work, not only of Government but also to this Parliament. I know, convener, that you are looking very closely at how parliamentary processes can best support that work, and there are obvious similarities with the challenges faced by Government. For example, effective human rights training and a commitment to continuing professional development is important to both institutions. Human rights is core business and is the job of everyone in the Scottish Government to help ensure that we are meeting our obligations. In fact, public officials not only need to know about human rights, but they also have to be empowered to respond proactively when human rights issues do arise. If we are to take a human rights approach, it is also essential that we do more than just predict how laws and policies will deliver human rights outcomes, but we also need to be able to check that those policies and laws are actually delivering and that they are doing so for every member of society. It also requires a commitment to meaningful and deliberative participation. That is about much more than one-off events. Human rights cannot, by definition, be safeguarded or advanced without the active participation of rights holders. One of Scotland's particular strengths, I believe, is the role played by civil society. I know that you have heard from a cross range of very able and articulate representatives as part of your on-going inquiry. For our part, the Scottish Government is keen not only to ensure that civil society voices are heard at a domestic level, the ability to present the civil society views to best effect at international level adds directly to the value of formal scrutiny processes at the UN and the Council of Europe. The better place we are all to engage effectively with such mechanisms, the greater benefit we will have in shaping our own Scotland-specific deliberations. The Scottish Government, I believe, has been leading the way in this front. We are keen to go beyond the inevitable constraints imposed by the fact that it is the UK rather than Scotland, which is a member state and reports at an international level. To address that and to promote a fuller understanding of Scotland's distinctive position, we have sought to publish whenever possible free-standing Scottish position statements ahead of each treaty examination. The most recent to appear covers our obligations under CEDAW, the convention for the elimination of all discrimination against women. That was published last week, and we expect the formal examination to take place later this year. As I indicated when I gave evidence on the universal periodic review in January, there is certainly scope for the Scottish Parliament to use human rights mechanisms of this kind as an important framework in which to develop its own scrutiny work. It is certainly my view that this Parliament has a pivotal role to play in ensuring that we both use national and international human rights frameworks to the very best possible effect and to use them as a way to find common ground to construct solutions and to make a real life difference to the everyday lived experience of all members of our society. I very much look forward to reading to and responding to committees deliberations in due course. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. I have really detailed opening statement, but we have many areas that we would like to interrogate further with you. I am going to kick off this morning with Gail Ross. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. Cabinet secretary. Thank you for coming along once again. We have had a lot of evidence sessions on this now. Every single session has thrown up something different, and it has all been absolutely excellent, as well as there is evidence that we have received as well. We have also done breakout groups in Leith, and I was in Inverness. Speaking to people with lived experience of disabilities and mental health issues was quite an eye-opener. We also did a bit of a straw poll between all of us with our constituents and asked them what do you believe human rights is. We all agreed that a lot of our constituents feel that human rights is something that happens to other people or something that applies to other people, in maybe a judicial sense or an immigration sense. How do we embed human rights in society as a whole? We have a pivotal role to play, not just within the committee but within the Parliament as a whole. How do we get that message out there? That is a great opening question. The bottom line is that human rights are for everyone. We cannot be selective about who human rights are available to, they are part of our rights as individuals and they are part of our collective rights as communities of interests and as a society. I think that the language around human rights is very important. I know that you have heard lots of evidence about people who need to more routinely, in all their business of government, in all their parliamentary endeavours and their individual MSPs talking the language of human rights. There is always an on-going challenge about dumping jargon and trying to demystify the world of human rights. With respect to the lawyers, that is not just an area for lawyers. We have to be taking some of the narrative and discourse away from the lawyers and putting it into everyday language. What you mentioned about the work that you have done with breakout groups is really important. That might be something that we come back to. I think that one of the most important developments in how we legislate and how we develop policy over the past decade has been the work that we are now intensively pursuing about really tapping into the talents of folk with lived experience, whatever that lived experience is. You can see that in the range of poverty truth commissions that have been established. You can see that in how we as a Government engage with that. The poverty truth commissions were pivotal in our dialogue around fairer Scotland. The experience panels and how that shaped our new social security legislation and how that will continue to shape social security policy and our agency, I am sure that we will touch upon. However, if there is one thing that really gives me hope, I suppose that it is what I visibly experience like others when I go in and out of schools. When I was young, and this is going to make me seem extremely old, when as a child I was given it's no fair and my mother would be like it's tough, life's no fair. The debates that we have with our own children and the discussion and dialogue that we're having within schools is that as adults we no longer rest on the tough life's not fair. Our children have that sense of justice and fairness in terms of the rights, respect and schools agenda. I think that in terms of what curriculum for excellence is done, in terms of that focus on citizenship and actually empowering young people, I know that, as a committee, you've spoke a lot about the youth parliament and how you see a generation of young people absolutely up and at it and prepared to articulate what their rights are and prepared to advocate for those rights and to really press down on those with parliamentary government responsibilities about how we're implementing and delivering on those rights. I completely agree that the people who live to experience are the people that we should be speaking to all the time. The Scottish Youth Parliament and the people that tend to belong to groups have, from what I can see and you touched on it there, quite a good notion of what their human rights are already. How do we reach the disadvantaged groups, the people that would never think is standing for the youth parliament, for example, people from deprived areas or people that aren't part of disability groups etc? How do we reach those people? Again, that's a very fundamental point. How do you get beyond those that are already very proactively involved in established structures? There is the issue about wider engagement, about normalising human rights at this part of our everyday language and relevance, trying to keep it real and giving those real-life examples of where human rights have made a positive impact and taking it out of the academic and legalese. However, it is also about an issue of representation, so that if our national institutions be that parliamentary, be that government, be that our youth organisations, be that other organisations in civic Scotland, that if we are only representing or if those who are participating in those organisations are only, for example, white and middle class, there is a failure there. Throughout our society, that starts with government in terms of leadership, we have to ensure that we have representation of Scotland's diverse communities and diverse backgrounds. That includes socioeconomic background as well. Good morning, Cabinet Secretary. Good morning to the officials as well. Can I start by proffering my apologies? I have to slip out for a few minutes at 10 o'clock due to an unavoidable commitment. Cabinet Secretary, we as a committee have taken a lot of evidence about our mandate to try and draw human rights through the Scottish Parliament, through the workings of the Scottish Parliament, making it real and not just a tick box exercise. We have some very specific and granular recommendations on that that we are going to bring forward, but that is only half the battle, because a lot of the policy work that comes before this Parliament starts in the Scottish Government. I would like to start by asking as you understand it, the sort of filter that we push legislation through in terms of rights impact assessments or equalities impact assessments, and your view as to how effective those are before they even come to the Scottish Parliament? It is important to stress that the duties that you describe and those responsibilities around impact assessments and the preparedness of policy work and legislation before it is introduced to Parliament has to undergo a rigor that human rights and equalities need to be sewn throughout that. You will be familiar, as I am, with the processes around legislative compliance, the ECHR, and the work that will go on collectively across government. Individual ministers will have specific portfolio responsibilities, but there is a collective responsibility across government in terms of how policy is shaped across portfolios, in terms of the sharing of cabinet papers and advance of cabinet meetings, the way in which those papers and discussions are structured around our obligations and the connections across government. None of that is rocket science, you would expect, in terms of good governance for any organisation. Then there is the next step when policy or legislation in particular is introduced in terms of the issues that are detailed in a consultation document, how accessible that is, how explicit consultation documents are about putting human rights into practice. There is obviously policy memorandum documents that I am sure you all study really closely in terms of your work as parliamentarians, and then we have that scrutiny process where things are debated, tested, pulled together in terms of committee and in chamber, and there is the voices of Civic Scotland out with that. I suppose that that is an overall process of many, many parts, except that the more that we can get right from the beginning improves the prospects of a journey that is iterative and that is about continuous improvement. Yes, thank you very much for that. It is clear that there are mechanisms in policy development that are meant to deliver this, although we found recently an example where that was not happening and my colleagues will be getting tired of this example, but it serves a purpose, and that is the draft Age of Criminal Responsibility Bill, which absolutely has human rights at its core. It answers one of our outstanding commitments to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Childs in respect of the age of criminal responsibility in this country, but on the first cut we identified the first time we looked at the bill as a committee that there is a section in that bill around place of safety where young people can theoretically be taken to a police station for their own protection, which is the direct contravention of their article 37 rights under the UNCRC. So there is an incoherence in that bill and I think it speaks to perhaps a lack of rights literacy right across all the silos of government, so that came obviously from justice. I wonder if the cabinet secretary will offer her view on whether we actually need from the right out of the traps when bill teams are formed, whether there should be somebody in that bill team who has an understanding of the conventions or treaties to which we are signatory, which apply to that legislation, to inform that drafting process from the start? There are a number of really important issues there. I do not want to pre-empt the scrutiny and the dialogue that this committee will have with the relevant portfolio minister when it comes to it, but if I can just touch upon the very real example that you have given before I talked about the show of rights literacy and the issues that you have suggested around the bill's team. I am sure that we would all agree that, given the importance of the age of criminal responsibility forthcoming legislation and the age of the children that we are talking about, that absolutely wherever and whenever possible, we have to avoid police stations being used as a place of safety. I am sure that there is agreement about that. As part of that process in terms of the infrastructure around making rights real in the context of this particular bill, I know that there is a stakeholder delivery group that includes representatives of children's rights organisations that will look at the best practice approaches and to help us to achieve what we all achieve. I am cognisant of what you mentioned, article 37, in terms of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, where, if I recall rightly, it talks about the detention of a child as to be the last resort and for the shortest appropriate period. My recollection of the particular section of the bill that the member is referring to is talking about thresholds around should it be necessary, an important word, to take a child to a place of safety to protect any other person from an immediate risk of significant harm and that period of removal to a place of safety should be no longer than 24 hours. I am highlighting those phrases about necessary, immediate risk, significant harm and no longer than 24 hours because those are the phrases that committee will have to be testing, that the minister will have to be responding to in the context of, we hope, very rare circumstances where events that have the potential to cause significant harm and there are issues about remote communities and out-of-hours. I am not saying issues around remote communities and out-of-hours necessarily means a particular course of action or a particular articulation of rights in the bill. I suppose just what I am trying to flesh out is that, given what the UNCR says, given what the current bill says, which is similar to what is currently in the Children's Here in Scotland act, committee is really going to have to test those things robustly and how would those scenarios be avoided in practice and what legislative scope or framing is or isn't required. I apologise for the length of that. No, not at all. Forgive me, I wasn't asking you to speak specifically to that issue. It was more the general theme where we are talking about having rights champions on every committee in this Parliament who are trained and understand the rights landscape. Is there a similar view that there should be something similar within the silos of government so that directorates have people within them who forensically understand the rights landscape around all the legislation that might come through or from their particular directorate to inform that so that there might not be a clash or something that we wouldn't have to then try and amend somewhere down the track? I apologise for the length of that answer. I was trying not to go into the issues that you will focus on in due course, but I tried to talk about that in a real way. I suppose to give some assurance committee that we don't just produce things out of thin air that, for this bill and indeed for other bills, these are matters that are actively considered. People might not appreciate the level of consideration or the conclusions, but that's a different matter. My experience of bill teams is that they are very robust and thorough. My experience of Scottish Government lawyers and the Scottish Government legal department is that they are very well versed in human rights and are often a prompt or a check and a resource for ministers. That's just my experience over a number of years over a number of bills. I think that the issue about rights literacy, though, isn't just one for bill teams and legal teams. You have to ensure the capacity of the organisation of a whole. While I can point to the things that Government is doing with civil servants and how we operate as ministers, that would point to a good understanding. There is a high proportion of civil servants that are involved in equality impact assessments, for example. I think that it is an area that you cannot be complacent about, because it is often an area that is not black or white. It requires difficult choices. I know that your committee has touched on competing rights and competing obligations. We cannot be complacent about rights literacy and that it is something that we have to have an enduring commitment to in terms of increasing understanding of the capacity that we have within the Government. We have a financial memorandum and a policy memorandum that comes along with a bill. Would you be supportive of an equality in human rights impact assessment coming along with a bill? It is not just an assessment of compliance but an assessment of the opportunities contained in that bill to further advance rights under a human rights umbrella. I am certainly open to suggestions that will help in promoting a culture that can do and that this is something that we embrace and feel positive about. It gets us away from that tick box exercise and here is another forum to fill out here are some more questions to answer. We want to be in this work in terms of mainstreaming a human rights approach. We want folk to be really positive, enthusiastic about it and to implement it with joy in their hearts. I suppose that that gets to how best to do that. I can see a logic for a framework that is helpful. I would have a wee bit of caution about something else that is seen as a layer of bureaucracy. Frameworks are positive. Things that can empower staff to inject their thinking and their talents into policy memorandums and financial memorandums about how we make human rights in Scotland are very open to. I always have a bit of caution about whether we are adding to layers of bureaucracy and mechanisms that might not produce outcomes at the end of the day. I suppose that it goes back to the question of how we would do that and the quality of it as well. I have a couple of brief follow-on questions by my two colleagues before I ask my substantive question. Following on from Alex Cole-Hamilton's line of questioning, I would be interested in your view on whether or not, without full incorporation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, can we really, truly protect children's rights? I am not someone who is hostile to the debate around incorporation. I hope that you would recognise that that applies across Government, because there are two very important programme for government commitments. One is the establishment of the First Minister's advisory group on human rights. While the genesis of that is the context of Brexit and how we do not ensure in the context of whatever happens in Scotland that we are not stepping back from rights, we are not seeing that regression. The other part of Professor Miller's work is to look at the issue of incorporation in the context of how we give further and better effect to make rights real in Scotland. That ties in with another programme for government commitment, which was the audit of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in terms of our policy around supporting children and families. That audit is under way, and the work around that audit includes the issue of incorporation. It is an area that the First Minister has spoken extensively about. We are actively engaging in that debate about incorporation. I have two views about that. I do not think that nothing can be achieved without incorporation. I think that that is an over simplification. The other thing that I am acutely conscious of is that incorporation is not necessarily a silver bullet. It is not necessarily a standalone solution. We will go back time and time again. The debate is more about how we implement and how incorporation has a meaningful impact. I am conscious that the terminology around incorporation has become a shorthand for what is often a complex implementation challenge. I am not saying that we should shy away from complex challenges. I think that it is right to recognise where challenges are complex. We are having a debate about how. We are open to expert advice and the views of Civic Scotland about the benefits of incorporation and some of the challenges around it. The question is whether incorporation in itself delivers accessibility and whether it delivers legal certainty for duty bearers and right holders. It is an area that we are actively engaged in. When you talk about the on-going work and the audits that are being carried out, can you share with the committee any timescales for the completion of those pieces of work, or would you be able to share with the committee in the future? The First Minister's advisory group is planning to report in December. That is no work that is proceeding with a pace. The UNCRC audit is currently on-going, and I will have to double-check that with education colleagues. We would be expecting something either later this year or next year, but I will double-check that. That would be helpful. When you were making your opening remarks, you spoke about the active participation of rights hold, and it comes back to the question that Gail Ross asked you about how we make human rights real and tangible for everyone. I wonder if you think that there is more of a role that schools can play in that. I know that schools do a lot of really good work, but as we take forward the whole dialogue around human rights and the impact that it has on everyone, it is almost as if there is a dual role. There is a role for stakeholders to play in almost doing the top-down, but there is also a role for schools to do the bottom-up, because everyone is not going to become literate and aware of their human rights overnight. It could take a number of years, and if we embed it properly in the curriculum, that will filter through. We will have a generation that will have a full understanding of what their rights are. Do you think that there is more of a role that education could play? I think that there is more of a role for everyone, and I am sure that there is more of a role for education. I suppose that, when looking at the bigger picture, the shining examples of good practice are within the education system. The points that you were raising about other areas of society are probably in more need of attention. I know that women's organisations do a lot to inform the nation as a whole, but also the women that they are working with and supporting as individuals and other community groups about the rights that women have in terms of international treaty obligations. However, the discourse about how all of that translates into policy and practice and many of the debates that we have around end-in-violence against women and girls are often rooted in human rights. However, there are other groups of people and other communities that I fear are less aware of the rights. I know that you and I have often discussed gypsy travellers, so there are particular groups that are disenfranchised and discriminated against who are far less aware of the rights. I am really hopeful and encouraged. We should not take our foot off the gas in terms of what is happening in education or the work that we are doing to end violence against women and girls, but there are other particular communities that we have a lot more work to do to ensure that they know what their rights are. Just as an aside, I recently increased the funding to an organisation, the Roman of Lav, which we currently fund so that they could do some more outreach work with interpreters, and that was about reaching out to the Roma community, where there were issues about immigration services in terms of compliance and not using interpreters. That was quite a practical example of where we, with a modest amount of funding, could enable a local organisation on the ground to do something very practical to provide service to inform people of their rights. The question that I have asked of every panel when you touched on it in a previous answer was how do we balance competing rights? How do we navigate our way through the rights of individuals? How do we prioritise one right over another? That is where dialogue, exploration and whether we are talking about incorporation, whether we are talking about, as we were earlier, specific sections in a particular bill. That is actually about how we ensure that rights are real. If everybody has equal rights, and we do not have a hierarchy of rights, we are then having to make judgments that may well be challenged. We will be having to rely on principles around things like risk, about what is proportionate. Some of that is common sense, and some of that is what we do in everyday life as well. There can be competing issues, such as the rights of a child versus the rights of parents, but the human rights approach encourages not to look at one issue versus the other. It is requiring us to unpick the issues about what is fair and what is proportionate, recognising that everybody has a stake, and then how we deliver that in practice. I ask if you can give committee any update on the three-year programme that the First Minister announced last year as part of the programme for government on raising awareness of children's rights. I not only started at the beginning of this year and we are not long into the year, but if you could give us any update or if you could perhaps write to the committee and give a report on that. I know that that work has commenced, but I would rather provide committee more accurate information from other portfolio colleagues who would be able to give you a better structure and a better timeline. That is very helpful, thank you. Thanks very much. I have a quick supplementary from Gail, if you want to jump in very quickly with that one and then I can go film. We heard evidence from the ombudsman in Northern Ireland and she has quite a lot of judicial powers with regards to human rights. Also, there was evidence that there is a thought, an opinion that the Scottish Human Rights Commission should also be given some more powers. What are your opinions on this, if you have any at all? I am conscious that I always have opinions, but I am also conscious that I am here to do represent the Government and that, although there is always a need for collaboration and a shared understanding, I am conscious that there are different spheres of responsibility for Government and from Parliament and to that of our national human rights institutions. Should the powers of the Scottish Human Rights Commission and the powers of ombudsmen or women should be given, that is rightly an issue for Parliament, as opposed to me and my capacity as a Government minister given an opinion. We have layers of responsibilities and spheres and it is about checks and balances. I am not trying to duck the issue, but I genuinely think that that is a matter that is appropriate for Parliament, as opposed to me. You mentioned some of the ongoing work of Professor Allan Miller, who we had in last week for a very detailed session. He was talking about his work leading up the advisory group. How do you think that Brexit impacts human rights, especially in your answer to EU nationals and migrant workers? I always feel very positive and upbeat when I come to committee to talk about human rights and then we are asked about Brexit. I have that sense of doom and depression. There is a journey that no one really knows the outcome of. Members will be as aware as I am that the UK withdrawal bill is currently with the House of Lords. I was pleased to see that the issue of retaining the EU charter of fundamental rights as a part of domestic law, that there were successful amendments in the laws that recognised that important link. That is an important matter, not just from the Scottish Government's perspective, but from other stakeholders, as well as removing the EU charter of fundamental rights as part of our domestic law. I think that one of your witnesses has described it as a loss of a security blanket. It is accurate. I think that that is where the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and other stakeholders such as Amnesty have done a really good job in robustly explaining that, yes, we have human rights legislation, yes, we have the Equalities Act, but that is not the same as the EU charter on fundamental rights. My understanding of the fundamental charter is that it goes further than the European Convention on Human Rights in that it gives better effect to economic, social and cultural rights. It gives a better articulation and that it is actually rooted in some of the real issues around health, housing and employment. It would be a real loss for not to have the EU fundamental charter as part of our domestic law and that would be a step backwards. You will have heard that from countless witnesses. We are now in a situation in which the UK Government's bills with the lords have been successful amendments to retain the link between domestic law and the charter of fundamental rights. We will enter Westminster Parliance as a period of ping-pong where we expect the bill to go back and forth. That creates uncertainty and a risk over a longer period of time. I would like to ask your advice. I would like to take the question on to a wider issue of prejudice, but I do not know what we are like for time. Let me get Annie in first and then I can come back to you. We are quickly running out of time and we will get a big panel for the second session. I would quite like to dedicate enough time to that one. I have just got a couple of bits probably falling on from Mary's question and the balance of the core fundamental rights and other rights. You spoke in your opening statement about the effect of human rights training and that human rights was at the core of everyone's job in government. As a committee, if we are going to be looking at human rights as a whole to make sure that we are the duty bearers and we are leaders in it, what is the proposal from the Scottish Government to make sure that every parliamentarian has human rights at its core? We are human rights experts, but we want to make sure that we are delivering a human rights approach across whatever we do. The Government's responsibility in terms of training and awareness and integration into day-to-day practice would be to enable that within the civil service workforce and ministers. I do not think that it is appropriate for a Government minister for me to be profring on opinions about what training parliamentarians should be going through, given that it is the job of parliamentarians to be scrutinising me. It would be a bit cheeky for a Government minister to be saying what training or opportunities parliamentarians have or should undertake. I think that the general point about more awareness-raising training—I am not a vers to train it. I think that how it is done is really important. Again, it has to be done in a way that is about empowering people. It has to be done in a way that is about how it can be applied in practice, that is integral to everything that we do. Again, training can be provided in a way that bolsters silos. What we are trying to do is to get a real cross-portfolio integrated joint work and articulation and delivery of human rights. I think that how training supports that is very important. The other bit that I was going to say is that we have spoken in the during and where evidence sessions about each committee having a human rights rapporteur attached to it, which I think that most of the people who have had evidence from think that it is a good idea. However, we also spoke with some local councils as well who have got equality officers, but the human rights bit is well adding on to that. I think that it is important that we split human rights and equality because, for me, I see it as integral but separate as well. We know that the equality impacts assessment statements that we have heard from a councillor as well saying that they are tick box exercise at times. How do we make sure that each committee and each local authority actually embeds human rights at its core? Again, I am not sure that it is for our Government Minister to be telling committees how to do their business. I can imagine that there would be a number of committee conveners that would get a bit rightly so. I rate about that. Even just the local authority side of it then? I think that in terms of operationalising human rights from a Scottish Government point of view public sector, including our partners in local government, the challenge here is how we get away from a tick box mentality. I understand and I can see the added value of people and specialist roles, but it is whether the proliferation of specialist roles—either attached to committee or attached ability or attached to portfolios or departments in health or local government—helps to mainstream when we are trying to get across. Nobody can opt out of that. That is everybody's job. Although I think that there is a role for people with that specialist input to help mainstream, I think that the bigger prize is a bigger in everybody to take that to their hearts and put it in any practice, rather than a proliferation of specific roles and specific assessment forums. However, I think that there is a balance somewhere. It is whether you can use specialisms to mainstream and in green. I hope that is helpful. Fultons just informed me that he is going to take his question up with the next panel, because it might be a more appropriate place. That ends our direct questions to you today, cabinet secretary. However, there are a couple of areas that we might not get into deeply enough, so we will fire off a wee letter to you to get some of that more detail. If the information that you said you would write to us about earlier could be provided in the same way, that would be really helpful indeed. I give our grateful thanks from the committee this morning for your attendance and for the continuing correspondence that we will have on this inquiry. It is going to run for a few weeks, because we are hoping to hear from some work that is being done at the UN, so we are waiting for that to be published. We will certainly come back to you at the end of the process with the report and, hopefully, some communications and how we can move some of the recommendations forward. Thank you so much, cabinet secretary. I will go to the suspend committee for five quick minutes to allow the table to be set up for the round table and back in your seats, please. Good morning, and welcome back to the Equality and Human Rights Committee to the second panel this morning on our continuing inquiry on human rights and the Scottish Parliament. It is a real joy this morning to have a table full of young people. It makes us feel young as well, so thanks for bringing your youth into the room. With us this morning—I am just going to go very, very quick round the table with us this morning—we have Claudia MacDonald, who is the director of Influencing, and we have Callum Lynch, Public Affairs Ambassador from Who Cares Scotland. Sana Aziz, MSYP, who is the convener of my sister committee, the Equality and Human Rights Committee. I am shadowing Sana today to make sure that I know how to do it right. Laura Pasternak, who is the Public Affairs Officer at the Scottish Youth Parliament. Juliet Harris, who is the director of Together, Scottish Alliance for Children and Rights, with Dylan, who is a member of the Children's Parliament, and Hannah, who is a member of the Children's Parliament. She will be supported today by Chelsea Stinson, Children's Voices Programme Manager at the Children's Parliament, and Lucinda Rivers, who is the head of UNICEF UK in Scotland. We know all about rights-respecting schools, and we will be keen to hear more about that this morning. With us this morning, we have Rama Mika Mariam, who is supported today by Khalida Noon, who is the service co-ordinator for heritage and inclusion at Action for Scotland. Thank you so much for coming to the committee this morning, and thank you for the written evidence that we have received from the organisations that are supporting you all here today. It has been very, very helpful. You will have seen the earlier panel with the Cabinet Secretary at that side of the table, and you realise that this is a very different set-up, because this is what we call a round table, because we get everybody around the table and you all get your tuppans worth in, and we are very keen to hear that this morning. The rules of this one is that you catch my eye and I have a wee list here, and I make sure everybody who wants and gets in, and hopefully, if you are a wee bit shy, we can make some space for you to get in and say what you have got to say as well. However, please don't feel shy, don't feel intimidated. We are here to listen to you today, and we are very keen to hear what you have got to say. If you were here for the first session, you would have heard the first question, and that is how we are going to open, just to give you that bit of familiarity. I am going to go straight to Gail Ross. Thank you, convener. Good morning, everyone, and thanks very much for coming along. It is really important that we hear from you today. I am going to start off the same way as we started off the first panel. Obviously, as young people, you are very aware of what your rights are, but how do you think that we, as a committee and the Scottish Parliament, can help you to show leadership in your communities and across wider society to make people understand what their rights are? Sanna, do you want to come in first, given the work that your committee and the youth Parliament are doing around the agenda? Sure. We do a lot of consultations with our young people and our constituencies. A way to do that is to go into schools and talk to them and make them aware. I help my local council with rights-respecting schools, because we are trying to get that everywhere. That is how we are mainly taking charge in spreading awareness of young people's rights. As the youth Parliament, we do consultations and we bring it up and we have motions when it comes to our settings. Those are an actual motion path. The Scottish Youth Parliament believes that young people should be taught about and empowered to stand up for their human rights through personal, social and health education, PSHE, or its equivalent in the curriculum. That was a joint motion by our committee on human rights, and it was passed with a 92 per cent agreement with our young people. We were very passionate about the subject and with our policy that has been passed. We are now going to advocate it with any decision makers we meet. We are going to say that this is our policy and that this is what we want to happen in our schools. That is based on what we do. Hannah, Dylan, would you like to tell us a bit about the work that you are doing with the children's Parliament? What we have been doing recently is doing multiple workshops across Scotland in different schools just to inform them about what it means to be a children's human rights defender, which is a child who is willing to stand up for not only themselves but other children's rights. Dylan, do you think, given Gale's question of how we as a committee can make recommendations to make rights real in your world, in your school, in your communities and in the things that you do, that that is a good thing? Or do you think that you have some ideas that we can use? No, it is definitely a great thing that we should definitely implement into near enough every school, if not every school across the UK and Scotland. Thank you very much. Dylan, do you want to tell us a wee bit about the work that you are doing in schools in Edinburgh and maybe bring in some of the young people that you are with today to explain to us a wee bit about what you are doing, but how it relates to Gale's question and how we can make rights real? For action for children, we develop a heritage conclusion in secondary schools in Edinburgh to make sure that we hear the voices and we work with minority ethnic young people, because often they get excluded and the lack of awareness around their cultural barriers and issues are highlighted within the curriculum. We develop programmes that enable them to be proud of themselves, be proud of their identity and their heritage and self-worth, and that gives that confidence. When we first meet young people, we start by getting to know them and building trust. For action for children, we believe that this is the way of exploring their heritage and inclusion. This is the start of them understanding their rights. I have a few of our young people who participated two years ago. We have come at the end of it and we deliver to Duke of Edinburgh throughout. We are the first, and this is the first sort of than Duke of Edinburgh, the biggest, largest participation of ethnic minority young women in Edinburgh than the whole of Scotland. We have had to adapt the award to meet the needs of these young people, because often the award is... It did not before I used to enable some of our young people with regards to staying over at night time, so we have adapted the award to make sure that these young people can get their bronze, silver and gold Duke of Edinburgh. We are just about to host a celebration event, given 50 young minority ethnic women the Duke of Edinburgh award. The girls have been working on some of the things that they want to talk about, which the project perhaps gave them. Sharing good practice will help to share good practice for other schools to be aware that there are pockets of communities that are not engaged in anything. We have to reach them and it is through education in school that we can do that. Rama, do you want to say a little bit first about what the project has done for you? I started off not knowing my rights in school, and I did not know who to turn to, because many of the teachers at my school were not really aware of the things I was going through with the racism, and someone told me that I could not stay on at school. I did not have the ability to do well, but when I joined the group I found Caledale, who I could speak to, I knew my rights and I knew that I wanted to stay on. Now I am doing four hires, and if it was not for this project I would not have the confidence to be here to speak to all of you and have the opportunities that I do right now, like taking part in the chat remark and being able to speak to young people next year to help them, because if it was not for the project I would not have had the help I did. Maryam, do you want to say a little bit about what maybe a little bit of discrimination you felt with being a young Muslim woman and how you feel that the schools maybe do not understand who you are and the challenges that you face? Well, I think that a lot of it is just kind of always feeling like you are excluded and you do not always feel included and that you cannot be who you are. Creating the heritage project was also very important because it allows you to know who you are and express yourself, which is something that you cannot always do at school, because people do not always understand. So did you feel that when you first started the group it was more of a safe space, and how do you think the other participants felt? I think at first I was not quite sure what to expect from it and I think a lot of the other pupils felt the same way too, but then after we were in the group it became sort of a safe place for us to sort of just express our feelings and our opinions. Rama, I will go to you again. You went to school, you faced some discrimination in school and sometimes I know that you felt angry and sometimes you would lash out. How did that affect you in school and what teachers thought of you? Well, being racially discriminated happened so many times in school that complaining to teachers became almost like that. I felt like it would annoy them because it happened so many times and it got me angry and frustrated because it was known to speak to, but when I joined a project I calmed down a bit and I knew that my studying was more important and I could speak to Caledah and speak to the other members of the project as well because they were going through similar things. I got to stay on at school because I was getting told that I couldn't stay on but then I didn't have a potential, but now I'm doing for hires. Mika, what do you think about discrimination outside school? How do you feel when you recently had a few issues with you and your friends coming together and going to places? What happens and how does that make you feel? Basically it doesn't really feel that you're really included with other people and the outside world if people just don't want to speak to you in a certain way or are rude or just because I'm in a group with people that have a darker colour of skin or anything like that, it just makes you, it doesn't really feel, don't feel confident within yourself and going out in public with your friends, like also being teenagers, should hang about, should just be something fun, something natural to do and when other people that work in different places just exclude you or try not to socialise directly to us, it just doesn't, it doesn't really boost your confidence at all and I'm lucky to have this project to talk about it and to really feel good about myself and feel good about the people around me that are maybe going for the same things. Thanks very much. Callum, who cares young persons ambassador? We've seen some of the work that you have done in highlighting the work that you do with young people and you've heard some of the stories this morning of how young people feel and the opportunities that they're taking and the organisations that they're working with and the difference that they'll make and how that'll inform the work that we need to do to make recommendations to Government. Can you tell us a bit about what you do and maybe give us some insight in answer to Gail's question about how we can maybe change some of the procedures here or build more into the procedures in order to do things a bit better? Well I guess in terms of what I've been doing, is it okay to take a minute to give some context as to why this is really important to be here. I think of some of the members, look on your desk there's this image of me when I was 12 years old, I was very petite, very fragile and I'm a care experienced young person which means I've had experience of the care system and I feel that after assessing myself in my life human rights and children's rights is not something that's always been fulfilled not only prior to going into care but also during care and I guess to an extent now. So as a child I was a victim of extreme violence, abuse and neglect and my home was not a safe place, there was drugs and alcohol misuse around me consistently and that led to me at the age of 10 taking drugs. The fridge was bare and me and my siblings had to steal for food so my initial start to life was rough and I would guess my parent wasn't adhering to a lot of my rights but through the issues that were happening in my home my behaviour became difficult and challenging which then led to attention seeking behaviour within school which then led to me being removed from school and instead of teachers listening to my cries for help I was removed. So it took for me at the age of 11 to have a breakdown to a social worker for me to be placed into care and I thought that being placed into care I would be safe but this was not the case. So as you look at that image of that young boy when I was in care it was an environment where restraining a child was occurring daily and this is the same for a lot of young people and by restraining I mean physically holding and pinning a child down and I have had first hand experience of this from younger than I was in this image so this was people who I thought loved me who people who I thought that I held a relationship with and it wasn't nurturing but it was actually scarring and now that I reflect back I know that this didn't happen to my friends or my peers and I know that their parents would not have called the police for them bringing a mattress into the hallway and jumping on it and this happened to me and it happened to so many other young people where we were handcuffed for carrying on and put into the back of police fans so I think I'm gracious and thankful that I'm here and able to share this with you because human rights and child rights is something so important and I can be an ambassador for young people who are care experienced and say that it is something that's crucial for us to know a lot more about and have access to learn a lot more about this. In terms of how we do it there's ways obviously we do it through corporate parent where the Government has a responsibility to scrutinise them on their duties which we feel is super important to let care experienced young people know their rights through that process but I think one of the other really amazing things that Hooker Scotland has done for the past 40 years is that we have provided independent advocacy for young people in care and we're the only people that do it currently nationally for specifically care experienced and this is relationship based it's child centre that's one to one it's built on a foundation of trust and it's a complete offer you opt into it and I believe that had that always been available to me whilst I was on the edge of care that would have been something that would have been so beneficial prior than going straight into a children's hearing system. I guess reflecting on my experience having an advocate was incredibly important to allow me to understand and access my rights. My advocate had a lot of uniqueness, nerve and talent. He was independent from the system which again I can't reiterate how important that is because as a child who you're presented with so many professionals in your life who always remind you that they adhere to the rules from above it was so important to have someone who was there who was able to contest against what other people wanted to speak for me and allow me to understand my rights to then exercise them and I think as any child going through a very complex and a very legal system such as the care system you ricochet a lot through it and that's how you come to the end and that is why the outcomes are quite poor. So having an advocate and so important to reiterate how important it is for trust and relationship based and child centred approach to that is fundamentally the only way to do that in a really effective way and that is fundamentally what we do and I believe that a lot of the advocates not to PR but a lot of the advocates we have are incredible at doing that so that's a way that I have access my rights and a lot of care experienced young people do but I think it's so important to improve that and give a lot more young people access and resource to that. Okay, thanks very much. Callum, Hannah I'm conscious that you're the only young person that's not managed to speak yet and before I bring the adults in I'd quite like to hear from you if that's okay and I'm just thinking about what Callum just said about ensuring and realising and seeing people's rights maybe if you can tell us a wee bit about the work that you've done at the UN on raising these issues there. Well the first time we went to the UN we took a mural and we had worked on this meal for a week and basically we took ideas from children that go to our schools and we took it to the UN to show them what children's views are on their community and second time we are planning, well the second time we went this year, March, I mean a boy called Cameron Mount and MCP and we were planning for the DGD general day of discussion in September this year and leading up to that we're doing workshops in children's schools again to look at their views and what rights are most important to them and so far I've realised that it's more the right for privacy and the right to be educated. Thank you very much. Hannah Lucinda. I want to come to you, Nix, because in relation to Gail's question as well because it's a pertinent question. We've heard from groups of young people this morning so we've heard from the young women and the discrimination and the issues that they are facing now and how they've used that organisation in order to realise our rights. We've heard from Calum who said that if he had some of this at an earlier stage he might have a different outcome but I know that for your strength of character Calum you've had a very positive outcome and should be proud of that as well and we've heard from Dylan and Hannah and the work that they are doing in the UN and from Sana and the work that the youth parliament is doing. Now we've visited a couple of schools who are UNS school rights respecting schools and we have seen first hand as a committee the absolute joy in that and the work that's being done so I wonder if in relation to answer in Gail's question about how we make rights real can you tell us how you're doing that in schools. Yes absolutely well thank you very much for being with the opportunity and I'd like to congratulate all the young people who are here today you're all brilliant I think it's great that we have heard your voices so UNICEF has got UNICEF we have an office here in Scotland and we have the mandate to uphold from the United Nations General Assembly to uphold the UNCRC the right convention of the rights of the child and here in Scotland we do it in a number of ways and you've talked about the rights respecting schools which I would echo what you say they're amazing school they're amazing and the children and young people who are in those schools have a lot of self-belief because I think because they know what their rights are they have great relationships with their teachers and they have the desire to be the best they can and all of that I think is about the way children's rights are embedded in the schools so we have over 50% of all schools in Scotland of rights respecting we have an aim by 2021 to have 75% so we're working very hard on that so we but we do a number of other programmes as well to ensure that to embed the UNCRC as much as possible for children so we work in every maternity unit in Scotland to ensure that mothers and babies have the best start up in life and we also are doing a child friendly child friendly city programme one of the first cities in the UK is in Aberdeen so the idea of that is to embed children's rights throughout the services for children so whether that's looked after children it's it will cross all services for children so that is ensuring that professionals working with children are taking a rights-based approach to the work that they do and I think I'd echo what the some of the questions that we talked about before I mean any engagement with children has got to be really mean and young people has got to be completely meaningful we need to ensure that these messages are getting out to children that they understand young people and they understand what their rights are and I think the rights respecting schools programme is a is a very very good way of delivering those those messages so okay thank you very much Lucinda Juliet is a campaign and organization who have been campaigning in the corporation of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child for such a long time you this will all be very very familiar to you and I suppose what we're looking for as a committee is some ideas on how we can advance that how we can embed it how we can mainstream it all all the words that they use to make sure that we make rights real in relation to Gail's question I wonder if you've got any views on that yes definitely I thought you would I think first of all I'd like to congratulate the committee on having such a vibrant round table it's brilliant to see so many of together's members so many children and young people so many of our policy support people sitting around the table for this discussion and it's brilliant to see this at the heart of the Scottish Parliament but what I'd also like to say is it's really important that the Scottish Parliament gets out into the spaces where children and young people feel safe secure and able to talk about their rights because this is quite an intimidating environment I find it scary and it's very difficult to kind of present a coherent message to MSPs and say everything that you want to say and so the first point I think I'd bring to not just this committee but all MSPs is remember that children and young people are disenfranchised they're under the age of 16 they can't vote for you they can't let you know your their views and so that places even more of an obligation on MSPs to actually get out there into the community and talk to children and young people find out about these experiences this shouldn't be a one-off event where we tell you about kind of what the lived experience of children and young people's rights are in Scotland this should be a recurring thing where MSPs go out to their constituency don't just speak to parents speak to children and young people in places they feel safe secure and able to tell you what's going on in their lives I think they're kind of two key points that I'd like to raise with the committee the first one is around incorporation of the UNCRC and I know the cabinet secretary said in the previous evidence session that is very complicated it's not complicated it's really easy we just need the parliament to really support a bill that places our obligations we have them there in international law the UK has signed up to the UNCRC we've said that we're going to take forward all the provisions of the UNCRC and so all we need is for the parliament to actually bring that international commitment into domestic law it shouldn't be complicated because we're bound by it and so we just need to explore how we do it and it's quite a simple process so the number one thing is incorporate the UNCRC and this is where I would agree with the cabinet secretary it's certainly not a silver bullet it's not going to mean that every child's right across Scotland is held up all the time but it is going to mean that the impact assessments that are done to ensure that bills comply with children's rights are done properly it is going to make sure that there's that level of scrutiny and I think really importantly it's also going to let children and young people know that Scotland is committed to them the parliament is committed to them and that these rights aren't just abstract concepts that come from the UN but these are what really we all want them to have in terms of their lived experience so that's the first point the second point is something that we raised in our submission to you which is around an intergroup on children young people's rights and I think that's important because children's rights aren't just something that should be looked at by the Equalities and Human Rights Committee or the Education Committee it needs to be looked at in all areas across justice transport homelessness the whole lot and so to do that we need to have champions in every single committee and we need these champions to really speak out for and with children and young people and involve them in the work of the parliament and so if there's going to be something tangible that comes out of this inquiry I think it really would be brilliant if it was a recommendation to have this intergroup on children and young people's rights and have real champions for children and young people's rights in all committees who push the importance of MSPs going out and speaking to their children and young people in their constituencies it's something that is in place in the european parliaments that's a model that's worth looking at and worth considering in terms of your work yeah thanks very much julie a lot of points that you've touched on there that I think is some of the evidence that we've been hearing it going along can I reassure you that the committee's been going out to different events and we've tried to do them north southeast west so we've had one in Leith, we've had one in Highland and this week coming on Friday and Monday we've got one in Clydebank and one in Gallichields to just make sure we got right down into the the borders on Monday so please be reassured that we are trying to get out and talked as many people as we can and last week I two weeks ago I attended a visit with the cabinet secretary which just happened to be in my constituency of a gypsy traveller education project which was superb because the young people ran it and they just got her in and they sat her down and they told her how it was and then they ended up with saying how are you going to make a difference so which was very good because when you get in a room of young people it's like why or how and when are you going to do it when are you going to fix it which is always very important for us so please be reassured that some of that works going on but notwithstanding that we take on board what you say. The european parent models think is something that we'll have a wee look at as well. I want to take sort of an open out to Mary's question now because Mary's got another aspect of it and I think Mary it might be helpful for you to direct your question. Well, I have been asking the same question in all the evidence sessions around balance of rights and I'd still be interested in the views particularly from who cares about the rights of care experienced children because I think they are completely disadvantaged and completely removed from the whole rights agenda by the very nature of them being care experienced and I'd be interested in the views from the rest of the particularly the older people in the room but the question I would also like to pose and it's more for the young people that are sitting round the table with us today you all have heard that the previous evidence session and the questions that we asked about how we make rights relevant and what this Parliament does to raise the profile of rights and how we take rights into account when we're doing any piece of working here but if the cabinet secretary was still here and you had the opportunity to ask her a question and this is specifically for the young people whether it's Dylan and Hannah from schools or from the youth Parliament or Calum if you could ask her a question what would that question be and it could be around you should be doing this in schools or the Scottish youth Parliament want you to do this or you should be doing this for care experienced children what would that question be? Who's first up? If you don't volunteer I'll just pick you out it's a hard one Rama or Mika Mariam if something if you the cabinet secretary here and you wanted to ask her a question what would it be? Maybe then I could revert back to my first question let the young people think about the answer yeah okay think about the answer and I'll go back to the question about balance and rights maybe Claudia you'd maybe want to give us a bit of an answer to that one first so first of all I'd like to say thank you for welcoming Calum and I to what we believe is possibly the most important issue in relation to our care experienced members I also want to echo unsurprisingly what our allies and friends around the table have already said in relation to rights I think Mary you're right there is a peculiar experience which care experienced children and young people face when they have sort of virtue to state interventions to care and protect for them I think first of all I would like to say that care experienced people are no different from children and young people across all of Scotland they have dreams they have aspirations they have talents they have ability and they have capability they have grit they have determination they have hope and they have lives that they want to lead out successfully. As an organisation our sole mission is to see a Scotland and actually to go beyond that to see a UK to see a Europe to see an international community where care experienced people every single day experience love equality and respect and that's why the framing of human rights is so important to us human rights are children's rights and children's rights are human rights and I think it's important for me to maybe point now what is probably obvious but to reiterate that the frame through which we as a this Scottish Parliament was set up about accountability power sharing equal opportunities is all around the lens of participation family life freedom from degrading treatment education health and inadequate standard of living most recently in the Scottish Parliament particularly with the creation of the social security system I'm hearing members around this table share consensus on how new laws that are progressive and protective should be put into Scottish society. Words like dignity like citizenship like respect understanding and equality are very encouraging to hear members around this table talk about so actively and that is probably what I believe are the four fundamental things through which we should always be assessing the standards of childhood for our care experienced people you're right though Mary it is a complex system and it's one which is there to protect and to keep children safe we know that care experienced people are subject to a lot of adults in their life and by virtue of that there's a power imbalance and adults that are appointed to look after children are there because children are needing protection they've come from a family life which has not been to the standard or expectation that we would expect for for our own children and for me there's two main themes through which the balance of rights if you like should be should be assessed and it shows you then relation to protection and participation when I say protection we know that children because of a care experience because of their care label and because of their care identity they face stigma they face harassment they face prejudice and they face a high level of difference compared to non-care experience counterparts we believe that there needs to be more done to protect the childhoods the day-to-day experience of our children and young people the impact Mary as you have said quite rightfully of rights being restricted rights being reduced or rights disappearing altogether from those childhoods are lifelong they are lifelong and they will last in the legacy of adults that have care experience in relation to the umbrella theme of participation it's fundamental that care experienced children and young people feel that they are able to say what they think now if you imagine how difficult that might be when you are asked to talk to someone who is effectively a stranger to you who isn't in front of you because of blood or because of family connection who is appointed by a care and protection system and imagine doing that over and over and over again imagine what it feels like to feel that your voices may be not being heard by those people that you know are there to care and protect to protect you so we believe that active participation understanding how your voice can be used how it should be heard and what redress you have when it's not being heard is absolutely vital to care experience children and young people in our country feeling that they are part of their lives so we would recommend that those two lenses of protection and participation is how we assess the standard of childhoods for care experienced people in Scotland and as Callum has already highlighted we believe that there needs to be far more conscious commitment from the Scottish Parliament to enhance a level of independent support through advocacy that care experienced people have access to those advocates are there to enable care experienced young people to say something out loud that otherwise they might not be able to say because of what I've already highlighted can be the day-to-day situation for a child or a young person and I guess fundamentally we want to also see a Scotland it's the best place to grow up but especially for children in care especially for our children who are subject to statutory procedures complex legal systems and a lot of adults who have power over them in their lives that's a standard for our society that we and our members want to see claudie can i just take you back to the protection and participation do you think that is something because one of the questions that we are wrestling with is that when legislation is formed here when it's drafted when it's at its earliest stages that we would look to see an equality human rights impact assessment but an opportunities assessment so not just about the impact whether it complies with current legislation but whether it has an opportunity in it to advance some rights would you suggest that protection and participation would be a means of ensuring that assessments done is that something easy answer to that is yes of course anything which enhances the consideration and compassion which is given to care experienced children young people will always be welcomed by hooker scotland i think that there's probably an additional answer to from my perspective and that's that equalities impact assessments have had a positive benefit to a range of communities within our society and right now we believe that the lens of protection which is offered through protected characteristics is something which could be extended to care experience we believe that those tangible experiences which are negative and have a lasting legacy purely because children young people have a care label we believe that there's a strong association with care experience and discrimination that has to be redressed and we would recommend that members around this table and particularly this committee look to utilise the powers that we think you have not just on public bodies through corporate parental legislation but also through the scotland act to enhance the levels of protection and participation which is offered through a protected characteristic association for care experience in scotland thanks very much clausie now going to mary's other question is dylan and hannah ready we some ideas on what you would say to the cabinet secretary if you had one question to ask her well what i've written down with help from hannah is what are you trying to do to point blank remove inequality and discrimination of lgbtq plus groups and why does this matter to the current school pupils and young people i'm thinking mary that the answers that know the answers but some of these questions would maybe form our letter to the cabinet secretary with some of these questions in it so we can get direct answers for you would that will you be happy with that because we can facilitate that um i don't know if the girl's already yet but yeah i guess just going on from mary's question i would ask for some additionality to the uncrc i think from my own experience i've experienced this stigma that's lifelong i've experienced the discrimination from being declined from flats just because i'm care experienced or being harassed in the street and weapons pulled out to me just because i was a boy who stayed in a residential home so i've experienced the stigma and the discrimination and i have multiple examples and so does the collective of the care experience but i think one of the i think one of the really key things that i would like to be included is what additionality will the cabinet secretary give in terms of creating equality and lifelong rights for young people regarding a lot of relationships we hold and i know that i'm going to use the word love it's something that's being discussed a lot just now especially in our political climate and there's a lot of talk from the first minister around it including in the review of the care system and i think that i would love to live in a world where young people have the right to feel love to be loved or the opportunity to give love it's quite a bold statement but i think that everyone around this table would agree regardless that every young person should have that right to experience that and i think that everyone around this table i don't think many people would deny a child that right i know someone who has went through a system where there's been lots of barriers and restrictions around what's allowed i completely understand that and i completely understand the ideology and the principles of protecting both people and both young people but i think that that's at a detriment to people's wellbeing which is fundamentally one of their rights i know that i've had consequential effects of not being hugged or not being told that people feel emotive towards me which has then affected me as i've got older and i think a lot of young people especially our members are speaking up and saying that this is something that's fundamentally missing so i guess that avadasca would she give additionality to legislation or legislation that may be adopted but give young people who are in state care the right to feel love to be loved or to give them the opportunity to give others love or experience it so i would love to know the response from that we'll ask the question you'll get a response and i've loved to hear your question actually because the fundamentals of any anti-discriminatory practice is that if you can find a wee bit of love in your heart for the other where the other is always denoted as a negative thing but if you can feel a wee bit of love for the other then it deals with some of the discrimination and the fear that breaks the rights in that discrimination i think that when we think about this is like human rights and as a concept everybody in the world has basic human rights when we apply this to like mazlo's hierarchy needs we have rights to housing shelter we have rights to psychological need we have psychological needs which are attachment responsibility protection care emotive size to that so why is love not included in that because i think every single parent in scotland would argue that young people should have the right to be loved and i would love to sit in a committee room with those who disagreed with that we'd love to sit in that committee room today because we i think i could safely say that we all agree so which one of the girls is going to eat mariam you're going all right okay exam today so mariam's getting exam today so she needs to see this quickly then go i don't i don't really have a question but i think there was a question that was asked like before when we were listening to the other meeting and it was how do we get to people that know nothing about their rights and i know it may seem like we're sort of repeating ourselves and saying that um you know that action for children basically like helps them and to be honest it kind of does because if they can find people that represent them like you know like us and we speak up for them then that means that we can reach them more easily and i think it's like it's sort of important to know that because a lot of like pupils who come from different backgrounds they don't they have no idea how to express themselves or their opinions especially like young women like us they might come from like certain cultures that are not really educated on that matter so i think it's important that if we were able to reach more people easily then we can reach other people that can't basically have that right to speak that's a great point yeah Sana now i know that the youth parliament has their manifesto we've met with you last week and you presented me with a manifesto and made me make commitments to it which wasn't a difficult task because i was happy to make those commitments so Sana you've obviously got a manifesto you've got a drive and you've got a campaign going do you want to tell us a wee bit about how you think that can help us inform the recommendations we need to make to government yeah um so just choosing one question is very difficult because i have multiple and there's many things that still need to be done but um a huge huge part of our manifesto is just listening to young people we are not listening to enough and and we have so many opinions and we're so diverse and we've we we think differently to different generations and i think people need to to realise that um that we we aren't um like we aren't here just for show and tell necessarily and like you can say yeah we listen to this one young person but then that's one young person my opinion is not going to be representative of all of all young person all young people in scotland um we need to actually go out and we need to listen so it's not just like we do it as MSYPs but do you guys do it as MSPs uh does she do it as a as a minister it's something that we need to look at um a good example of what syp did was our rights review that happened last month we had about was it five ministers 40 government officials and seven ministers and it was about it was a lot of MSYPs that represented like the highlands and different areas in scotland and and so on and we basically we consulted we consulted our young people and we brung up the biggest rights issue in our areas so in my area i consulted 800 young people and our biggest one was education and we said that and we had our we had our speeches and we told these government officials and we told these ministers and it's just going out there and that was arranged by us and i feel like ministers and government officials need to arrange stuff like that and have young people listening to what they want to do and then question them about it as well it can't just be a one-way street um so that's basically so listen to young people do you listen to young people is my question thanks Anna we're hearing you today Fulton i want to go to your question because you've got a wider question about discrimination and how we can tackle that it's convenient and i know that kyleeda has just left to be one of the young people in my realm so it is sort of directed at that and i'm trying to bring it into the last session but i think we just ran out of time and it's i'm actually the conveners of folk who don't know if the racial equality group here at the parliament and last night i was at the sister group cross party group which is a tackle on islamophobia and there was speakers there in that group who are launching a new book which is which is called no problem here and basically what that book is trying to address is the sort of myth if you like that that scotland doesn't have a problem with racism and prejudice the other parts of the UK or the wider international community perhaps have and the gist of the speakers without going into all the details there's lots of stats and the speakers spoke for about an hour and told but the gist of it was that there is a difference in the governments of devolved scotland in terms of policy acts of all devolved governments and the UK governments of late where maybe a lot of the UK government have brought in sort of old empire policies if you like so there was that however public opinion is broadly similar so what i was going to ask of the cabinet secretary and i wanted to put out to people was given that a lot of these studies are saying that about 30 percent of folk in scotland is an absolutely astonishing figure and hold quite significant and serious prejudices how can we make sure that human rights is upheld in that environment and i've just described and i think that there was a general consensus that the government here in scotland and the parliament as a whole actually i should say rather than just the government is very positive in that direction but public opinion is broadly similar to the rest of the UK so i was going to put that out there and also maybe in the context of Brexit as well sanna would that be something you could address and i wonder whether rama and mika would address the direct points as well so this is going to be slightly on more personal note from me because i was part of the fair future panel from young scot and we worked on the race quality framework for scotland and we basically put young persons like our recommendations to it because it was all done without consulting any young people so um i think there's a panel about 15 of us and we basically looked at it and we're like yeah this is this is we could tell it was put together by older people like it wasn't at all considering anything that a young person wanted and we looked at everything bit by bit and i was mainly at the participation and representation part because msv and we were like a huge part of what i wanted was not necessarily role models because i know how hard it is for young people and just ethnic minority people as a whole to get into politics because we just feel like we don't have a voice and a huge part like my parents they just they don't really care they're just like over the head but since i got into politics i'm like okay guys you really this this does make a fundamental difference you need to research us i'm not going to tell you what to do you go to decide yourself so i they're like i can't be asked to do research so i did the research for them and that's how i that's how my family basically make their decisions because i tell them i'm like okay this is this this is that but that was me personally um if i hadn't told them to do that they wouldn't they wouldn't care um but not everyone's going to do that not everyone's going to have an interest in politics and no one's not everyone's going to realise the effect that has on them before i study modern studies i was like oh yeah politics uh and it's not it's not it's not a thing that we consider in our day-to-day lives because we've got so many other issues like my my we've dealt with so much discrimination like my parents own a restaurant and like when we're up and going so much discrimination it's just it's unreal especially in rural areas because i'm from the borders and we're really small and i think we've got like one percent ethnic minority it's something surreal like that and we're we're a thumb but a sore thumb in in a small community so i think it's just it's intriguing their different their interests and just saying well look if you uh your voice does count you know you do have an opinion and you do have the right to be heard and that your it does make a difference it's just knowing that that you do have you do have rights and you do have the right like to express your view because a lot of us just we don't know that like we don't know that our voice is going to be heard because we're like well we're the minority everyone's going to overlook us and i think it's just about say validating us and just saying well your voice is going to be heard and we're going to take it to heart and we're going to make sure that what you're saying is considered and i think just that verification is very much needed so can i follow up i don't i think maybe rama and mika want to come in and say something i believe that there's a lack of cultural awareness in within schools like holding an assembly once a year with a clip of how racism is wrong is not very effective because that like children face racism like in schools every day and sometimes like feel like they can't even go to school because they don't want to face their bullies or they feel like they they can't speak or don't have a like a voice and i feel like groups like action for children should be placed in like every group like this heritage project that is taking place in my school gives the opportunity like gives children the opportunity to come together and speak about their problems and i feel like teachers as well should be more aware of like how their students are feeling within like schools because they just i feel like they just wash it out and not many people can speak out and it's not fair mika following up on rama sadly like discrimination ignorance is still portrayed in 2018 in our schools everyday life in public and yeah we do need people like the action for children or a project or just more awareness in general to young children and to adults so they understand teenagers more because as teenagers there's also a lot going on in our lives already with exams or school family problems and cultural background or whatever so yeah we just really need to raise awareness to people like me or people just to bring more thought and understanding to teenagers that might be going through this every single day and as rama said not just once a year in assembly sitting there just for 15 minutes talking about the situation that people have to face every single day and people are scared and people really want to speak out and really want to be heard and have a voice about these things so we really need to just bring a lot more awareness to this type of thing okay felton if you want to come back in quickly because i want to get any of your question on training to some of the organizations yeah i appreciate we're running out of time i really i think the answers were absolutely fantastic i just wondered if the people had answered think that the government's on the right track and what more it can do because some of the stats that were revealed last night at the meeting it was a for example you know a large proportion of people don't feel that you can be Scottish you can be considered Scottish unless you either have white skin colour or a Scottish accent in the stats for something thirty odd percent as i said earlier we're in that category which i just found astonishing but so i suppose it's the right to be Scottish the right to be part of this this country so i might not have time to go through a full answer but can be there through it yourself i wonder if people think the government are on the right track okay yeah i've been Scottish brought up in Edinburgh meeting new people i still get asked where are you from if i say i'm from Scotland they go or where are you actually from or you know even people getting brought up in Scotland to get asked this question just because they're not white or they don't as he said have an accent which is kind of not disturbing but it's just not nice to hear that you can't understand people that have different skin tones have different cultural backgrounds that can be from Scotland even if they're not white and i think the government just need to bring more awareness with that and to show people that there are as he said people that are different and people that are from Scotland and not just because they're white but because that's where they come from and yeah straight to the point absolutely straight to the point but thanks very much sanna like as soon as you said that in scotland she's been white like one thing popped in my mind when i was originally elected as ms yp i was over the moon excited but one comment originally got me down now i'll just use it as evidence of discrimination is that some people just said why is she ms yp because she's not truly scotish and i was born and raised in scotland and i've got a really strong national identity but like that comment initially like hit me i was just like oh and that was people in my school and people i've known and for a very long time and like i was like why why wouldn't i be scotish because of the colour of my skin like yes my parents are pakistani i like i love being like pakistani as well but i identify scotish pakistani scotland comes first because this is where i this is what i know i don't even know any other language than english so like that initial like racism which now i'm just like i i i talked to that person that said it and i said why did you say that and they said it's because it's funny and i was like but is it really um so i i talked to them now they've changed their mind they said yeah you're scotish and i'm like yeah i know um but a lot of what people do a lot of discrimination is mainly because people think it's what their friends want them to say or they think it's comedy or they think it's it's it's not going to hurt and it does hurt and it's just trying to relay that message but it's really hard to stand up and say that hurt me because people will be like oh ha so she's getting hurt by that i'm going to hurt it even more because i think it's funny again um but yeah just thought i'd bring that up thanks sanna i think it's been incredibly important to hear the voices of young people today and i know lots of members haven't taken in with their questions and we're we're right out of time is it a question on training i think maybe to the two organisations about how we do that very very quickly yeah just very quickly some of you have heard earlier um the question i put to cabinet secretary and i think the thing is there's a balance of rights so we've got co-fundamental rights and we've got others and as parliamentarians we need to make sure that we're looking at everyone's human rights would it be that every parliamentarian gets because through human rights training do we look at a rapporteur on each committee or how do we do that because for me i find it could be quite challenging i think it's it's mainly judicial stuff that goes with it but as us to be leaders we need to know what we're doing losinda do you think we need to be a right respect in parliament i do i do and we've actually talked to the deputy first minister about a nine months ago about doing child rights training and it could be similar to the work that we do in schools but i think it's absolutely i think everybody should do it absolutely i think everybody needs to be aware obviously i'm referring to children's rights but because that's what we do i i would absolutely support that i think it's something we should really focus on juliette you you're going to bring you a nix and then chael so you're getting the last word so yes i would agree i think every parliamentarian should have training on children's human rights on human rights more generally um i think there should be a special rapporteur as well and i suggest earlier about the inter-parliamentary group um i also think that um parliament needs to have more training and awareness of some of the mechanisms that are in place and so the fact that we've got the children and young people act that places the requirement to consider um on ministers to consider the UNCRC the Scottish government is now using child rights and well-being impact assessments and i think that MSPs need to have support and need to have the training to actually examine those impact assessments properly to make sure that they're being done effectively and so i think there's a whole range from the basics of children's human rights through to the international legal system but also through to what's happening domestically and how you can hold government to account okay thanks jelsie um yeah i just wanted to touch quickly on issues that were brought up earlier um about making rights real and by about rights being something for people elsewhere and that's something that we hear most often from children is that when they're taught about rights it's something that happens to children elsewhere around the world and so it's not about rights being real here in Scotland and so i think well it's important to raise understanding and awareness of rights it's also important that children here are experiencing their rights and that's something i think we can task all adults with it's our responsibility as duty bearers to make sure that children in scotland are experiencing their rights and i think as these conversations around adverse childhood experiences around the care system around discrimination take place i think we need to explicitly link those two children's rights or human rights more broadly and also around the issues of human dignity because i think that's really important a good point to finish now you would have realised that we could have sat with you for hours today to hear from you but parliamentary protocol means that i need to finish this committee i should have finished it a minute ago but you know we need to we need to to hear from everyone this morning if you go away and you feel you've not been able to tell us something that you wanted to tell us please through the people that are supporting you that tell us because as i said earlier this commit this inquiry is running for another few weeks and there's much information as we can put in that in order to make our recommendations to government and the parliament and how we move the whole you know the scotland parliament being that human rights guarantor not just for us but for everybody including young people is incredibly important so your evidence to that is incredibly important our very deep grateful thanks to you all today for your evidence i think you've all done absolutely brilliantly you've told us exactly what we need to hear and we've heard it and we hope we will reflect that in our report but you can come back and tell us if we haven't because we will not be leaving this issue to lie after the report's published we'll be continuing it on for the whole mandate of this parliament 2021 so we'll be keen to hear from you but thank you so much for your evidence this morning and we look forward to hearing from you and i'm going to the spend committee and we will back back together next week thank you