 Me Secondly is welcome to the fifth meeting of 2018 of the standards, procedures and public appointments committee, which will provide feedback. The first item for the committee is to agree to take agenda item 4 in private. This letter has been received by James Dornan MSP. member agree to take the citation in private. They include agenda item 2 to take evidence on the proposed cross-party groups on tackling I would like to welcome Anas Sarwar MSP to the meeting, Anas is the convener of the proposed group and I would like to invite him to make a statement. Thank you, chair, and thank you for your time this morning. Anyone who has seen the media in particular the last few weeks around Islamophobia and challenges towards not just Muslims here in Scotland and across the UK but across the world will recognise that there is a growing challenge with Islamophobia how it impacts on communities and the impact that it has directly on particularly women and I'll come also to that more in a moment and what we're trying to do is to get some recognition firstly that Islamophobia exists and then secondly bringing together all those people that are doing work in their individual silos right across Scotland around the table in one place namely in the Parliament but also as an opportunity to educate our parliamentarians about what more we can do to challenge Islamophobia head on and what we're looking to do with the group is to look at certain areas so one I've mentioned gender there's a clear gender nature to Islamophobia so if you look at Islamophobic hate crimes if you look at racist hate crimes you're almost twice as likely to be the victim of that if you are a woman rather than if you are a man and more often or not the perpetrator of the incident is usually a man so there is there's clearly a gender nature to to Islamophobia and to racism and that's one element one to have a direct look at secondly it's what framework we have as a legal framework is there are other gaps in the laws are more that we can do from from this place to to challenge Islamophobia and we're going to look at that in much more detail and we're doing that in partnership with the Equality and Human Rights Commission and also Police Scotland what role does Police Scotland have to play around reporting around recording around the barriers to recording around how cases are dealt with and then after that subsequently what role the Crown Office plays in terms of successful prosecutions and the kind of sentences that is going down for people that are the perpetrators of Islamophobic hate crimes but the key point I think that that's worth emphasising is the vast vast vast majority of Islamophobia and racism is not criminal in nature it's not something someone can report to the police it's not something that can have a successful prosecution but it's still impacts on life chances life opportunities and life outcomes and it's that part that in particular I think the cpg wants to explore around employability around the education system around access to public services all those are issues that we're going to look at in more detail and the final stream that I think we want to look at is when you ask young Muslims in particular what do they what do they think is the reason for the rise in Islamophobia the first answer is always the media and the second answer is politicians so we want to do some work around media monitoring the responsibility of media in terms of the language they use and and how they interact with individual communities and then secondly how we better educate our politicians as well myself included about the language we use and how we can we can recognise the actions that we take can have an impact on communities on the ground these are all areas we want to explore in much more detail I'm happy to take any question thank you for that mr sour in do the committee have any questions alexander thank you convener good morning there's obviously some common themes and some common issues that you've identified there are also other cross-party groups that may have an input into what you're trying to examine as well how are you planning to work alongside them to develop some of these common themes and take that forward so Fulton McGregor chairs the cross-party group on race equality which I'm a vice convener of so Fulton was at the the first meeting of the cpg when we set it up and there are areas that we're going to look at together particularly around the legal framework because I think there's a common interest there around around race and around religion and faith around reporting and how the police cooperate so that we've agreed already myself and Fulton that there will be certain meetings that we'll try and do together I've also had conversations with people that are serve on the one around religious freedom I think there's some issues around religious freedom which would be worth having more conversations around and then there's obviously the cross-party group that deals with antisemitism as well I think Adam Tomkins is the chair of that so there's already been some conversations around some of the work that the Jewish community really successfully did in terms of getting access to to decision makers particularly in the criminal justice system and how we can replicate some of that with the cross-party group in tackling Islamophobia thank you Kate following on from that in terms of the specifics for how the impact you see your cross-party group having on Scotland generally and working with other cross-party groups what would you like to be the objective I mean what what's the the objective the biggest challenge has been I think at times we have a Scottish exceptionalism an idea that bad things happen elsewhere but bad things don't happen here and I think one having a recognition that Islamophobia exists in Scotland just the same way that sexism homophobia antisemitism racism exist I think is an important part of that and secondly trying to define what Islamophobia is I think there's a very loose definition that people have in their heads but there's probably not a set definition in law about what Islamophobia is I think that's an important piece of work that needs to happen and then third is to try and educate communities it's trying to bring people together so I've been struck by how how much people have been willing to engage with the cross-party group so when I first put it together I thought we're going to struggle to fit people in a room you know but we had 162 individuals express an interest to take part in the CPG I think we have over 50 or 60 members of the CPG already in terms of organisations as well as MSPs it's already got a mailing distribution list of well over 300 people in organisations so I think there is genuine scope and interest from the public and what I've been very clear about is I don't want it to become just a talking shop because that's an actual fact that's the easy thing to do let's get people in the room and as a Muslim myself get lots of Muslims in the room we'll all end up fighting with each other so we've got to get people in the room and talking about actions and that's one of the key themes so the first meeting we're hoping to have if the CPG is approved is for example with the Equality and Human Rights Commission who will do a presentation on the legal framework there are then people who have suggested what certain amendments could be to the existing legal framework so we'll look at actions that come from that and then Police Scotland are coming to do a presentation also around hate crime statistics how they case handle what they think the barriers to reporting are and then how we can build up a relationship and a dialogue with the third party reporting for example being one thing that's been suggested and also how we publish those statistics to try and get that debate and conversation going so one is having the conversation and the recognition but secondly I think the most important part is what are the actions that we need to take small practical actions but hopefully can have a bigger impact on the longer term. I just wanted to ask you've obviously got some universities listed here but I imagine they're involved from the kind of academic point of view largely. I was just wondering how you were going to engage or include kind of engagement and communication both ways with colleges schools universities particularly the students who have kind of practical experience of what's going on are you looking at getting them involved or education unions absolutely so I'm delighted that Peter Hopkins Professor Peter Hopkins has agreed to be the secretary of the CPG Professor Hopkins has done research although he works at Newcastle University he's actually from Glasgow and commutes back and forth and has done research for 10 years in Scotland around Islamophobia and one of his great frustrations is he's done lots of research but very little people myself include have done very little with the research and the findings that he's had so I think there's definite scope for more research and collaboration with professors not just in Scotland but across the UK. We've also set up with Professor Hopkins taking lead on this an education working group which brings together other relevant researchers it brings together the college and university sector it brings together the ethnic minority educators group which is a group of ethnic minority teachers across Scotland and also action for children who have done a bit about work on creating a charter against racism and religious hatred in our schools that is being piloted in three schools in Edinburgh at the moment so all those people are coming together as an education working group to try and form a more detailed charter that can go into schools across the board and then also to fund to create a research document because one of the biggest challenges we have when I'm asked this question a lot is how bad is the problem I don't know the answer to that is the honest answer and I think there's some research that needs to be done so we can find out what the extent of the issue is secondly what the Muslim community's perception is but thirdly and equally importantly is to find out what the general population's perception is as well because the biggest challenge I think in terms of tackling racism and Islamophobia isn't actually taking on the hate mongers that that's actually the easy part so challenging those that have openly racist or Islamophobic views is actually the easy part because you condemn them you don't allow them a platform the much harder job is those people that have probably an unconscious bias towards people of a certain colour or people of a certain faith is trying to create a dialogue in a conversation where those people recognise that perhaps their own behaviour or their own language isn't appropriate they reflect on that and they challenge themselves and that's the key part is how do we get people to challenge themselves I think that's the only way that we can fundamentally make a difference in society thanks very much good morning first of all congratulations for bringing people together to propose this group just looking through the list of members I didn't see the Amadea Muslim community represented in that list and obviously one of the highest profile hate crimes that's been in recent years in Scotland was the murder of Assad Shah targeted because he was an Amadea Muslim I'm just wondering if you've already made that connection with them are they involved in the group or going to be absolutely so there are obviously within the Islamic organizations themselves there's an internal challenge there which is the cpg is not wanting to get involved with I've made that absolutely clear that it's not for the cpg to define which groups are Muslims there are not Muslims that is for people to self-define just like we have made this organization open to the Jewish community to the Catholic community the Protestant community the Hindu community Sikh community the exact same way it's open to the Amadea community as well and they are more than welcome to attend and more than welcome to be members that they've been reached out to yes so I've sent an invitation out to all faith-based organizations these are the ones that have responded so far great thank you which actually leads me quite nicely into the issue that I wanted to ask you about and thanks for joining us this morning on us it was about the rise in religious hate crimes over the years and actually specifically anti-Catholicism is more than all other religious hate crimes put together and it's 58 percent of hate crimes in the last statistics last year so I did wonder whether or not you would be looking to to do a piece of work on that with the cross-party group and widen it out I think you've answered that in a way by saying you've invited other religions to come along to the group and have an input but I wonder if you'd like to just comment further I think the challenge that you have with that is so firstly I think it's important that we get all faiths involved because only if it's done across all faiths and none will we be able to get action secondly I think there's best practice that can be learned from other communities who have who have been through similar circumstances but one of the challenges I think you have is and and people have said this to me that shouldn't we create a cross-party group on prejudice and hate in general rather than making it specific to Islamophobia and the challenge you have with that I think is if we were to have a cross-party group on prejudice and hate I think it's natural that based on population sizes there will be a there will be an order of merit or importance or seniority of that and I think in that basis Islamophobia to be frank would be quite low in the chain in terms of those different forms of prejudice and hate and that's why I think having a cross-party group on tackling Islamophobia in its own right I think is important and that's not to say that other forms of hate and prejudice are are negated far from it but I'm more than happy to work with any faith-based organisations about how we tackle hate and discrimination and actually some of the actions that will come from from the cross-party group some of the policy proposals for example I've already put forward to the First Minister impact on all faith groups it's not just the impact on Muslims impacts on all faith groups and I think that's an important piece of work that needs to happen. Thank you very much for coming along this morning Mr Sarwar the committee will consider whether to approve the cross-party group at agenda item 3 and we'll suspend briefly to allow you to leave. We'll move to agenda item 3 and that's for the committee to consider whether to accord recognition to the proposed cross-party group on tackling Islamophobia. So committee's agreed to approve that and that ends the public part of the meeting and we'll now move into private session as previously agreed.