 ddweud i'r sicr memdau. Rydw i'n ei fideb i ddweud hynny i'r ddiweddau i ddylu i'r ddynebu iawn i'i gael i dderfynu i gael y dyfodol y bydd y� un o grifith yma yw ymweld iiciwlad ei gael i tspyd i'r iawn i un o'ch方 yw ein'r trefo'r dweud i ddweud o'r sylweddau o'i gael i ddechrau i gael i schimpr i weld i'r iawn i gael i gael i gael. Rym ni i gael i ddechrau i gael i chi arnod ddiolch yn ei ddifigol i gael i ddifigol, yn ichi croeso i ddifigol? I congratulate the Parliament on the excellent service that I have always found to be provided for constituents who are deaf and use BSL as their first language. I congratulate you on the award that the Parliament has received. For me, this is a very happy day. It is a great honour for me to open today's debate on the British Sign Language Scotland Bill. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Education and Culture Committee, the Finance Committee and the Delicated Powers and Law Reform Committee for their consider scrutiny of the bill and to all those who have worked so hard to get the bill to this point. I am delighted with the reaction that has been to the bill. It is clear that from the many submissions received by the Education and Culture Committee that there is a real desire for a piece of stand-alone legislation that will promote awareness and protect the language and its culture. I would also like to thank the Minister for Learning, Science and Scotland's Languages, Dr Alice Rallon and his officials for the open and constructive discussions in relation to the bill. I look forward to working with them in the future, given that we have, hopefully, a successful vote at 5 o'clock tonight. Members may recall that, back in 2010, former MSP Cathy Craigie consulted and conducted a consultation on a proposed British Sign Language Bill. Although the aim of my bill is different from that of the one that Cathy Craigie was proposing to introduce, the work done by Cathy and the cross-party group on deafness went a long way in informing what we have here in front of us today. British Sign Language is the first language of many deaf people in Scotland. BSL is a visual gestural language that uses space and movement. The hands, face and head are used to communicate and it has a different grammatical structure to English. Across Scotland BSL is the Indigenous manual language in the same way that English is the Indigenous spoken language. Deaf people who use BSL are part of a recognised cultural and linguistic minority and, unlike other people who speak other minority languages, many deaf sign language users cannot learn to speak English as they cannot hear the language. The origins of forms of sign language can actually be traced back to the 7th century. In fact, in 1886, a short story penned by Charles Dickens titled Dr Marigold's prescription was published. That story was about a deaf girl called Sophie, who is rescued from a violent father by a man who adopts her and then devises a form of sign language in order for them to be able to communicate with each other. Before I go on to discuss the aim of my bill, I would like to mention a specific group of BSL users in Scotland who use BSL in a different way. People within the deafblind community have estimated that 11 per cent of deafblind people use BSL as their first language, and they, of course, access that language in a distinctive way. There are a couple of different names for that method, such as hands-on sign and tactile BSL deafblind manual, to name a few. I want to assure members of the deafblind community that I consider the needs of all BSL users to be equally important, regardless of the way in which they access the language. The minister at his last appearance before the Education and Culture Committee stressed the point that the needs of the deafblind community would be taken into consideration in the implementation of the bill and that he was determined that the deafblind community would be represented on the advisory group, which would be set up if the bill was passed. I hope that that will reassure members of the deafblind community that their needs have been considered at all stages during the development of the bill and that they will continue to feature prominently in its implementation. I have also been in discussion with deafblind Scotland over the possibility of an amendment to the bill to ensure that the involvement of deafblind BSL users is guaranteed. That is something that we are actively looking at for the purposes of stage 2 amendments, and that is something that we will look to introduce once the legal consequences of any amendment are fully considered. The aim of the bill is to encourage the use of BSL in Scottish public life and raise awareness of the language among the hearing population. The bill will not give BSL users any rights or impose service obligations on authorities, and as such the bill is not directly about the service needs of BSL users. Its focus is more about promoting the language and all the benefits that will flow from that. Unfortunately, to date, there still remains a lack of awareness and understanding of BSL among the hearing population. That lack of understanding and awareness has meant that deaf people not only have less access to the same information and services as hearing people, but that can often lead to them feeling marginalised, shut out, misunderstood and isolated. By the same token, society is also missing out on the contribution that deaf and deaf and deafblind people can make because they do not have the same access to education and the workplace as hearing people do. Given that 90 per cent of deaf children are born to hearing parents, would the member also support an amendment that would help to support family sign language provision? There is no doubt that if the family can sign, that is an enormous help to the child. As well as BSL for family needs, there is no Government provision at the moment for that. That is obviously a big gap in service provision, as Mary Scanlan points out. The vast majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents, hearing siblings and hearing grandparents. I am right in saying that it was a commitment, maybe if not all, but in most parties manifestos in the 2011 elections here for the Scottish Parliament. I hope that this bill does act as a vehicle for the Government to implement that pledge that was within its manifesto. I would like to quote a response from children in Scotland to the Education and Culture Committee's call for written evidence when it said that acknowledging BSL and the strategic approach to the early years is a critical aspect of addressing the inequalities that are currently experienced by deaf children and young people, not least potentially having a positive impact on reducing the attainment gap. That attainment gap is all too evident here in Scotland when it comes to deaf pupils in terms of the amount of standard grades that are higher, the amount of deaf young people who go on to enter the jobs market. I hope that that will be able to make a difference to that. In my opinion, the minister helpfully encapsulated the purpose of my bill when he said that the evidence session on 17 March too often we talk about BSL users only as recipients of public services. As a country, we will benefit from their contribution if we protect, promote, support and value their language and culture. To be honest, I could not have put it better myself. That is why I use that quote today. I hope that I have stolen your thunder in your speech. According to the last census, there are estimated to be more than 12,000 BSL users in Scotland, and some think that that figure may be suppressed because not all deaf BSL users use written English, and so perhaps not able to complete the census form. It is estimated that 120 children each year in Scotland are born with a hearing loss. Mary Scanan pointed out that the majority of those children being born are to hearing parents, where the impact of that child being born with a hearing loss. The impact of that can be huge on parents, guardians, brothers and sisters, cousins and other family members who are hearing. A scoping study carried out by Marion Grimes in 2009 on behalf of the Scottish Sensory Centre in conjunction with the National Deaf Children Society reported that only 8 per cent of teachers could sign, and that means that other 92 per cent could not sign. Raising the issue of how deaf children in Scotland are accessing their education, we need legislation that will encourage education providers to think about how deaf children can be educated and the language and the culture to which they belong. I hope that one of the outcomes of the bill will be a greater uptake of the language and greater educational attainment of deaf pupils so that they are able to participate more fully in daily life. As things stand, we are all missing out on what deaf and deafblind people have to offer. Wouldn't it be fantastic if a BSL user could access healthcare or housing advice, whether they could report a crime in the police station, whether they could get advice from their local authority, if they could access that in their own language, because the professional delivery service was deaf or deafblind themselves? That is why educational attainment is so critical. Data from the Deaf Achievement Scotland project shows that, in 2010, the unemployment rate of young deaf people aged 16 to 24 was 49 per cent compared with 19 per cent for all young people. We will have to do better than that, otherwise we are really missing out. Turning to the Education and Culture Committee's consideration of my bill, as part of the scrutiny of the bill, the committee set out to ensure that, as many BSL users as possible were able to contribute by setting up a Facebook page, the use of digital media as an engagement tool is of particular importance to the deaf community, as it allows people to post comments in video and text format. Since the launch of that Facebook page back in December, well over 2,000 people have joined and posted hundreds of comments in the form of BSL videos. I thank the committee for its commitment to engage with members of the deaf community and for giving them the means to be able to participate in a consultation process, which is of so much importance to them. I also thank all the people who responded to that consultation. The convener of the Education and Culture Committee himself acknowledged just how important the views of BSL users have been in enabling the committee to scrutinise the legislation. During the scrutiny of the bill, the committee was keen to pin down what exactly was meant by the term promotion of BSL, so I thought that it would be helpful to try and clarify what is a hope to achieve in relation to promotion of BSL. For me, promotion means approaching BSL as a language and not as a communication tool for the disabled. That means that the language having a status equal to the Gaelic language and commanding the same kind of respect and appreciation of its long history and culture. We are all familiar to some extent with Gaelic because of dual language signposts with Gaelic appearing on many websites, and I would like to see the same for BSL. I welcome the Government's support for the bill. Like I said, I have been having a constructive dialogue with the minister and officials, and I look forward to seeing the detail of the amendments that the minister has spoken about at the committee. I would like to thank everyone again for their contributions and consensual approach. I look forward to the debate and hearing from members to working with the committee, the minister and his officials to further refine the bill should it be supported today. I am pleased to move that the Parliament agrees to the general principles of the British Sign Language Scotland Bill. Before I begin, I add my congratulations to the Parliament on the receipt of the award that is just received and before I start to congratulate Mark Griffin for getting this far. I know that it is like trying to get a member's bill through the Parliament, and he has done a great job in getting this far. I know that it is a lot of hard work, so well done to Mark Griffin. I believe that the fact that the committee unanimously supports the general principles of the bill reflects the value that we as a Parliament place on protecting Scotland's linguistic minorities. Before I talk about the committee's findings on the specifics of the bill, I want to say a bit about our approach to the bill and particularly our engagement with the BSL community. Throughout our scrutiny of the bill, we sought to engage directly with BSL users and the wider deaf and deafblind community. We wanted to understand the challenges experienced by people whose first language is BSL, to discuss the importance and benefits of using BSL, and to consider what impact the BSL bill might have on their lives. We visited Windsor Park School and Sensory Service in Falkirk, where we met deaf peoples who attended the secondary school. The pupils told us that BSL was important in helping them to communicate with their classmates and their friends, which helped them to feel included and involved. We also met members of the Sensory Services team based in the 4th Valley Sensory Centre and discussed some of the challenges around the provision of education for deaf peoples. The member is aware that we have a signer today in the Parliament, and I am just wondering if the member can perhaps slow down slightly in some of his address in order that the interpreter can keep up. I am Julia Chastineis by Dennis Robertson for the speed of my speaking. The balance that I am trying to strike is getting through all that I have to say today, and hopefully the signers can keep up. In Edinburgh, we held an open meeting at Deaf Action, where we discussed the bill with adult BSL users. There was enthusiastic support for the bill, even though it is seen as a stepping stone in a long-term project to improve access to services for BSL users. To enable people to share their views in BSL, we set up a Facebook group. That provided an easy way for people to communicate by posting BSL video clips. The group has attracted more than 2,300 members and has been shown to be a good example of how public bodies can be inclusive and accessible for deaf people. Throughout our work, we published key documents in BSL, and our evidence sessions were broadcast with live BSL interpretation. The views of the deaf community have been extremely valuable in helping us to understand the context of the bill, and we are grateful to everyone who submitted views and evidence to us. Now, turning to the committee's findings. Firstly, I am grateful to the minister for his response to a report, which he has helpfully provided in time for this debate. While everyone who gave evidence to us agreed with the aim of the bill to raise the profile of BSL, there were some different views about whether the bill was the best way to achieve it. Indeed, some public authorities told us that they felt that existing legislation was sufficient and opposed the bill. Most cited the Equality Act 2010, which provides protection for people with certain characteristics, including a disability, as the appropriate mechanism for addressing the communication needs of deaf people. It was suggested that BSL users were already protected under the Equality Act as employers and service providers have an obligation to anticipate the needs of employees and service users and to make reasonable adjustments for them. We explored the viewpoint in detail during our open meeting at deaf action and in our discussions with witnesses. From those discussions it became clear to us that the bill is about promoting BSL as a minority language. That is an entirely different approach from using legislation that protects deaf people based on the view that they are disabled. The British Deaf Association put it very succinctly. The Equality Act accords rights to individuals to protect them from discrimination, but it does not protect or promote BSL as a language. The bill is an important step in helping to meet the linguistic needs of BSL users, in the same way that previous legislation did for the Gallic language in Scotland. That is distinct from the protection offered by existing equality legislation, which identifies BSL users as disabled. During our scrutiny process, we were acutely aware that the bill does not impose obligations on service providers or confer rights on BSL users. Therefore, we were keen to find out whether the BSL community felt the bill went far enough. The clear message that came back was that the bill was a positive first step to improving services for BSL users. The preparation of BSL plans is the primary means by which the bill seeks to promote BSL. Therefore, those plans are crucial to the delivery of the bill's objectives. From the views that we received, there was general agreement that the planning framework proposed in the bill, with the Scottish Government's national plans setting out priorities that inform and guide the lower-level authority plans, is a sensible and strategic model. For the committee, the most important thing is whether the BSL plans deliver the improvements that the bill aims to achieve, to heighten the profile of BSL and increase its use in the delivery of services. Of course, the quality of the national plan will be crucial in this respect, as it will set the tone for the authority's plans. As I mentioned earlier, we received lots of views and comments about the bill via Facebook and during our informal discussions. BSL users told us about the challenges experienced by deaf people when accessing services and called for BSL plans to address the following key priorities. First, the promotion of BSL in an education setting. Secondly, improving access to healthcare and social care for BSL users. Thirdly, improving employment opportunities for BSL users. Providing early-year support for deaf children and their families. Enabling the inclusion of BSL users in cultural and leisure activities. Finally, recognising the particular communication needs of deaf blind people and ensuring that their interests are taken into account. If the bill is passed today, then the Scottish Government and public authorities must ensure that their plans are meaningful and reflect the needs of the BSL community. Effective engagement and consultation with BSL users will be crucial to the development of meaningful plans. We strongly agree with the view that the bill should require BSL plans to be made available in BSL. It is frankly inconceivable that plans would not be made available in BSL. I note the Scottish Government's view that the cost of translating BSL plans would now be classed as an additional cost of the bill rather than being subsumed under the existing equality duties, as had been previously suggested. We also welcome the Scottish Government's proposal to establish an advisory group that will provide advice to Scottish ministers. As the national plan will set the framework for action on BSL, the advisory group will have a key responsibility in ensuring that the bill is implemented and meets the needs of BSL users. It will be important to ensure that membership of the advisory group reflects the interests of the BSL community and supports the minister's commitment to ensuring that BSL users, including deafblind BSL users, are represented on the group. Their expertise and their knowledge will be vital in ensuring that the advisory group provides effective advice and guidance to ministers. In addition, we have suggested in our report that the group's expertise could be of assistance to a wide range of public bodies, not just the Scottish Government. We would be keen for it to act as a resource available to all listed authorities under the bill. We very much welcome the suggestion from the minister that that will indeed be the case and that the advisory group will provide guidance on the style and the content of authority plans. The committee supports the proposal to extend the scope of the national plan to include public authorities with a national function, which are accountable to the Scottish ministers. We recognise that that will lead to fewer plans being produced and reduced bureaucracy. In our report, we cautioned that incorporating the plans into a single national plan must not dilute public authorities' accountability for delivering the actions included in the plan. I note the minister's comments, however, that, in his view, that approach would strengthen the level of accountability and not dilute it. The important thing for the committee is whether the bill will help to deliver improvements for BSL users. In addition to introducing BSL plans, the bill proposes a performance review that is to be carried out by the Scottish Government and laid before the Parliament. The bill proposes that the performance review will provide a basis for the Scottish ministers and listed authorities to be held to account on their performance against the actions in their published plans. The review element is therefore central to the success of the bill. The information provided by listed authorities in their plans will be used to judge performance. However, as the first cycle plans will not include such information, it will not take effect until the second performance review and beyond. As the minister has usedfully indicated in his response to our report, an alternative approach to collecting information during the first cycle to inform the first performance review will need to be developed. The Scottish Government has also suggested moving away from what the bill describes as a performance review to what would instead be called a progress report. Part of the reason behind that is the concern that is raised by COSLA that it would be inappropriate for the Scottish ministers to assess local authorities' performance as it suggests a top-down command-and-control relationship between the Scottish Government and local authorities rather than the partnership relationship that currently exists. While the committee understands COSLA's concerns, we did not arrive at a final position on the Scottish Government's proposal and ask for further clarity about how the progress report would operate. We look forward to receiving updates from the minister on this, which we will consider in the context of any amendments that are lodged at stage 2. In relation to the cycle for publishing BSL plans and performance reviews, the bill suggests that this should be done every parliamentary session. As a result, there are some fairly complex arrangements that take account of, for example, the early dissolution of the Parliament. We therefore agree with the Scottish Government that there would be merits in simplifying the process by decoupling the publication cycle from the parliamentary timetable. However, we did not arrive at a conclusion on what length the new cycle should be. Some people suggested to us that five years was too short, while others were concerned that extending the cycle any further could mean the loss of more educational opportunities for deaf children. I know that the minister is now proposing a cycle of six years, which we will consider at stage 2. However, we accept that there would be benefits in allowing a longer lead-in time for the publication of the first national plan that is provided for in the bill. An extended timetable would allow for the BSL national advisory group to be established, and it is likely that the committee would support such an amendment to the bill. We recognise, along with the Government, that the bill could give rise to further cost implications, such as in relation to implementing the plans. While there are likely to be additional costs, in my view, that is not a reason to oppose legislation that seeks to support the communication needs of the BSL community. I know that the minister has expressed a similar opinion. There is one other issue, including a report that I want to briefly mention. The bill includes provision for a minister to be appointed with special responsibility for BSL. We, however, are content with the Scottish Government's suggestion of removing this requirement from the bill on the basis of ministers' collective responsibility on the understanding that BSL sits within a ministerial portfolio. In conclusion, the committee supports the general principles of the bill and recommends that the Parliament agrees to them. It is clear that further work is going on behind the scenes to give effect to some of the proposed changes that Mark Griffin and I have highlighted, and any of the minister may mention in his contribution. The committee welcomes the fact that the Scottish Government and the member-in-charge have shown willingness to work together to develop the bill, and we look forward to considering any amendments that are brought forward at stage 2. As others have done, I would like to start by congratulating Mark Griffin for proposing the bill and for the very positive approach that he has taken to its development. I would also like to place on record my own thanks to Cathy Craigie for her early work, which helped to bring the bill to fruition. It is important to acknowledge that the bill has huge support from MSPs, from across the political parties, and I believe from the BSL community who responded to the consultation and to the Education and Culture Committee's call for evidence in vast numbers. I would like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to the committee for the way in which it has engaged with the BSL community as part of its scrutiny of the bill. That has included setting up a BSL bill Facebook group, which I believe has more than 2,000 members, and accepting BSL clips submitted via the Facebook page as evidence. That has ensured that the process for stage 1 of the bill has been accessible and engaging to the citizens of their country who use BSL. The Scottish Parliament has been applauded, as we have heard, for the approach that it has taken, and rightly so. I would like to add my congratulations and thanks to the committee convener Stuart Maxwell, deputy convener Siobhan McMahon and all the members for their detailed and careful consideration of the bill. As members will be aware, the Scottish Government fully supports the BSL Scotland bill, and we have suggested some changes that we think will improve and which, broadly, Mark Griffin has accepted. I will describe the main changes in just a minute. First, it is important for me to say clearly that the Scottish Government recognises the cultural aspect of deafness and recognises British Sign Language as a language. We formalised that in a statement of recognition in 2011. I had the opportunity to meet a number of deaf and deafblind BSL users last week. They described the marginalisation and exclusion that they face on a daily basis, because they do not have linguistic access to information, services, opportunities, benefits and things that most of us take for granted. Profoundly deaf people who use BSL are covered, as we have heard, by equality legislation and human rights conventions, which define them as having disabilities. However, the evidence suggests that, despite those legal protections, their needs are still not being met. Although there are examples of good practice to promote and support the use of BSL, there is a lot more that we can and must do across the Scottish public sector to address that. I believe that that will benefit not only deaf BSL users but all of Scotland. The changes that we have suggested to the bill will, I believe, reduce the bureaucratic burden on public bodies and make the legislation more action-orientated and outcome-focused. The most significant change that we propose is that, rather than all public bodies producing their own separate BSL plans, the national plan should cover all public bodies with a national remit that is directly accountable to the Scottish ministers. That is very much to be welcome, but in my contribution I want to ask you, so I am preparing you for it, which, in the list of public authorities, if any on schedule 2 would not be covered by your national plan? I am glad that you prepared me for that. All that I can do is reiterate my point, which is that our view is that the legislation in its schedule should outline the bodies that are covered and that they should all be covered by our national plan. If that does not answer the member's question and I can sense by her face that it does not, I am happy to speak to her afterwards about that or correspond. However, the other important issues that we can perhaps together seek improvements on is that we would like to enable a more co-ordinated strategic approach at a national level that will significantly reduce the burdens that are associated. We anticipate that the national plan will include general actions for all national public bodies, but it will also set out additional actions to be taken by specific national public bodies with responsibility for priorities included in the national plan. I have said in the Government memorandum and in evidence to the committee that we intend to establish a BSL national advisory group, which will have a crucial role in advising Scottish ministers on the content of the plan. Importantly, the group will include a significant proportion of deaf BSL users, including deafblind BSL users and families of deaf children who use BSL. Effective engagement, when done properly, also plays a key role in ensuring that public bodies are accountable to the communities that they serve. That is important for all public bodies, but particularly for local authorities who are not directly accountable to Scottish ministers. Like the committee, we agree that engagement with the BSL community will help to ensure that the bill delivers real improvements. Indeed, we feel that that will be a more appropriate and effective approach to supporting on-going improvement than merely naming and shaming individual public bodies. We agree that it will be important to review activity against plans on a regular basis through a progress report informed by the national advisory group. We propose that the information should be collected through a self-assessment exercise and with feedback from BSL users. On the subject of authority plans, members may be aware that the Scottish Government has previously suggested that listed authorities should be required to publish BSL statements rather than plans, as we felt that those would be more streamlined and focused. However, on reflection, we accept the committee's view that, in reality, there is no legal difference between a statement and a plan. We will instead focus our efforts on using guidance to encourage listed authorities to ensure that their plans are concise and action orientated. I firmly believe that engaging effectively with the BSL community in the months and years ahead will be crucial to help to ensure that, across the public sector, we focus on making the changes that will have a positive and lasting impact on the lives of the BSL community in Scotland. We have recently announced funding of £390,000 from the Equality Fund to five deaf organisations to help to make that happen. The organisations are British Deaf Association, Scottish Council on Deafness, Deaf Action, Deaf Connections and Deaf Blind Scotland. I thank the organisations for what I am sure will be an invaluable role in the successful early implementation of the bill. In closing, it is my view that, if we promote, protect, support and value British Sign Language and Deaf Culture, we will all benefit from the greater contribution that our deaf citizens can and want to make to our communities, our country and our economy. I look forward to what I hope will be a positive debate today about the benefits of supporting British Sign Language and the benefits of Mark Griffin's bill. It gives me great pleasure to open this debate for Scottish Labour this afternoon and to pledge your support to Mark Griffin's BSL bill, particularly during Deaf Awareness Week, a week that we are now celebrating. I would at the outset like to thank Mark for proposing this extremely significant bill and congratulating him in not only bringing it to the chamber today, but also for the way in which he has conducted himself throughout the bill's process. I know that that has not been the easiest of journeys, but I am sure that it will be a worthwhile one. As a member of the Education and Cultural Committee, I have heard first hand evidence as to why we require the bill and what impact it has likely to have on people's lives if it fulfills its potential. The policy intention of the bill is quite clear that the profile of language will be heightened and it is using the delivery of services increased. However, for many people, especially public bodies, they may see the bill as an equality issue based on disability. Many times during evidence, both verbal and written, witnesses referred to the equality act as a means of dismissing the proposed BSL bill. Some people believe that the equality act should be sufficient to deal with the provision of BSL. However, as deaf action said, many people are confused about what is covered under the equality act. I do not consider deaf people to be disabled or covered by that act. That bill is necessary as it is about a language and it is difficult to fit linguistic issues into legislation designed for disability. Many deaf people do not see themselves as disabled and it would be wrong for public bodies to implement decisions that, in effect, do not recognise that. As the Scottish Association of Sign Language interpreters stated, BSL is a language, a culture and an identity. That point was further highlighted by the British Deaf Association Scotland, who told the committee that speakers of other indigenous spoken languages are not required to self-identify as disabled to access their language rights. It is only right, then, that we treat deaf people as we would any other person wishing to put their language rights into law. Given that there are an estimated between 6,000 and 10,000 BSL users in Scotland and that 120 children each year are born with a severe or profound hearing loss, we have to start changing the way we think about deaf people in our society. It is not acceptable that there are only 80 interpreters for the deaf community in Scotland. That is one in 100 for every deaf person, whereas in Finland, a country already with a recognised sign language act, the figure is one in six. It is horrifying to learn that hearing parents are finding it difficult to communicate with their deaf children because the parents cannot get access to BSL classes. Given that 90 per cent of deaf children are born to hearing parents, that is a significant amount of people across Scotland. The bill could make sure that those parents would get the right help when they require it and that the barriers that they are currently in place would be removed. Statistics from the Scottish Council on Deafness found that 77 per cent of BSL users who had visited hospital could not easily communicate with the NHS staff. That is a deeply concerning figure, given that we all want our health service to serve everyone in our society. It cannot be acceptable to find such a high number of people who are unable to communicate with their health professionals at such a worrying time in their lives. That bill could change this statistic for the better if the policy intentions are delivered. Another topic that the Educational Committee and the Scottish Government have been focusing on at the moment is the attainment gap. During evidence to the committee regarding the BSL bill, we found that the attainment gap for deaf learners was extremely worrying. The Scottish Government figures for 2011-12 show that 36.4 per cent of deaf pupils attained higher or advanced hires compared to 60.2 per cent of hearing pupils. Scottish Government data also shows that only 26 per cent of deaf school leavers are likely to go on to higher education compared to 39 per cent of hearing school leavers. As Mark Griffin said earlier, the Grimes report in 2009 indicated that only 8 per cent of teachers of the deaf can sign. That is a major concern to many and it is not something that can be addressed by the bill directly. Although being able to have access to communication from teachers and other education professionals might be of some help to many, it is something that must be addressed to the Scottish Government's current education bill and I look forward to further discussion on that in the coming weeks and months. Mark Griffin has previously spoken of the postcode service provision that currently exists for BSL users. In addition to the deaf services' larniture, it is very critical about current standards of care in that area. In other words, the provision to the deaf community is dismal. The bill would change that not only for the people of larniture but for people throughout Scotland. I would echo the views of the committee when I say that the performers' review is critical to the success of the bill. It provides the mechanism for ensuring progress is made in delivering tangible improvements for BSL users. I would urge the Government to make sure that this particular aspect of the bill is implemented correctly and with the full support of stakeholders. It has been made clear by Mark Griffin and organisations supporting this bill that this proposed bill is the first step on the journey to improve the lives of deaf people in Scotland. The bill will not solve all the problems that deaf people currently face, but it is an important first step, and this Parliament must take it today. As we heard in evidence, the bill will give deaf people the opportunity to access life through their own language. There could be no stronger point to end on. I look forward to supporting this bill at the decision time tonight. I would like to start by saying that the Scottish Conservatives fully support the BSL bill at this stage. I also say that there is something quite special about every party in this Parliament agreeing on such a special bill to provide sign language for deaf people when we are all at loggerheads fighting battles across the streets of Scotland, but I think that that is politics as we know it. I would also like to thank Mark Griffin for bringing forward this bill in British sign language. Mark not only has the best intentions for this bill, but he also has the best reasons that he shared with the committee. No one said it, so I will say it. Mark watched his grandparents struggle with the lack of British sign language provision and understanding, and he probably thought that two generations later that things would have improved quite considerably. It is the comparison between what is available today and what Mark Griffin saw two generations ago that has inspired this bill. We should all welcome that and commend Mark Griffin for having the courage and the background for bringing that forward. It is also worth putting on record that Kathy Craigie, as others have mentioned, former Labour MSP, worked very hard on this issue. Indeed, in this Parliament, Jenny Marra, to be fair, has also been a champion for improving services, training and understanding for the needs of deaf people. While I am giving my thanks, I would like to thank the Scottish Government for responding to the committee report at stage 1. I feel that this is a critical part of parliamentary proceedings, given that some aspects of the bill have been dropped, such as the requirement for a minister—that is already agreed—or proposed amendments due in stage 2, which makes today a mark of progress with agreement and a full, open and transparent debate, not only from all parties today, but we have moved on with the response from the Law Society, Inclusion Scotland and National Deaf Children's Society, who have all sent in updated briefing papers in response to the committee report at stage 1, but also in response to the Government's response to our committee report. I have to say that it was unfortunate that the Minister for Mental Health was unable to do so at stage 1, and I hope that he has perhaps learned from the approach that the Government has taken to this bill, because it is certainly very, very helpful. The assurance from the Scottish Government that direct responsibility for the promotion of BSL is included in the ministerial portfolio is very welcome, and I would like to think that this bill will succeed in heightening the profile of BSL and increase its use in the delivery of services. However, at this stage, I am not entirely confident that it will make a huge difference, because we do need quite a bit more clarity on many parts of the bill, and if it is vague in any way at this stage, it can potentially mean that it could be vague in implementation. However, given the comparisons to Gaelic and the huge success in Gaelic speakers, Gaelic teachers and access to Gaelic language in recent years, if BSL at least makes some of this progress, then the bill will be deemed a success. I would also add that there is still much more to do on the Gaelic front. The main provision in the bill is the delivery of national and authority plans. Although we need to see more detail about the Scottish Government's suggestion for statements to be produced rather than plans, we also need clarity on the performance review, which is critical to the success of the bill by providing the mechanism to ensure that progress is made in delivering tangible improvements. More clarity on what would be a progress report, because I appreciate that the intention of the bill is an important stepping stone in the development of BSL. Mark Griffin has quite often mentioned the different levels of provision throughout Scotland, and it has been referred to as postcode service provision. If that is looking for a consistent approach across Scotland, I think that that is something that we would all welcome. Inclusion Scotland asked for an honest appraisal of where the gaps in provision exist and how those will be addressed during the period of the plan. I do not think that that is an unreasonable request, but nonetheless, it is a huge amount of work. Whether it is a plan, a statement or a progress report, if we are looking for a consistent level of service, that is quite a considerable commitment. I am pleased that naming and shaming has been dropped. I think that carrots always work better as an incentive mechanism rather than sticks. I feel that some authorities may be starting from a very low base of provision, so they may make tremendous progress, whereas others may start at a much higher base, a higher level of service and not make much provision, much progress. If we are looking for a consistent level of service, some are likely to make more progress than others. I think that we need to look at whether we want progress from everyone, even the ones that are doing it really, really well. I would like some more clarity on that. As I am summing up, I will raise the other issues that I have then. Many thanks. We now turn to the open debate. I would ask members who wish to participate to ensure that the request to speak buttons are pressed, please. It will be speeches of six minutes. I thank Mark Griffin for continuing to bring the bill before Parliament. As someone who I recently brought forward a member's bill to Parliament, I understand the workload that is involved. Indeed, he has my sympathy to some extent. However, this is an important bill. I welcome those in the gallery who are here today, those BSL users who are here today. They are here because they want to ensure that their BSL is seen as a language, not a disability. Presiding Officer, it is important that we have that distinction. As someone who grew up not really having an aptitude for language at school, my Latin teacher said to me, my name was Dennis, but he called me boy. My name still is Dennis, of course, Presiding Officer. However, he said, you have not got a grasp of grammar, you will therefore never get an acquirement of Latin. As a Doric Lund from Aberdeen, I always thought that my grammar was married to my grandfather. That was the problem that I had with my aptitude of language. Presiding Officer, I know very little in the way of French, I know very little in the way of Spanish, BSL. Why is that? It is because quite often we assume that others will speak our language, our language of English. BSL users are not wanting to speak to one another or only be able to speak to one another. They want to be understood when they go into a public service or any other service. They want to be understood in order that they can acquire the same rights as anyone else, the same respect as anyone else, because it is a language and not a disability. Society is finding it difficult to find the difference between language and disability. Bringing the bill forward is something that we should ensure sees the passage of Parliament to stage 3. It requires slight amendments. Mark Griffin acknowledges that, but it requires and has done since its inception the input from those using BSL. Mark has listened, Mark has engaged, and I know that, because as the deputy convener of the cross-party in deafness, I have listened also to the other groups coming in to Parliament to engage with Mark. Consultation is important, but consultation in itself means nothing unless you move forward with actions, because actions speak louder than words. That takes me to the award that is received today in Parliament, Louder Than Words, an award presented by Delia Henry, the chief executive for action on hearing loss to this Parliament. That was achieved not by tick boxing, it was achieved because this Parliament is leading the way in accessibility and leading the way in trying to ensure that deaf, deafblind people and those of hard of hearing have the access to the information within this Parliament. That is where we should also congratulate Anilla McKenna or Equalities Manager in Parliament. I had the privilege in my last job of working with people who are deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing, blind and partially sighted. In fact, they were considered a group of people with sensory impairments. One of the things I had the privilege of doing was ensuring that staff—all staff, reception staff, social workers, support workers, volunteers had an awareness of the BSL stage 1 and, for many, they went on to stage 2 in order that they could engage with those who used BSL that were coming in for that service. What was remarkable, Presiding Officer, was the way in which the staff who had no knowledge of BSL in the initial stages took to that language. They took to that language in a way that I had not done in my school days, but they took to it in a way that they were able to see the benefit of using that language. They engaged with people and saw the awareness, and sometimes the gratitude of people who were using BSL or who were reliant on BSL. Mark Griffin is taking this bill forward for people who are using BSL, but it is not just for the deaf community, Presiding Officer. It is for society. Society is needing to be aware of and needing to learn BSL as a language, thank you. I welcome the opportunity to speak this afternoon on the British Sign Language Bill. In requiring government and public authorities to put in place BSL plans, the bill could help to develop an infrastructure and services to support British Sign Language, and it delivers a fairer deal for the people who use BSL to communicate. The proposals contained in the bill are right in principle, and on that basis I hope it proceeds. I believe that the bill has potential to improve the quality of life for a significant linguistic minority in our society. I believe that the bill not only helps to promote awareness of British Sign Language and the needs of those who use it, but it encourages accessible government, active and inclusive citizenship, and the growth of the culture surrounding that rich and wonderful language. I therefore pay tribute to Mark Griffin for introducing the bill and securing support from members across the chamber. I also want to congratulate all those BSL users and champions of the language who have campaigned for change. I know in the last Parliament that a member's bill on British Sign Language was proposed by Cathy Craigie, but it fell when the Parliament was adjourned. I realise that the proposals before us now are not identical, but it is clear to me that many deaf people and BSL users are still not satisfied with the status quo and continue to demand change. We are only debating the bill today because of the conviction and the persistence of those who have been steadfast in their belief that a new law would help to protect and promote this language. For them and for those who represent it, I hope that we can agree on the principles behind Mark Griffin's bill and move a step closer to legislative change. This bill requires Scottish ministers to facilitate the promotion of BSL through a national plan for the language, and it requires authorities listed in schedule 2 of the bill to develop their own plans too. This is not simply a bureaucratic exercise. This is a means of focusing minds in government at all levels on meeting the needs of those who use BSL. Working with BSL users, Government and public authorities will have to consider how they use BSL in the delivery of services and how they develop the language. The bill is not overly prescriptive. It does not require BSL to be a modern language in schools. For example, it does not require teachers to have a BSL qualification. However, the bill is crafted in such a way that those kinds of initiatives could be included in BSL plans, and those plans would of course be subject to performance review. What the bill does seek to do is to put BSL on an equal footing with Gaelic, another rich and wonderful language that has a measure of protection in Scottish law. Presiding Officer, I know that we are not approaching this issue principally as an equalities issue. This is about a language used by a linguistic minority being more widely understood and promoted. Let's be clear about the importance of the quality act for people with disabilities and people who are deaf. Our equality legislation is to be valued. However, I would also draw the chamber's attention to the consultation submissions from the Deaf Association of Scotland. They say that, currently, language rights for BSL are only offered under ages of disability legislation. However, speakers of other Indigenous-spoken languages are not required to self-identify as disabled to access their language rights. The quality act 2010 does not make specific reference to BSL, and it is therefore the subject of case law. It goes on to say that the quality act accords rights to individuals to protect them from discrimination, but it does not protect or promote BSL as a language. I believe that there is therefore a gap in legislation that the bill addresses. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights confers on any members of a linguistic community the right to use their own language and to be taught or to receive information in that language. Article 5 asserts that the rights of all language communities are equal. That bill would be in keeping with the spirit of that declaration. It would sit alongside equality legislation, not in place of it. It would provide a platform in which we can build the further growth and greater development of British Sign Language. I am obviously aware that the needs of those who are deaf or affected by hearing loss are not identical. Deafblind people, for example, who are registered blind cannot make use of a visual language. Their needs are different. They would typically use a tactile British Sign Language or deafblind manual variations on BSL. Meeting those needs can be more resource intensive because it requires one-to-one communication. In the past, when improvements for BSL users have been achieved, those have not necessarily benefited deafblind people in full. However, I think that it is important to note that Deafblind Scotland supports the BSL bill. They recognise that this bill will improve the experiences of deaf people. I also believe that there is a scope within the bill to address the needs of deafblind people, too. I see from evidence received by the education committee that some respondents to their call for evidence were concerned that a focus on British Sign Language could detract from other methods of communication used by deaf people and those who have experienced hearing loss. For example, deaf action has highlighted the use of lip-speaking and the need to continue to train and recruit skilled note-takers. However, deaf action is also supportive of the bill, as are most organisations that advocate for deaf people. None of the concerns that have been expressed strike me as a barrier to the bill progressing. Indeed, I can see from the education and culture committee report that the member and the Government have been commended for their collaborative approach to the bill. Continuing that spirit, I am sure that Mark Griffin will be able to deliver a bill that carries broad support within the chamber and outside, too. The Scottish Council on Deafness described the bill as a promoting and enabling catalyst. I agree with him. The bill can help us to cure a broader recognition of BSL, and it can substantially improve the lives of people who use the wonderful language. Let us allow the bill to progress and give BSL the status and the support that it deserves. I welcome the opportunity to speak on the British Sign Language Bill. As a member of the Education and Culture Committee, I have had the opportunity to consider the proposals contained in the bill. I congratulate Mark Griffin on the progress of the bill to date. I also thank deaf action for arranging a visit to their offices in Edinburgh to meet members of the deaf community. I found that very helpful in understanding everyday issues facing BSL users. There are estimated to be around 6,500 people who depend on sign language and around 850,000 people with some form of hearing loss in Scotland. With that in mind, it is important to note, and as the minister has already stated, that the Scottish Government recognised deafness as a culture and formally recognised BSL as a language back in 2011. However, four years later, deaf people are still facing problems in their daily life that most people take for granted. Many deaf people who contributed evidence via the Facebook page highlighted the barriers that had stopped them from accessing basic services as a result of sign language not being widely used. Whether it was in education, health, banking, policing or a whole range of other services, many felt that the lack of BSL interpreters or people who could sign had limited their access to basic services and left them feeling isolated. They all expressed a hope that the bill would resolve some of those issues by raising awareness of the needs of deaf people. The policy memorandum to the bill highlights that it aims to promote the use and understanding of British Sign Language principally by means of BSL plans that should be published by Scottish ministers and specified public authorities. However, the spice briefing outline that the bill does not confer on BSL users any rights or impose service obligations on authorities. As such, the bill is not directed about the needs of BSL users nor is it about the needs of a wider group of people with hearing impairments. As I said earlier, the Scottish Government recognised BSL as a language four years ago. Through its work with the BSL and Linguistic Access Working Group, published a detailed report back in 2009 on the long and winding road, a road map to British Sign Language and Linguistic Access in Scotland. It has already taken steps to promote and support BSL through a number of activities, including funding to support the teaching and learning of BSL, encouraging schools to offer BSL as a subject, alongside other modern languages, and providing funding to develop a pilot online interpreting project for BSL users, wishing to access public services by phone. I am sorry, Mr Robertson, for taking a brief intervention. Can I start your moment? We do not have your microphone. We do now. Thank you. Mr Robertson's microphone, please. Thank you for taking the brief intervention. The member agrees with me that, as well as schools, we should be encouraging youth groups such as Scouts, Guides and other such groups to perhaps learn to take BSL as a subject in order that they can communicate with people using BSL. Gordon MacDonald? Yes, absolutely. My son is a scout leader with a blind scout group in Edinburgh. I fully support anything that widens access to supporting people with disabilities of some description. Through those activities, the Scottish Government has increased the profile of BSL, increased the number of interpreters and of deaf tutors able to teach BSL at a higher level and developed a better understanding of the language. However, despite all of this, BSL users are still facing difficulties in accessing public services today. The difference that the bill could make is that it will encourage and enable the Scottish Government, key public authorities and the deaf community to promote and support BSL, agree national priorities and set out the specific measurable actions that they will take to make progress towards those priorities. Given that there are 117 public bodies across Scotland that would be required to produce a BSL plan, then it would be sensible if authorities working in the same geographic area could explore the opportunities for joint working and to reflect those in their initial set of actions. That would reduce the burden on cost, on public authorities and create the possibility for more shared expertise and resources. The financial issue is especially important in the current economic climate and, in light of the estimates for producing the initial plans for all public authorities, is in the region of £2.4 to £3.6 million. What we do not want to happen is that money is currently spent providing services to the BSL community and people with hearing difficulties being redirected to produce a plan. Those plans will only be meaningful if there is an effective review of the implementation of the plans with the resultant action points. I support the aims of this bill to promote BSL, but we have to recognise that there are many countries across the world from Norway to New Zealand and Greece to Venezuela who have already formalised recognition of their indigenous sign language within their legal structures. On that note, I leave the last word to Deaf Action Scotland, who in their written evidence concluded, we believe that the BSL bill will have a positive impact because it will allow us to move a step closer to BSL language being more widely endorsed within society. Although the bill is primarily concerned with the promotion of BSL and does not impose obligations on service providers or confer rights on BSL users, it places a duty on 117 public authorities to prepare a BSL authority plan that set out the measures to be undertaken by each authority in relation to the use of BSL and to establish timescales on their achievement. It may not be the bill that we could have hoped and campaigned for. Nevertheless, it represents progress, and that has to be welcomed. Thank you. I now call Liam McArthur to be followed by Stuart Stevenson. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I start like the convener did in thanking all those who helped us to prepare our stage 1 report. In particular, I thank those who gave evidence, particularly those from the BSL user and Deaf community. As a number of people observed, they engaged enthusiastically and in high numbers. I cannot recall an occasion where meetings of the education committee were almost standing room only, but that was achieved at various points during our consideration of the evidence. I thank, like Gordon MacDonald, those who hosted our visits, notably the deaf action gold number club and the staff and pupils at Windsor Park School. Those visits were invaluable in giving us all an insight into the issues underpinning the bill. Finally, I congratulate Mark Griffin on his work with the BSL community in delivering their aspirations and his work with the committee and the minister and his officials in ensuring that that change is in fact achieved. I confess that I went into this process and I think fixated with the issues around access, some of the issues that Siobhan McMahon related in terms of the attainment levels in education and some of the barriers to employment. However, it very quickly became apparent that the bill here was seeking to achieve something wider than that, that it was not simply a question of providing communication support to deaf people, that support was the bill focused on the need to increase recognition of BSL as an indigenous language with its own cultures. I think that, understandably, the parallels have been drawn with Gallic. I think that it is right that the committee in its report has said that, like Gallic speakers, deaf people have their culture and identity and should be able to access information and services in their first language. That is not in any way exclusive, it is very inclusive in fact. I think that some examples have been given in relation to parents of deaf children. I was very struck by the visit to Windsor Park School, where the pupils were talking about the desire amongst their hearing peers to learn BSL so as to be able to communicate in the way that all children look to do. Despite the consensus that exists, it is not by any means universal, concerns were raised in terms of whether or not this was already covered by the equality legislation. I think not only is there patchiness in the way that that is being applied, but it misses the point about the fact that the equality legislation will do nothing for promoting BSL as a standalone language. There were concerns too that the rise in expectations may lead to cost pressures in terms of expanding services. I think that we may need to keep a weather eye on that, but, nevertheless, I think that the BSL community themselves have been very pragmatic about what this bill will achieve. We were concerned, as a committee, that it may raise expectations on Julie. I think that that concern was put to rest fairly early on, that the BSL community has a clearer idea of what this bill does and, indeed, what it does not do than perhaps many of us that were considering it did at the outset. In terms of the bill itself, the national and authority plans lie at the centre of it. I think that I was encouraged by the Scottish Government's statement in its evidence that these would provide momentum co-ordination and focus across the public sector to improve BSL's users' access to public services and to enable them to participate fully and equally in daily and public life. I think that the content of those plans is still to be fleshed out, but the input that we have already had from BSL users shows us the way that those need to go and prioritise the promotion of BSL in an education setting, including in early years support, improving access to healthcare and improving employment opportunities and recognising, as Mark Griffin did in his remarks, the particular and very distinct needs of the deafblind community. There was understandably concerned to avoid an overly bureaucratic process to delivering those sensible proposals and I think that the ministers come forward with amendments that may help achieve that in terms of authority statements rather than plans having a national plan covering authorities answerable to the Scottish Government. Those make sense in our pragmatic response, but only if there is the sufficient level of relevant detail in those plans and that each authority is accountable for the aspects of it that relate to their work. I think that, as the convener says, it is inconceivable that those are not available in BSL. There is a vital role in both respects for the advisory group and indeed for Parliament in ensuring that we hold that to account. I think that there is also a further argument of why the majority of members of that advisory group need to themselves be drawn from the BSL community. Deputy Presiding Officer, in conclusion, I think that there will be those who worry that this bill raises expectations on Julie. There will be others who are concerned that it does not go far enough, but, as we all know, politics is about the art of the possible. From the evidence that we have received, Mark Griffin is to be congratulated on having struck a good balance about what can be achieved now. I think that it lays the groundwork for future advances in the years ahead. The bill can and will, I believe, help raise the profile of BSL as a distinct language and increase its use in the delivery of services. That is not a bad achievement. I look forward to working with my committee colleagues, with the minister and, of course, Mark Griffin himself, to make the improvements necessary at stage 2 and stage 3 in the interests of all those in the BSL and deaf community in Scotland. Presiding Officer, this debate is less than half over, and yet I already find myself personally significantly challenged by this and with a whole series of questions. I have to go away and ask myself after the debate, because it has been informative. I think that there is some doubt in something. Siobhan McMahon said that there are 100 BSL speakers for each of the 80 interpreters. It might actually be even worse than that, because the 2011 census, according to Spice, tells us that there are 12,533 households where someone speaks to BSL who would make it one interpreter for every 150 houses where BSL is spoken to. Whichever number it is, whatever number is relevant, is clearly a challenging and important issue that we find ourselves properly debating today. Using visual communication is not something that, for any of us, is alien. A shrug of the shoulders is immediately recognised as doubt. The fingers like that is money, and that is what you want to drink. We all have our little bits of personal sign language, but BSL is quite different, because what it is is a standardised approach that reaches beyond local variation and culture. Of course, it is equally a language that, when people are speaking to each other in a social setting, has slang and has rude words, genuinely is as rich as any other language. We heard some suggestion that perhaps the list of bodies that are affected by this ought to be looked at. It does strike me that some of those bodies—the use of sign language or any language—has legal force. If you are in the court, if you are before a tribunal, it is important that there is precision. Therefore, you have a particular need that needs to be emphasised in that environment. However, in social environments, in normal day-to-day commerce, perhaps there is less rigor required. We need to make sure that we are legal forces required when we have people in place. I hope that the plans that are brought forward— I am grateful to the member for taking the intervention. I advise the member that the BSL community can usually tell which part of Scotland or any other part of Britain is from where someone comes from because of the differences in using the language. I was taught BSL from someone from Glasgow and he had to vary the teaching to take in some of the language differences in Aberdeen. As it is a visual language, I could present but I could not receive. I look forward to hearing the difference between Doric BSL and Posh Morningside BSL, perhaps after the debate here. I have one or two things that have come to me as the debate has developed and I thought about what I might say. For example, is there a standardised sign that we ought to see as part of our future planning saying that BSL is spoken here so that people whose first language and preferred language is BSL know where to go? It should be a very simple symbol, so that, if you are driving a car, you can see the symbol in a glance. The letters BSL might be good enough if they are in a standard format. A lot of academic research has been done. Desmond Morris produced a wonderful book called Man Watching, which is essentially about how we communicate visually. I commend that to others. I regularly see sign languages in my journeys to Parliament. Indeed, I have been watching BSL conversations in the public gallery, which have not attracted the ire of the Presiding Officer, because they are not intruding as an oral conversation might do into the performance here. People who are visually impaired have huge help, and we can see it. The edge of platforms at railway stations have bubbles, so you know that you are reaching them, the same on pavement markings. Buses and trains have oral announcements that help the blind. How much are we doing for people who are deaf, so much less? It is absolutely important that we look at this as something where there is a category of people in our community, of people with a particular language, who have been significantly neglected compared to others. When I was a youngster in our Sunday school, we were taught some BSL—at least, I think that it was BSL, certainly sign language of some kind. Alas, not a shred of that survives into my adult life. Even simple things like Dennis said, we need to be careful about our speaking rate. Well, over the nearly half million words that I have contributed to parliamentary debates since I came here in 2001, I am averaging 131 words a minute. Do I really need to slow down? Can I speed up? Of course, as Dennis in a little aside a minute or two ago explained to me, there is not an exact map of words between the languages. He told me that, for example, BSL does not have a word for if. That is actually quite good news, because if it is one of the most destructive words in the English language in certain contexts. Let me just close by saying a word or two about the efforts of the proposer that there is, Bill Mark Griffin, and congratulate him on his work. We, as a Parliament, should always be looking at what other Parliaments do. Australia has a seven-minute curfew on questions at Prime Minister's question time. Does not matter if the First Minister is speaking chop—next question, not a bad idea. We are looking at what Westminster has done in electing committee conveners, but I think that what we do and can show others is the access that there is for backbenchers to their being able to legislate. In fact, if every backbencher took the opportunity, that would be 256 bills for parliamentary session, but, of course, there are so many fewer, because it is a formidable difficult task engaging a lot of time and effort. I absolutely want to congratulate Mark Griffin on the work that he has put into it and thank him for that, if only, for raising my awareness and giving me a set of questions. I have to go and ask myself and get answers to you later, Presiding Officer. Could I remind members to use full names when they refer to each other, please? Nigel Dawn, to be followed by Jane Baxter. I would like to start by congratulating Mark Griffin. Others have explained the process and they have been through it. I have not. I am not expecting to, to be honest, because I have realised that it is actually quite difficult. However, I think that history is actually going to tell us that this was an important day, because I think that this bill is going to be seen 10, 20 years time as the first step of quite a number of steps that are going to get one of Scotland's languages into a place where it should have been for a very long time. As has already been said, I think by Liam McArthur, this is the practical step at this stage, but I'm very clear it is no more than a step. If anybody thinks this is where we stop, then I think we need to say to them now, no, you're wrong. I've actually met BSL translation in several places in my political career, but I have to say one of the most interesting ones was only a few weeks ago when we looked at this very bill in the delegated powers and law reform committee, which others will remember, and it taught me two things. The first is that you need to speak slowly because translation is one of those arts. If you're going to get the real sense of what's being said, then you've got to be able to think about it. Clearly translators and interpreters are extremely bright folk, but there is a limit to the rate at which this can be dealt with and the right gestures put forward. The second thing it taught me is that you need to keep your voice up and a lot of us, and I am one of them, tend to drop our voices at the end of the sentence and you don't know what they said, so that's a lesson in public speaking for all of us. Use BSL translators and you learn to speak up. There's also one other thing that's emerged this afternoon and I'd like to dwell on it for just a moment, Presiding Officer, and that was the influence of Kathy Craigie because, as has rightly been pointed out, Kathy Craigie was significantly involved in a piece of legislation or a draft bill on this in the previous session. She was significantly involved in the cross-party group on deafness, as it may come as news to some was I in session three. I think that the lesson that I derived from this is actually to see how important cross-party groups can be in engaging with a part of Scottish society discovering what needs to be done and then over time getting that through the legislative process. I do also reflect that it has taken quite some time and I think maybe that's just the reality but it does suggest to us that we need to persevere. An aspect of BSL use that I think we have not said very much about this afternoon is the issue of the marginalisation and the isolation of BSL users because I think what we will know from a few moments reflection is that when you feel marginalised and isolated that is a mental health issue and people who want to use a language which the rest of society is not prepared to let them use are immediately being given a mental health issue, never mind a communication issue, and I'm pleased to note that in the Government's response there does seem to be a recognition that the costs of this bill and the implementation of it will probably to some extent at least come back in the reduction in some of the health costs that we might otherwise be building up for ourselves and I think that's important. We need to understand that eliminating inequalities at every level within our society does actually have economic benefits to the public purse. It's good for absolutely everybody. If I can turn now briefly to the national plan, it's been suggested that we might take a bit longer to get this right. Can I say I must absolutely endorse that? It does seem to me that the first national plan is going to be the big stepping stone for this and if it takes a little bit longer than we would like to get that right then frankly so what because there's no point in hurrying and getting it less than right. I have no idea what the answer to that should be. I couldn't dream of putting a number on it but I think that we must be very careful to make sure that the first national plan really does set out something which is understood by everybody to be good. Which listed authorities should be and who should talk to each other is not something on which I would want to comment and I'm very grateful we've got an advisory group which it sounds as though it's going to set us in good stead but can I endorse Gordon MacDonald's comments about avoiding duplication? Could we please please ensure that we have a system which is set up which has here's a template if you like of what you ought to do adopt it unless you have good reasons for not doing so. If you've got to change it then consider why you've got to change it and if for example and I represent a rural community you need to have a different perspective from the inner cities and that might be perfectly possible for all sorts of very obvious reasons then talk to the other rural communities about how you might modify it so when we have one modification rather than 17. I think public authorities maybe have an opportunity here to do something that they manifestly haven't done sometimes in the past. I think the point has already been made that we have to consult users if we don't consult BSL users on this of course we're going to get it wrong. Now if the purpose of this bill is to get BSL into the mainstream and those are my phrase words rather than anybody else's and if it's to build up plans and put together plans as to how we might do that then surely we already know some of the answers. We know do we not that we're going to need more interpreters simply because if public bodies are going to do their engagement properly they're going to need them. I think we can see that coming. Secondly we're going to need more people who work within these organisations to do what Dennis Robertson described earlier on about getting level one I have no idea what that means but the basic skills to communicate in BSL so that we know that the person in front of me is a BSL speaker rather than French or German or whatever other language you want to come up with. So I think we can already see that those skills are going to be needed in large measure and somebody somewhere might already be thinking about how we do that, how we fund it, how we organise it because we can see it coming. Could you draw to a close please? I will indeed. I think Presiding Officer we need to get to the point of society where we recognise the place of BSL as a language. I think this bill is trying to nudge us in that direction and I sincerely hope that it succeeds. Thank you. I now call Jane Baxter to be followed by Christine Grahame. Thank you Presiding Officer. I would like to thank my colleague Mark Griffin for bringing this bill to Parliament. It relates to an important issue for many people in Scotland. It's also appropriate that this bill is introduced during Deaf Awareness week. Around 12,500 respondents to the most recent census indicated that they used British Sign Language at home. There are approximately 120 children born in Scotland each year with a hearing impairment. Over 1,000 children and young people under the age of 19 in Scotland have severe or profound hearing loss. For many of those young people, BSL is the only method of communication that they have ever known. From my experience as a councillor and an MSP, I have learned that many BSL users struggle to get the services that they are entitled to and sometimes it falls to them to make it easier for public services to respond. Like my constituent who needed some housing repairs and couldn't communicate with the local housing office, he took a video on his iPad and sent it to the council and that got a really good response. It's actually a pretty effective technique for anyone to use but solutions like that are not always available. It's clear then that BSL is used by a large number of people from all backgrounds and circumstances in Scotland. This bill is a positive contribution to their lives. This is a relatively modest bill. It does not impose an explicit statutory requirement on authorities to provide British Sign Language interpreters or translation services nor does it require them to deliver any specific services to BSL users or those wishing to learn BSL. The bill also does not apply to sign language communicated in other languages or to other forms of communication that may be required by the deaf and hearing impaired community. Its goals are specific. Nonetheless, it is an important bill and one that will be a substantial step forward for BSL users across Scotland. The current arrangements contained in the Equality Act 2010 do not go far enough to take into account the specific needs and requirements of the deaf and hearing impaired community. The Equality Act is an important piece of legislation putting the rights and needs of minority groups at the heart of the work and decisions taken by public bodies across the United Kingdom. With this bill, we have the opportunity here at the Scottish Parliament to build on their work for the deaf and hearing impaired community. Once we consider that the provisions of the Equality Act that apply to deaf and hearing impaired people are those that cover disabled people and issue arises. As a Scottish Government paper from 2009 describes, deaf BSL users consider themselves as a distinct language group and not disabled. They have a unique culture, history and life experience as a language minority and feel that action to improve their inclusion in society should be based on exactly the same language approach to other groups, such as speakers of Gaelic or Welsh. In effect, BSL is, for many deaf and hearing impaired people, their first language. They have communicated using it for their entire lives. They do not accept that it is a manifestation of a disability but rather an expression of their cultural identity and a part of who they are. We should ensure that this feeling is recognised across Government. This bill would assist in achieving such recognition. The bill requires Scottish ministers to promote and facilitate the use and understanding of the sign language known as British Sign Language by setting out and publishing a plan to be known as a British Sign Language national plan for Scotland. That is a positive move. It would not place an excessive burden on the Scottish Government but would allow the BSL and hearing impaired community to work with them to establish and maintain good practice for authorities to use when working with and providing services to them. The bill would operate much like the Gaelic Language Scotland Act 2005, without the need for a new statutory body to be set up, as was in that act. A really important provision of the bill is the plan to set up an advisory group to advise the Scottish ministers on how to set up and implement the plan. This group would include BSL users and experts in the field. I believe that this group would be of use not just for the explicit purposes of this act but in order to act as a conduit for the BSL, deaf and hearing impaired community to liaise and communicate with the Scottish Government. The voices of this community are heard all too rarely in making legislation and other government activities in this country. The advisory group could be a major force for good in this area. As I have already noted, there are thousands of BSL users in Scotland. Sadly, there are nowhere near enough interpreters. In Scotland we have less than 100 interpreters for BSL. Many people have family members or friends who do this on their behalf. Many others are not so fortunate. We should look at this closely and seek a solution to what is clearly a failure of supply and demand. It may also be that we have encouraged more widespread take-up of BSL amongst employees in front-line services such as councils, job centres and health services. I would also like to take a moment to praise recent development in relation to BSL. The recent development of remote BSL interpreters for users of public services in Scotland is a positive one. I believe and hope that their approach to BSL is one that is encouraged by this bill. Returning to the specific provisions and implications of the bill, the Scottish Government has indicated that it would like to amend the bill in order to place the review of the national plan on a seven-year review cycle. This is unsatisfactory and not in the spirit of the bill. It is important that each Government reviews its own progress and justifies its own actions. That is why it is imperative that the plan is reviewed on a five-year review cycle. That will ensure that the Scottish ministers are held accountable by Parliament and BSL users for their plan. To conclude, the bill would make BSL users in Scotland's lives better. It would ensure that they are able to access public services and feel that their distinct culture is accepted and encouraged in Scotland. It would help BS users to go to college and university and take part in community activities. I believe that the bill is a well-thought-out one and should be supported by all parties across the chamber today. Thank you very much. I remind members that speeches are six minutes. Please, I call Christine Grahame to be followed by Chick Brody. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I add my congratulations to Mark Griffin? I have brought a member's bill through this Parliament myself. I know that it is hardgoing and I also know that it is quite difficult for a member to appear before a committee and look for a gentle interrogation. I have another bill coming, so I am letting myself in again. However, it does again demonstrate the value of a member's bill, which is usually very consensual in this Parliament, and shows us with a different personality. As others have said, over three quarters of a million people in Scotland suffer from a severe hearing impairment. Jane Baxter has told us how many in the Scottish Census it said that they use BSL. I am glad that question was on the consensus paper. In my constituency, in Midlothian, 233 responded that they used it in the Borders 228, which has galvanised me into looking into exactly what provision is made by the various service agencies across my constituency. However, I think that it is very important that the bill embeds the status of BSL as a language, and I suspect that that will increase those numbers. However, I want to specifically turn to section 3, subsection 3, which I have alerted the minister to already. I accept that he is now going to proceed with a national plan instead of all the little local plans, but I note that the plan is to set out measures to be taken by the listed authority in relation to the use of BSL in connection with the exercise of the authority's functions. I look forward to an answer to which of the authorities listed in schedule 2, which I have in front of me, will be subsumed into this national authority. I do not know if they are all, but I want to turn to some within my own particular interest of justice, where I think that there must be huge issues about people involved in proceedings who have difficulties with hearing. Does that take just simply children's hearings crucial to those with a hearing loss that they understand the proceedings, whether they are the subject of the proceedings or whether they are parents or carers who may be in danger of losing contact with children? The Mental Welfare Commission, where issues such as compulsory treatment or, indeed, removal of liberty are issues under discussion. The Scottish court service would apply not only in criminal proceedings but civil proceedings, disputes about contact with children, contractual disputes and all the way from the court of session to the small claims court, where you might be contesting the fact that your washing machine that you have paid for is not up to scratch. That, of course, embraces also the Crown and Procate of Fiscal service and, indeed, the Scottish prison service. I think that there is a huge issue here when liberty and rights are under challenge, that everyone taking part understands the proceedings. Indeed, there must be an issue of convention of human rights, whether you are in fact having a fair hearing in being part of the proceedings or even understanding them. That takes us even to the Scottish tribunal service dealing, say, with matters of employment and employment rights. The Scottish legal aid board is crucial to whether or not you receive financial support to have an interpreter or translator available at all stages of a case when you are speaking to your solicitor, explaining the position that the solicitor is responding, whether you have been given legal advice, whether proceedings are being drawn up, which you must understand, and at the end of the day, the process in court and the final determination, all of which I think is essential that they have access to BSL if necessary. That takes me to the emergency services, the Scottish ambulance service, Police Scotland, Fire and Rescue. All must be embraced in having access to BSL services where, literally, there are matters of life or death or serious injury. The question, of course, is, after all that goodwill, do we have sufficient trained interpreters? The answer must be no, because the Scottish Association of Sign Language interpreters have 66, the National Register of Communication Professionals 46, deafblind interpreters' single figures and, more worryingly, in training 10 under SESLI and 8 under NRCPD. There is no point in good plans without practicalities that cannot deliver. My question is this, and I do not know the answer, apart from the one about which the national plan applies to the various agencies. Is it possible to use technology in the fora that I have mentioned? Automatic translation into BSL without having to have it at the time where you could have automatic translation, perhaps at the time to leave. Many of our courts have technology, and I do not know whether a programme could be developed that would enable that to take place, perhaps if it is a remote court where you are not going to be able to have an actual person there, whether you can do it remotely or by whatever means. We are a sophisticated generation. Let us try to look at sophisticated as well as personal ways of making sure that those with hearing impairment are engaged in every stage of what I have focused on, the judicial process in the widest terms. I, too, welcome this report. I first applaud Mark Griffin for having the foresight and the tenacity in bringing this bill forward. It is perhaps regrettable that we cannot conduct the bill, each of us, in our speeches, but who knows what the future will bring in terms of BSL communication. Of course, we have our wonderful professional interpreters with us today to help. In my early years in Dundee, when my father was in the navy, his brother, my uncle Joe, became a father figure to me. He was deaf. He was caused by an accident when he was five years old. However, he taught me what was then basic sign language, which I can still remember. The fingers on our left hands, for example, are formatting the vowels of our alphabet, A, E, I, O, U. I rarely spoke for the first three years of my life. Some people suggest that I should follow that tradition today. However, as a newcomer to the education committee, I was delighted that this bill was my introduction to the committee's work. I want to place on record the valuable contributions and insights to sign language that we received at Falkirk, Edinburgh and elsewhere. Although I and others support the bill and its general principles, its promotion is to be over the long term. In the interest of full inclusion of all in our society, I might have preferred a more robust intervention to legislate for public service bodies over the shorter term, in particular, to embrace the further employment of those who are deaf and to establish the profile and the means of an effective communication that they are in. Presiding Officer, I accepted communication, BSL language promotion and education, particularly to those of a very young age. Technology can generate more inclusion, as would a significant increase, as has been mentioned, in the number of interpreters of deaf language. The difficulties faced by the deaf, for example, seeking and understanding medical analysis and treatment, or faced by questions that they may have on the many local council services or on rail and air travel, are immense. Those difficulties are sometimes too immense for the hearing, let alone the deaf. It was suggested, Presiding Officer, that although the hearing has call centres on almost everything from those public services to medical services to financial services, it cannot be beyond the width of our technologists with further development of existing applications, with features such as Skype and with more interpreters. It cannot be difficult to create similar video call centre arrangements sometimes in future, so that our deaf citizens can deal effectively with the challenges posed through them. As it is programmes and as it will be, the progress amended, the bill certainly would and will raise the profile of the bill and its benefits to not just the deaf community, but to the wider community. Raising the profile is important, but more important is increasing its use. We fully accept the Government and the Finance Committee's concern about the financial and bureaucratic burden in creating the national framework and plan as developed by the national advisory group. Those are real, but a much greater focus on listed authorities, in particular local authorities, establishing a framework to achieve improved performance outcomes, I believe, is paramount. The development of planned outcomes with regard to BSL use and the deaf community must be matched by actions by those accepted and listed authorities. In the early stages, those plans or statements need not be onerous, but are seen rather as key initial steps on the journey that we plan to take to achieve a national awakening with regard to how we include and communicate better with the deaf or the hard of hearing. The bill should underpin through its higher profile, should complement and should embrace existing equality legislation, which the conclusions to stage 1 states and which identifies the deaf as disabled. They are evidently not. Mr Griffin highlighted that many supporters and BSL users focused on the need for increased recognition of the bill as an indigenous language of Scotland. Quite right. Comparisons have been drawn with other countries of a similar population size, but with greater language training and interpretation provision. In this area, being anything other than first, frankly, in my book, is not good enough. Of course, it will take time. Of course, it will take amendments and, of course, a defined performance framework. Again, I applaud Mark Griffin for bringing in the bill forward now. My uncle Joe will be very happy. That is not the first from the floor of this chamber today, but in his memory I say thank you, Presiding Officer. Thank you, Mr Brody. I now call on Dr Richard Simpson to be followed by Richard Lyle. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I want to join with others and congratulate Mark Griffin on bringing forward this bill and indeed the committee on its report and the manner in which they consulted on the bill, which I thought was exemplary. There is, of course, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Person with Disabilities, which came into force in 2008 and was ratified by the UK in 2009, and existing legislations such as the Equality Act 2010. The Patient Rights Act Scotland 2011, the Educational Additional Support for Learning Scotland Acts of 2004 and 2009, all of which afford some protection for deaf people by requiring the needs of the individual service users to be met. However, the bill, promoting BSL language, if fully implemented, could help to advance the aspirations of those who are deaf and help the 120 children born with profound deafness out of around 58,000 annual births in Scotland. It can identify the gaps in support and identify any postcode variations. There could be no doubt that the 12,533 respondents who reported using BSL at home in Scotland's census 2011 need more support, but, at least unlike the English census, we do ask the specific question, agreed as a result of Jack McConnell beginning to address the BSL deficit. Can I ask the minister whether the bill will ensure or he will ensure, but, even if the census is abandoned, as it may well be, that we will still have good data of this sort because it is fundamental to the measurement of progress? In 2000, a working group was set up in the Scottish Executive, and in one form or another it continues to this day. A paper on languages, including BSL, was published in February 2007. In 2014, the working group started work on an update to the road map in order to identify where progress had been made and to highlight priority areas for action. This update was to be published in early 2015. I was unable to find it, and I do not know if the minister can provide us with a link or, if not, date as to whether that report is going to be available. I thought that coming at it not from the committee angle and not from the particular angle of the bill that I am trying to look at it slightly differently and look at the progress that we have made. The Equality and Human Rights Commission in Scotland has estimated, as I reported last week, that only 0.2 per cent participation rate by disabled young persons in the modern apprenticeship scheme is 79 out of 26,000. How many of those had profound deafness? We just do not know, but the statistics from the Scottish Council on deafness show that up to 70 per cent of deaf people believe that they have failed to get a job because of their deafness. I raised the issue last week, and I hope that in reporting disabilities in the future we will get an idea of the number and types of disability. Those numbers, as we know, are hugely lower than they are in England. Only 0.2 per cent in Scotland is compared to 8.7 per cent in England. There may be an explanation for that, of course. Does the member accept that the BSL community themselves are suggesting that their language is not a disability and that they are hoping that the bill can take forward the fact that it is a language and not disability? Fully accept what the member is saying, but what I am trying to address is where that takes us, because language obviously has a purpose, and the purpose of that language is good communication skills. In the workplace, that is absolutely fundamental, so ensuring that that is not a barrier to access is important. On education, we have a problem, too. The figures have been quoted earlier, but 36.4 per cent of deaf pupils are obtaining hires compared to 60.2 per cent of hearing pupils. The numbers are advancing into higher education, but, again, we need to have support for them. That is only 26 per cent compared to 39 per cent of hearing school leavers. 52 per cent of deaf people felt that they had been prevented from pursuing further training or education because of their deafness or lack of effective communication support services. On our NHS, which some members have referred to, again, the statistics from SCOD show that up to 35 per cent of deaf people had experienced difficulty communicating with a local GP, and I can say that, as a GP, when I was confronted with someone who was profoundly deaf, communication was not easy, and being able to obtain a BSL communicator or interpreter was not always possible. 77 per cent of BSL users who visited hospital could not easily communicate with NHS staff. The Financial Times reported recently that there has been a cut in real-time spending on education, and it is interesting to note that this Parliament decided to abolish the graduate endowment fee, but that was never charged to anyone with deafness, so its abolition has not really helped. It is important in the educational setting that we ensure that individuals are maintained. Out of the 140,000 cuts in college places, which I am told has affected those with disabilities more, whether that has affected people with deaf problems more than others. The outcome of this not being a sufficient priority to us as a Parliament is demonstrated in the fact that, as others have said, in December 2014, there were 78 sign language interpreters registered with SALSI service, 66 BSL interpreters, 10 training interpreters, and only two that can offer deafblind manual three interpreting. I just wonder, nobody has so far quoted the Nordic countries, which is common in our debates, and yet Finland, with a similar population to ours, has 790 interpreters, and so there is clearly a long way for us to go. I wonder if the minister can give an indication if we have more interpreters now than we have. Has there been a growth? Is there intended to be a target for the number of interpreters? How many courses are there for BSL available in Scotland? I really hope that some of those questions can be answered and that the bill will promote this. I am glad that we are supporting, I hope, today the principles of this bill. I know that Cathy Greger will be pleased, but I hope that this bill will only be the starting point for developing services that can allow full inclusion and participation of those who suffer from profound deafness. After which we will move to closing speeches. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Can I begin by saying how much it is a privilege it is to speak in the stage 1 debate on a proposed British Sign Language Bill, particularly as a member of this Parliament's Health and Sport Committee? I also would like to take the opportunity to commend Mark Griffin for bringing this important bill before Parliament. It is important to begin, I believe, by saying that I, like many other members this afternoon in this chamber, support the principles of the British Sign Language Bill. I believe that it will do well in working towards raising the awareness of British Sign Language and, importantly, to encourage others, particularly those in public bodies, to better meet the needs of BSL users. Across the chamber, we recognise that deaf British Sign Language users are often marginalised and excluded because they do not have access to a wide range of information, services and other opportunities. Therefore, because of that, they are unable to make their full and important contribution to daily and public life in Scotland. In Scotland alone, they are estimated, as has already been said, around 6,500 people who use sign language and they deserve to have the same access to services as everyone else. Therefore, the bill paves a way for a greater action to resolve that. The implementation of the bill, particularly the production of a BSL national plan, will build on the work we have undertaken in partnership with the BSL language access working group since 2000. A different approach is therefore needed to raise awareness of BSL as a language and to encourage, enable and support public bodies to better meet the needs of the deaf community. That is what the bill does. Not only that, Presiding Officer, but it recognises and supports BSL as a language rather than just a means of communication support. That is a significant difference. It is important and right that, while we debate the bill, we recognise and champion some of the excellent examples of work that have been done to promote and support the use of BSL and help to meet the needs of the deaf community. Together, we recognise that more can and must be done by Government and across the public sector to continue making a difference. It must be said that I believe that this Government has already taken steps to promote and support BSL through a number of activities. It will work closely with the BSL and the access working group. It has increased funding to support infrastructure for teaching and learning of BSL and to improve the engagement with the deaf community. I know that we are working continually to enable and encourage schools to offer BSL as a subject alongside other modern languages. In 2011, there was a ministerial statement to the Parliament that officially recognised BSL as a language. Through those activities, we have increased the profile of BSL and teach BSL at a higher level and developed a better understanding of the language. However, it is now time to take the next step and the bill enables us to do that. Although we should recognise that there may be costs involved in delivering improvements, I believe that failing to meet the needs of BSL users will result in additional costs, not only at a personal and societal level but for local authorities too. I mean that one of the consequences of public bodies and local authorities not having to think more formally about services for deaf people is that deaf people are left behind in a way that creates a cost to society through the personal cost to them in terms of educational opportunities, the attainment gap, employment problems that we face. That is not what I nor this Parliament should want for any other people. In the memorandum from this Government, they have set out an estimated total cost for the implementation of the bill as proposed of £6 million over four years. However, in line with current investment, the Scottish Government will likely invest around £2 million over the period 2016-20 in BSL, reducing the estimated cost to around £4 million. As already has been stated, health costs may be reduced as a result of the bill. We benefit tremendously from the contribution that a deaf community makes to our country and to our economy, and we should promote, protect, support and value their language and their culture. The bill goes quite some way to improve the lives of the deaf community in Scotland. Once again, I commend and thank Mark Griffin for all the hard work that he has done in the past number of months for bringing this bill before Parliament. As has already been said by many members who have already spoke, I, at 5 o'clock, intend to support the principle of this bill, and I commend it to everyone in this chamber. We now move to closing speeches. I will call on Mary Scanlon up to seven minutes. I would also like to thank every member who has spoken. I think that it has been a very well-informed, measured debate, and many constructive suggestions, which, as a member of the Education Committee, will lead to further discussion for us in future. As many members have said, there is no doubt that people who are profoundly deaf are often marginalised and excluded, as they do not have linguistic access to information or services. I think that each and every one of us today has borne that in mind and tried to say, well, the bill goes so far, can it go a little bit further and can we be assured that it will lead to that upgrade in the provision of services? I think that that is to be commended. I would also welcome the setting up of the national advisory group to support the implementation of the bill, and I hope that it will adhere to the principles and the hopes contained in this legislation and by each member who has spoken today. I fully understand the difficulties associated with the first performance review in terms of the collection of data, given that there seems to be scant information about the current level of service and support. The lack of baseline data or performance indicators is an issue, and I note that the Government will lodge an amendment on this issue to hopefully bring some clarity. Inclusion Scotland states that there are 57,000 people in Scotland with severe and profound deafness, with around 6,000 people for whom BSL is their sole or main language. Inclusion Scotland, in its briefing paper, says that there are only 30 qualified BSL interpreters currently operating. I am not saying they are wrong, but many other figures have been given today. NDCs state that there are about 80 qualified BSL interpreters. Further baseline information on those figures, we seem to know more about Finland and the exact figures in Finland than we do about our own country, so any further baseline information has to be very helpful. As NDCs also state, without a basic understanding of the numbers of deaf children and their needs, it is difficult for national and local government to effectively plan service delivery. That is fair. They also make a good point that a large number of deaf and hard of hearing people may also have accessible communication needs that will not be addressed by the provisions of the bill and that the promotion of BSL should not be at the expense of other accessible communications. Although we all support the promotion of BSL, I was very persuaded by the NDCs paper by the proposal to improve the availability of family sign language, which enhances the ability of hearing parents to communicate with their deaf children a fundamental right, surely, to promote their development. Helping the child and also helping the families must be a positive way forward, given that 90 per cent of deaf children are born to hearing parents. It is shocking that there is currently no nationally funded provision for parents to access appropriate training or classes in order to communicate with their child through sign language, although NDCs have an early years project. Not only has family sign language provision improved vocabulary for deaf children, but it also contributes to positive family relationship as a result of parents having better communication with their children. I would be keen to see provision and support for families to help families to communicate with their children. I would also like to see that in the progress reports and the performance reviews. I do not know whether I have got to bring forward an amendment, but I did mention it earlier and Mark Griffin seemed to be hopeful. I would like to hope that the minister would see the help for families as being something that could be mentioned in the performance reviews, in the progress plans and the national advisory group. Surely, we need to help families to help their children. I also thought that the Law Society filed a very good briefing seeking greater clarity on many aspects of the bill, and, of course, we have heard some very good points today from the convener of the Justice Committee, Christine Grahame. However, she made a very good point—I have to say that I was not aware of it, but others have mentioned it—by stating that public bodies in Scotland also have a legal obligation, under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, to eliminate discrimination, promote equal opportunities and foster good relations between different groups. I am really asking that the defining question has to be if someone is being discriminated against on the basis of a disability, if someone does not enjoy equal opportunities, and if there are not good relations—in other words, if public bodies are not adhering to the legal obligation under section 149—then where do they go? Where do they go? Yes, I am happy to do. Once again, I think that those using BSL are keen to promote that it is not a disability. Although there is disability legislation that ensures fuller access to perhaps other things, we are talking language and not disability. I appreciate that, but, as the Law Society has said, there is a legal obligation to eliminate discrimination and promote equal opportunities. However, all I am saying is that we are very good at passing legislation in this Parliament, but we are not very good at saying to people that, if it is not implemented, as we hoped it would be implemented, if it is not perfectly implemented, see where do they go? We have been here for 16 years and I think that people who find that the service falls well short of their needs, we need to be able to say to them, well, if it is not working for you, this is the door to knock on, and I am not sure that we have that yet, but I put that in a constructive way because we are fully supporting the bill and it has been an excellent debate today. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I congratulate Mark Griffin for bringing forward this bill. We have heard that it attracts widespread support throughout the Parliament. It is also timely to have the stage 1 debate in death awareness week. That was possibly good planning by the Parliament, but I am not quite that organised. It was maybe a good chance. The bill will focus on promoting BSL language throughout Scotland. As we have heard, there are many estimations about the number of BSL speakers that we have in Scotland, some as low as 6,000 but some higher than 12,500. We need to make sure that those people are languages protected and have the language officially recognised as a full and independent language, as the UK did in March 2003 in the Scottish Government in 2011. We need to go further, however, because that has obviously proved not good enough. 120 children are born each year with severe or profound hearing loss, making it really difficult to learn a spoken language. Margaret McCulloch in her speech told us that the deaf community are demanding change and promotion of their own language. I am sure that that is why Mark Griffin brought forward this bill to meet those demands. Siobhan McMahon and many other speakers talked in the debate about deaf people do not see themselves as disabled. They need access and recognition to their own language, but can I build on that slightly? Many people that we term disabled do not believe that they are disabled. They aspire to the social model of disability, which says that disability is caused by the way that society is organised rather than a person's impairment or difference. It looks at ways of removing barriers that restrict life and choices for disabled people, because different abilities are ignored in a society that is designed very much for the majority. The deaf community in Scotland face barriers in their everyday lives that stem not from the barriers caused by their deafness but from the distinct lack of understanding of BSL and its own language. Therefore, recognising BSL as a language in its own right is a step in the right direction. I hope that we will continue to break down the barriers that we all put in place, not only for the deaf community but for other communities that feel that society puts barriers in their place rather than trying to break them down. A number of speakers talked about access to services. Richard Simpson talked about legislation that currently demands that needs of service users are met, but we see so often that that falls down. Communication with medical staff, education or other authorities is indeed a lack of interpreters. The Scottish Government figures for 2011-12 showed that 36.4 per cent of deaf pupils attend hires or advanced hires, and that is compared with 60.2 of hearing pupils. Indeed, Mark Griffin himself in his speech talked about only 8 per cent of teachers knowing how to sign, which is a huge barrier for people in mainstream education. The STUC, and I think we need to pay tribute to them through union learning run BSL courses, and I attended one. I really enjoyed it. It was quite strange how easy it was to pick up, indeed how intuitive it was, but it was very difficult to keep those skills up if you are not using it on a regular basis. That is maybe something that we need to look at in the future. We need to look at including it in the curriculum, not only just as a language, but as we have heard today, the culture of the history is really important to be taught and learned as well, because the people's history is very much taken down in their language. If we do not use the language, we miss out to that rich tapestry that is very seldom recorded. Christine Grahame talked about the justice system and access to courts, children's panels and, indeed, wider justice. I think that it is a point well made. If you cannot access the justice system, you are being discriminated against. Many other speakers talked about health. We depend on communication when we go to see our GP a doctor and, indeed, to be able to tell about symptoms to get a proper diagnosis. However, how much worse must that be at a time of critical illness when you are dealing with an emergency or maybe facing very difficult news about your own health? You need to be able to communicate well, and not only the person who is going for the assistant needs to communicate well, but the person who is given bad news needs to be able to communicate that properly. Nigel Dawn talked about mental health and the impact of exclusion on somebody's mental health, and that is something that we need to bear in mind. However, if we talk about talking therapies and the like and dealing with mental health problems, again, how impossible is that if someone cannot speak your language? We really need to make sure that there are people there who can have those conversations and provide those therapies in someone's own language. Richard Simpson also talked about the workplace, and that is why the STUC were keen in teaching BSL to make sure that workplaces were accessible, but we need to go a lot further. Mary Scanlon mentioned a number of times about BSL for families, and that is hugely important, because a child starts to learn almost immediately. If the parent is not able to communicate, of course we all use signs and we do that with young children as well. However, the sooner a child starts to learn the language, the better, and the person that child is going to learn that language from is their parent. It is really important when a child is born who needs to learn BSL, but the parents are immediately taught BSL. They can almost learn it along with the child as long as they are one step ahead to make sure that that child is learning. We have heard of widespread support for the bill from BSL users and many others beyond. We have also heard how the bill was scrutinised by the committee at stage 1 and how it opened up the Facebook page. That led me to thinking, and I think that Jane Baxter's constituent demonstrated that the use that could be made of new social media to communicate for people using BSL through video clips on Twitter and Facebook, and indeed the use of Skype to deal with service providers. I am grateful for raising the issue of the use of digital modern digital technology. It struck me that, as we go about our daily lives, not in critical services but in normal public services, such as announcements at a railway station or announcements at an airport. They are all pre-recorded, or many of them are pre-recorded, and yet they have digital screens available. There are no pre-recorded messages that could be put out saying that the train has been moved from platform 6 to platform 9 using BSL. I think that there are many opportunities that are there using the new modern digital technologies that could be used, but, frankly, I think that many organisations have not yet thought to use them. I absolutely agree, and maybe slightly flippantly, if that was the case, given how difficult it is to hear some of those announcements, we would all learn BSL just to know if our train is later, if indeed it is going to arrive at all. I just want to close by congratulating Mark Griffin again for bringing the bill forward, and I am sure that his family are very proud of him. More than that, BSL users will be delighted. Yes, of course, it could go further, but this bill is a start and a journey, not the end, and I very much hope that the Parliament will unite and support it tonight. Thank you very much, and I will call on Dr Alasdair Allan, eight minutes or thereby, please, Dr Allan. I think that this has been one of the most genuinely constructive and positive debates that I have certainly had a chance to be involved in in this Parliament, and I hope that it is a debate whose content has meant a great deal to the many people who have campaigned for a long time to bring legislation of this kind before this Parliament. As anybody who knows me will know, I have personal interest in languages of all kinds, and I think that it has been important throughout the debate today, as Stuart Maxwell and many others have mentioned, that this is a piece of legislation, proposed legislation, which seeks to offer some status to a language. It is not merely about the issue of disability important as that issue is. Dennis Robertson made that wider point about language when he talked about where this language BSL fits into our picture of world languages, if you like. That is, of course, very relevant to the efforts that are taking place in our schools in Scotland to introduce much greater exposure to languages, including BSL. Margaret McCulloch rightly pointed out the importance of the plans that the bill mentions, or perhaps more accurately, as she mentioned, the content of those plans, which will lead us over the coming months, I am sure, into a real discussion about how we involve very fully the BSL community in the production of those plans. On the likely Government amendments, Jane Baxter and others have raised the issue of the length, for instance, of the cycle of the language plans. I should make it clear, however, at this point that the reason that the Government has raised a question about the five-year cycle in the bill as tabled is not motivated by some desire to avoid ministerial responsibility for the conduct or achievement of the aims of the legislation within five-year parliamentary terms. It is simply, if I can be honest, because the experience of the Gaelic language legislation is important, although that has been for the language. It teaches us that we cannot put organisations in a position in which they are continually producing plans, as important as they are, and we have to have a debate about what the best length of that cycle is. Richard Simpson asked when will the review of the road map be published. I should say that it was carried out by the Scottish Council on Deafness and will be published on their website. Christine Grahame, if I can offer a second attempt to answer her original question, I hear her say please. If her question is about the listed authorities not covered by the national plan, perhaps helpful if I exemplify what those bodies might include, they would include territorial NHS boards, a small number of national bodies not directly accountable to ministers, which would include, for instance, things like the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, Audit Scotland and others. That was not an exclusive list. Christine Grahame also interestingly raised the issue about interpreters, a point that was also made by Dr Simpson and others. The Scottish Government is currently putting, or has been, over the past few years, putting £1.5 million into an apprenticeship-based model to try to address the very need to increase the number of interpreters that we have. Contact Scotland is one such effort that makes use of various technological solutions to promote and make further use of a limited number of interpreters. Although, again, on Christine Grahame's question there, none of that obviates the need for human interpreters, notwithstanding the point that Stuart Maxwell did make about the fact that there is considerable scope for pre-recorded messages to be used in other contexts. I would like to say, by way of the rest of my offering this afternoon, just to put some of the bill in context and to talk about some of the steps that this Government is already taking to promote and support BSL through a number of activities. Through, for instance, significant funding to support the infrastructure for teaching and learning of BSL, to improve our engagement with the deaf community, enabling and encouraging schools to offer BSL as a subject alongside other modern languages, and setting up a pilot online interpreting pilot for BSL users wishing to access public services directly by phone. Now, through all of these activities, we have made progress, but it is time to take the next step, and the bill, I believe, allows us to do that. We have a good idea of the longer-term outcomes that we want to achieve, having worked closely with the BSL and the Linguistic Access Working Group throughout our time in office. As Gordon MacDonald referred to, as a Government, we supported the publication of the group's report, The Roadmap to Linguistic Access, which set out eight long-term aims to improve linguistic access for deaf and deafblind people. There is, of course, an awful lot more to do, and we will draw on the expertise of the new BSL national advisory group to determine what priorities should be included in the national plan. I would like to pick up on some of the specific points around that. For instance, Mary Scanlon made a very important point about deaf children born into hearing families. The Scottish Government wants Scotland to be genuinely the best place for everyone to grow up, so we have recognised the importance of supporting families who have a deaf baby, providing over £0.5 million to the National Deaf Children's Society in 2011 to 2016 for its family sign project. The other issue for later on in a child's life is that, once a child reaches school, we are committed to ensuring that deaf pupils who use BSL get the support that they need to achieve their potential. Although we recognise that there is much more to do, overall it is important to say that things are improving with the latest Scottish Government data showing an increase in the number of deaf pupils moving into further education and employment. That is not to take away from the reality that many members have mentioned of the attainment gap that still exists. I am sure that many members will agree with me that deaf people who use BSL should be able to access public services in the same way as their hearing peers. That should be the aim that all of us have. That is why, earlier this year, we announced the extension of the NHS 24 online British Sign Language video relay interpreting service to ensure that that equality is further promoted. In my earlier contribution, I emphasised the importance of effective engagement between the BSL community and the public bodies who serve them. I mentioned funding that has recently been awarded to five organisations to help support that. Together, I hope that they will develop and deliver a cohesive programme of work around that. As the Minister for Scotland's languages, I am honoured to have responsibility on behalf of the Government for BSL and for responding to the bill. I look forward to playing my role in giving the language the support and protection that it deserves through the provisions of the bill. The Government remains very happy to work and to continue to help to develop the bill as it makes its way through Parliament. I thank the minister and members for their valuable positive contributions to the debate. As I said in my evidence to the Education and Culture Committee on 17 March, one of the reasons I have for attempting to introduce a British Sign Language Bill was partly personal. Mary Scanlon had raised it earlier, but I think quite get it right. It was my two of my great-grandparents who were deafblind. I never met them, they died before I was born, but I was brought up with stories from my mum about how they raised their children, the difficulty they faced, how they interacted with their children, with their grandchildren, how they attempted to access services and overcome everyday activities with a dual sensory impairment. When I became an MSP, I joined the cross-party group on deafness, where I heard of some of the experiences of people on that group. It was sad to learn that almost three generations later, people were still experiencing the same difficulties in accessing services, including medical and police services. The same difficulties in relation to educational attainment struck me that the language was still marginalised and still misunderstood. During evidence, the Minister for Learning Science and Scotland Languages, Dr Allan, provided us with a fitting historical illustration of the cultural roots of sign language in Scotland by citing an example of Joan, the daughter of King James I of Scotland, who died in 1493, who was deaf and used a form of sign language at court. I thought that I would do some research of my own and see if I could match that. In keeping with the royal theme, I discovered that there was another member of the royal family who used a form of sign language, Alexandra Princess of Wales, who married a son of Queen Victoria. It was said that the princess learned finger spelling and regularly attended deaf services at St Saviour's Church in London. It is even claimed that she went on to teach Queen Victoria how to sign. I am under no illusion that the bill is anything other than a starting point. That positive first step that Nigel Dawn, Stuart Maxwell alluded to is that starting point of a continuous cycle of improvement for access to services for BSL users that aims to raise awareness of the language and highlight gaps in provision, as well as identifying and enabling the sharing of good practice. Siobhan MacMahon, Gordon MacDonald and almost every other speaker in the debate raised the issue of the number of interpreters that we have. In Scotland, we have around 80 British Sign Language interpreters registered, whereas in Finland, that country that has got a lot of attention in this debate as well, we have a similar population to Scotland. We have 750 interpreters. I hope that if the bill is passed, the promotion of BSL and public life will lead to a resurgence of the language and an interest among all people in learning the language, creating an upturn in the number of interpreters coming into the system. The Education and Culture Committee heard evidence from witnesses who gave examples of how the lack of BSL awareness affected their everyday lives. One witness told the committee about people going into hospital and waiting hours or even months without really knowing what was going on with their treatment because there was no BSL interpreter available to help. Chick Brody raised the issues around interactions with financial institutions, the difficulties caused by data protection and the problems that can cause for BSL users who often rely on a family member or a friend to act on their behalf. Christine Grahame raised the issues of access to the justice system. If a BSL user needs to go to a solicitor, for example, in the process of perching a house, who pays for the interpreter and access to that legal service? It is the BSL user because legal aid does not cover the cost of BSL interpreters. That is just a small issue of access to justice services, which Christine Grahame elaborated on covers cases right up to the High Court. Any form of appeal or tribunal or mental health precedence, there is a real difficulty with access to justice for BSL users. Many organisations have already made great progress towards considering the needs of BSL users, and it is time that their experience is shared and allows others to catch up with them. I recognise that it is not possible to wave a magic wand and instantly enable BSL users to start using their own language every time they engage with the health service, educational establishments and so on. I wish I could, but I do believe that this bill is an important first step towards putting BSL on a firmer footing and that it will make a positive difference to the lives of BSL users. The point that has been raised with the Equalities Act on people who use BSL as their language access services by using this means is that it is important that BSL users certainly do not define themselves as disabled. There is intellectually, physically capable as any member here, and resent the fact that they have to define themselves as being disabled to access services that UNI take for granted. We do not go to a foreign country where we do not speak the language and define ourselves as being disabled. It is simply two people who use a different language to communicate, and that is what we have to recognise. There is a minority in Scotland who use a different language and have no opportunity to learn the indigenous spoken language, so it is up to us to address that and adapt to our services accordingly. The member mentioned in his earlier remarks that those who use the deafblind and deafblind manual and sometimes a person using BSL because of a degenerative sight loss after being profoundly deaf sometimes have to amend or adjust their BSL to using that different language. I myself can use the deafblind manual and can use some BSL but very little. Mr Griffin? Yes, certainly the impact of someone experiencing a further sensory impairment after being deaf and becoming deafblind and having to amend that language that they have used all their life is clearly a big issue. I mentioned in my opening speech about the particular consideration that has been given to deafblind BSL users. Margaret McCulloch picked it up in her contribution as well, as I said in my opening contribution. I am open and I have been in discussions with Deafblind Scotland about the potential for an amendment to specifically cover deafblindness if that is possible. There has been a range of contributions this afternoon. If I can pick up as many as I can in the minute we have left, I said earlier that I welcome the amendments that have been tabled in the minister's name or will be tabled in the minister's name. I look forward to discussions with the minister on the detail and indeed very much welcome them because a number of them strengthen the bill in particular areas. I also welcome the £390,000 of funding that is already earmarked to go to five deaf organisations to work in advance to implement the provisions of the bill. I think that we have had a tremendous debate today. I believe that my bill will help to improve the lives of BSL users and, in time, help them to come to better participate in all aspects of daily life. I hope that the decision time will come that the whole chamber will support the bill and take the next step towards introducing those improvements for the benefit of BSL users. That concludes the debate on the British Sign Language Scotland. I take this opportunity to thank our signers at the back of the chamber and the camera operator as well. The next item of business is consideration of motion number