 Good morning, and I welcome everybody to the 29th meeting of the Education and Culture Committee in 2014. I remind everybody who is present that all electronic devices should be switched off at all times because they interfere with the broadcasting system. Today is our first evidence session on the BSL bill, and so our meeting will be interpreted in BSL. I welcome our BSL interpreters, Shauna Dixon and Paul Belmont. I welcome and I hope that we have a pleasant day here at the committee. Our first item is to welcome Chick Brody to the committee, who is our new member who is coming here in place of Claire Adamson. I'm sure all members will join me in paying tribute to Claire, who was a member of the committee from the start of session 4 and has been a very assiduous member of the committee, so I wish Claire well on the new committees that she's moving on to. But can I invite Chick to declare any relevant registerable interests? I have no relevant registerable interests. Thank you very much. Our next item is to take evidence on the British Sign Language Scotland Bill. This is our first evidence session on the bill, and I welcome Mark Griffin, who is a member in charge of the bill and is supporting officials from the Scottish Parliament, Joanna Hardy, non-government bills unit and Neil Ross, principal legal officer. Our intention today is to focus on the policy intentions of the bill, and the meeting takes place while our call for evidence is still open. The reason we're doing this is to help those who are considering making a response by allowing them to hear Mark Griffin's evidence to us today in advance of making a submission. Mark Griffin will, of course, come back further on in the process to give us extra evidence at the end, and he'll respond to all the other relevant evidence that's come in during the process. I welcome Mark Griffin to the committee this morning. Mark Griffin, I begin by going straight into questions on the bill itself, and I'm going to begin by asking Mary Sarrasoff. Thank you, Mark Griffin. Since this Parliament was set up in 1999, there's been no shortage of initiatives on British Sign Language. I won't read them out to you, but in our paper today there are seven separate initiatives on BSL between 2000 and 2011. Given this fairly long history of policy on promoting BSL, why is a statutory response to this issue now required? In what specific ways will your bill succeed where previous efforts have failed but have perhaps not gone far enough? There have been initiatives before, and it's clear that there is good work on going out there. Dingwall academy doing excellent work, HMP Perth chaining their staff in BSL, museums and galleries translating information into BSL, massive amounts of information, and BSL. It's clear that there are pockets of excellent practice going on round about the country. That doesn't mean that it's happening everywhere. The first thing that the bill will do is place that obligation on the Government to promote the use of BSL and put it on equal footing with the Gaelic language in Scotland so that people who use BSL in fact don't have the opportunity to learn any other language other than BSL felt that they feel just as important as any other language group in Scotland. To end that, a postcode service of provision, I know there have been studies, reports even into just single areas like action on hearing loss, had a study just on social work services for deaf and hard of hearing users and that across the 32 local authorities performance was very, very variable and that this bill would try and the Government would coordinate the actions that public authorities were taking, give them a strategic policy lead through the national plan and really say clearly that we value British Sign Language as the Government have already done when Shona Robison was the Public Health Minister, the clearly value British Sign Language to put that on a statutory footing. I visited Dingwall academy and I totally am pleased she mentioned it because it's a wonderful centre of excellence and they're very proud of their teaching of British Sign Language. Would you, given the size of the highlands, the most sparsely populated area of Scotland, would the excellence in Dingwall, will your bill allow children throughout, if I could use the example, all of the highlands and all of Scotland to have a higher level of access to BSL and their families, of course? Yep, the bill would be the starting point to the Government promoting the use of BSL. I mean, Dingwall academy were down in the Parliament and I spoke to the pupils and they were, I think it's fair to say, they loved learning BSL and they were disappointed after the first and second year that they weren't able to take that further because of pressure on their studies and other subjects. I think this bill does give the Government that platform to take forward the excellent curriculum that Dingwall academy have developed and see that being replicated across Scotland. My second question is, if I may read from the policy memorandum, just one sentence. The intention is that by placing this obligation on the Scottish Government, the profile of the language will be heightened and it's use in delivery. So basically you're asking for BSL plans to be prepared and published by ministers and local authorities. Is that go far enough? To publish a plan isn't a guarantee that more people will learn BSL, it's a publishing an intention if you like and I just wonder if you had any specific improvements or outcomes that you would like to see as a result of the bill. And if I can just say we did go to Falkirk with the committee and again that was another centre of excellence. So if they publish a plan and add on to the excellent works they're doing, that's wonderful. But if we go to another local authority where the base is very low, publishing a plan, a progress, may be pretty minimal. And so I'm just wondering if in your mind what are your expectations for improvements and outcomes as a result of the bill? I mean literally what will happen as a result of the bill will be that public authorities will publish their plans and then the crucial point for me will be that performance review and I know I've said that three, four years down the line after the plan has been published but I'm open to variation on that. But that performance review which the minister will then report to in Parliament will give BSL users in their own community for the first time ever through those performance reviews to say why is my local authority, in my own example, North Lanarkshire, why are they not doing or taking forward the excellent work that's happening in Dingwall academy and give our constituents the opportunity to come to us to challenge the minister, hopefully the minister for British Sign Language, as to why these authorities aren't performing as well as their neighbouring authorities, I mean that will be the literal outcome of the bill but more broadly what I hope to see as a result of the bill will be increased awareness of the bill that public authorities in their increased consciousness of BSL will move to make sure that their frontline staff are more appropriately trained in BSL and more opportunities to learn BSL and that the language continues to grow and flourish, that's my ultimate aim for the bill. That's my final question, convener. We have seen performance reviews over the years and we've also had historical concordats and single outcome agreements with local authorities so basically what you're looking for the bill offers what I would term a stepping stone to improving BSL but it does seem to stop short of setting clear rights for BSL users or even duties on public authorities it's really asking if I may say but want you to do a little bit better than what you're doing just now and I'm just wondering it seems to fall short of the right of BSL users in their families to have access to that excellence and I just wonder if public authorities if there's enough incentive for them you know to improve their services. Yes, I mean I think it right to say that it's a stepping stone I'm not going to say that this bill is going to wave the magic wand and that all of a sudden that any person who uses BSL is going to suddenly be able to turn up at a local authority, first stop shop and get access to services immediately. I mean I think I set out what I expect local authorities to include in their plans and that that's listed for the local, they can ignore that but local authorities could ignore that if they like if they wanted to. Well I set out what they need to include in preparation of their authority plans there's a whole list of things in the bill that they would have to do in terms of their consultation and BSL, their staff awareness of BSL, how they provide services and access to services in BSL but that stepping stone starts at the government that this bill gives the government that platform to set out their policy priorities at the end of the day it will be up to the government as to what resources they choose to put into their policy priorities and if classes for families of BSL users is their ultimate policy priority then this bill gives them the opportunity to set that in their national their national direction and put the resources behind it. I wasn't specific in a certain area of say the example that you'd given about classes for families of BSL users because I want I was aware that it would be a large sum of money and I wanted to leave that open to the government of the day to set their policy priorities and decide on the resources that they could match to that said the start before we started the question could I ask members to ensure that they speak clearly and not too quickly to keep questions short and concise and of course to allow a short pause after the last speaker has finished so that the interpreters can do their job but can I now bring in Chick Brody? Good morning. The bill as we understand it intends to promote the use of BSL. In that clearly we wish to cover those that can benefit from the understanding of BSL. I just wonder, I think it's recognised that the approach taken in the bill will not by itself close any service gaps and Mrs Scanlon mentioned the improvements outcomes. Why is it not attempting to close current service gaps so that there is a level playing field for all those that would benefit from others using BSL? It's setting the platform to start to close that gap by making people right across Scotland aware of exactly what public authorities are doing in the area of BSL, how they are providing their services and BSL to allow people to rightly challenge government and authorities on what they are doing. I think that if we were to go on to talk about closing gaps and access to services and things, there's a danger of straining to equalities. For me this is about a cultural issue, this is about a language and how people access services in their own language and giving people the platform to challenge public authorities on how they are providing those services in that language. I went to the beginning by the way, I congratulate you on pursuing the bill. Just on coming back to the business of the level playing field and encouraging local authorities, we mentioned again Mr Scanlon asking about specific improvements and outcomes. Should there be some measurable outcome on the outcomes on the public authorities that you seek to encourage the use of BSL? It may well be that there are measurable outcomes. The Government will, in setting out their national plan, give guidance to local authorities on what should be in their plans. The Government will then carry out their performance review as to whether they've met the objectives that they've set out at the start of the parliamentary term. There will be that opportunity for Government to say whether public authorities have met the standard that they've set out in their guidance. Can I just pick up one question? If a public authority, for whatever reason, does not carry out the statutory duty of delivering one of those plans, what's the penalty? There's no penalty. When we were starting to look at the consultation and the draft and the legislation, we had a close eye to the Gallic Language Act, and the sanctions in the Gallic Language Act basically amount to the board in the Gallic writing a letter to a particular authority to ask them to comply. I felt that the nature of the bill, the language in the bill, what we were planning to do was about promoting BSL, encouraging access to BSL, and the positive measures that a lot of authorities are already undertaking, and that inevitably there wouldn't be any formal sanction as such, but that the performance review and a Government minister reporting to Parliament and to MSPs saying, here are X, Y and Z public authorities who are doing fantastic work in the field of providing services in BSL, but here is one authority who hasn't even produced a plan. Here's another authority who has produced a plan but has made no effort to work towards achieving outcomes in the plan and said minister saying in Parliament that that is not acceptable, and I expect them to step up to the market and start delivering services and frizz around the table and other members to be able to be approached by their constituents who will be impacted by authorities choosing not to develop plans and develop their services for them to be able to challenge that through their MSPs. I'm concerned though that there's a danger that it will just become a particularly in the current rather straightened circumstances that public authorities find themselves, and you're not concerned that effectively it will become a tick box exercise? I mean it will depend on the strength of the Government, the strength of the Government Minister, the strength of the Government's national plan and the guidance that they set out and the resources that the Government chose to put in. I think on reading the Government's memorandum that the committee have been provided, I think it's clear from that memorandum that the Government have a strong understanding of BSL that they have a strong commitment to BSL and in fact have went over and above what I've been proposing through the legislation, so I think there is a clear commitment from Government in terms of policy direction and resources to make sure that this bill is a success and I'm grateful for that. Thank you, Neil Bibby. Thanks, Cymru. Can I repeat what Chuck Roddy said in welcoming you pursuing this Bill? I think it's a very important issue. I wanted to ask you about current legislation and specifically the Equality Act 2010. Obviously the Equality Act has been in place for a couple of years. Can I ask you why the protections offered by the Equality Act 2010 are not seen as sufficient to promote and facilitate the promotion of BSL? It goes back to the point I made earlier that I don't see provision of services in BSL as a disability issue for me. It's a cultural issue and I'm grateful that I'm here in front of the Education and Culture Committee talking about a British Sign Language Bill. This is a language issue that Scotland's BSL users have their own language, their own associated culture with that language and that's how we should deal with these issues. I mean there are areas where improvements have been made around access to services for deaf people along the lines according to that Equality Act, but I don't see that people who speak Urdu or Polish or any other minority language they don't have to self-define as being disabled to then go on and use the provisions of the Equality Act to access services for me. It's firmly about the language and culture of British Sign Language. In terms of the Equality Act, are you aware of any proposals to change the Equality Act 2010 to address BSL? I'm not aware at all, but if the member knows something that I don't know, I'll just send that on to me. Bring you to the issue of finance, Mark. In your financial memorandum, you estimate that the cost in staff time, for example, between 20,000 and 30,000 per authority was the estimate in the financial memorandum. Can you take us through how you come to that estimate of £20,000 to £30,000 per authority for production and publication of the national plans, authority plans and performance reviews? I'll bring Joanne in in terms of the development of financial memorandum and questions around that. It's always difficult to put a price on this thing, but we did take a few soundings on people's experiences with implementing the Gallic Language Act, but we also attempted to quantify the work involved and the grade at which that work would take place. It is quite a broad range reflecting that. It's based on an individual of a management grade spending approximately half of their time at the point of producing the plan, and then we factored in a bit of time for reviewing and reporting back to the Government. We also spoke to COSLA and had a bit of input on their experience with the Gallic Act. Obviously local authorities are all the same size, nor are they the same size as the range of public bodies in the schedule. A lot of guesswork is involved based on all the factors that we were able to determine. The reason I ask—well, there are two reasons. One is that I'm looking at the Government's memorandum, which you'll have seen, and it paragraphs 20 and 21 in particular. What it says there is that—I echo this question—that it's difficult to assess whether those costs are realistic as the bill does not specify what BSL plans should cover or what process will be involved in developing them. Given that that is the case, that's correct, that the bill does not specify what the plans should be. I'm struggling as to how to understand how you would then work your way back to what the cost would be of producing such a plan. Secondly, you mentioned COSLA. A paragraph 21 of the Government's submission to the committee states that COSLA believes that the upper estimate should be £40,000 per authority, not £30,000 per authority. The first question was on working our way back from the tone of the bill, which is to be quite silent on the detail of what the authority plans will include. I think that Mark has already touched on the reasons for that, and that's because it's a matter for the Government of the day to set the tone with an eye on resources and for the authority plans to flow from that. That's why the bill is silent on that, and it does make it difficult to then cost that, but financial memoranda are important. We just did the best job we could do, and it's fairly typical of this type of bill. On the COSLA point, you're right that COSLA did come to us with a figure of about 40,000, and we took the decision to to rein back on that slightly because there were differences. This was based on experiences with the Gallic Act, and there were differences in the way that the two bills were likely to be implemented. In an attempt to come up with the best possible estimate, we felt that a more conservative figure would be more realistic. I won't take you through all the pages and paragraphs that are in the Government's submission, but, if I go to the end of it, I mean effectively what it says at table 5 on page 9 of the Government's submission is that using the upper estimates that the total cost over the period 2016 to 2020 will be in excess of £6 million. I'm just wondering about how realistic, first of all, you believe that those figures are. Secondly, given that local authorities, for example, and other public services around a financial strain at the moment, and having to make difficult decisions, whether or not putting this additional statutory burden on them, amounting to some £6 million, is reasonable at this particular time. I mean, it is a big top-line figure, but I think it's worth pointing out that it is shared across over 100 public bodies, and in line with the Government investment, they have already plans to invest £2 million, so that would bring that figure, that burden down to just over £4 million at the outset. However, I think that it basically comes down to the Government's priorities and members' priorities. If you feel that it's right and proper, which I do, that British Sign Language is a language of a significant proportion of people in Scotland, and as a method of communication that they can only use, they have no opportunity to learn spoken English, that if you decide that we should be given priority, then we have to put in the resources to match that, and I'm happy to see the Government support it with those resources. My question, I suppose, is that—you're quite right, of course—everything's a matter of priority in terms of politics, but the money must come from somewhere. Have you had any thoughts about the possible unintended consequences of making it statutory that local authorities—let me stick with local authorities for a second—must produce a BSL plan and then review and etc, do all the work on that plan? Is there a danger—let me give you just a small scenario—that Authority X spends, let's just say, £50,000 on this area at the moment supporting local deaf people, making sure that services are available even to some extent to support people who are deaf in their area? Is there a danger if there's now a statutory obligation to produce a plan that they will use some of the money that they use currently for supporting deaf people in their area to produce a plan, given the fact that they don't necessarily have money to come from other parts of their budget? Obviously they'll need to find the resources from somewhere. I'd be very disappointed if they withdraw services to produce a plan. I think that would go against the ethos of the bill entirely. This should be about their plans should set out what services they're providing at the moment and how they plan to go beyond that. It would be very disappointing if authorities pulled funding. The reason I ask is clearly if you make a BSL plan statutory. Obviously the bill does not talk about, for example, sign support of English or the use of some modern technology in terms of communication. Effectively, any money that's spent in those areas, there's a danger or not to mark that the money would then be transferred by local authorities into supporting BSL plans. The bill isn't exclusive about particular use of technology, video relay technology in relation to BSL that this bill is ruling out. In fact, it would encourage local authorities and public authorities to go down that route to save themselves money and using that technology that's out there. There's no doubt that producing a plan will have a financial impact on local authorities. It will be up to them to manage their budgets. I'm open to ways of local authorities doing that more efficiently in terms of their consultation. I know that the Government has clearly looked at that in depth from its Government memorandum around whether they could change the authority plans to a statement of intent, whether there could be a national co-ordinated consultation or whether authorities could get together, say, on perhaps a community planning partnership basis to produce plans or statements. I'm open to the Government's suggestions and ways around alleviating some of those costs so that the scenario that you paint doesn't happen. It will come on to those in a moment or two, but I want to bring in Chick Prody. I understand the difficulties in coming up with financial figures. I just want to just have you been informed by what has happened internationally. What evidence have you taken? I know that there are currency issues, inflation issues and organisational issues, but at least to inform you of the financial circumstances that you face, has there been any contact with other countries regarding what they've done in terms of the implementation of those plans? We haven't done any international comparisons in terms of the inputs, so to speak. There are international comparisons as to what services are provided in Scotland. At the time of the consultation, we had the 80 registered sign language interpreters for the whole population of BSL users in Scotland. In Finland, a country of a similar population, there are 750. What was the cost of setting this up? We haven't done any international comparisons on costs, just on outputs and service provision in other countries. I want to move on to the subject of consulting on those BSL plans. The bill requires Scottish ministers and listed authorities to consult on their draft plans. Given the constraints on time and the financial resources available to many public authorities, how can the Scottish Government and other public authorities ensure that they effectively fulfil their obligation to consult? It goes back to that resource question again. From the outset, for Government and public bodies to effectively consult, they have to consult with BSL users, and there's no doubt that there would be a cost to that. That doesn't mean that I expect a public body to consult with every BSL user in their particular areas, as long as there was some input from British Sign Language users in their areas. As I said, I am open to the suggestions that the Government makes in terms of collective consultations at a national level or a group approach at a more local area level, in terms of a health board area that brings in local authorities or whether that is a community planning partnership level that brings in police, fire, health boards, local authorities, etc. On the basis that you have said that you would be able to streamline the number of public bodies either through the partnership or based on a geographical area, you still have the problem that you have just mentioned a minute ago that there are only 80 people who are registered sign language interpreters. How do you put in effective consultation that doesn't create a difficulty with a few organisations and individuals being swamped to review a whole list of draft plans? They do have normal duties to undertake in addition to what you are proposing. That is a sort of chicken and egg question. We only have 80 interpreters, and if we don't do anything about it, we will only have 80 interpreters. We will only ever have that level of capacity to consult to adequately provide services. I think that this is the first point in saying that we are going to be clear about promoting the use of British Sign Language, about the culture that surrounds British Sign Language and encouraging more people to be aware and take up learning of the language, which is a long process. However, if we do not take action now, we will be in a position 10 years down the line that we are still on. We have got 80 interpreters and there are still going to be resource issues in terms of looking at these consultations. However, I think that a lot of the suggestions that the Government has made in terms of bringing together a national advisory body on BSL, that they have been clear that that should have a significant amount of BSL users themselves, that that could be a body for meaningful consultation. Given that, you have suggested that we need to grow the number of interpreters, have you got an idea of how many we would need and what the financial implications would be of that? Though the international comparison that I had given earlier is Finland, Finland have a similar population size to Scotland and have 750 interpreters, as opposed to the 80 that we have here, obviously that is... What should we grow it to that number? There are higher institution bodies here in Edinburgh, the Harriet Watt, university provides those sort of learning opportunities but the funding for the places isn't as widespread as you would like and also there is the pressure as the pupils from Dingwall academy had said when they came to see me, they enjoy learning BSL, they learn it in first and second year and then when it comes to third and fourth year when they have to go on to learn formal qualifications that they need to get into university and college and get on into work because there is no formal qualification that they can get UCAS points for in BSL, that means that it's dropped so there's a sort of block on that number ever ever grown. Getting back on to the subject of consulting, the duty to consult takes in a large group of people including people who are either deaf or deafblind or have a hearing impairment, how would you go about consulting with individuals and should there be any prioritisation between these different groups and why? I don't think there should be any prioritisation between different groups, I think as long as BSL covers, if you're communicating BSL that covers the whole spectrum of what you would call a deaf person's deaf, deafblind hard again, if you use BSL you use BSL if that's your main language, that's who should be prioritised. I think in terms of consultation and engagement, I think the committees on work in consultation and engagement in seeking evidence is an exemplar, I mean if you look at the Facebook page there are close to a thousand people on the Facebook page people uploading videos of their own submissions in BSL every day that's certainly been a very effective method of consultation and that's a pretty good model that local authorities could look at that will be a cost associated with that consultation in terms of translating any responses that they get in British Sign Language. My final question is giving their specific communication needs, have you given any consideration to how consultation should take place with people who are deafblind? I mean it's deafblind, people use BSL who are deafblind, it's a really resource intensive process, there are individual guide communicators, Deafblind Scotland who hold consultation events whereas an organisation who focus purely on deafness could have a consultation event and one interpreter for the event, every single person who uses BSL and as deaf and blind needs their own individual guide communicator and that would be an issue that they would have to use their own guide communicator to respond to the consultation. Thank you so much. The bill states that the Scottish ministers should set out a strategy for the promotion and facilitation of the promotion of BSL in the national plan. The policy memorandum states that the national plan will set out a framework for action on BSL. Can you provide further details of what you expect the national plans to include and to what extent would you expect any subsequent national plans to take account of previous plans and performance reviews? It's exactly as you say that the national plan has to set out that strategy for promotion and facilitation of BSL. That's what the bill is providing, it's providing the Government to set out their policy priorities for the BSL community. There are a range of issues that affect the BSL community. I know that the committee is taking forward an inquiry to address one of them around the attainment of deaf pupils, which is a massive issue. There is an issue around the fact that 90 per cent of deaf children are born to hearing parents and there is no funding in place for parents, grandparents and siblings to then learn BSL to communicate with their own children, so it will be areas like BSL classes, like front line service provision and awareness of staff of BSL, the attainment of deaf pupils. Those will be the sorts of issues that I would like to see included in the national plan and the guidance, but like I said, all I am setting out is the overarching strategy that the Government should promote and facilitate the use of BSL and then take forward their own policy priorities of the day. What was your second point again? Would you expect any subsequent national plans to take account of previous plans and performance reviews at a rolling programme? I mean, there is a statutory requirement within the bill. Authorities must have regard to the performance review when they are drafting their next round of plans, so that is a requirement of an authority. Thank you. Following on from that, can you give the committee an indication of the types of actions that you would like to see included in authority plans that would directly benefit BSL users? I mean, I have been more explicit in terms of the authority plans in the legislation and some of the things that I would expect to see in terms of exactly how their functions, how they provide services, how they do that in line with BSL users, how they access their services, in terms of consultations that they have carried out on their services, whether that is a local authority consulting on something like the local development plan, how that is done in relation to BSL in terms of the NHS, how they facilitate BSL users to access things like doctors appointments, how they facilitate a BSL user turning up at an A&E department and things like that. I have been more specific in the bill in terms of authority plans and what I expect them to provide. Since those authority plans will be used to assess progress against the national plan, have you had any discussions with the Scottish Government about the level of detail that should be included? I have had an initial meeting with the minister just to talk broadly about the policy objectives and the aims of the bill but we have not gotten down to that level of detail as to what I would like to see them producing in terms of the guidance and their national plan but that is something that I expect to happen as we go through the course of scrutinising the bill. Finally, is it your intention that, following its consultation exercise, a listed authority should make its final authority plan publicly available? Again, that is one of the statutory requirements of the bill that is in there that the authority must make public its plans. According to the bill, the authority plans are to set out measures to be taken by the listed authority. One of the questions that I asked earlier on was measurable outcomes. I am confused. We are asking the authority plan to list measures. We have to take high-measurable outcomes. When I asked the question, you said that there were none per se and yet you are asking the authority plans to encompass measures. Sorry if I seem to contradict. What we are saying is that there are no measurable policy outcomes as a result of the bill. There will be measurable outcomes in terms of a performance review. Essentially, that is measured outcomes. That is measured the actions that a public authority is taking in regard to their authority plans. That will be the measurable outcome but, in terms of a policy outcome, there are no measurable outcomes in terms of that. Mark, on consistency, you stated in the bill that, in preparing its authority plan, it is to try to achieve consistency between that plan and the most recently published national plan. Why is there a statutory requirement to try to achieve consistency between the national and the authority plans? That goes back to the original intentions of the bill to try to deliver a more even spread of services, a more equitable spread of services for BSL users so that the exemplar authorities, their good work, is then being shared through the Government and then filtered down into the authority plan so that, quite rightly, a BSL constituent in your constituency would not expect to get the same services as they would in my own. The reason the line says that they should try and maintain consistency is to try and get that consistency of approaches across Scotland but also still to give local authorities that degree of flexibility in there as well, that there may be a particular local issue and, obviously, to a large extent, local or public bodies who operate on a local level will know better the needs of their own constituents than national government would. There is still that element of flexibility to allow authorities to vary according to local needs. That is why I asked the question, because if we are trying to achieve consistency, is not there a danger that you will limit the potential of individual authorities to effectively pursue policies that are very helpful locally or that there are very specialist needs in that area? There may be a difference between very rural and very urban areas. There may be a number of reasons why there would be inconsistencies, but there are good reasons for those inconsistencies. Does it not effectively limit the potential authorities to go out and pursue those areas of flexibility if it is not within the national plan? It gives authorities that steer, the national plan gives them the steer on what government expects them to deliver, but the bill in that line says that they should try and achieve consistency that that line gives them the flexibility to do things as they see fit according to local demands and needs. I am trying to understand whether what you are trying to achieve here is a minimum standard for BSL users or consistency, because effectively they are not necessarily the same thing. Can you maybe explore a little bit if that is what you are trying to do? Are you trying to provide the same service across the country or is it a minimum standard of service that BSL users could expect, but local authorities and other public services could go beyond that and produce services that are particularly specialist or particularly locally based? I would hope that there would be a minimum standard that would develop and that a BSL user could be able to access a local service in their own language. That would be what I would expect or what I would hope to see happen as a minimum. The Government will be able to set out the priorities on national objectives as well and some of those measures that I gave in answer to James Baxter, but I still think that local authorities have the flexibility with that line in the bill to pursue their own individual localised needs. I am sorry, I am not understanding, but are you saying that you are what you are trying to pursue through the bill as a minimum standard? The overarching aim of the bill is to promote the use and understanding of BSL, so it is hard in a way to say that there is a minimum standard, but I could come back to the committee with some more... Sorry, I am sorry to press this point, but you have been talking about consistency and in other answers to other members on the basis of service provision. In response to me, you talked about the consistency of service that BSL users would expect. If we are talking about service provision, that seems to me or it sounds like we are talking about there has to be a minimum standard. The bill itself is not really about that, that is why I am getting a little bit confused. I think that you are right. It is very difficult to look and understand the bill without linking it to service provision, but actually within the bill and on the face of the bill, there is nothing on service provision. It is about the production of the plans, which I think you identified. Therefore, there is no point in having a national plan if it is going to stand on its own and be completely unconnected with local plans. Whilst listed authorities have the scope and the flexibility to tailor their plans to the needs of the people whom they serve, it is important that the national plan sets the tone and has some influence over those plans. It is creating a linkage, which at the same time allows for flexibility. In terms of service provision, that is a step well beyond the bill itself. I hope that that clarifies it. I understand that service provision is beyond the scope of the bill, but given that is the response that is being used to try to explain it, that is why I am a little bit confused. No doubt that as we explore the evidence, I think that that may become clearer, because I think that it is an important issue. Particularly for those BSL users across the country to understand what the scope of the bill is intending to achieve. It is all very closely linked with the aspiration for what will result once the bill is enacted, and it is difficult to look at either side of that in isolation. Colin Beattie, I would like to explore a little bit more around performance review. You have already said that, in terms of outcomes, you are expecting no policy outcome to come from this, and no policy is to be developed as a result of this. If I was a BSL user, what would I expect to see as a benefit arising from this bill? What outcome would I see? As a BSL user, I hope that this will come across clearly when you take evidence, and the evidence that has already been garnered through the Facebook page is that you value my language, my culture, that you put British Sign Language on an equal footing with spoken English, with spoken Gaelic, and that BSL is recognised. The use of BSL is promoted right across Scotland, and it is rightly given that focus by also establishing that Government Minister for BSL as well to push forward that in all areas of policy, Government policy. If I turn to the actual bill, it states that the performance review should draw on the national plan and authority plans to provide an account of measures taken and outcomes attained. What outcomes are you looking to measure there? It would be the measures that the local authorities include in their own plans, as I said to Mr Brody. In terms of measurable outcomes, there are no measurable policy outcomes from this bill. There are those aspirations and the policy directions that the Government of the day may or may not choose to pursue. The performance review will be a particular public authority stating in their plans, here's what we do to provide services to BSL users, here's what we do to, here's what we plan to do to improve on that, and the performance review then take it into account whether they've met their own objectives or not. The bill also says that the performance review should highlight examples of best practice and where there exist examples of poor performance. Who's going to do that evaluation? Obviously, the 117 different participants here are going to put together their own plans and so forth and put them forward. It's all going to be brought together into one performance review, which is laid before Parliament with the Scottish Minister. So who's going to do that evaluation of best practice? Who's going to evaluate poor performance? What will the measure for that be? What will poor performance be? What will best practice be? That'll be the Government Minister who's responsible for BSL. We'll take for that performance review when reporting to Parliament on those outcomes, the sort of best practice and the standards will follow from that national plan where the Government set out their guidance and set out their priorities for BSL and the performance review will be how local authorities' plans and their actions then match up to that Government ambition. So deviation from the national plan would constitute poor performance? Not deviation but failing to meet any specific policy intention that the Government have decided to pursue through the national plan if they've decided to take a course of action if they've funded that policy through the national plan and an authority fails to meet that. I think that would be right that the Government would report on that to Parliament. Now I talked about a performance review being prepared and laid before Parliament by the Scottish ministers and that performance review draws together the performance of the Scottish Government and the 117 listed public institutions. But can one performance review covering such a wide range of institutions effectively, realistically capture the activity and progress and outcomes that are being achieved? Can it actually do that? Isn't it too big? I don't think so. I mean we all undergo the scrutiny of the Government's budget every year, a £30 billion project that we managed to bring together into a performance review and it's nowhere near that scale. I don't think it's unrealistic to expect the Government to pull together and they've suggested their own method of doing that using a BSL advisory group pulling together the performance reviews of authorities and bringing that into one document. I don't think that's beyond the wit of the Scottish Government. What mechanism do you envisage the Scottish Government to use to review the performance of these listed institutions? I mean the Government, I've set out, given an example of how that could work by using the BSL advisory group to assist with the actual mechanism of collecting and analysing performance reviews against authority plans. I think they've helpfully set that out for me. Now there's to be no statutory sanctions for non-compliance with the legislation and I think the only possible sanction is naming and shaming. Do you think that's a sufficient sanction for non-compliance? Like I said at the outset, I think that the ethos behind the bill is about promotion and encouraging about the positive aspects of BSL and its culture. I think that a formal censure or sanctions regime runs counter to that approach. I don't think that any local authority or public body want to see themselves being spoken in Parliament in an unflattering way, I think, that the naming and shaming approach is enough to make sure authorities are carrying out what they say they will on their own plans. Do you have an example where that approach has worked in the past? We have the example of the Public Audit Committee. The Public Audit Committee don't have any formal powers over public bodies that look into the spending and governance of them. The Public Audit Committee table a report on the Auditor General's report, and if that's a hard-hitting report and a rebuke on the performance of that particular public body, they stand up and take notes of Parliament. I just checked something. You mentioned a couple of times about the guidance that will be produced by the Scottish ministers. I just wondered if you could outline for us what you envisaged that such guidance would include. I think that that's really a matter for the Government. It's up to them that I stood their policy priorities for British Sign Language in Scotland, what they feel they can resource. I think that that guidance could set out what they expect to be included in an authority plan as a minimum, or even a template authority plan to go some way towards reducing the burden of costs around developing a plan. I know as well that the Government has sort of indicated their preference for an authority statement rather than a full formal authority plan, and that's something I'm happy to have discussion with the Minister about. I think that that goes back to the question of the discussion that we had just a moment ago about service provision. I'm trying to envisage what would be in guidance to those preparing authority plans, which would not be about service provision. If it's not about service provision, what would it be about? It would be about the content and structure of the plan. It would be exactly what we've both said. What would the content be in your view of those plans or that guidance? It goes back again to the Government priorities. I don't have access to the Government per strings, so I couldn't commit to a particular policy direction that the Government would include in their national plan and feed down through guidance to public authorities. It would depend on their political priorities and what direction they choose to take the promotion of BSL as a language. I accept that you're not the Government and, obviously, it's up to them to decide what they put in their guidance, but you must have some view about what you would like to see in such guidance. I'm struggling to understand what would be in the guidance beyond a Government saying to local authorities, for example, or all public bodies. I go back to my questions on minimum standards. Those are the minimum standards that we expect. That is the kind of services that BSL users should expect. If it's not about that or is it about that, is that what you expect to see in those? If the Government chooses to go down that route and set that minimum standard, that will be up to the Government to do so. I said earlier that I haven't had an hour-long meeting with the Minister to discuss the overall policy aims of the bill. I haven't had any detailed discussion with the Minister as to the guidance and what they would reasonably be able to include in that guidance to set that policy direction. I think that guidance will follow on from what is included in the bill as to what local authority plans should include in terms of how they exercise their functions, providing services to BSL, including BSL users and consultations, and what services they provide specifically to BSL users. George Adam. Good morning, Mark. I would like to ask about the publication of the plans, particularly the cycle of the publication. The first plan for the publication differs from what will be the future ones as well. Has there been any thought into streamlining the whole process to four to five years? The reason why the cycle changes was to give the Government more time to develop their initial national plan and a consideration that, after the first plan has been developed, subsequent plans are taken into account of the performance reviews and that that would take less time than the initial plan. The reason for the cycle being as it is was purely to make sure that the Government who drafted the national plan was the same Government with the same political priorities who would carry out the performance review. Really, it was just an arbitrary number based on the parliamentary cycle to make sure, like I said, that the Government was assessing its own performance rather than a new incoming Government assessing the performance of a previous Government who may or may not have a different set of priorities. That's an area that I've had discussion with the Minister and he's mentioned the difficulty around the Gallic Language Act and the five-year provision in there being a bit tight for time that they feel some open to the suggestion to lengthen that cycle as long as that's based on the evidence that that makes it a more productive exercise to then move away from the original policy intention, which was, like I said, to have the same Government reviewing their own plans. Mark, do you think that the Scottish Government and listed authorities should translate their plans and consultations into BSL? Yes, I do think that they should translate their plans into BSL. It's not something that is in the bill itself. That would have been an additional cost that would have been more financial memorandum, but at every stage, I've produced a consultation in BSL to produce the responses analysis. The bill itself has been released simultaneously in BSL, and I think that the Government has to be congratulated as well on this that they have committed to amending the bill and providing that resource to make sure that the plans are also produced in BSL as well. The Government in their memorandum has indicated that they would prefer to see the plans produced in BSL and that they have revised the financial implications and are content with those to see those produced in BSL. Mark, if it's not in the actual bill itself, how are we going to ensure that the authorities and the Scottish Government would actually put it if it's not in the act itself? If you're saying that the finances and the financial memorandum are available for it, why have we not got it in the bill then? I didn't have it in the bill purely because it was trying to keep the costs of the bill as low as possible. I'm happy to accept the Government's amendment for that to be the case since it's the end of the bill. The Government that will be footing the bill is more than happy. I think that the Government has been really helpful. It has strengthened the bill with a lot of—I think that it has made seven comments on the bill and four out of seven have been areas to strengthen the bill and strengthen the legislation, and one of those is in terms of producing the national plans in British Sign Language. I'm more than happy to accept that amendment. I know that you said that you'd be open to discussion on the timing or the timescale for publication. The Government has suggested in its submission to us at paragraph 17 in particular that under the timetable set out in the bill there is just over a year between the publication of the first authority plans and the first performance review, which would leave insufficient time to gather meaningful information and performance. There is only three and a half years between the publication of the first and second national plan and three years between the publication of the first and second authority plans. That does seem a very tight timescale. You've said that you're open to discussion. Obviously, the Government goes on to point out the five-year cycle for the Gallic Language Plan and the fact that those who are producing those plans say that that's two tight five years, and the Government suggests a cycle of seven years and produces a table at the bottom of page five of their evidence as to how that would work. What's your view on the proposal that's laid out in that paper that's been submitted to the committee of a seven-year cycle? Like I said, that five-year cycle that I'd set out was purely so that the process could be linked to a parliamentary cycle. If there are practical difficulties in terms of that cycle being too short, obviously the Government has that experience with the Gallic Language Act. I'm happy to accept a Government amendment to lengthen that cycle. That's helpful in terms of clarity. I'd just like to ask about the provision for deaf-blind BSL users. I was talking about in the consultation document about the needs of deaf-blind BSL users, but I know that it's not mentioned in the actual bill. Is it your intention that the needs of deaf-blind BSL users could or should be specifically mentioned in the plans? If so, in what way? Deaf-blind people, it's not in the text of the bill. The bill specifically talks about BSL users and that covers a BSL user whether they are deaf here in deafblind. It covers the full spectrum. While deafblind isn't specifically mentioned in the bill, I think that it's my intention that they're covered by the term BSL user. We do mention specifically deafblind people in the policy memorandum and that we would expect a consultation to take into account their needs, but realising that while the population of BSL users is at around 12,000 deafblind BSL users, it's a smaller again group with a much higher resource implication with individual guide communicators. Can I ask you about one thing that the Government doesn't agree with the bill on? That's the appointment of a designated minister with a lead responsibility of a BSL. Why do you think that it's necessary to use legislation to do this? I think that that was in tune with the overarching aim of the bill. Again, I hope that this will come out in evidence that you'll take from individual BSL users that they're proud about their language, they're proud about their culture and they want to see a much greater focus in Government. They want to see a bill that puts that on that equal footing to Gallic and to see a Government minister set out as being responsible for British Sign Language. I think that a Government minister having it attached to his or her portfolio, that is my policy intention anyway. That's what I would hope the Government would do anyway, so as long as the Government is setting out that there is an individual minister with BSL in his or her portfolio, then I think that that meets the aims and objectives of what I'm trying to achieve. The Government, I've stated that they are quite content that the responsibility should be within a ministerial portfolio. They're clear on that, but they're obviously not content with the idea of it being legislated for in statutes. Would you accept the Government's statement of intent to put that responsibility with a Government minister rather than it being on the face of the bill? I would accept that. Both methods achieve the same outcome, so as long as there is that stated aim and there is from the Government that there would be a minister with BSL added to their portfolio, then I'm happy, happy with that. Thank you very much. Any other further questions from members at this stage? Can I thank Mark Griffin very much and Joanna Anil for coming along? Can I thank very much our interpreters for the work that they have done on this evidence session? Clearly Mark will be coming along later on in the day to give us evidence towards the end of the bill, but can I state at this stage that the committee very much welcomes the views on the bill in written English or BSL? Further information is available in BSL on our website at www.scottish.parliament.uk slash bsl-bill. The deadline for responses is 2 February 2015. As you mentioned a couple of times in your evidence, we have set up a Facebook page that now has more than 1,000 members, and I thank everyone who has taken an interest in the bill from amongst the deaf community. We are receiving assistance to summarise the material that is received on the Facebook page, and a summary document will be published after the deadline closes. All of that is available. It is open to members of the public to submit evidence right up to 2 February, and we are particularly keen to hear directly from BSL users across Scotland, so I just want to put that on the record and make sure that we get as much response as possible to your bill, Mark. Thank you very much again for coming along at this stage, and can I suspend briefly to allow the witnesses to leave? Our next item is to consider four negative instruments as listed on the agenda. Do members have any comments on any of the instruments? Yes. The one in the teacher's pension scheme, we did look at that at the end of October, and I now know that it is to provide the implementation of the public services pension act 2013. I am really just wondering when these further instruments will be prepared that will complete the statutory arrangements. My next question is, what is the reason for the delay, and will it have any impact on the pension scheme itself? I am just slightly surprised by the delay, and we have not had any explanation. I am not aware that it will have any impact, but those are entirely reasonable questions. If I submit a letter to the Government to the appropriate minister, may I ask those questions, those specific questions? Are you content with that? Having been in real, long and hard, on what was the subledge committee in the DPRR, on the various errors that crop up in the production of the legislation? It is not really for the DPRR committee, but a fairly strong message was sent from the committee at the time that I was on it, to encourage those that draft legislation or amendments to legislation to do so accurately, so that those that are impacted, such as teachers' pension arrangements, do not have to go through the hiccup of having to come back and look at redrafted orders. I will go through them individually, given that there have been some comments on those. The first instrument is the teachers' pension scheme, Scotland number 2 regulations 2014, SSI 2014-1992. Does the committee agree to make no recommendation to the Parliament on this instrument? We will be writing the letter, yes. In terms of the recommendation to the Parliament. The second instrument is the looked after children's Scotland amendment regulations 2014, SSI 2014-310. Does the committee agree to make no recommendation to the Parliament on this instrument? It is agreed. The third instrument is the Children and Young People's Scotland Act 2014 and Silverly provision number 2, order 2014, SSI 2014-315. Does the committee agree to make no recommendation on this instrument? It is agreed. The last one is the Education and Disapplication of section 53B Scotland regulations 2014-SSI 2014-318. Does the committee agree to make no recommendation to the Parliament on this instrument? It is agreed. Thank you very much. We have previously agreed to take the next item in private, so I therefore close the meeting to the public.