 Welcome to the 13th meeting of 2023 in session 6 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have no apologies this morning. Agenda item 1 is agreement to consider evidence in private, so our first agenda item is to do that. Are we all agreed? The second item on our agenda is to take evidence on minimum core obligations with a focus on recommendations from the national task force for human rights leadership. I welcome to the meeting this morning, Professor Katie Boyle, who is the chair of international human rights law from the University of Stirling. Welcome. Alan Miller, professor of practice in human rights law from the University of Strathclyde and co-chair of the national task force for human rights leadership and Dr Elaine Webster, reader in law also from the University of Strathclyde. You are all very welcome this morning. We will, as colleagues, be asking you a few questions as we go on, but I would like to start by inviting Professor Katie Boyle to make a few opening remarks. Thank you, convener, and thanks to the committee. Just as an opening remark to commend you in undertaking this work, and thank you for hearing from us today. I am absolutely thrilled and delighted to have the opportunity finally to talk to you, and thank you for your patience in that regard. A couple of points that I thought might be helpful to say from the outset. First is a caveat that when we discuss minimum core obligations, they cannot be understood in isolation from the broader duty to progressively realise economic, social and cultural rights. Article 2, one of the covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, contains the duty in MCO or the minimum core obligation as just one component of that. All the evidence that I provide is with that caveat that it should be understood on that wider basis. Both universal and relative minimum core obligations can apply, and they can apply concurrently. Effectively what the UN bodies tell us is that it is at the discretion of the state how to implement the minimum core obligation with very clear guidelines on how to do so, but that means that both relative and absolute standards can apply, and that is what I would class as a hybrid approach. The third point is to say that other countries do that already. They use the social minimum concept—they do not always call it minimum core—and they often use dignity as a threshold as part of that. Indeed, we already use that threshold in the UK, and it is evident in jurisprudence across the UK and specifically in Scotland. Scottish courts are already accustomed to using that concept in terms of the European Convention of Human Rights and also the EU charter of fundamental rights. As a final point in terms of open remarks, it is often the easiest way to reflect on those types of obligations, is to think about it from the rights holder's perspective and how they experience those violations and what it means in practice. My evidence will very much be couched thinking about it from that perspective, from the rights holder, how they experience a violation and how it could be addressed in practice. Thank you very much, convener, and thanks to you all for your patience and hearing from the three of us. I know that it has been a bit of a long wait for us, but we are now here, so I am looking forward to engaging with you. I would just like to make a very few comments to try and frame what hopefully we can provide for you this morning. I understand very much your choice of the minimum core obligations and respect that, but I also understand that you have heard a lot about that from a lot of other witnesses, particularly the Scottish Human Rights Commission, quite comprehensively. I am a little bit personally concerned that I may not have anything much further useful to add, but you will be the judge of that. As you said, convener, I was the co-chair of the national task force for human rights leadership. Just to put it in some context, what the task force said, and it was half of one of the 30 recommendations about minimum core obligations, was that there should be a public participatory process in order to determine those minimum core obligations. The reason for that really was to ensure that the lived experience of individuals and their dignity was at the front and centre of understanding where that level should rest. It really is the experts in terms of the cumulative impact of whether it is housing or education or social security or employment income or health on their dignity of life. We were very clear that it should be a public participatory process and not some technical or managerial process alone. Recognising that it is a cross-cutting issue—for example, women—very often, as we saw through the Covid experience, in the most precarious forms of employment are the carers in many, many instances. To understand the gender dimension of it, it is important to hear from those people themselves. As I said, it was literally half of recommendation 13 out of 30 recommendations, and the other half of that recommendation 13 was the need to, as Katie has said, couple an understanding of MCOs with also the duty of progressive realisation. For a country like Scotland, that is something that is very, very appropriate, a developed country in the 21st century. The continuous improvement and raising of the bar and not resting at the floor of MCOs. The second thing, again briefly, is that we all understand that there is going to be soon a public consultation paper and then we expect that there will be a bill introduced to the Parliament. I look forward very much in that context if you are interested to engage with you to sort of understand how either the consultation paper or the draft bill aligns with the task force recommendations as a whole and looking across the entirety of the bill and the entirety of the task force recommendations. Finally, and just as an example of that, what was clear to the task force and what has become ever more clear since our report just over two years ago, and certainly personally, it has been my experience that it is the effect of implementation of the bill that is going to make or break its value to people. Upper most than that is the bill being accompanied by practical guidance and capacity building on a human rights-based approach to enable its effective implementation. That was reinforced by the recent publication of Scotland's national action plan, SNAP2, which may be on your radar. The work that I am currently doing with the UN is leading work on development of an HRPA, a human rights-based approach toolkit for all UN country teams. That is of this time, is the practical nuts and bolts understanding, particularly for public authorities who will hopefully have a duty to develop implementation plans and how they are going to give effect not only to the minimum co-obligations but progressive realisation duties. I hope that I can contribute something useful, but just to put that doubt out there at the outset. Thank you, Professor Miller. Dr Webster. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much, convener. I am delighted to be here. I would echo what my colleagues Professor Boyle and Professor Miller said about the duty of progressive realisation and minimum co-obligations in that, and also about the importance of capacity building. I think that something really exciting about the prospect of the legislation is that we can have participation that can then lead to, hopefully, a very sustainable piece of legislation. I think that it is really helpful for us to think long-term about how we set the foundations for a better human rights framework in Scotland. My specific expertise is around the principle of respect for human dignity and the role that that plays in human rights law. I contributed a paper on that to the academic advisory panel for the national task force on human rights leadership. The principle of respect for dignity is relevant in a number of ways to the things that you are interested in, including thinking about minimum essential levels of rights and corresponding minimum co-obligations. The national task force recommended that dignity should be included as a key value, included explicitly as a key value underpinning the legislation. Dignity is an idea that really captures the point of what we are doing. It really captures the purpose of human rights protection in law. It is symbolically very significant from the international human rights perspective and in line with that, but it is also practically useful to give prominence to that idea of dignity. In my briefing paper for the academic advisory panel, I noted the potential that that idea could be used to help support a sense of public ownership over the new legislation. I have since followed that up with a small pilot project to explore that a little bit further. Dignity is relevant for understanding minimum essential levels of the right if we look at that in relation to a dignity-based standard that allows people to live a life in dignity or to live a dignified life. Therefore, it is also relevant for participation. The participatory process is a really exciting step in all of those discussions, especially if it will include public authorities. It is really interesting for me personally, because I do research on trying to understand how different people and different roles engage with human rights law. At the heart of what we are talking about is what do the rights mean, and that really has to be a fundamental first question that we ask ourselves. It is a real opportunity to build broader understanding of human rights law. Thank you again and I look forward to the discussion. Thank you, Dr Webster. You have talked about the participatory process, and that is what I would like to start off by discussing a little bit further and drilling into that. It would be interesting to hear your views on how the participatory process should be approached. I have listened carefully to Professor Miller on the cross-cutting issues and, including lived experience, putting that at the heart of it. It would be interesting to hear your views on that. Professor Miller, could I come to you first and then bring in your other two colleagues? As I said, I have worked closely with the UN human rights system for many, many years now, particularly since the end of term of office as chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission. That is where I have largely been spending most of my time, and therefore looking back at Scotland and contextualising where Scotland is in global terms on its human rights journey. Sometimes when you are in the midst of things in a country, you cannot see the wood for the trees and appreciate what the assets and strength that you have in the country in comparison with the situation in so many other countries around the world. One of the big assets that Scotland has, and it has really come to the fore in the past five to ten years, is the space for public participation in the formulation of laws, policies and practice. That is certainly what the task force mobilised. Our recommendations were based on wide participation, including very much those with lived experience, and hopefully that is why the recommendations will be closely looked at by those drafting the bill. It is an opportunity for Scotland to demonstrate leadership globally as to how we go about defining the minimum core obligations through using the space that we have of public participation. That means being innovative by ensuring that the participation is meaningful, that it can actually influence outcomes and not be tokenistic. I think that there are lessons that we have been learning where we can ensure that that is the case. Never forgetting the purpose of public participation is not just to be seen to do the politically correct thing or the nice thing to say you have done or to tick a box, but it really is to get under the skin of what it is you are trying to make progress on. The only way you can ensure that you are looking honestly at the progress needed and then be able to measure it is through basing it on the lived experience of people because they are the ones who are suffering the denials of human rights or the inadequacy of human rights protection and they are the best ones placed to tell us what progress we are then making with our best intentions. Involving those with lived experience across different aspects of life in combination with public authorities and experts who can provide technical information about where the existing standards and adequacy can be part of the evidence base. First and foremost, is Scotland taking the opportunity to demonstrate leadership and building on the assets that we have in Scotland, which is the space that is denied in so many other countries? Dr Webster, can I ask you about any ideas or thoughts about including the very people who were talking about that Professor Miller referred to? They are often the most disenfranchised and furthest from any sort of communication systems and difficult to reach. What approaches can be taken? What have other countries done that we could learn from to make sure that those voices are at the heart of the participatory process? In terms of participation broadly, there are lots of examples where we can look to other countries. In terms of what we are doing here in building understanding people's experience within the process of informing the implementation of human rights law, it is really innovative, world-leading, I think that it is fair to say. Normally when we look at the interpretation of rights, what they mean for people, often that happens in a very piecemeal way, often through judicial interpretation when it is too late to prevent rights violations taking place. There is probably not a blueprint for what we are doing, but I have been involved in lots of discussions with civil society and, to some extent, with public authorities around the human rights framework as it is developing in Scotland. There is a huge amount of innovation, creativity and expertise. We are really in an unknown territory, but with all the tools, resources and expertise that we need to do that. I think that I would reiterate how important the process could be for implementation, because the more people who understand the way that human rights law works and why it matters for them, whether that is from the perspective of their lived experience or from the perspective of their role, the more comprehensive their understanding is, the better position we will be in to achieve effective implementation now but also in the future. It is about building that capacity at the same time as really gaining insights from lived experience. It is a crucial part of the process that we hope to see. Professor Boyle, can I ask you about what you think about the challenges with the participatory process? For example, is it possible that there might be areas of contention around certain rights? We do not need to go into those rights. My colleagues will explore further, but I am thinking about areas such as health, housing and education and what is realistically achievable. That is an extremely important point to raise. I do not think that the aim of a participatory process is to, in and of itself, just reach a consensus on what a right means. It will always be most likely to disagree about the meaning and content of rights in different contexts from different groups of people. I think that the purpose of the participatory approach that the national task force has recommended is to ensure that the voices of those with lived experience are given the level of expertise that they deserve, just like any other group would normally be in devising a new programme. It will be difficult to realise that in practice, because, as my colleagues have said, it is certainly a novel and innovative approach, but it is not the first time, as Elaine mentioned, that participatory processes have happened. Participation is an ethos that is at the heart of the international human rights framework. From a perspective of thinking of it as an ethos, consensus building is an important part of that, but where consensus is not reached, for example, in deliberation around the content of rights, normally you would have processes and systems in order to help to resolve that. In a system that is, for example, a multi-institutional framework, which is the framework that is being proposed by both the First Minister's advisory group and the national task force, a multi-institutional system allows for deliberation between different expert communities in a way that consensus can try to be reached. Ultimately, those bodies will take responsibility to give meaning and content to rights in different settings. For example, if Parliament introduces a new piece of legislation following the human rights bill, there will be a part of that process where you will need to discuss the meaning and content of rights, for example, in secondary legislation, and that is a contribution to what is an on-going deliberation, an on-going conversation. What the participatory ethos requires is that people with lived experience have a seat at that table, that part of the consensus building and part of the on-going conversation includes them, not in a way that is a consultation framework. It has to be meaningful, inclusive and equal. That, for example, means taking into account intersectional barriers, as you mentioned. Some people will simply not be part of that system. They may not have engaged, for example, even with civil society groups that are already in that conversation in some respect. There is a lot of work to be done to ensure that you have an inclusive model. Scotland is leading in that respect. The Scottish Human Rights Commission, for example, has already set up expert advisory groups that include people with lived experience in order to better understand what they see is needed from economic, social and cultural rights. If you look at it from the rights holder's perspective, what you see in research that is undertaken is that people will be able to tell you what they need, when a violation occurs, and they will be able to explain the nature of how that happens in practice. Our legal system and the framework for economic, social and cultural rights in the UK and in Scotland right now are not well equipped for that, but we have the tools in order to change the system to fix it. One of the big things that people will often say is that the issues that they face are systemic, and they are clustered. They will not just face one issue, but many at the same time. Often, they will be experiencing other problems such as living in poverty, and they will have intersectional problems to deal with. They may be facing barriers in multiple respects. They will also have not only clustered but systemic issues, so it will not be just one individual that faces it. It will be many people facing the same problem. In that context, what our system needs to do is better respond in a collective sense to provide collective justice and structural responses to those sorts of issues. The participatory model is a way of making sure that we engage at the start from the outset to better understand what problems people face, what violations look like and how we might better fix them earlier than waiting, for example, for a court case to look at it. That is very helpful. Just as a final question for myself, the concept of dignity. If you are talking about people with lived experience again, they maybe do not have that concept of what is dignity. If they have lived without dignity, then their expectations are going to be different, if at all. How would a participatory process make sure that people with lived experience understand what is dignity and to live with dignity? Who monitors that? Dr Webster, I think that is your question. Over many years, I have worked with different groups looking at dignity. For example, student nurses have been a really interesting group to work with. There are remarkable, similarities in how people understand dignity. That is also related to the small pilot project that I mentioned earlier that I did subsequent to the paper for the national task force, where I explored whether engaging with the idea of dignity could help to support the growth of our human rights culture in Scotland. I spoke to people working in civil society about their perspectives for themselves and for people that they worked with in the community. Dignity is an idea that people get and that people understand. It is something that is recognised more in its absence than in its achievements. That is something that is reflected across a vast body of academic literature, in philosophical analysis but also in social science studies for how dignity is experienced. However, it is something that is very much intuitively felt. It is real power that comes from the fact that it is something that people get. People with lived experience will say that they know what dignity means and what dignified treatment would look like. It is essentially about relationships and relationships with people who provide services. It would be a really important opportunity to recognise what people are saying about their experiences of what it means to have dignity violated sometimes on a daily basis. What is useful is that we would be asking those questions as part of understanding how human rights law can respond to those challenges. It will always have an anchor in international human rights law and in the meaning and role that dignity plays in that context. I very much see that as part of the conversation that would happen within a participatory process about hearing what people say. As I said earlier, there are remarkable similarities and ideas that people talk about when asked about that. At the same time, it would be an opportunity to share understandings that come from international human rights law and to understand how human rights law tries to respond to dignity violations in different ways through different mechanisms. Different human rights respond to different facets of dignity, but all human rights are grounded with the aim of protecting the dignity of human persons. Thank you for that. Just going back to the conversation around the participatory process and engaging with civil society, we heard from witnesses that people feel marginalised within that process. It came through very strongly with people with learning disabilities, disabled people and other groups. I just wondered if it sounds great, but how in reality does this really work so that we bring everybody along with us in the process? That is a challenge. It is not an easy thing to do. Let me give you some personal examples. Yesterday, I was in a community cafe in Dundee for those people affected by substance issues. I have been asked by the Government to lead and chair a national collaborative for people affected by substance issues as part of the national mission on drugs. I went to where they were. I did not ask them to come to where I was. I asked them what progress would look like in their lives and how it can be brought about. A whole-day conversation and what came out of that conversation is the same as the experience that I have of working in many countries around the world, particularly in Africa. Two things really strike me that what you have to aim to get through this public participatory process. What I was being told yesterday, in the same way that I have been told in many other countries and in different parts of the world, is that dignity is not something that is contained within yourself. If you have a social security level of payment, that is enough. If you have certain housing standards, that is enough to meet your dignity. Dignity is realised through interaction with others and through the ability to participate in a community and in the lives of the neighbourhood and your fellow human beings. Dignity is something bigger than some technical accountancy type thing. What is the level of income or adequacy of housing? It is a human universal need to interact with others. Particularly in the drugs context in Dundee yesterday, and it is the same in Glasgow and other places, is the demand from those that are so-called hard to reach is to see me. It is the same here in Africa and in different parts of the world. See me for who I am. I am not a patient, I am not a victim, I am not someone who is looking for charity or some hand out. See me as to how I have come to this place in life. What have been the factors that have led me to turn to substance use, for example, as a means of escaping the realities and the lack of dignity that I have had? Before you see me as a whole, do not make decisions on my behalf. I have got the right to participate in decision making. That is why this bill is so important, because it is going to bring in for the first time the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. It is going to change the whole culture from, as an example, people affected by substance use bringing a self-stigma on themselves, reflecting the stigma that society has. Their own dignity is diminished, so they do not go to support services. They do not demand what they need in order to have their path towards recovery. They stay away, and they suffer from addiction. Dignity is interaction with others and seeing me for who I am and where I have come from in life and why I am here. Therefore, what should progress look like? What role do I have? What agency do I have in determining the progress that is going to work for me? You might think that it is a difficult thing, very abstract and academic. It is real, both in reality, of community cafes in Dundee and in South Africa and Botswana and other countries that I have been working on. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. It is absolutely fascinating so far, and I really appreciate what you said, Professor Miller, because I think that it is that disconnection and the feeling of disenfranchisement that, really, if we can get to the core of that. My questions are going to centre around what exactly those obligations are. What would they look like in practice? Can I start with Professor Boyle? As I mentioned earlier, minimum obligations cannot be understood in isolation. They have to be read in conjunction with the duty to progressively achieve. International, covenant and economic, social and cultural rights, like many pieces of legislation, whether they be at the international or domestic level, do not give a full elaboration of what duties or obligations mean. It takes subsequent interpretations of them to help us to better understand. The covenants from 1966 were in 1986 as part of the Limberg process that we had, the introduction of the concept of minimum core obligations, and then the committee, which is responsible for the interpretation of economic, social and cultural rights, came out with a general comment to explain that it was the raison d'etre of the treaty and of the human rights framework that there should be a minimum below which no one should fall. Regardless of what you call that, most people tend to fall in an agreement with that, using the concept of dignity often. As I mentioned earlier, countries all over the world engage with this principle, with this threshold, in different respects. Minimum core obligations should be read as part of the broader progressive realisation duty to take steps to realise economic, social and cultural rights, to the maximum available resources, to avoid regressive measures, to ensure that substantive equality is part of that framework, and to ensure that, when things go wrong, there is an effective remedy. There is a whole integral piece of machinery that works together. In terms of how they manifest in practice, what you will see is that you have to look at different sources in order to understand how that might operate in practice. For example, general comments actually provide guidance. There is a general comment in social security, which talks about the minimum core in terms of social security. There is a general comment on health, which talks about the minimum core in relation to health. Other treaty bodies reference the minimum core obligations. While the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is responsible for explaining the interpretation of that treaty, you will also see, for example, the Committee on the Rights of the Child explaining the minimum core rights in relation to children's rights. For example, it has been very clear that regressive measures are not acceptable even in terms of times of economic crisis for children's rights and that there is a minimum core content to them, or that the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has elaborated on what the minimum core means in relation to people with disabilities engaging in work and employment, and they explain what that would look like in practice, ensuring, for example, that there is no segregation in work practices, that people have equal access to employment opportunities and training, and that there is substantive equality included as part of that. Other countries interpret it. You can see it in case law. If I just give a very brief example, in Germany, for example, they use human dignity as a value, but they use both absolute and relative thresholds. There was a case there, which looked and said that the level of social security here falls below a social minimum. It violates human dignity, and the processes by which the state undertook to reach that threshold were insufficient, so it applies in the context of that. Another example would be in South Africa during Covid, although it was not specifically a minimum core that was used when, as part of a national programme where children had access to free school meals, which is a very familiar story to us, the state stopped the free school meals during Covid when the schools closed. The South African constitution protects the right to food, nutrition and children's rights, and they are unqualified, so they are absolute in nature. The court looked at that and said that that is a regressive measure, and you cannot justify it, so we are going to issue a remedy for all those children, and they will all receive access to free school meals. We want to see a report from the state explaining how they have implemented it. In practice, the realisation is that those children, 9 million of them, who were not getting access to nutrition and food, got it, which is in stark contrast to the UK. We had a similar story unfolded, and we did not have legislation to rely on to help protect in that respect, so it is just a different way of working in that way. Thank you, convener. Just what you are saying there, what those are and what they look like in practice, it is bringing me back to Professor Miller when you spoke about physical and mental health and that potentially being one of the core obligations. In terms of, for example, substance misuse, what would that look like in practice if that was implemented? We will find out. We do not know whether minimum core obligations are being met in Scotland. You would assume that 21st century developed country is relatively rich in comparison with the rest of the world. You would assume that it is a default position that minimum core obligations will be there, and then we focus on progressive realisation quite quickly thereafter. It is an overdue scrutiny on whether we have been assuming things rather than looking for assurance that there are minimum core obligations. It may not be as easy as we would want it to be, because there will not be, I am quite confident, sufficient data across many sectors to understand just what the reality is. That is why it is therefore important to go to those living in those real conditions to understand from them qualitatively where we are, because quantitatively we may not have the data. I think that it will shine a light on assumptions that we are all making that minimum core are met, even though you would be entitled to think that they should be met given the resources that the country has. What it will look like in practice is, if you take substance use as the example that you gave, I look at a very similar, I was involved in a really fascinating piece of work where I learnt so much on the victims and survivors of historic child abuse. It is a very similar journey that I think we are going to have with problems with drug deaths and trying to address that. That is empowerment. The survivors of historic child abuse felt complicit in the guilt associated with what had happened to them and so held themselves back from demanding their dignity and access to justice in whatever form that was appropriate for each individual. The same with substance use, the self-stigma, the acceptance of what society has said that you are less deserving than the rest of us, therefore you are at the back of the queue if you are even in the queue. I think that what we will look like is at the end of a process of about three years working with the survivors of child abuse, there was a cabinet secretary who was in it the first meeting we had with the survivors when we were trying to begin a process of them empowering themselves by demanding their rights under international human rights law. When the cabinet secretary came back two and a half years later to sign off the action plan that had been agreed by the survivors, by the religious institutions and local authorities, he came up to me and said, Alan, I do not know what is being on here, but this human rights-based approach about which I have been quite sceptical over the years, I admit, I can just see the difference that it has made. Yes, those are the same people, I recognise their faces, but they are not the same people. They are looking at me straight in the eye, their shoulders are back and they are expecting that I am going to agree to respect their rights and sign off a whole programme of measures to enable access to justice for them. So it is dignity to come back to that. Those people in that room, when they had become empowered and empowered themselves, you could just sense it, you could see it, you could touch it. They were human beings who were being seen for what had happened to them, where they were in life now and what their future needed to look like and therefore the responsibilities of the rest of us to organise the society that recognised that and fulfilled that. So the minimum core obligations are a floor. I suspect that we haven't actually got the floor enough yet and it's overdue that we're going to, for the first time, try and identify that, but we don't stop there. It then has to be the progressive realisation of these rights in a country that is as relatively wealthy as the UK and Scotland is. Thank you for that. If I may ask Dr Webster a question, I mean, in light of what we've just heard there, when we look at these core obligations, what would be your experience in regards to thinking that these should be universal or relative to each individual? I think there are different ways of thinking about obligations, but I think it's helpful to think about the minimum essential levels of the rights and the obligations are what we have to do in response in order to secure those minimum essential levels. So the minimum essential levels for each individual, I think that is something that we have to understand as well as part of the participatory process because only by hearing from as many people as possible can we understand where do we say at that minimum level. In international terms, there is a universal minimum that we can talk about and that is because the idea of human dignity is seen as a universal idea. Dignity, I think, is a really powerful concept because it has enough content and intuitive understanding that we get what it is, but it also has enough flexibility and room within it that people can inject their own ways of seeing their own worlds and their own ways of seeing the world, really. So there is a kind of universal, but there is also flexibility because it's a complex thing. It's about understanding how we as humans live in our societies and how we want to be recognised and relate to others. For thinking about minimum essential levels, I think that in the participatory process we can certainly and it will be necessary to engage with the idea of a dignified life. What does that look like? That's part of what we want to understand, but I think that we would be doing that in my view. Well, there are different ways to do it, but one option is certainly to come to that process with a kind of working definition, if you like, of what a dignified life is understood to mean from the international human rights law perspective, and then we engage with people around that in relation to particular rights. So we basically be asking people what aspects of housing, what aspects of participation in cultural life do you think we need in order to meet that threshold of being able to live a dignified life. The minimum essential levels are the minimum, so we are talking about things that are very basic. We in Scotland have an opportunity to be a little bit more ambitious in what we see as the basic floor, but at the same time we are talking about very basic things. In that sense, it is likely that there will be a lot of similarity, because that is about very basic experiences at the end of the day. I think that the question that you are asking there is an extremely important one, and also one that the international community lawyers, judges and different countries grapple with. It is important, first of all, that you have correctly identified it as an issue, and, second, to take a step back from that, we have an opportunity to decide what approach should be taken. For example, if you look at how academics look at this, some will argue that there is a danger in trying to apply a relative threshold, because we should already progressively realise rights and that there needs to be this bottom layer, which is absolute, universal and survival led, perhaps using concepts such as human dignity, and that that should apply across the globe. On the other hand, others argue that, because different countries are at different stages and they have different prevailing circumstances, that is simply not sufficient in a country that can demonstrate that it can go further in ensuring a universal minimum within its particular circumstances. There is the opportunity to reflect on adopting both, so an absolute minimum threshold would be one, for example, where human dignity is used as a concept to ensure that no one falls below it, and we already use this type of threshold in jurisprudence. For example, the Napier case in Scotland was about applying article 3 of ECHR, where it was considered that prisoners lopping out were subject to inhumane and degrading treatment, which is a form of looking at whether or not that was a breach of their dignity. We see that what the threshold would mean in terms of economic, social and cultural rights is that we would apply that threshold at a slightly higher level. If you look at it from the perspective of what happens if there is a breach, how can a duty bearer respond? We have taken those steps to apply a relative threshold. We have all the data, as Alan mentioned. You need to have disaggregated data to understand how different groups are experiencing a particular right. We have undertaken those steps. This is our minimum threshold, and we can justify our approach. That would be a relative threshold. Or you might have circumstances in which there has just been an absence of thought or the opportunity to apply a minimum, in which case you may need an adjudicator of some kind, whether that is a complaints mechanism, ombudsman, tribunal or court, to say that we recognise that there was a minimum here that has not been reached. For example, where that disaggregated data has not been taken into account on one group or community is simply not having access to basic food, shelter, sanitation, water and, unbelievably, in our country this does happen today. In fact, the process that was undertaken when Alan was chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission revealed major gaps in minimum core violations for particular groups who simply did not have access to things such as heating, water, sanitation and housing. For example, the Scottish Gypsy Traveller community, where people were being accommodated in circumstances where those basic essentials were not available, which we would not have known had we not gone through that process of gathering that data. Obviously, it was known to the people who were living that lived experience. It is about trying to apply both thresholds simultaneously if that is the approach that is to be taken. You can reflect on the different types of remedies that respond to that. For example, a more basic level will require a much stronger intervention from an adjudication body to ensure that dignity is restored. Whereas a relative approach might allow, for example, an adjudication body to respond to, whether you really thought through the process or whether you have the data, and if you do not, maybe go back and rethink that. It is just different ways of responding. Thank you, convener, and good morning, panel. Thank you so far for all your statements and all the information that you have provided. You may know that decisions are taken in local authorities and are heavily influenced around Scottish Government budgets. In that respect, if the local authority was considered to be in breach of any core obligations but simply had to make the cuts due to the ring-fencing spending from the Scottish Government, who then would be responsible for the breach and how, given the local authorities, will inevitably have different spending priorities, will that be facilitated between the national and local government? I ask Alan that question, please. Thanks very much. It is a good, very searching question. We will find out, as we said, with the public participatory process and minimum core obligations, we will find out the answers to a lot of those questions as we go forward. One of the things that I have certainly found over the years is very much what you are raising. There are multiple duty bearers. When someone raises a challenge that their minimum core obligations and their view are not being met, we quite often will find that it will not just be the one public authority that might well be held accountable for that. One of the benefits of incorporation of treaties, however, is that the primary duty bearer in a country is the state. Essentially, the state is made up of the central government and a whole range of public authorities. Ultimately, it is the state at the highest level that has the responsibility as the primary duty bearer. It has the duty, therefore, in terms of economic social rights, to ensure that the maximum available resources are used for the minimum core obligations and the progressive realisation. There is an opportunity through incorporating these treaties into our law of simplifying what, for a small country, can be a very complicated landscape as to who has the duty to do what, to whom and in relation to what other public authorities. A number of public authorities have told me when I was doing the task force work, particularly in housing, that they would welcome a sort of clearer lines of accountability. The same when I go back to substance use just now, because I am immersed in that work, because it is so urgent. Front-line providers in local authorities, alcohol and drug partnerships, NHS, the first reaction of some of them is, are you blaming me for the lack of minimum core obligations? I know that I am the front-line provider. I have got limitations. I cannot pull strings and levers to remedy this situation. When they understand that the effect of human rights law has been brought into Scotland in the way that the bill is in business to do, the accountability will be going up the food chain. At a higher level, questions will be asked about the use of available resources, the priorities in budgetary decision-making processes. What I found is that the front-line providers in local authorities or health boards actually say that that is going to improve our working conditions. We are going to be able to deliver better services. It is good that we are not the ones who are getting burnt out, who are also going to be challenged as being those who are denying minimum core obligations. Long way around, the central state has a primary duty bearer in partnership with other relevant public authorities. They will be held to account and not a hard-pressed front-line provider. Thank you, Professor Allen. I am going to come on to housing in a minute. Sorry, can I just bring in Professor Boyle, who indicated? I was going to, but I was just saying that I was going to come on to housing in a minute. I think that Professor Boyle wanted to add to your previous question. I will be very, very brief if that is all right. No, that is fine. Sorry, I think that it is convenient that you have got it wrong here. What I was saying is that I am going to come on to housing, but I am going to stick with this question. Sorry, maybe I was not very clear. Sorry, Professor. Thank you so much. No, I appreciate that. My expertise is in adjudication and access to justice. I will often go to the examples that involve courts, but it is just to help to demonstrate what happens in relation to when things go wrong. You have raised an important example, because people who feel that they have duties to realise rights simply cannot, because the way the budget system works means that they do not have the money. It is important to reassure those duty bearers that the system has to accommodate those problems. In other countries, where the issue has arisen, it does arise in the context of economic, social and cultural rights, as well as civil and political rights, I might add, because they are also resource intensive. What you will often see is that, as I mentioned earlier, issues are often clustered in systemic, so a local authority, for example, cannot meet a provision to provide a particular service across the board for everyone, so they are all experiencing the same violation. It comes to an adjudication body, whichever that one is. They will look at it, and in those other countries that have managed to try and grapple with this issue, the adjudication body will take in the various duty barriers and say, look, you are going to have to do this, you will need to think about this, you need to work together, we need to come up with a remedy that ensures that this violation no longer occurs. That is part of a structural response. It is a different way of working than we are currently used to, but it would not take a huge shift to adapt to that, because we have all the tools at our disposal to do it. Collective issues, structural responses, including dealing with many different duty barriers, and there are excellent examples of that, and the Columbian jurisprudence, under the tutella system, in which that is exactly what the court has done. It has got all the actors around the table and said, there are various different levels of government here, we need to work together, because internally displaced people do not have access to housing, education, food, health, and we are all going to have to work together to find a solution, and then the court supervises that that actually occurs in practice as an example of how to deal with that. Thank you, Professor Katie. Dr Lane, would you like to answer anything? Yeah, nothing to add, I agree, so yeah, nothing to add. Community Yoke that I asked my housing question? Yes, please continue. Just on housing, in the last couple of sessions we've obviously heard a lot on the housing emergency, as it's been raised quite a lot. The sort of example to better understand that is what the core obligation would look like in practice round housing. So currently Scotland has a housing emergency, we all know that. We have record numbers of people living in temporary accommodation and many living homeless, and yet obviously a lot of the budgets by the SNP Scottish Government have been slashed around this. So I want to understand what impact on understanding, what impact on enshrining the right to housing into Scots law would mean in practice for the public authorities and for the Scottish Government, and what the implications would be if that right was not being met. Do you want to answer that, Professor? Thank you very much. The right to housing actually already exists in Scottish legislation, so it's a really good example because it demonstrates how even although you have something in law it doesn't necessarily mean it comes to be realised in practice, which is why you need that broader framework that's being brought through this human rights bill because you need the early stages of proper implementation, the support and participatory process, the work of Parliament to give content and realise rights, the work of government to implement it, and ultimately what you need is actions to redress when things go wrong. I would argue that that's where the problem is in relation to much of this. There is no proper access to justice avenue. The use of temporary accommodation is a good example of what might be considered a breach of a relative minimum core because, while people are being accommodated in housing, it doesn't necessarily meet the threshold in order to enable a dignified life when they don't have access to the various different components that they need to participate in society and exercise their autonomy. Likewise, the problem around, for example, evictions is that people are often underrepresented in the justice system, so they will, for example, face an eviction notice, turn up to deal with that. It depends if it's private or public housing, it will be there in the sheriff's court or in a tribunal, and they will be unrepresented where the landlord might have lawyers on the other side, so it's an access to justice issue where there's no equality of arms. Finally, homelessness, as you can present, for example, at the local authority to say you're homeless and under the housing act, which has been recognised internationally as a really key important act because it's not based on priority need, everyone's entitled to protection. If you suffer from being able to exercise that right, you have to raise a judicial review, which is very costly and not something easily can be done on an individual basis, which comes back to that issue of clustered and systemic problems and trying to respond to them in a more structural and collective way. Ideally, without the need to go into court, nobody wants to go to court. That has to be there as a backstop, but it's about trying to change the system to respond to those systemic issues that you raise in a more comprehensive way. International human rights law demands are really good faith attempts. All of that has to happen within the ethos of how international human rights law works, so around participation, access to remedy, all of those things are part of a big package, which should, hopefully, what we want is for human rights violations to be brought to light, and once they are, then the processes are in place to try to address those in a way that recognises that implementing human rights, whether it is civil, political rights or economic, social, cultural rights, is not always a straightforward process, but the point is that there is a plan, there is a time-limited strategy, there is communication and there is a coherent and collaborative effort to prioritise whether that is strategic decisions or through budgetary decisions to remedy those things in the appropriate way. I think that that's just useful for us to bear in mind that it is about good faith attempts and that communication and collaborative, contentious processes, but in a respectful way that is reassuring. Part of the process is reassuring public authorities in every sector, and we have seen that in some work that we did looking at the right to housing as a case study in Scotland. There are concerns around basic things such as housing stock, how can those things be overcome, but it is about bringing those to light, about prioritisation and about good faith attempts. No, thank you. Professor Katie, you mentioned the Columbian example. Can you just say a little bit a little bit more about that? I'm very happy to follow up with that example and write enough that that would be helpful. If you could follow up with an email, that would be great, thank you. I'm happy to do so. That would be great. Rachel Hamilton is indicated, but just before I bring her in, just following on from Pam Goswell's questions, obviously Governments come and go, but the policies that they implement can have far-reaching effects. We've recently been taking evidence on asylum seekers and refugees, and some of the evidence that we have heard is that, like the illegal migration bill, for instance, some organisations have said that that is a breach of human rights of asylum seekers and refugees. We have been looking at the tensions between devolved powers and being able to mitigate the perceived harms. How would that fit in with that context? I wonder if Katie is nodding her head, so I'll take that as an indication of a comment. To agree that it is a very difficult area in terms of managing reserved and devolved competence and how far one can go to try to address and mitigate and applies across many reserved areas, some of the research that I under took over the past five years on an off-field study, spoke with practitioners about the different types of violations of social rights that people experience in this area, record time and time again. In response to that, one thing is to recognise that, in terms of devolved competence, it is important to take a maximalist approach, which is at the heart, and I would defer to Alan to speak about that. Further, it is at the heart of what all the recommendations are in the national task force to go as far as it is possible to do so within devolved competence to try to address those gaps. There will be many areas that are cross-cutting, but using the power to observe and implement international obligations that the UK has signed up to is a power that is devolved to the Scottish Parliament, and it is within that power that you can go as far as you possibly can. It is also a really important example, because the UK Supreme Court at the time of the House of Lords intervened in immigration and asylum cases when it was felt that there was a risk of falling into destitution. It applied a minimum to ensure that people did not fall into destitution. It is an excellent example where in the UK we already apply a minimum court in the context of immigration and asylum. It is complicated because it does not apply across the board. It has been in particular circumstances under the particular piece of legislation that applies, but the European Convention of Human Rights was able to step in and provide a floor in those circumstances. It is also a good example in that respect. That is very helpful. I was thinking about the right to work, of course, because we are not at the right of asylum seekers and refugees because not all of them have that right to work. That is what I was thinking of. Professor Ball, it was just to pick up on the response that you gave to my colleague Pam Gozzle on various parts of articles within UN obligations, such as the liberty and right to live independently in the community for disabled people or perhaps rights where children and pregnant women are concerned. There is already a conflict between a minimum service obligation and those rights. How does the human rights approach help an individual who, for example—if I use an example in my constituency—a young man with learning difficulties who has a place at a college but does not have the ability to have supervised travel or the transport to get there? In a practical context, we know that the articles are already being broken within the rights of individuals. How is that approach going to help that person? Again, an excellent question. In terms of the current circumstances, there may be pieces of legislation that would already support that individual. I know that legislation relating to social work and social work responsibilities include accommodating needs for different circumstances following an assessment of that person's needs. Although I would not speak to that person's particular circumstances. However, what an act ought to do—we do not know yet because we do not have that act before us and we do not know what it looks like. In terms of the UNCRPD, as you say, it provides various circumstances to help to support people who live independently. What that act might do, in those particular circumstances, is to help that person to participate in that college course in the way that they wish to do it. The problem that you identify is how you go from, what is happening to that person, where is the remedy? Where do they go? That is the part that we do not have an answer to yet because we have not seen the act. What people in those circumstances normally say—perhaps you are a constituent—will offer his own preference, is that they often do not want to go to court and nobody wants to raise a case to get access to basic needs. However, our system, which is non-judicial routes or non-legal routes, is not well equipped to deal with that right now. We need to see a step change. What the recommendations say and what Elaine and Alan have spoken to is that this is a culture shift. However, his responsibility for helping to support that person would reflect on a human rights based approach in order to help them to participate and live independently and be able to use the treaty that provides for that right to help to support that change. If they are not able to do that, for example, for budgetary reasons, you need to take a step back and work out how the budget is being spent and whether or not the money is being allocated to its maximum available resources addressing all the different components of progressive realisation, minimum core and so on. There is a decision-making process to go through in order to reach that end. I suppose that we started to touch on some of this, but I am particularly interested in how we monitor and scrutinise those minimum core, essentially. I am interested, from our point of view, as to Parliament's role in that and where the panellists feel that there is a role for Parliament. Should there be some scrutiny at committee level in Parliament of organisations meeting their minimum requirements—we have heard something about local authorities, for example, in that space—crucially, the Scottish Government holds the Government's account in terms of whether it is meeting its obligations or not. I suppose that the link to that is what would you see as the indicators that we would want to measure the Government or public bodies against. I appreciate that it is quite a wide-ranging question, but I am keen to know what our role should be. Professor Miller? I am happy to come into that. It is a good wide-ranging question. It was one that the task force spent a lot of time considering. We took the view that, for the effective implementation of the human rights bill, there had to be a multi-institutional approach. It was a combination of the Government, public authorities, the courts and the Parliament. The Parliament had a very important role to play. Within the Parliament, your committee has a very important role to play. One of the recommendations that we made from the task force was that the Government should be under a duty to present to Parliament its own implementation plan. The language was a human rights scheme to implement the bill, so what practical measures was it taking to give effect to those rights and to make them real in people's everyday lives and for that to be presented to the Parliament for scrutiny and accountability. One of the components of that human rights scheme to be presented to Parliament by the Government was that implementation plans from all public authorities should be required by the Government to ensure that there was a uniform, consistent implementation of the bill. Therefore, Parliament would have an opportunity to look at those reports from public authorities and from the Government itself. On indicators, the recommendation was that there should be human rights-based indicators of the progress made or not in the implementation of the bill and that those indicators should be co-designed. Those with lived experience should again be part of a participatory process with public authorities to define what are the realistic human rights-based indicators of progress. The work that I am doing in chairing this national collaborative as part of the national drugs mission is that we are developing a charter of rights based on the incoming bill for people affected by substance use. We will co-design between alcohol and drug partnerships and those seeking to use services, agreed measures by which progress can be monitored and evaluated and lessons learned where sufficient progress is not being made, so that Parliament has a role to oversee all that and to hold the Government and public authorities to account. Within that, the task force looked at different countries, one of them was Finland, and it was a very important role that, broadly speaking, your peers in the committee system in the Finnish Parliament had a very respected role within the Parliament. For example, when legislation was being introduced to Parliament, they would scrutinise it and make a view as to whether it was compatible with our case, it would be with the human rights bill and the international obligations. That committee's voice was very much respected because it was based on very good authority of evidence-based from human rights experts, but in this case you could supplement that with evidence from those with lived experience and therefore be a very clear authority of voice within the Parliament and strengthening the role of the Parliament to hold the Government to account. I do not know if anyone wanted to add in. That was very helpful, Professor Miller, in terms of an overview. I suppose that absolutely this committee and the committees of the Parliament have a role in the scrutiny and looking at legislation to ensure that it is compatible. Part of my question is what happens when targets aren't met and standards aren't met. Is there a role—very often in a parliamentary democracy because of the nature of majorities—that it can often be difficult to enforce, if I can use that expression? Is it a sense that the courts would be the place where much of that would be done rather than this Parliament, or do you think that there is a role for a commissioner within Parliament or the commission, the human rights commission, to have those powers of redress or dealing with significant issues when they arise? The task force recommended different levels of accountability from different processes and institutions. A local level, you would hope to be able to resolve issues quickly and effectively and in as collaborative a manner as possible so that the decision making at that ground level was based on human rights. Secondly, if that didn't work, and we all know with the best will in the world that it's not always going to work, the scrutiny bodies, the inspectorates, the Ombuds institutions would monitor and their job would be made easier because of the duty on public authorities to develop implementation plans, their commitment as to how they're going to give effect with progress indicators. The scrutiny bodies should be better placed to scrutinise the human rights performance of public authorities, but if that fails, and we know no system is perfect, then there is access, there needs to be access to a judicial remedy, but there again a kind of improved approach can be developed, and Katie is the person to pick this one up, that the courts should be able to provide a remedy that where they see something systemic that is simply not working, and it's not just this individual or that individual, then they should be able to look at that from a systemic point of view and consider a number of remedies we recommend, what's called a structural interdict, that the court would take the view, look, this system is not designed or being implemented or even monitored in a way that has an outcome of those rights being realised, therefore we will suspend judgment in this particular case but give you a reasonable period of time to come back showing us that the system is going to remedy itself in a way that is compatible with the rights and we will then look at that to see whether we think that's the case, and within that there's a role for the Scottish Human Rights Commission which we recommended that it should have the enhanced capacity to take test cases if it sees something systemically not working the way that it should be, so it's sort of a multi-institutional approach but front-loading it very much what we call the everyday accountability sector should be as effective as possible but a backstop to the courts which should also have a better way of systemically addressing issues and making sure that the structural changes take place and avoiding the burden being felt by individuals having to take on the world simply to get something that they're entitled to way back down the food chain. What if Professor Boyle might want to comment? I agree with everything that Alan has said and I'll not repeat what I would say briefly is what your question essentially relates to is about access to justice and it's important to reflect on the fact that access to justice in international human rights terms and as would apply to this bill means access to an effective remedy and an effective remedy needs to be adequate, it needs to be affordable, it needs to be tied timely and it needs to be effective, there needs to be a realistic prospect of reaching an outcome which addresses the violation and at the moment we don't have a system that accommodates that in relation to those rights and so in response to your question about where is the appropriate avenue, all avenues, all avenues need to be exhausted and you need to irrigate the system so that all avenues are available and that all justice routes are recalibrated for those types of rights in order to try and meet that threshold of an effective remedy. If a particular route becomes an additional barrier it is no longer effective so if it takes too long, if there's not sufficient advice to support people, if they cannot reach an outcome which actually addresses the violation then that route is no longer effective, it needs to be changed or it essentially doesn't meet the threshold of what's required. The Parliament is one avenue through which justice can be sought and so the Parliament should reflect and all the different means through which it can help to support that. There is an example of the Ombudsman for example having a power to refer to the Parliament when it notices a systemic issue I don't think it's actually being used in practice and the Ombudsman's current remit needs to be recalibrated for those particular rights but it would be a potential route and also could work concurrently with those other institutions of government so the idea being that it's a conversation and deliberation between all of us in all our different capacities in order to try and reach a redress for the person and people who experience the violations so it's just to reframe the way we think about justice as access to remedies wherever that may be. I wonder if I might just briefly on international examples Professor Miller mentioned Finland which was very helpful but I think for this committee it's useful for us to reflect on where this has happened elsewhere in the world and perhaps what the outcomes have been. I know in the documentation we've seen Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Cumbia, Brazil and again I think a variety of ways to access justice in those nations but I wonder if there are other examples that you think we should focus on. I'll have a go at that. I think you've already cited examples that the task force looked at very closely but I'll often get asked this, you know, is there some model country somewhere in the world that we can just lift something off the shelf and apply here and the blunt answer is no. Every country has its strengths and weaknesses and is on a journey and has its own history and culture and tradition and ways of doing things so you really have to take responsibility yourself as a country to chart your own course within international human rights law and learning as much as you can from other countries but taking responsibility yourself is something that I think needs to be recognised and also taking advantage of within the UN human rights systems there are mechanisms and tools available to concretely support countries take a path forward in accordance with their own ways of doing things and as I say I work very much within the UN human rights system so that you've been talking about indicators before there is a tool for example that we have developed and is being increasingly used by countries very effectively is called the human rights matrix and what it does is you may or may not have heard of the universal periodic review it's where every country's human rights record and performance is viewed by its peers within the human rights council and it's based on information that comes from the countries themselves from the UN human rights system from civil society and it then issues recommendations to that country and the matrix is a tool that the office of the high commissioner for human rights has developed for each country it takes these recommendations which are all based on treaty obligations clusters them into thematic areas so that you can sort of translate them into what terms you're more familiar with aligns them with the sustainable development goals where the crossovers are very very relevant and then enables parliaments governments and civil society to track the progress and implementation and this is a cycle like every 45 years countries are held to account and so the progress indicators are very much there in front of their peers that they will be held accountable for as part of this cycle so that there's ways it means that within the UN human rights system that you can you can use the mechanisms and tools to add strength to your own way forward learning from other countries but also leading and taking that responsibility of leadership and in Scotland in comparison with many other countries that I've worked in really we have the responsibility because there is so much space within Scotland to have these sorts of discussions to do innovative things to break ground and actually take a leadership role that other countries can not copy us but but look with interest as in fact they are in many respects so you know we should look to ourselves and use the international human rights system and don'ts I think you know can we take something off the shelf from Finland or Colombia we can learn a lot from there but take responsibility ourselves thank you very much just before we come to the end of our session I just wanted to pick up on a couple of points that we've mentioned already going back to remedy and justice that's going to look different for different people for some people absolutely taking a court challenge is the route that they wish to explore but it may be that a remedy would require non-legal routes as well so I'd be particularly keen to hear from the panel on what their thoughts are on what kind of non-legal routes would be open for people that wish to challenge any breaches could I start with Dr Webster please yeah I'll just say something very briefly hand over to Katie again on remedies but I think what's really important as a point that's been mentioned already is that we think about how we can support decision makers at every level to take every relevant right into consideration at the point of delivery at the point of making decisions and that's really the first important thing where we need to where we need to start it's all part of one big puzzle but that is a really key part of the puzzle is thinking about how can decisions be made at point of delivery that are to with the best intentions human rights aligned or human rights compliant if you like even within an organization where people are able to make complaints through the normal complaints avenues within any organization at that stage those making those decisions should be thinking which human rights are at stake here that is their burden to identify what issues are relevant here because in any particular instance a person might face as has come up already multiple issues which could mean multiple rights are implicated so therefore and we can't expect individuals to come and with a list of rights have been violated so it really is about building that capacity into decision making and in internal complaints processes and from there then we start to go ombudsman and then we branch out thank you um Professor Boyle please thank you i i'll just mention again the importance of using effective remedy access to justice as it's termed in international human rights law and that means effective processes as well as effective outcomes so if you if we go back to what i said at the beginning if you think about this from the perspective of rights holder and you will see this with your constituents often what people seek and what research tells us time and time again is when something happens where people experience a violation of their dignity and a right what they want is an apology they want it to stop happening they want the issue to be fixed and they don't want it to happen to anyone else and that happens too now we have a system which is very individualized in nature relying on individuals bringing cases which is really difficult for people in very precarious circumstances it doesn't account for the clustered nature of the problems or the systemic issues we rely on them place a huge burden on the individual to raise a case regardless of it whether it's legal or non-judicial routes and so we need to change that way of thinking to allow collective responses but ultimately regardless of whichever route is available to be taken it needs to meet that threshold of being effective in nature and at the moment that's that's not what's there actually what we know from research on access to justice is there are multiple barriers people have to overcome even to use non-legal routes so if we go back to the start and think about this from the perspective of undergoing a journey something's happened to me i know it's wrong but i don't know what to do about it first of all people need to have awareness of the rights they need to have legal consciousness of the fact that the rights exist and they're entitled to them they need to have awareness of the processes and knowledge of the system and that needs to be supported with resources financial legal and emotional because it's not fair as I say to place the burden on one individual often what people will say for example in the mental health sector is that they use collective advocacy in order to raise issues there's a fear of retribution of an individual raise in a case and they use this collective advocacy system in order to bring problems before various different authorities there needs to be an issue in resolving the complexity of the system ideally yes you would be able to go to an ombudsman or a tribunal or just to a complaints body in the the service that you're working for but they need to be able to respond effectively and be able to issue an effective remedy also people don't realise that sometimes if they pick one route they actually can bar themselves from taking another and there's not enough known when you engage with that system or enough support at the moment to help support to help people navigate that so ideally what you would have is proper advice and co-located services so rather than asking people to come for example to see a lawyer you would ensure that advice providers are in places like libraries schools unfortunately the proliferation of food banks is where people go who experience clustered problems there should be support and doctor's surgeries those are the types of places where you go to help support people when the act comes into force it will recreate a transformative system in which these rights actually take on legal status so that will enable routes to effective remedies but all of these non-legal routes need to be supported and slightly recalibrating and changing their system in order to respond to the particular types of rights and the nature of the violations and that is through collective advocacy collective cases an ability to ensure that they are not hindered from taking another route and always as a backstop ensuring that you have access to a court as a means of last resort as overall supervisory body and finally in that time of clustered approach or when you're responding to something structurally the importance of moving away from an individual case space is that people aren't looking for compensation they genuinely want their situation restored and often that's a fear that you'll create some kind of litigation culture but it's about actually trying to address the violation itself and help restore people in to a place where they should have been avoiding the administrative mud of getting stuck in a system which will not actually even be able to give a remedy at the end of the day and ensuring that we change things to enable our systems to respond differently so that means wider definitions of standing different types of tests than we currently use we need to have a broader reasonableness test to assess and interrogate compliance with rights ensuring that we can as I say respond collectively and structurally to problems ensuring that ESC rights is a grounds of challenge and that can be raised in different places perhaps a bit like a devolution issue which can be raised for example in lower courts which can then refer up say for example an issue comes up and a tribunal says we actually don't know how to respond to this that they could refer it up to the inner house for a response those type of things so there's so many different mechanisms that we can do to ensure that we basically open paths to justice for people and and move away from this individualised approach so flexible and adaptable yes and responsive get that um yeah Rachel Hamilton please comment actually thanks convener it's just um as i've been listening it's stoned on me that you know we haven't considered uh geographical inequalities or the ability to deliver within public bodies and um it what you're saying is definitely not a silver bullet and any of us because we haven't explored this enough but i do think there could be inconsistencies in the uh i suppose the outcomes oh across across scotland because of that well you've been in relation to for example the advice sector that i spoke about there what you see in practice is there is advice desert so depending on where you live you may or may not be able to get access to the help you need for example an immigration and asylum support or housing support if you live closer to an NGO or a charity that might help support you or you're able if you have digital access you might be able to get support but that's what the minimum core comes back to again because essentially what you're trying to do is look at disaggregated data to understand where those gaps are if you don't have that data you don't know who is further from those structures and who can access them and always reflecting on the fact that many people have not engaged with the system we don't actually know how bad things are for some people and so it's about trying to ensure that we are not walking into it with our eyes closed more data that we have and disaggregated across those intersectional barriers the better we can understand where those gaps are thank you just as a final question i think that i'm going to go for professor miller but if either of you feel that you need to chip in please do indicate um how do you think that uh we've talked about sort of non-legal routes but going back to the courts how do you think courts might be able to judge um cases given that we have difficulties in defining uh what the scope of minimum core obligations might be um will courts have sufficient experience or skills to be able to do this um and what what does the system need to provide in order for them to be able to do their job in that case um professor miller yeah when you said you were going to go for me there i was getting a bit concerned i can handle that yeah um well i think there's a couple of things our courts are already becoming more skilled and perhaps we realise and that they do engage to some extent with international human rights law already and having sort of had conversations with the judiciary in one way or another over decades the last couple of decades since the human rights act came into effect has broadened minds in the legal profession including the judiciary and the composition of the judiciary has has also been broadened to some extent so they they would quite rightly say this is an area that we have have some experience in you know plus why can't we become as skilled as any other courts around the world you know we will we will raise our our ability to take into account international human rights law if that's what the parliament wants of us and we quite confident we can do it why why could we not do it um we can you know look at other courts and look at jurisprudence internationally and we can look at the general comments from treaty body committees so yes it will be a new challenge for the judiciary in the same way as it will be for every other institution but one that they should be able to to rise to and and therefore i think they have an important role to play directly answering your question how can they sort of interpret or define whether a minimum core obligation has been breached or not in part this public participatory process of defining the minimum core obligations will be very helpful because that will give them a measurement a tool to to look at the implementation plans from from public authorities is something they could look at to assess and scrutinise the stuff whether that's adequate and compatible with the duties that public authorities have and if we have easier routes of access to justice that cases can come before brought by bodies on behalf of a whole range of individuals and interventions from other bodies with expertise so if we sort of loosen up the system a bit then there'll be other sources of evidence that will be made available to the judiciary to take into account and and to help help equipment equip them with these judgments but we probably end when we began if a judge is sitting there saying well i've got this source of evidence i've got that interpretive authority and we come back to human dignity and the courts ultimately may well come to judgments based on i've heard everything i've seen all kinds of evidence is this something that is enabling this individual to live a life of dignity or not and that will be the final sort of criterion that the courts will have to apply in the way that other courts have begun to do that as well so they come back um maybe you should give Elaine the last word on that because that's where we come back to webster thank you um and i just want to say yes i i agree and i don't think that should be concerning either um sometimes there's a little bit of trepidation around the idea of a dignity standard and i think that's because we all intuitively think we know what it means there for everyone else must know what it means and that's probably different but actually um it's not something that i think should be concerning so courts around the world work with the idea of dignity dignity is an idea that is found in most written constitutions in the world so it's very commonly used and it is familiar in scotland's legal culture as well i would say so in the briefing paper that i did for the academic advisory panel there was a section on dignity in scots private law because of the way that roman law has been received into scots law and on that basis alone i would say that it is familiar in our legal system um we also looked at um the use of dignity language by courts across the UK and found that it comes up in thousands of cases across all jurisdictions within the UK so it's not something that is unfamiliar and it's also language that we find used in legislation including um there are examples of legislation of this parliament as well which uses um including recent examples that use that legislation and it's also been mentioned that courts use a dignity standard in adjudicating on the prohibition of inhuman integrating treatment in the european convention on human rights which has been in our legal system for the past 20 years directly alone so it is it is familiar and so i think it's i think we've been very safe hands if we have to get to that final point of a court making a decision on that basis because at the end of the day it is about ensuring as much as we can that people are enabled to live lives and the way that they want thank you very much for all of that it's been a very interesting and formative session and it seems quite fitting to end on a final note talking about dignity um and i would like to on behalf of my colleagues thank the panel for their contributions this morning and i bring the public session to a close