 Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Equal Opportunities Committee. It is the 14th meeting of 2015. Can I ask you to set any electronic devices to flight mode, or switch off please? I'd like to start with introductions. We are supported at the table by clerken and reserters staff, official reporters and broadcasts and services a gennym yn y ddiwyll views o Gwymorol, ac yn ddweud'r siaradau gwahanol hefyd. Mae'r ydych yn Gweithgaredd ac mae'r cyflawnur gyda'r uniondiad gweithgaredd cyfanol, ac mae arfer i arfer i sydd yn yn ôl i mi roi'r ydw i. Argymdein am Sando ouron o confi nid. Rhywodraeth yn ni, Beth yn y gallu gyfanol. Onid, John Finney, MSP Hyls, yn Eilats. Onid, Crusia, nid yw'r MSP hynny yn Ardebeth, Scotland. Onid, Hanobelgoel, y MSP wes of Scotland. John Mason, MSP, Glasgow Shiddleston. Drew Smith, member for Glasgow. Agenda item 1 is a declaration of interest. I welcome our newest member, Drew Smith, to the committee. In accordance with section 3 of the code of conduct, I would like to ask you, Drew, to declare any interest that is relevant to the committee's remit, please. Thank you for the welcome. It is a pleasure to join the committee. In light of some of the correspondence that the committee has, I would indicate that I am a former member of the STC general council and board member of Scottish union learning, but those are both previous positions. Okay, thank you very much. Agenda item 2 is our second evidence session on our inquiry into removing barriers, rape, ethnicity and employment. I welcome the panel and ask witnesses, if you don't mind, please to introduce yourselves. Start with Peter. Peter Blair, head of resource management for Police Scotland. Llorian Cook, from Cosland. I slip within the migration population and diversity team. Elaine Gerrard, diversity manager for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. I'm Ailey Prentiss, Associate Director of Corporate Affairs and Compliance for NHS National Services Scotland. Thank you very much. I'd like to now start questions and Annabelle, I believe that you are taking the first question. Convener, thank you very much indeed and once again good morning. I think that we're interested as a committee in trying to understand what different organisations are doing in relation to improving the employment or the proportion of people being employed from those with an ethnic minority background. I wanted to ask specifically in relation to your own organisations, perhaps focusing on NHS and Police Scotland to begin with, do you think that you are doing enough to engage with and support ethnic minorities to participate in employment? Peter, we'd like to start. I might just give you a picture of what we do at the moment. We have a dedicated team of four police officers who are specifically employed to work with the ethnic minority groups in order to facilitate them towards employment as police officers. That, for the whole of Scotland, isn't a huge number of officers, and we've got one sergeant and then three cops, so we've got one in the north region, one in the west region and one in the east region. However, we have increased that just recently and we're trying to the new strategy for recruitment is to push a localism agenda, so we're pushing recruitment to divisions and we're going to try and get further support from divisions. Not to say that that hasn't been the case up until now, but we're trying to have much more encouragement for divisional commanders across the 14 territorial divisions to take more of a responsibility for recruiting within those divisions. We've now appointed another two staff with an attempt to try and push that out to local communities. Is it enough? Well, I think that the statistics will probably say that if with 1 per cent people from an ethnic background, officers from an ethnic background, it probably isn't enough activity at the moment, so that's why we're trying to proactively increase the amount of activity that we've got working with the communities. We do, there is a lot of work currently going on with the communities, with ethnic communities and there's a lot of difficulties in encouraging people from these communities to work with the police and to apply to the police. The applications that we have are insufficient in themselves, so it ranges from 1 per cent to 2 per cent of people from an ethnic background to apply to the police, so we've clearly got some additional work to do there to encourage more applications. As I say, I hope that the new strategy of localism is supported by additional officers will assist with that. No, thank you, Mr Blair. I think that that's very helpful. If Police Scotland makes any attempt to engage with those employees who come from an ethnic minority background to ascertain how they're getting on, what they feel about being in the organisation? Well, absolutely. We have a number of representative groups, staff associations, across a variety of different backgrounds, so we have SEMPA, which looks across the whole of the ethnic background, but we also have a particularly Muslim group. We've recently established Eastern European group, so we're in constant contact with those groups and they sit on the working groups for recruitment, so we include them in terms of consultation all the way through. Yes, we are continually monitoring that, and our activity is very much based around about the feedback that we get from them. I wonder if I could direct the same question to you, but I'm interested in the inclusion plan that is mentioned, which I think is in a draft state at the moment, so maybe following the themes that Mr Blair has already addressed, you would like to comment on those and also bring us up to date on the inclusion plan. Absolutely, not a problem. I should first explain that National Services Scotland is a special board within Scotland. We have about three and a half thousand employees. We work across Scotland and we have a specialism in shared services that support the health of the people of Scotland, so we are a special board and therefore we are a standalone board within Scotland. We have a recruitment team within NSS. They are experienced recruiters. They recognise that the experience of the recruitment process can be absolutely pivotal to bringing people into the organisation, particularly from a BMA background. We recognise that we have areas for improvement across all-protected characteristics that came out of our main streaming report last time, and further from that, as Ms Goldie mentioned, we have an inclusion strategy, which is in draft form. That is currently being put through our committee structure and will hopefully be implemented towards the end of the year, I would anticipate. Within that inclusion strategy, we recognise that all-protected characteristics are equally important. It has to be recognised that, while we can take positive action, we cannot take positive discrimination apart from the field of disability. We do recognise within that that we have to be inclusive, and therefore all managers are encouraged that, when they are writing job descriptions, that inclusivity is included to promote that outward as well as inwards. We have a robust training programme for managers around recruitment, which includes things such as unconscious bias. In line with the duties that we are expected to do, the plan recognises that we have to utilise our data better to show where our gaps are. Key on all of that, particularly for the BMA population, is positive action in terms of where we promote our adverts. We do already work with the council of ethnic minority voluntary organisations to try and focus employment opportunities better, and I foresee work happening within that field further. We also look to implement a scheme at the moment of modern apprenticeship across NSS. It is in some parts of our business currently, not all, but we are looking to roll that out further. That will have, again, further opportunity. Thank you very much indeed. In case Ms Cook and Ms Gerrard think that they are being neglected, could you respectively build on the themes that Ms Prent, as Mr Blair, has been talking about in relation to your own organisations? Certainly. The Fire Service has a tradition of doing quite a lot of outreach work, having things like positive action databases, so people from underrepresented groups may be given advanced notice of adverts rather than waiting for them to come into the public press. As I said, we have outreach work. We have open days specifically for minority groups, and we have done that over a number of years. We feel that we have exhausted the traditional set of positive action initiatives that are available to us, and yet we are still finding ourselves with a 0.5 per cent workforce profile of ethnic minority staff. The numbers are extremely disappointing, because they do not reflect the effort and resources that have been put into this particular area of work. Since the new Scottish Fire and Rescue Service came into being, there has been very limited recruitment, so we took that opportunity to do a research project, a positive action review of all the activities that we have done before. We looked at countries where they have had slightly better success, but we really did not find anywhere that was doing particularly well. It was not just in relation to ethnic minority staff or minority religious groups but also to the proportion of women in the fire services. We took that opportunity to go out and do some more focus groups with minority ethnic communities to find out what it was that was establishing the barrier to coming forward to applying, because what we were finding was that we were not getting very many applicants rather than people not getting through the process itself. We did identify that there was a potential barrier in our recruitment process that we had been unaware of. We tested all of our recruitment with an independent company and looked at potential bias—either prejudice or unconscious bias—that would discriminate against people on the grounds of gender or ethnicity. On that sample, there was no discriminatory practice identified in our recruitment processes, but when we looked at our actual data from our recruitment processes in the last couple of large recruitment campaigns for whole-time firefighters, we noticed that fewer women and fewer people from ethnic minority heritage were getting through the first stage. We are now looking at how we do our cut-off of our recruitment process at each of the stages to see whether that has an impact that we have inadvertently put in some bias. We do not believe that that is the case. We think that it might be because we have got so few applicants coming through, but it deserves further investigation. The work that we did with the focus groups and the positive action review brought back to us information and evidence that we had through the quality outcomes evidence gathering, which was that the fire service had a very strong brand. It was very highly respected, but when people started to think about potential career opportunities, it was not one that automatically jumped to mind. 90 per cent of our jobs are operational firefighter roles, so unless you want to be a firefighter, there are limited opportunities, but we have 800 plus support staff roles that we need to take better steps at promoting and making sure that people say that there is more than just the firefighter role in the fire service. One of the things that came through quite clearly in the focus groups was that there was not a perception that the fire service was racist or any more racist than any other public sector or private sector organisation, but that they were broadly representative of Scotland's society. If there was racism in Scotland's society, there would undoubtedly be racism in our public organisations. That was a fear that some minority groups had that if you could not see a visible minority employee within the workforce profile, it may be an indication that there was racism within that organisation, and that may well be perceived rather than reality. We are still working on our positive action review action plan to undertake some of the tasks that we felt that we needed to take on the back of that review. It might be helpful, convener, if we could be kept up to date with how you are getting on with that review, but that is a very helpful piece of evidence. Thank you very much indeed, Ms Cook. In terms of local authorities, with the written evidence and work that we know that local authorities are doing, there is a lot of good practice out there in terms of COSLA, but we are looking at forums that will help to share that good practice. Particularly, we are working with SNP, the Scottish National Equality Improvement Project, Sounding Board, and they are preventing spaces for public sectors, including local authorities, to share their good practice. There is some good work that is bringing out positive outcomes, but it is just getting that across to all 32 local authorities. That is included in the public sector equality duty, but it is also developing evidence, better evidence and better data. I know that there are benchmarking groups that are looking at that in terms of not only employing BME communities but the progression that they are exiting and gathering that data and getting better consistency to be able to monitor that. There is a benchmarking group that is actually looking at that right now. It is also about gathering better evidence to look at progress, monitor progress, and what is this practice actually working? What can we share and what is valuable? In terms of forum, I mentioned SNP, but another crucial and important network is the Scottish Council's Equality Network, which we work very closely with. That is all that leads to all 32 local authority councils. It is a crucial forum in terms of sharing that best practice and improving on evidence and getting that consistency. I think that, to some extent, it has been answered, convener. Over and above what you have been telling us about what your individual organisations are doing, is there any specific work to attract young people from ethnic minority backgrounds to join your workforce over and above what you have already described to us? We do have a graduate scheme as well. Okay, thank you very much. In part of our proactive work, we do work within schools, particularly targeting the six years, whereas it is not specifically for people from an ethnic background. We are targeting, because we can employ police officers from 18 and they can apply at 17 and a half, so that is certainly one of our targeted areas. We will target schools within areas where there is a higher percentage of ethnic minority potential candidates. Can I ask Mr Blair who does the targeting? That is the proactive team in the main. We have a lot of schools that have community officers based in them, and we are trying to increase the activity of the community officers to make recruitment part of the general vocabulary when they are in the schools. That is very much the work that we are moving out in terms of localism. Would some of those personnel be people from an ethnic minority background? Yes, absolutely. Thank you very much indeed. I want to comment. Similar to the police, we have the same sort of youth engagement initiatives. There is an initiative that is not current at the moment. It is something that will be reviewed again, I suspect, but it was an apprenticeship scheme that happened a couple of years ago that we had funding for, where we specifically targeted schools for girls and schools that had high representation of ethnic minority pupils. Through that, we got substantially better results in our application and in our appointment process for the apprenticeship scheme than we did in part of our normal typical recruitment campaign, but that particular apprenticeship scheme is no longer running. We would use those techniques again if we were looking at a similar type of scheme or opportunity. Thank you. In terms of local authorities, it is very wide-ranging and specific to local areas and local area needs. For example, in rural areas, there have been roadshows around farms to promote people's rights and entitlements in the workplace. There have been projects to attract overseas talent, so we are looking at highly skilled workers. That particular areas need, for example, Aberdeenshire. There are also examples of targeting particular communities and promoting the council as a place to work. There is also promoting the council in general in terms of schools, work experience, shadowing and internship. In terms of our work as well, we have been working on a Migration Matter Scotland project. It is a small pilot project and it is looking at how councils and community planning partners can promote the area and attract migrant workers to the area and have the skills that they need and how they can integrate and encourage people to stay in the area. That has been a piece of work that we have been working on with five different pilot councils. We have also been asking the people that live there, the migrant workers that live in that area. We are engaging with around 175 migrants as well to get what would be useful for them as well. Another piece of work that we do is collate for the Migration Advisory Committee and looking at skills shortages and how councils get the people from overseas to the area that they need. Primarily, the feedback that we have had is around teachers and social workers. We have been collating that evidence so that we can feed into the Scottish shortage occupation list and the UK shortage occupation list as well. Good morning, everyone. We have heard evidence of subtle discrimination and I think that Ms Prenses mentioned unconscious bias. Is there enough work being done in the organisation to recognise this and perhaps either educate it? What do you do in regard to this unconscious bias, which we have certainly had evidence from people who have came along and given us evidence, that it does exist? What work has it been carried forward to weed that out? All of our interviewers for selection have gone through an extensive course that highlights the potential for unconscious bias but also highlights the good practice in terms of interviewing. Nobody sits in an interview panel without being fully trained and being competent in that to make sure that in part of the recruitment process we shouldn't play a part. Beyond that, we have training every member of staff on induction, get to quality and diversity training and regular training throughout the service. I hope that people are absolutely fully aware from the start of their service, both as police officers and members of staff, about the issues around equality and diversity. We do quite a lot in that respect. Anybody else? Can I just ask if anybody wants to come in if you just indicate to myself or the clerk and we can then take you in turn? Absolutely. We also have mandatory training for all members of staff, and at our induction process for all new members of staff, we have a pacific section on equality and diversity that covers unconscious bias. We also have equality and diversity roadshows that travel around the country. We have work locations all around Scotland. Those roadshows are voluntary but staff are encouraged by managers to attend, and managers are encouraged to attend. Those roadshows will also cover unconscious bias. All our recruitment processes are effectively blind, so when we receive applications in, we do not have any information on who that applicant is. However, when that applicant is invited for an interview, some of the matters that might be taken into consideration arrive. For example, we might not put interviews on a Friday, and that is just little things like that can help. Managers are then given training and recruitment processes that should also cover unconscious bias. Thank you very much. Anybody else? Elaine? I am very similar to police and to Ailey. It was another piece of work that is currently being carried out by the equality subgroup of the justice board that is looking specifically at unconscious bias across the justice sector. The committee might want further information on that and how it is being rolled out. That would be excellent. In terms of councils that have given examples of training, both at induction but also at different levels, managerial levels as well. Reflecting diversity within the interview panels has been identified by some councils as well. Promoting diversity as a positive aspect for the council and for the workforce and what that brings to the organisation. Just really getting that best practice across all councils. If you have an interview panel, what is the percentage of BME ethnic minorities on an interview panel? You would imagine that that would be where it would start. Percentage-wise, in the managerial interview panel, people that get out on the road shows what is the percentage? Is that a question that you know the answer to just now? If not, if you are quite happy to actually send it to us, then that would be excellent. Thank you. I will form up again on that particular theme. If you have an interview and there is equal amounts of ethnic minority to indigenous white people on that to go forward for the job and there is only maybe one from the ethnic minority, get through and get that job, do you follow that up? Do you take figures on people who apply and how many actually do get through that process and become employed? Who would like to answer to you? If you do not know the answer, then that is fine. You can actually find it out and send it to us. I think that that has been identified by councils. The lack of data on progression and I know that data does show that there is an issue around getting not necessarily getting to the interview but getting beyond the interview stage. I think that it is about building evidence and particularly about progression when we are talking about BMA communities in low-level jobs. I think that there is a job to be done in terms of gathering that evidence and being able to answer your question. Ms Gerrard said that you are all doing lots and lots of work. We are looking at stage 1 and the lack of progression from that and we are looking at that. It would be interesting if we were able to get that evidence in that respect. Thank you for that. Can I ask another question in regards to barriers that you have mentioned? Obviously, there are lots of barriers. Are you aware of the certain barriers that Ms Prent has mentioned in the fact that on a Friday, obviously, prayer day, you do not sometimes have interviews on a Friday. Are you aware of the barriers that are there for people from different ethnic minority groups? Our entire recruitment process is subject to quality impact assessment. In fact, we are working towards a new recruitment process at the moment that we have called pathways to policing, which is going through a rigorous quality impact assessment at the moment, so every stage of it will be examined to ensure that there is no impact or unnecessary impact or disproportionate impact on any particular group, so every stage of our process will be reviewed under those grounds. We will also monitor the statistics for each stage. Since we have merged from the nine areas into the one, we have had trouble gathering the data purely because the system has had to be merged together and we are really working from spreadsheets and manual counting at the moment, but we are hoping to bring in a new recruitment solution that will allow us to give us much better data in terms of all aspects of recruitment, both internal and external, and that will then allow us to monitor better against the quality impact assessment of each stage of the process. Work is on going very much in that regard, but we hope to bear fruit within the next 18 months or so. I am going back to the monitoring of the recruitment process. I was referring to the historical data that we had because we have not been recruiting since the Scottish Government's service came into being in any large numbers for us to run any data analysis on it. In terms of cultural awareness of the recruitment team of panels, we are setting up interview selection panels or running recruitment events in any way or open days or whatever. In addition to making sure that the panel is familiar with not having things on a Friday or being aware of the quality impact assessments, everybody is issued with a cultural calendar that specifies specific dates throughout the year that you might want to avoid if you are going to do a big event. That is primarily for community safety engagement activities, but it is also used by staff who are conducting interview panels. Very similar to the answers that have already been provided, we also have an equality impact assessment process that is embedded throughout any of our processes, so it would cover the recruitment process. We would ask candidates if they had any matters that they wished to draw to our attention. In the past, we have been known to offer translators where there is a requirement. I just wanted to ask one quick question, because I think that barriers are very important in the understanding of why people do not apply. I just wondered probably two quick questions. When you are out into the forums, would those questions be posed to people who may be interested in what they perceive to be the barriers? I think that Lorraine brought that up about bringing in professionals. Do you think that perhaps the professional qualifications are not recognised? Therefore, they end up in lower-paid jobs? I wonder if that stops a lot of people. Definitely. Qualification recognition is a huge issue. As I was saying about our MMS project, we spoke to 175 migrants. Out of all those 175, one person mentioned in the UK translation of qualifications, Narik mentioned it. I think that I have heard that there are issues around that as well, but it is still a good resource to have. Maybe it is an issue of promoting that and getting people to know about it. That was one of our recommendations. In terms of promoting that service wider, I think that there is a problem with that, but it is not just qualifications. I suppose that there are so many nuances. There is so much diversity even within one community. Never mind people being looked at as a homogenous group, but, in terms of qualification recognition, it is also around experience as well, and the UK experience being valued, so understanding or getting a better grasp of people who have had experience from overseas. How do we get that similar recognition? It is qualifications but also experience. That really came out of the MMS project and frustrations around it as well. People are going into a much lower level when they are highly skilled, have a lot of experience and are equal. We are working to a really tight timescale this morning, so can I ask the witnesses if you can keep your answers really short and to the point, if you do not mind? We have a number of members who want to ask questions as well, and I will now smoothly pass you on to John Mason. I think that we are going over the same ground in different ways, so I am sure that you will accept that. I have listened to the answers to the first two sets of questions, and I am happy to accept that all four organisations represented and the people underneath you. You have policies in place, you are doing the right thing and so on, but I have not so far picked up a sense of frustration that we are not actually solving this. Are you frustrated that we are not getting there? A lot of action and projects have been short term, but the public sector of quality duty gives every public sector a chance to embed this in a long-term project, so looking at action, best practice and sharing what is happening, and giving it time to embed in, implement and be informed of action that actually works, to embed it, to give it that long-term process involved in it. Do you think that we just need to be patient? Should I and my colleagues be a little bit more patient and say that over time it is going to work its way out? No, I think that the public sector—there is a duty now. In terms of equality outcomes, I had a quick look at all our member councils. The vast majority of them have an equality outcome relating to employment and a diverse workforce, reflecting the diversity in their community and their workforce, so that the outcome is there and they have to. It is their duty to publish progress every two years, so the momentum is there, and I feel that the public sector of quality duty has given it that momentum and that chance to embed it in long-term. I think that there is still work to be done in what I have said about best practice, but also in terms of better evidence to track that progress and to see what is effective and what is maybe not as less so. I agree. I would not say that we are frustrated, but I think that there is still a lot of work for us to be done. Some of the barriers for joining the police service that we find anecdotally when we are out in the communities is the perception of the police officer as a role in communities. People who have come from different backgrounds do not necessarily hold it in sufficient high regard as an employment that we want to enter into, so there is a frustration that we have to work with the communities to inform them better of what policing is like in Scotland and to encourage them to apply, because it is very much a different role than some of the countries from one generation or another that they have come from. There is a frustration in that regard, but we are working very hard on it. It is supposed to be about returning investment. The more we invest in working with the communities to encourage them to the police, the more we will get back, but then it is a balance of resources at the end of the day. As I say with the executive, I have agreed to put additional resources in to try and work within local communities in order to redress some of this balance, but without additional activity, we will not achieve the 4% that we are trying to work towards. If I could just follow up on the police issues particularly. I have never been in the police, but it strikes me as quite unorganised and rigid. It would be unfair organisation. We have previously looked at the whole question of women not getting promoted within the police and the problems with breaks and things. The suggestion has been made that although a young person might have grown up entirely in Scotland from a BME background, and therefore possibly has quite a positive attitude towards the police, the previous generation might have more influence on them than the parents of a white Scottish kid might have. Is that something that you can deal with, or is that just getting too far away? We would like to deal with it, and you will have noticed from the evidence supplied by the Federation that anecdotally that is some of the issues that fathers and mothers of potential applicants are putting them off, or there are cultural traditions in terms of what is expected of the children that the police would necessarily interfere with. We are working very, we do work right across the board spectrum, so we are not just focusing our activity towards potential applicants, we are working in mosques and places where some of the older people would congregate in order to work with those communities to encourage them that the police service is a good opportunity and a good career for their children. We are trying across the spectrum, but it is difficult without a doubt. How adaptable could the police be for things like people want a Friday, or parts of a Friday of people are not eating through Ramadan? Are these things or is it just really not possible for an organisation like the police to adapt to that? It is absolutely possible for us to do it, and we do our very best to do that. In fact, we are considering at the moment opportunities for people coming in on a part-time basis, so part-time police officers are something that we are considering at the moment, because that could encourage options that we do not currently have. Equally, we are taking away the requirement potentially for removing driving licences as a requirement because there is a large proportion of people from different communities who are unable to get a driving licence before they join the police. We are looking right across the spectrum of things that we can do within the organisation to remove some of the barriers that we have to recruitment. What about the fire service? If you get a fire on a Friday, you cannot give people time off for prayer, can you? Within the operational rules, no, because you would have to go out to respond to it. At the moment, we have not had any requests for people to have altered hours on the basis of religious observance, but we have people observing Ramadan and being accommodated by looking at alternative duties, depending on the extent to which they want to observe it. If you are an operational firefighter, we have not had any requests to alter the workforce, but for support staff, we do have compressed hours flexible working that would be accommodating. Yes. There is a wee bit of a chicken and egg, is not there, because if you have not been asked for something, you do not do it, and then if you do not do it, nobody, you do not get people in. Is the council feeling that there is a bit more flexibility in there? I would imagine that it would come under every quality policy within local authority. I could go back to the quality leads, but I would imagine that that would be incorporated. Again, on this thing about policies, I accept that your cos land authorities have policies in place, but we have also done things such as people feeling isolated at the workplace, they are the only ethnic minority person in an office, that kind of thing. Can policies deal with that? Is that not attitudes? I think that there is an element of training in terms of that training required and useful, experiential training. There are large areas of Scotland that are not particularly diverse. White Scottish communities do not experience that level of diversity, but making it important training is experiential. If you like, people walking in somebody else's shoes. Please have been desperate to get in as well. Can I just make one point before we come on to you? On the local authority thing, I just make this point, I am not expecting an answer here, but I am confused over the sum of the figures that have been given, because we had a submission from Fife that says that their total BMI population is 1.27 per cent. Spice said that Fife is over 2 per cent just for non-white ethnic minority groups. I am not sure where we go with that, but I find that a little bit strange. Sorry, Ms Prentis. I wanted to come back to your issue around the sense of frustration. I absolutely agree what Lorraine said about the impact and the progression that having equality outcomes has had. The benefit of that is that it allowed us to stop and look at the evidence and really try to shape where our organisations wanted to go. We had to choose where equality outcomes depend on the evidence that we had, and therefore sometimes some of the protected characteristics had to be promoted over others. As long as we could justify that, that was fine under legislation, but it is a process. There is a sense of patience around it. We can't solve all problems on one day, but we are trying our very best across all the public sector, and that is the sense that I am getting from all the evidence presented today. For us, within NHS NSS, when we were looking at our outcomes, we looked quite outwards, and that helps the inwards focus as well. For example, one of our key things that we have is that we take blood donation from mosques. That allows people to access our blood donation services who may not access it before. The impact of that is that staff who work within blood donation have a much greater awareness and understanding of the issues of that community, and it is working. I can follow-up and respond to other questions. Can you clarify for me that you are here for NSS? Can you speak for the whole NHS? No, I cannot. NSS has a responsibility in some areas for the whole NHS, is that the case? In limited shared services areas. For example, our blood donation services are Scotland-wide. We have procurement services that do facilitate procurement for boards, but we do not control what other boards do in terms of their quality. One of the issues that has come up in both local authorities and the NHS about the whole spread of people from ethnic minorities through the organisations, and my understanding is that within the NHS there is a fair number of people from ethnic minority backgrounds at a lower level, but there is not so many at a senior level. Is that something that you can speak to? I cannot speak to that for other boards, no. Within the NHS, it would be too small to really... We have three and a half thousand. We publish our figures in line with the equality duties, which are in our mainstream report, and figures should be in there. You have figures as two ethnic minority groups all the way at different levels? We do not have figures on retention and progression. We have figures on recruitment and reverse. As requested by the panel, we will look at retention and progression figures. I think that that will probably do me, sir. Thank you, convener. We have talked a little bit about unconscious bias and subtleties. I wonder if we could just move you on to the issue of institutional racism and maybe ask you to say on behalf of your own organisations maybe what your understanding of that terminology is, and it has been raised with the committee in evidence. As organisations, you would seek to identify what could be described as either institutional racism or a perception of its existence. I suppose that thinking about recruitment but also about sustaining staff and employment and giving them opportunities for promotion. Since McPherson reports, all police services have been very virtually aware of institutional racism and have really worked very hard to address any evidence of that within the organisation. As I said earlier, all officers at induction and all staff at induction are trained very strictly in equality and diversity, and it is quite a significant course. It is not just a half day, it is a full course on equality and diversity to raise the issues. We also have within the organisation confidential reporting mechanisms that should people wish to raise issues, then the ability to do that. We have the staff associations that should report back to us on anything that we are not conscious of that would have an impact on people from an ethnic background working within the force. It is always going to be difficult to address, and I suppose that the culture of the organisation will dictate to some extent how much we are aware of that. However, right across Police Scotland, we have put in the mechanisms, as far as we are concerned, that should be able to address that. I think that confidential reporting of any instances is a very much a positive step in addressing anything that is in there. We do not actually believe that there is any significant institutional racism within Police Scotland. In fact, I would be astounded if there was any at all, but those mechanisms have been put in place to ensure that that situation continues. I think that it is about positive action and what I spoke about about training. Training is an induction, but it is also about managing real staff who are interviewing and creating opportunities for progression and developing opportunities. We are putting training in place for managers and making them aware of those opportunities and the importance of fairness within those opportunities. Awareness raising within the workforce in general of cultural differences and disability across the protected characteristics. There are good examples of that awareness raising and promoting diversity within the workforce in the positive aspects that that brings. Perhaps uniquely, as compared to my colleagues, what we do across NHS, although we get individual results, is that we have an annual staff survey, which is run by an external agency. That staff survey seeks to ask questions along the lines of, are you aware of bullying, harassment, discrimination in the workplace, so that we can get some feedback on that? I would highlight for NSS that our feedback is not that we have an issue around race and that is very positive for us. We have other measures so that we can use to promote things like positive action or not being a bystanders. For example, we have linked into Stonewall's campaign about not being a bystander. There is no reason why that similar language cannot be rolled out across other protected characteristics to promote inclusivity. Eileen, do you like to comment? We carried out a cultural audit and, similar to NSS, racism was not identified as a particular issue. There were other issues that we have to address through that piece of work. One of the other things that we are doing is looking for trends in bullying, discipline, grievances and absence management by the characteristic of the individuals who are making a complaint and the trends in terms of the actual complaint whether or not there is any racism behind that. The numbers are so small that it would not ever give us an indication of institutional racism, so we need to look at other ways of capturing that data. Different ways of training positive action and the cultural audit and employee satisfaction surveys are probably our best tools, along with making sure that the quality impact assessments embed the dynamics of what somebody has to do in order to apply a policy appropriately. Is that there for each of our policies and practices? I will make a comment or a question and then see if everybody wants to respond. However, there is a bit of reluctance around that kind of term, which is understandable, because people may feel that it brands what you would regard as being a small and isolated problem. There are connotations that come with that, but for people who are maybe not in the management positions and thinking about the cultural sensitivity of their organisation, they are thinking about, this is my lived experience at work, this is my experience of going for a job that they might be much more likely to see in racist terms. I suppose it is about how you get the balance right of what is the correct level of concern about a problem that neither exaggerates it but makes it clear within an organisation that it is something that you have to be on the lookout for and take seriously whenever it arises and not the little people's experience, even if in a management view it is a perception rather than a reality of the situation. Is that a question or is that a statement? Looking at the panel, I think that it was a comment. Are you finished? Does anybody want to answer that? No, you are quite happy to leave it as it is. Can I have a very quick… It goes to the 32nd thing, thank you. I was interested that NHS NSS does an annual staff survey, and that is carried out by an independent organisation. Scottish Fire and Rescue referred to a cultural audit. Is that an annual thing or is that a one-off? I need to come back with the exact details. We are going to do a cultural audit, which we are doing, and we are also doing an employee satisfaction survey. One of those will become annual, and one of those will become… It will have a programme that will be a cycle, but I do not know the number of years. There will be an annual at some point, but I need to come back to verify it. Could you come back? Does Police Scotland do an annual? Police Scotland have just embarked on their first staff survey, which we are just expecting the results later this month, and it will be a bi-annual. I am. Probably some of my questions have been covered through the process of previous members, but you mentioned the fact that you monitor recruitment. What information do you keep and use the data for people being promoted, and the exit rates of BME groups? If you could expand on that, what do you do regarding monitoring recruitment? I know that you go through that process, but for the promotion aspects of it and exit rates for ethnic minority groups, that data, what do you do with it? Is there any way that the data monitoring could be improved? How could it be expanded to make it more effective? Everybody's head is down. I believe in that contact, but maybe it's okay, I'll work through them. I stated already that we take data at the recruitment stage. As I'm sure the panel will be aware, there are rules around what data you can keep for how long. For example, data on candidates that are not successful, you keep for a lot less time than data on candidates that are successful. In terms of promotion, we do not have those figures at the moment, and we will come back to the panel on those. Exit rates, the leavers report within our mainstreaming report details leavers by ethnicity in front of me at the moment. Again, it's voluntary, staff do not have to make a response. The highest number of our employees who are leavers are actually white Scottish, so maybe take some comfort from that, I don't know, but we don't actually do much with the data as far as I'm aware at the moment. I agree that we could do more with our data and use it to look at our outcomes for the next time round. We monitor all stages, so we have data. The issues that we have are that the numbers are so small in terms of only 1 per cent within the organisation. It's difficult to identify trends as a result of that, but every stage, we monitor each of those outcomes. I suppose that, since we've become Police Scotland, we've still been working with legacy systems and we're still catching up in terms of some of the data, so we're just about to embark on a new set of exit interviews and the proposal sitting with the executive at the moment that should gather better data, the data that we previously gathered about retention of staff. We didn't feel strong enough for us to fully understand the reasons for people leaving, so we're really going to bolster that piece of evidence by looking at much better exit interviews. I think that there is a divestry of collecting data and collecting evidence between all the different local authorities and from what I picked up from speaking to councils and also from their evidence. There are gaps in terms of evidence in promotion and exit data as well, but I know that there are benchmarking groups and family groups, so there are groups of councils with similar demographics and similar make-up. I think that there is one that has been led by Westin Bartsha, and they're looking at employment and at it in terms of progression and also at interview stage outcomes and exit as well in terms of BME community and disability and gender as well. There's work going on in trying to get that consistency across the local authorities in terms of gathering that evidence. The FAR service is still working with a number of legacy databases, and we're currently in the process of trying to develop an HR payroll system that will capture all this information appropriately for us. We're working with the individuals who provide us with their recruitment and selection recording models so that we can actually get better data from that, because at the moment I won't be able to give you all the statistics to all of the questions that you've just asked. Thanks. I think that John Finnie would like to come in. Thank you. It's to pick up on a point that you made, Mr Blair. I don't know if you know my background. It was previously a police federation official, and it relates to a problem that you and I would both have had, and that is, I'm sure, we would both have encouraged the use of exit interviews because they could learn, but the frustration that a lot of people in their anxiety to exit quickly have no wish to engage, and ironically it's sometimes the cause of that anxiety to exit that would be most informative. So as I say historically, I had experience of that, and as part of my constituency workload in the last four years, I've had that too. How do we address that? Because that's where you would get a lot of information from. You're absolutely right, and some of the options that we're presenting for the executive committee decision are to completely outsource that, so people would have confidence that when they're speaking to the individuals that it's not necessarily their line manager or somebody in the organisation that may be subject to the criticism of the reason why they're leaving. That's certainly one of the options on the table. Again, it will come down to returning an investment with that, so the more we invest, the better the data will get. For me, as head of resource management, it's absolutely critical. We need to develop a retention strategy as well as a recruitment strategy, because we have seen larger numbers of people in the last few years leaving the organisation voluntarily than we have ever done before, so for me to understand the reasons why they're leaving, I really need to do that in order that I can address that internally. Certainly part of our corporate strategy was to have processes in place such as to make us an attractive organisation in which we retain people, and I think that we really need to understand the levers in order to get that, but you're right, there will be a challenge for people who are leaving for some reasons, they'll just be glad to get out the door and it won't really want to speak to us, but we'll do all we can to encourage them to give us that data before they leave. As was said, of course, there's no compulsion with that, but I'm heartened that you say that, as much as that is about retention, it may not be about retaining that individual, but the experience has learned. We won't go into the particular detail of it, but we have a paper that you alluded to from the Federation. I don't know if those were concerns about the policing in the Commonwealth Games that you were aware of, but a wider awareness of that would, of course, impact on recruitment potential. With exit interviews, and this is maybe for all of you, but for you, Mr Blair, specifically in regard to that information there, what will you do about that? I mean, there are people who can have grievances as we know that are. They feel genuinely, but they're not necessarily enough to put there. Are you able to see what will happen about that? We have to work with the data, with the information we receive, regardless of what it is, and address the issues. I mean, very much about a double-edged sword. I think that there's no point in me spending a whole lot of time working on recruitment if I'm losing a whole lot of people out at the other end and without addressing those issues, so I really need to spend equal amount of time retaining people that I do, recruiting people in all honesty. Any information that we get which can assist us if it's about flexible working, if it's about the way people have been treated within the organisation, we have to absolutely action that. There's no point in receiving that information then sitting on it, so my commitment would be, once we get the better information, is to absolutely make sure that that information is actioned. In addition to dealing with individual cases as well, that evidence should also form its way back into the equality impact assessment process to redesign any policies or practices that you've got in place that are perhaps leading to either discriminatory practices or unwelcome workforce places. Do you want to work hand on your questions there? Yes, thank you. At this stage in the process panel, the questions are quite often being fully thrashed out, but let me have a go at it. I was going to ask about the balance between positive action and positive discrimination, and that's been largely touched on. I wonder, in maybe looking at recruitment sustaining people and promotion, if you could maybe talk about what the challenges are there. For instance, there are unrealistic expectations. Do people maybe feel aggrieved that they've not been promoted where the statistics would show that it's unlikely? I mean, it's unlikely that most people in the Scottish Police Service are going to be putered regardless of a nest in the city. So, are unrealistic expectations built in in the recruitment process in the first place for everyone? Yes, it's difficult to say as the reality. I think that if we were to survey recruits and ask what rank they would anticipate them finishing in, I think that there would be some unrealistic expectations within that. I don't know if that's necessarily the fault of Police Scotland, because in terms of recruitment, we're trying to encourage people to come in, but I think that false promises certainly aren't useful and would contribute to a higher attrition than we would want. Promoting reality is what we really need to do. We're embarking on a or about to embark on a new campaign. That's very much about that, is about promoting what the reality of being a police officer is and maybe taking away some of the more glamorous aspects which would create a false expectation for people joining the service, and that's all part of the retention strategy going forward. In terms of promotion, we have very much opened up promotion, as you'll know in the last year, so it's all on self-application now. If people feel that they've achieved the standard that is required to get to the next rank, then they can at any time apply for that up to the rank of chief inspector, which we run specific processes. For sergeants and inspectors, people can apply at any time. Their evidence will be considered and they'll be given an interview to see how they should go forward. It's competency-based, so again, it's a minimum standard. It's not competitive in that regard. It's a bit setting a minimum standard on people achieving that. Once we get to chief inspector and above, we run specific processes for promotion at times when we require those ranks. That is competency-based. It will be more. We will draw a line under the number of officers we require who have reached the standard and those will go into a pool for promotion. It's looking back from the times earlier days in the police service, where you were selected by line managers to go for promotion. It's much more open and transparent and fair system now that we have in place. It's slightly different within different parts of the public sector. We don't have promotion. We have posts that have come up that may be more senior to the post you're in and they go through a process of application. Usually, what happens with our posts is that they are advertised internally first, and that's just policy at the moment, before going externally. So if people are interested in it, it's very much based on merit. You would expect them to have conversations with their line manager around their own personal development. I know what I certainly do with my team. In NHS NSS, we strive to be a great place to work and for us it's about our people. If we don't have the right people who are motivated in doing the right things, then we will not get the best out of our organisation and what we do then to support the health of the people of Scotland. So it's key for us that it's not necessarily about positive action or positive discrimination. Everybody should have the opportunity to try and get to where they want to go, and if we can facilitate that through the resources that we have, we do. I think that John wants to come in, Mr Pimento. John, your promotion is more transparent now, but it's also more based on the individual seeking promotion from what I understood. Previously, when we looked at women in the police, there was a question of self-confidence, and a lot of women need to be encouraged, while some women need to be encouraged, to promote because maybe they run themselves down a bit. Would that also apply in this field that people would be encouraged to? Absolutely. I put that expectation on to the line managers and the senior officers within the division. At one of the recent processes, we extended the application period in order that we could get a better balance of applicants, because the applicant balance wasn't quite what we would have hoped for. There was a general encouragement for all staff to apply, but we extended it for a couple of weeks to make sure that there was a better balance of applicants in the first place. About disciplinary grievance dignity at work policies, they are quite often perceived by everyone as being punitive rather than positive. I would always want them presented as an opportunity to have a good workplace for everyone. Is the balance right with that? Is there anything in any of those areas that could be done that would enhance the prospects of increasing the BME workforce? The number of grievances that we get is very low, and it's difficult to understand whether there are other grievances out there that aren't coming to our attention. I don't want to overkill the point, but that's why we introduced the confidential reporting. If people don't feel confident in putting their head above the parapet, then there's an opportunity for them to report elsewhere. We have a very clear policy and operating procedure around grievance to make it absolutely clear that the person who raises the grievance is into any way culpable and should not be discriminated against or moved or alienated. They are very strong in that regard, but you are right that there is a perception, I suppose, with some people that, by putting their head above the parapet and those grounds that might be looked upon poorly, that's why we introduced the confidential reporting mechanism. Are you able to see what response that's had, Mr Blair? I don't have the figures to hand, but I can report back to the committee if that will be okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, convener. Unison stated that the positive action provision in the Equality Act 2010 are underused. One of the reasons, maybe some would think that it will equate to positive discrimination, do you think that that would be one of the reasons why, first of all, are they underused or is there a perception that they are underused? If that perception is because using positive action might equate to a lot of people in the organisation as positive discrimination. Okay, who would like to answer? Come on, Ailey. I will pick in you this time. I think that this is probably me speaking with my own knowledge of equality and diversity. The issues around positive discrimination and positive action are very difficult. Some people don't actually like to have positive action used even to their benefit because they feel that it should be on their own merit and therefore why should they have that additional help, if you like. However, positive action is there for a reason and the reason has to be that it is needed. Therefore, if you're going to use it then it's using it in the most effectively possible way. I read through some of the submissions that were provided by other organisations for this committee. One of the things that struck me, for example, is about how ladies from different backgrounds may have expectations around childcare on them. What positive action can we use to make sure that those ladies are actually seeing our adverts in the first place? They may not be going to, for example, Scottish Health on the web where we advertise or S1 jobs where we also advertise. There are things that we can do around that and I think that that is something that we should certainly look at and we do work already with Simbo to do so. In terms of positive discrimination, the only time we use that is around disability where it's permitted and that would be in the case of, for example, a guaranteed interview scheme. That's a very good point. When it's permitted with people's disability, should we permit it to address that particular issue? I think that's a decision, a discussion for much higher authorities in here. That's a question. Are you quite comfortable with that? There's been a challenge from Unison about saying that local authorities, for example, are not using as much as positive action provisions that exist. Is there a reason for that? I think that there was the example given at the inquirer of the double tech. It is positive discrimination and it is illegal if it was to be for BME, but I think that there's also a diversity of feedback of how useful, even if there were legal changes, you could use the double tech. How useful? Do people who can apply to use it would find it? Is there a perception that it would penalise them? It's not helpful. It's on their own merit. There's a lot of complexity around it. I think that we'd need further discussion. In terms of positive action, I think that it's maybe not framed in that way, but even just looking through the evidence and getting feedback myself from councils in terms of what I've been saying about workforce monitoring, in terms of training, in terms of dignity at work policies, disciplinary policies, so there is a lot going on under the positive action. However, I think that there is an issue with the understanding of action and discrimination and issues around the double tech. Can I just give you an example that we had within Police Scotland? Previously, our adverts, particularly for areas within the organisation where we didn't have the proportion of female officers that we wanted, would run along the lines of applications that are particularly sought from female officers who are currently unrepresented in this area. We had feedback from the Scottish Women's Development Forum, which said, and I'm quoting an email that I got here. In some cases, I even think that that's potentially caused more damage than good as it can end up being a barrier to those trying to target and opens up any successful female candidates up to the old, you only got the job because you're a woman comment. What the Women's Development Forum fed back and suggested, and we've now adopted this to go on to the adverts as opposed to the previous statement, is that whatever unit it is requires male and female officers from diverse backgrounds to operate effectively, drawing on police and non-policing experience. Therefore, interested officers should not assume that they are unsuitable based on preconceptions of the profile of that role. We moved away from that piece of positive action on the basis of the Women's Development Forum. I didn't think that it was actually positive, and we've now incorporated this new statement into our internal adverts. That's very interesting, but going back to the question, and thank you very much for being quick to tell us about your views on the double-tick, if it's good enough for people with disability, is it difficult to understand why it's not good enough for people from the ethnic background? Or is it not good enough for people with disability? We shouldn't have the double-tick. There has been a range of views from disabled persons organisations in terms of the double-tick and how useful it is. Along the same lines of you only got it because. I'm not giving a view, but there's a range of views out there in terms of how effective it is. I've got the same range of views, and you find it as a barrier, as a difficulty to promote positive action because you think you're bringing into that area of the voltaic of positive discrimination. Is it the case in other organisations? To be honest, we haven't considered anything beyond the double-tick. It's not a dialogue that we've had as yet, so I'd be in wrong for me to comment. Do any of the members have any other questions they'd like to ask? Can I ask the witnesses, is there any else you would like to say you've not had the opportunity to actually put forward? If there's anything you do think about, please send us the information that we'd be glad to hear from it. That actually concludes my meeting. I'd like to thank you all for coming and giving evidence today. Our next meeting will take place on 17 September, and I'd like now to officially close the meeting. Thank you.