 Welcome everybody to the Equal Opportunities Committee. It's the 18th meeting of 2015. Can I ask you to set any electronic devices to flight mode or switch off, please? I'd like to start with introductions. We're supported at the table by the clerkin and research staff, official reporters and broadcasting services and around the room by the security office, and welcome also to the observers in the gallery. My name's Margaret McCulloch and I'm the committee's convener and members will now introduce themselves and turn starting here on my right. Good morning, Sandra White MSP, Glasgow Kelvin, deputy convener. Good morning, John Finne MSP, Highlands and Islands. Good morning, Joyce Smith, member for Glasgow. Good morning, Christian Arad, MSP for the North East, Scotland. John Mason from Glasgow Sheddleston. Good morning, Annabelle Goldie, West of Scotland. The first agenda item today is a decision on taking business in private. You're asked to agree consideration of an event on female genital mutilation at item 3 in private. Are we all agreed? Agenda item 2 is an evidence session on our inquiry. If witnesses or members wish to speak during the discussion, can you please indicate to myself or my clerk on my left, please? And I welcome the panel and ask witnesses, if you don't mind, to introduce yourselves, please. Jim McCormick, associate director for Scotland, with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Hi, I'm Helen Barnard. I'm policy and research manager for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Good morning, I'm Maggie Kelly and I'm an independent consultant at CoraVer. Thank you very much. I now invite Helen Barnard to make an opening statement on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's new research into poverty and ethnicity in Scotland. First of all, thank you very much for the opportunity to come and talk to the committee. We're delighted that you're conducting this inquiry. It's exactly the right issue at a really good time, so we were very pleased to see that you're taking this on. Obviously, you've had our written evidence and you've also had the draft of the report that Maggie has written for us, which will be published in the early in the new year. So I'm not going to try and go over all of that. I thought what might be useful would be just to highlight some of the key actions that we think this evidence suggests could be taken in Scotland to reduce the disproportionately high poverty among some ethnic minority groups in Scotland, and particularly to think about how to make work a better route out of poverty than it currently is for many people across different ethnic groups in Scotland. I think it's worth starting by saying that what our evidence suggests is that the drivers of the high poverty for ethnic minority groups are part of a broader set of drivers for very high in-work poverty across Scotland and across many other parts of the UK. We don't feel that this is a separate set of issues. We feel that this is very much central to the overall goal of reducing in-work poverty. In particular, the key issue is the poor quality of work opportunities, which many people have, and that's not just about low pay, although pay is important. It's also about jobs that don't give people opportunities for training and for progression opportunities and the very high numbers of people getting stuck in entry-level low-paid jobs. What we've seen from our research and from the analysis that's been done in Scotland is that, for some ethnic minority groups, they are disproportionately concentrated in those sectors that have this problem, so particularly care, retail and hospitality. Having an approach to those sectors with a key focus on making sure that ethnic minority people within those sectors benefit would be one of the best ways of tackling this whole set of issues. There are two additional issues for ethnic minority groups on top of the broader drivers of in-work poverty, which are racism and discrimination, and for some groups English as a second language provision and English language speaking. Just think about what the big levers are to address this set of problems. The first one that we want to focus on is thinking about the Fair Work Convention, and we feel that this issue should be at the forefront of what the Fair Work Convention is doing. We would like to see them set out a programme of action to promote equal opportunities and better work opportunities across ethnic groups in Scotland. The second, as I said, is that we feel that there need to be sector-specific action plans for raising the quality of work, raising pay, improving training, improving development and progression opportunities, particularly for those big low-paid sectors, so care, retail and hospitality are the ones that we would suggest focusing on. The third issue is thinking about employment services. I know that that has been a big focus of what this inquiry has looked at, and we think that that is right. There are two big things that we think that employment services need to be doing differently. The first is that we feel that employment services, whether they are public or private sector or voluntary sector, should be to get people into work that leads to decent pay and takes them out of poverty. At the moment, despite all the progress in the last few years, what we still see is many employment services, the focus is to get people into a job. To some extent, that can be any job. What our research suggests is that that approach leads to people getting stuck in in work, poverty, getting stuck on tax credits, and they never really progress. We feel that there needs to be a real reorientation of the incentives and the targets for employment services, which should be to get people into jobs that have the potential for earnings progression. The second big issue for employment services is that, at the moment, there is very little available for people who are already in low-paid work. Once you are in low-paid work and you are stuck there, assuming that you have basic skills, there is very little on offer for you to help and advise you to support you to make and take those next steps. We feel that employment services need to be developing an offer for people who are already in low-paid work. The third thing that I can say a little more about later is thinking about investment and procurement. There are big steps being taken at the moment to say that the Scottish Government, local authorities and the new city deal in the west of Scotland are still, despite austerity, a lot of public money being spent in investment and procurement. That could be leveraged much more than is the case now, to create better quality jobs and to demand that people who are receiving any kind of public money to do things are creating good quality jobs and are taking really active steps to open those up to groups who are currently shut out. The next thing is apprenticeships. We have had the Wood commission and we would very much support the recommendations from that commission that there should be targets for the take-up of apprenticeships across ethnic groups and also thinking about gender. I would also say that those targets need to be about successful completions of apprenticeships, not just people taking them up. Quality of apprenticeships needs to really rise up the agenda. What we have seen across the whole UK is that the big expansion in the quantity of apprenticeships has come at the cost, to some extent, of the quality of apprenticeships. There are a fair number of apprenticeships out there that do next to nothing for the career prospects of the apprenticeships or for the economy that they are supposed to be contributing to. Our research around this has led us to say that we need quality of apprenticeships to be addressed probably before we see any further big expansion. That is a particular issue for this inquiry, because some of the research has suggested that young people from ethnic minority groups are not only not taking up apprenticeships or not achieving them in the same degree, but they are shut out of the higher quality apprenticeships that lead to higher pay. That is true for ethnic minority people. It is also true for young women more than it is the case for young men. The last two actions that we feel need to be taken are, as I said, thinking about English as a second language. Our research suggests that speaking good English can reduce your risk of poverty by five percentage points, which is a very big effect on poverty. For those groups and those people where their English is not to a high standard, their lives could really be transformed by getting their English up to a good standard. The key thing is that many of those people are already in low-paid work. Esol provision for people who already have jobs is very patchy, and it is very difficult for those people to get that English language to take them on to another step. We feel that that is where there needs to be investment and more action. Finally, thinking about what I said at the beginning about racism and discrimination, there is a lot of research that suggests qualitatively and quantitatively that there is a significant level of racism and discrimination that people from some ethnic minority groups experience and that is directly tied to people not being able to access good quality jobs, services and all the things that they need to take them out of poverty. The final thing that I would say is that a lot of the debate at the moment is rightly about the new powers that are coming up to Scotland, and there are some fantastic opportunities within those for this agenda, in particular the fact that employability is going to be moving completely up to Scotland. There is a real chance here to do something that is different that is better than what has gone before. A lot of what we are talking about is within the current powers, so I think that we feel that it is really important that we see action now, not just to debate about what we can achieve with new powers. Thank you very much, Helen. I think that there is going to be quite a lot of questions fired at you after that presentation, but before I jump into quickly and cut everybody off, I will pass you over to John and come in and probably quite a few supplementary questions on the back of your presentation. John Finnie? Thank you very much for the early sight of the report, for your submission and for that very comprehensive, which may well have answered a number of questions as well as provided. Can you say a little bit more please about the different labour experiences of different ethnic groups, particularly with regard to geography? I know that there is a challenge due to a dearth of data relating to Scotland, but can you comment on that, please? What we found, John, across the programme, is that when we take a specific look at different types of place, Glasgow has been one of the places that we have looked at in some depth, but earlier, looking at remote and rural areas, there is a more qualitative study place really matters here because of different patterns of migration, different compositions of ethnicity and, crucially, different compositions of the jobs market. Helen had said that about half of Scotland's low pay problem is found in three sectors—care, retail and hospitality. That geography varies substantially. We go to some of our most remote communities in the public sector as a much bigger employer as a share of total employment. Really understanding not just the evidence about what are the most powerful approaches to reducing gaps in employment rates and in-work poverty, but making sure that local authorities, community planning partners and the new city deal in the west of Scotland have really good data and the right tools to adapt to their labour market area. To take a long view of that, we probably need 10 or even 20-year planning horizons. Scotland's population has changed remarkably in the last 10 or 20 years. That is especially true of our cities. We need to, in a sense, catch up with the actual changes that we have seen and make sure that our labour market intelligence, the integration between local and national policy and our conversations with employers make sure that all those have caught up with the reality that we see across Scotland. In your report, you said that, despite the clear links between poverty and ethnicity, there is a lack of integration between equalities and anti-poverty policy in practice. How does that impact on issues such as gender and disability when considering the challenges that are faced by minority groups in the labour market? That is quite a question, I have to say. I think that, as the author of the report, the issue of how we integrate equalities in general with anti-poverty strategy in particular was something that was a recurring theme throughout the whole research. One of the really important things about the research is that it clearly demonstrates the link between, in this particular instance, discrimination on the basis of race, religion, etc., and poverty. Obviously, there are many reasons for discrimination in racism, and it demonstrates itself or manifests itself in lots of different ways. One of the key ways that that happens is through the much higher risk of being in poverty, if you are in one of those particular groups that are particularly disadvantaged. The same thing happens to women and to people with long-term health conditions and disabled people. When we are thinking about the different equality strands that you have mentioned, we have to always bear in mind that, obviously, there are different issues for all those different groups, and the way that that plays out is quite different and specific to those groups. Obviously, in this research, it was different, again, within different ethnic groups, so you cannot just generalise, but what is clear is that, to use a hackneyed phrase, money is power. One of the ways that discrimination, whether it is against women or disabled people or people from ethnic minorities, happens is through unequal access to money. In this particular bit of research, how we see that playing out is through the jobs market in particular. I do not know if that helps to answer the question. In very specific terms, the gender pay gap is different between different ethnic groups, so the gender pay gap is much bigger within some ethnic groups than within others, and for disability, overall, ethnic minority families that contain a disabled member have a higher poverty level than the majority families who contain a disabled member, so some of the other big equalities issues affect people differently depending on ethnicity, which means to tackle them. They need to be considered within ethnic groups, not just across the board. Again, from your submission, that applies across all the qualification levels to the disadvantaged and all those. Can I ask one final, if I may, convener, please? That is regarding the third issue of shortlisting, the number of people from ethnic minority communities who are unable, despite many applications, to get beyond that situation. Can you comment on that, please? I think that there is a big issue there around data and monitoring. One of the things that our research suggested was that, to take action on those things, one of the things that is really important is having the data to tell you where you are achieving things and where you are not. I think that there are two things there. One is about collecting data, but the other is what you do with it. What our research suggested was that, in broad terms, public sector bodies are quite good at collecting data and very bad at doing anything meaningful with it. Private sector organisations are not great at collecting data and are extremely variable in whether they then do anything. There is something very important about getting consistent collection of data—not just about recruitment, but about progression and development—but it is really about focusing on what you do with that analysis. In the past, there has been a great deal of focus on saying that everyone must collect data and monitor things and much less focus on saying what action do you take based on that analysis. Just to add a little bit more to what Helen has just said, I think that, particularly within local authorities, some local authorities have got quite good policies in terms of, for example, open recruitment. They are actually interviewing people from minority ethnic communities in reasonable numbers, but what you see is that that does not translate into actual appointments. There are quite a number of things that need to be thought about in terms of that. I think that there is some research that suggests that, for example, having ethnic minority members of the interview panel is really helpful. Those are just practical things that local authorities and other public bodies really need to be thinking about. There needs to be a refresh of the on-going training for managers and front-line staff to look at racism and unconscious bias. I think that there needs to be a very clear open recruitment policy, because I think that sometimes you see that people will use third-party organisations to do recruitment and they might not have as good an ethos as perhaps the public body that is doing that recruitment. There is lots of—it sounds quite small but could have quite profound effects in terms of good practice, in terms of recruitment and trying to make sure that those people who come along to interviews translate into actual appointments in jobs. I will comment on the data collection. We did hear evidence before from various organisations that people were unwilling to disclose their ethnicity because they probably did not know what was going to be collected for and what it would be used for. There could be a higher percentage of people from ethnic minorities working in various industries that we do not have the statistics for. What would you suggest that the private and public sector could do to get people to identify what their ethnic background is? It is voluntary, is it not? Yes, it is absolutely. I have not seen that evidence. It would be worth checking it against big national surveys just to make sure that it is a genuine issue. Assuming that it is a genuine issue, I think that the big thing would be to look at the informal cultures. It is something that some of our researchers suggested in broader terms that informal workplace cultures undermine equal opportunities policies quite a lot. Even organisations that have very good policies when they talk to low-paid staff and their managers are very often at the very least pockets in those organisations that absolutely do not have a particularly supportive culture. Possibly that is probably two things. One is for individual organisations to be taking a hard look at their own cultures and thinking what is it within this organisation that makes people feel that this is not a safe thing to do. The second thing is probably something broader to think about on a community level and a society level having a big anti-racism drive, getting the unions involved and getting some of the big civil society organisations involved. One thing that we think that it would be worth doing is for the Scottish Government to repeat a study that was done in published in 2009, which quantified the amount of discrimination that there is in recruitment. It is something that the UK Department for Work and Pensions did. It included Scotland but in a quite small way. It is one thing that would be very useful if the Scottish Government actually repeated that exercise for Scotland. You would have up-to-date specific results, and that could trigger some useful action around awareness, discrimination and racism. I am interested in the whole area of occupational segregation and underemployment. I want to be quite clear about the basis of the evidence that we are looking at. In your written submission, you had some very interesting information based, I think, on the last Scottish census. Is that right about clusters of where people tended to be working? Was that the 2011 census? I notice that you then went on to say in the following paragraph when you were talking about other aspects of this that it was not possible to include Scotland in its research and original plan due to lays and availability of census data. Is that a reference to when the next census will be? I do not know when the next census will be in 2021 or something. No, my apologies. A couple of things. Within the programme of research that the foundation has supported, there has been a mixture of research that has looked across the whole UK in research that has ended up looking at specific countries. The reference to not having been able to look at some of the results for Scotland says one project we did where what they basically did was to use the most recent census and come up with unemployment rates for detailed ethnic groups by local authority area and ward and also a measure of occupational segregation for each area and ward. That was England and Wales. It had originally been planned to be Scotland, to be include Scotland, but the most recent census data was not released in time for those researchers to carry out the same analysis for Scotland. We also, within our report, recommend that the Scottish Government should do that analysis for Scotland because we have not been able to. This is a kind of unexplored bit of territory, is that right? I think that is quite helpful, convener, because I was not quite clear what all this was based on. What I put in the submission was that I just went and had a look at the information for Scotland about how, across the whole of the country, ethnic groups are concentrated in low-paid occupations. However, the additional analysis that I am suggesting would enable you to look at that for specific areas in Scotland and identify hotspots, for instance. That is very helpful. Thank you, Helen. That clears things in my mind. Can I just ask, with reference to the draft report that you are very kindly shared with us, which seems to be a very impressive piece of work, to note on what you are drawing on in terms of the existing reports referred to, I did notice that there was reference to one for Wales and two for Northern Ireland, but nothing specifically for Scotland. Does that mean that there are just general extrapolations in here? Do you want me to answer that? In the programme as a whole, as I said, there are some projects that looked at more than one country. One of the biggest projects in the first phase of our programme was England and Scotland, but it did not include Wales and Northern Ireland. In one of the earlier stages of the programme, we had funded a review of research in Scotland and some qualitative research in Scotland, but we did not do the same in Wales and Northern Ireland. What we have basically done is to catch up across the UK, so we funded those additional bits of work in Wales and Northern Ireland to bring our evidence base up to the same level. I am sorry for having to clarify what I described as a little bit of housekeeping, but you have highlighted something. There is a bit of a gap in the availability of information with the help of the Scottish Government that we might be able to plug that gap. On the whole issue of what you did discover about occupational segregation and underemployment, I noticed what you found as far as you were able to locate information on which you could base your findings on. Did your research indicate the reasons behind that pattern? Why do we have clusters of certain groupings in care, retail or hospitality? To a degree, there is more investigation to be done. There are a number of different issues there. There is one specific one that is about the recognition of overseas qualifications. For some people, they have pretty high levels of qualification, but it is very difficult for employers to get a sense of what that means. Those people end up working in very low-paid jobs when they have degrees and high-level qualifications. The second issue is about English as a second language. Some people who are very highly qualified do not have English language skills to match that and therefore cannot make best use of them. Those are two quite specific things for people coming into the country. There are a lot of other issues that go back to the issue of apprenticeships. The apprenticeship route is not working at the moment for ethnic minority groups across the country. It is not working the way it should be, which means that routes into better quality work are not being opened up. There is an issue about lower qualifications for some groups, but for other groups they are leaving school with high levels of education. It is partly a question of social networks. If you are aligned on social networks to get jobs, if most of the people you know are unemployed or in poorly paid work, or if your family and friends tend to be self-employed, people from those groups lack the networks into better paid work. The fact that we do not have a good careers advice service means that if you do not happen to have your own social networks, it can be incredibly difficult to identify what your route into better paid work is, so that people cluster into places where they have word-of-mouth networks. Just to say that the final thing goes back to what we were talking about earlier on. Helen mentioned the Wood Research, which found that I cannot remember the exact figures off the top of my head, but for every application that somebody puts in from a white majority sounding name, the chances of them getting an interview are very, very much higher than somebody from an ethnic minority community. Clearly, all the things that Helen has talked about are very important issues, but, clearly, one of the key things that the evidence shows is that quite often the people who are settled here have very good qualifications already, they are well qualified for the jobs that they are applying for, but they are not getting them, or they are getting an entry level and they are not progressing in. Therefore, we need to tackle the supply side issues and the demand side issues together. My colleague John Mason will have more detailed questions, but one general point, the convener and Christian Allard and I visited the NHS Lothian programme, of which you might be aware, which has been in the go for about 18 months. That is specifically addressing the particular situation of black and ethnic minority employees in the health board. I wonder if you are new to that project. Yes, to some extent, not in detail, but I think that, correct me if I am wrong, I think that they have had some success in improving the level of recruitment, as a result of that programme. I am not sure, but yes, I am aware of it, but not in detail. Both recruitment and promotion once in. Yes, I know that I have come across it as an example of good practice. So, we were very impressed, and it was just to do that to you. Thank you very much for your help. John Mason, before you move on, I come back to Helen, when you said that the modern apprenticeship programme is not working for ethnic minorities. Can you give me the reason why, and also if it is not working, what can actually be done to actually improve the recruitment level? I think that when I said that it is not working, I mean that if you look at the stats on who is getting apprenticeships, there are some groups who are clearly underrepresented. To some extent, that is partly about raising awareness and promoting the kind of brand of apprenticeships among communities where it may not be perceived. But actually, there are a lot of people applying, and disproportionately, young people from ethnic minority groups are unsuccessful compared to white majority groups. And so, I think it's about—there are a number of steps that can be taken. There's raising awareness, and there's some very specific work that needs to be done about raising awareness and promoting it. And that comes about partly to careers advice. If there was a really good careers function for everybody in schools which properly gave people information, that would be much more equal access. It's then about examining what is going on in that recruitment process. And I think that has to be a really detailed look at what points are people falling out and not getting through. Then I think it's looking at, well, if people are getting through, which apprentices are they getting? Because if it is the case, certainly after a lot of fighting down in England, they managed to release some much more detailed data, which has shown that people from ethnic minority groups are not getting on to the best quality apprenticeships. And that's a real issue in terms of whether they're going to deliver higher pay, better economic outcomes. So I think it's looking at all those stages in a sense. And my impression is that all those stages, some groups are disproportionately not getting the outcomes that one would expect. Okay, thank you. Actually, I pre-empted joined Christians. That's actually going to ask questions about modern apprentices, so if we can leave it so we come to Christians shortly. And Sandra wants another quick supplementary. It is a very quick supplementary and it's not eating into it. Anyone else's questions are just picking up on what Maggie has said in regards to people applying for jobs. And obviously, if it's a name that people recognise, it's not, you know, white, whatever it may be, they don't even tend to get as far as an interview. We've had heard lots of evidence from people, one person in particular, who actually changed the name so that they could get an interview. Would you be supportive of CVs not even having names or ethnicity in their CV so that they actually get to the point of having an interview and then data being taken from that to see how far people progress to get into a job? I just wonder what your thoughts were on that one. I think there's a couple of different issues, isn't there? Because I know certainly some public bodies have a system whereby they will just take names and personal identifying details away from the application. And I think that that would be probably the best approach if that could also be encouraged in the private sector and indeed those public bodies are maybe not doing that as rigorously as they should be. So I think that's probably how I would like to see that go. And I think that your suggestion might be one way of doing that and that could be something that the Fair Work Convention and others could talk to employers about in terms of how they actually do their recruitment. And I think that that would be a useful practical step to help. But as I said earlier, I think it's not just about recruitment, it's about the whole process. It's about how do you get through that interview, what systems are in place to support people, get through the interview and then once they're actually in the job, is it going to be a job that's actually going to lift them out of poverty or are they going to be trapped there? So there's a whole range of issues. But I think that's a useful thought, particularly for the private sector, where people are often using CVs yet. Yeah, that's true. Thank you. Thank you. John Mason. Okay, I mean, I think we're going to go backwards and forwards and covering quite a lot of ground here. So, but we're talking about the whole issue of being overqualified. And in page five of your report, you've got a nice little graph showing that the number of graduates in the UK in each ethnic group who are overqualified for their jobs. And according to that, I mean, everybody is basically, I mean, there's... So I suppose my fundamental starting point is are we pushing too much emphasis on degrees right across the board? Or are people doing the wrong degrees, either coming into the country with the wrong degree or taking the wrong degree when they're here? Now, I think that my colleagues will be asking about young people and giving them advice. But, you know, because it seems to me a lot of the jobs, for example, are in engineering. And I just wonder, are we getting enough people doing engineering degrees? I think that the starting point is, if you look at the projections for how jobs in the UK are going to go over the next 10, 15, 20 years, there is projected to be an increasing amount of high quality, high-skill jobs for which you'll need level 4 qualifications. So that is going to continue. And so I think that there is going to be, that there is the demand in some places of the economy for those higher skills. What that also means, though, is that people who don't have high level qualifications are going to be progressively more and more disadvantaged within the labour market. And I think we've already seen that. But I think you're right, there is in the question of all level 4 qualifications aren't equal. And are people doing the ones that will actually have value in the labour market? And I think there is a fair amount of research that suggests that many people are doing degrees which don't have the value they expect. And I think there's two things about that. There is the demand in the labour market. So certain parts of the country are stuck in a low-pay, low-skills equilibrium where the economy is juddering along with lots of low-pay, low-skill jobs. And there's no real need for any particular business to do anything different. But as a whole it means that that local economy is stuck there. But there is also, I think, there's a lack of career pathways. So I think what we've seen is a real disconnect between the bottom and the top of the labour market. So whereas in the past you could get an entry-level job, get some work experience, work your way up, those pathways have really been disappeared in many sectors. So there are some quite interesting things happening in the United States and various other places where people are reconstructing career pathways. So where local or national governments are working with employers in a particular sector to map out what is a career pathway, what you need to get up there. The third thing is this question. It comes back again to apprenticeships, to higher-level apprenticeships, that if that, you know, the big policy drive, if that works, this should really, really help. It should mean that people are doing qualifications which are worthwhile in the labour market, which take you into higher-level jobs, which are valued. But what we've seen is a really big expansion in qualifications, particularly business service sector apprenticeships, which are essentially, you know, people are doing low-paid work with a very small amount of additional training. It's not linked up to any career path. It doesn't add value to the business particularly. It's just a way of getting somebody in. And I think that there's a real tipping point here where we need to stamp that out. We need to say, actually, no, the apprenticeship programme should be high value. It should rival, as agreed, as a pathway into a good-quality job. That's what it should do. At the moment, some of them do that, but not enough. So for people who do have good qualifications, either they might not be in any job or they might be in a job that's not anywhere near using their skills, what kind of employment support and advice should be or what should be happening that's not happening. And especially, I was interested that you mentioned the trade unions in that regard, because I don't think that's something that's really come across our horizon too much so far. And I just wonder what part you think they have to play in all of that. Okay. I think I'll ask Maggie in a minute to say something about the trade unions because she's been looking at that. The thing I would say before that is that one of the things that we're advocating as part of our broader anti-poverty strategy development is there should be a national advancement service. So there should be a service which is focused on people who are already in work and which is looking at how they can progress. So for some people, that is going to be about basically giving them advice on how they can switch sector or switch employer to make better use of their skills. For other people, it might be saying, you've got a high level qualification, but if you do this extra bit of training, you can translate that into the labour market success. And the third thing does come back to the point about racism and discrimination, that we know that there is a real issue that people from ethnic minority groups who do get high level qualifications are disproportionately not able to make use of them. Partly that's about which universities people go to and it's about which qualifications they take. Partly it's about what's happening in the labour market and the discrimination that we see there. Is there a different attitude amongst groups? I mean, there's a tendency, I have to say, amongst some white groups to look on medicine law and accountancy and that kind of thing as better and engineering as less good. And I come from a family where my father was an engineer, so is that uniform throughout all the ethnic groups or would you say there's a difference amongst ethnic groups in that attitude? So we haven't got evidence on that, John, in terms of attitudes. What we do have evidence on is access to opportunities which vary substantially. And then there's a kind of, if you want, we might call it an ethnic patterning to the opportunities that people actually feel are available to them, which are partly about, as Helen said, your social networks, your role models, what's happened in your school catchment area and so on. I think what we see here is in a sense in a reflection of bigger economic trends that affect Scotland and the UK. One of which you're quite right is about the long-term underutilisation of skills at all levels, but we've talked about graduate level. That's maybe a bit oversupply, but it's certainly about blockages in our workplaces where, at the managerial level, we seem to lack capacity to fully draw out, in the business interest, the skillset that employers have at the disposal. So there are problems there and there's even some evidence that Scotland may be doing rather less well than the UK as a whole. Unpublished analysis by the resolution foundation shows that we have a particularly acute problem of graduates being stuck for longer in non-graduate occupations. And then there's an issue about once people are in work, beyond apprenticeships, who gets access to on-the-job training. If you are in work and you are poorly qualified, your chances of getting any on-the-job training three times less odds than people who already have high qualifications. So whatever we're doing with our public investment, what employers do, what individuals invest in their own training, it isn't helping to reduce that gap in terms of access to good quality opportunities for advancement. Those are big macro issues that we need to grapple with and there's certainly an ethnic patterning to how that's experienced in Scotland. To go back to that initial question, I guess there's two aspects really, just to say a little bit more about the employment and advice aspect of your question. In addition to the issues that Helen of Rays raised, I also wanted to just say a little bit more about the future devolution of employability, because I think it's fairly clear that the current work programme that we've got at the moment isn't really providing people with high-skilled, good work experience on the whole. In terms of people who are overqualified for the type of work that they're doing, one opportunity that could be looked at in terms of how we put together the devolved scheme is whether or not we could actually be thinking about really good high-quality, high-skilled jobs, which are specifically there for people who've got good qualifications but are just not getting those jobs. Seriously look at it in terms of ethnicity, gender and so on and actually say what are the kinds of jobs that women and ethnic minority women perhaps in particular, but ethnic minority groups have got skills, the kind of qualifications that they've got, can we actually target them and offer them really good work experience. That's one thing, in addition to the kind of stuff that Helen's been talking about around apprenticeships. It's another avenue to attack the same sort of problem but from a different angle, I think, is something worth exploring definitely. I think that you also asked about the unions and their role. As part of the anti-poverty strategy, the current one that we've got is being refreshed at the moment but I think that there was a suggestion that it would be helpful to have a programme of awareness raising about employment rights across Scotland. I think that that's something that hasn't really been actioned and taken forward. So I suppose I'm thinking about a sort of a broad programme that perhaps would work in partnership with unions and it would be something that tackles the problem for the other groups of people who are, that we've been talking about, who were stuck in low-paid work in those sectors that we've been discussing, care and hospitality and so on. Do you feel that unions are up for this kind of thing? Because in one sense they represent their members and if you take something like construction, where it's mainly white and male, what is the incentive for the union to discourage white males and encourage ethnic minorities and women? I think you'd better ask them. But to be honest, I mean I've had discussions with people from unions quite recently about this and I think they are definitely keen to ensure that that's what I wanted to hear. Yes, I mean I'm being slightly facetious there. No, that's fine. But you feel the attitude is there. I think the attitude is there. I think people would be very keen to engage in this programme. I think that it's something that's sorely needed really when you think about some of the terms and conditions that people are working in. And I know that we have to think about this in the context of the fact that employment law is clearly a reserved matter and it's only so much that the Scottish Government and or people working locally in Scotland can do. But nevertheless, I think that there are opportunities to try and encourage people to report bad practices. There have been use of things like third party reporting for other areas where there are sensitive issues around domestic violence, things like that. So I know that people are in really bad working conditions. There can be issues around reporting. So maybe third party trusted organisations could be there for them to go to. There are lots of different ways that you could think about that, but I think certainly a renewed emphasis on ensuring that people are aware of their rights at work, both around exploitation and really poor conditions, but also around if they feel that they've been discriminated in terms, for example, they feel that they haven't had opportunities for training and, as a result, they haven't been promoted. This could go right across the spectrum from very poor conditions to really quite highly skilled posts where people are really suffering from discrimination. I think that also linking it up to investment and procurement, we've got new regulations. I was just going to ask something about that, yes, on you go. Well yes, just in terms of how do you motivate people to care, which I think is partly what you're talking about. These things aren't happening naturally, therefore there isn't a strong enough business case to make them happen purely by persuasion, or they would have happened by now, but I think that there are some really interesting levers around investment and procurement, and I know that you've been looking at the regulations that have just come out. On that one, the living wage, we've kind of struggled because we've not been able to put it and say you must pay the living wage to get a government contract, but we've kind of encouraged it around the edges. So is it the same that we would say to people, right? Unless you've got 8 per cent ethnic minority, we don't really want to work with you. Could we say that? I wouldn't say yes, I'll write to that. The guidance that has been published is guidance, and I think that the situation is that people ought to follow it unless they can explain if they've got good reason not to. So there's a strong incentive for people to follow the guidance and they really need to explain to themselves why they're not, if that's the case. I think that the difference with the living wage and with a lot of the issues that we're talking about here is that the kinds of things that you would want people to do in order to improve recruitment and retention, diversity, et cetera, within their workforce, there's already a quality legislation that says that that's what people should be doing. So in fact, in some senses, there's potential for it to be more forcefully persuasive. So I think, as I say, lots of things we're talking about, there's duties on local authorities to promote and not just try and ensure that they've got diversity but actually promote race equality and so on and so forth. So it's quite persuasive, I think. Two things we can do is make our inputs more intelligent. So for example, we know that BMSs have been working closely with Skills Development Scotland to try and really get under the surface of these kind of issues in different sectors, really get closer to employers and those who represent the workforce and potential workers. And be more proactive about showing good guidance, good practice and solutions that employers can grab hold of. That's one thing. And then if we do that kind of thing, we really are in Tithon, Scotland to expect better data. Much better data, not just about tracking and monitoring data but better value to data about approaches that appears to succeed. They might be NHS loading, they might be other things as well. And if we do that, then we'll be in a position, let's say, by the time of the next Parliament, hopefully at the end of it, certainly, to be able to get better answers to those questions that we can at the moment. I think that there's a big responsibility on Scottish Government and their agencies, like SDS, to be substantially further forward in the years to come about good quality data. I think we'll now move on. John, are you finished? Well, I could go on forever, but... Yeah, I know. But we've got other people that want to come in. So, can I pass you on to Drew now? Thank you, convener. I was going to ask you to expand a little bit more on the issues of discrimination, and particularly the submission that you talked about in formal practices within the workplace touched on some of this already, but could you maybe just give us a little bit more detail on what those issues are and any suggestions or suggested solutions that you might have as to how they could be tackled? Yeah, the research that looked at employment in particular in progression had quite a lot of really interesting information around this particular issue. I think that one of the key issues was that, quite often, there might be a human resources department that had quite good equal opportunities policies and had quite good policies on paper, about how they offer training to people, for example, would be a typical example and how they're monitoring ethnicity and so on and so forth, but then when people were in the human resources department were interviewed, they felt that their policies were pretty good and they did look good on paper, but when people were interviewed in the workforce, they often said, well, actually, this is not what's happening in reality and I've been passed over for training, for example, or recruitment, and quite often what was happening was that, although there were good policies there, there wasn't a formalised practice about how they were actually being implemented and it was quite often you'd get an example of somebody saying, well, I only found out about this training after the rest of the office or two thirds of them had gone off and done it and because I'm not in that little network of people, nobody told me about it. And quite often the person who didn't tell them was their line manager and that was actually one of the very striking things about the research was that it was line managers who were key. So I think that one of the things to think about when we're looking at how to stop these sort of practices is really good training for managers, line managers, and for human resources departments to actually look at how their practices are being developed in practice rather than just on paper and to go out and actually talk to people in the workforce and maybe do a bit of their own internal sort of testing around what's happening could be another way forward with it. Can I ask you when you are answering your questions to make them briefer because we've got quite a lot of questions we want to actually ask it and we're running short of time. So Jim, please, thanks. So a really specific example from some previous work we've done is around residential care and this is really easy to resolve but we found ever since Scotland of some care homes which had permanent night shifts rather than rotuing staff which meant those people were locked out of all the training that was taking place during the daytime. Those care homes changed over to our roto system that gave all staff equal access at least on paper to training opportunities things like that we can unlock very easily as long as we're doing good awareness raising with employers and the care sector is a very good example of where we can make much faster progress because of this workforce composition. We've discussed discrimination and beyond that to racism with other witnesses the term unconscious bias has come up probably most often from the employer or management side and there's quite a different perspective from representatives of the workforce about that. Do you think that that's a helpful term? I think there is certainly a set of unconscious bias training out there which seems to have a good effect so whether the term itself is useful I think it's for me on a personal level I think it's useful in the sense that it opens up a discussion which isn't just about overt racism because a lot of what we're talking about isn't expressed as overt racism. I suspect some people don't like it because it implies a kind of no blame it's not your fault and personally you know you can argue that back and forth I think it's useful to acknowledge that people sometimes are doing things without certainly conscious intention which work out very badly for members of their workforce and there is training out there which helps people to become more aware of that and challenges them to change their actions so to that degree I think it's a useful contribution Would you have any comment to make? So thinking about the the more extreme end of that so cases that might result in tribunals or different types of discrimination cases what's your sense of the level of that and the trends that are going on with that and our situation versus you know comparable places? I don't have any sort of specific figures on the levels of tribunal cases at the moment in Scotland it's not something that the research looked at in detail but I mean I do know that because of the costs involved that is an issue for people and so clearly that's not something that it's not a devolved matter so it's not something that we can do anything about I suppose that I just worry about the sort of potential under-reporting of that because there are issues around employment tribunals obviously and that sort of extreme end and then there's also perhaps this tendency to describe situations as being less serious than they are because people don't you know are uncomfortable around the terminology around racism I mean I think you're right I think there's a lot of cases which go unreported I think that must be the case I think the figures that we see are probably just the tip of the iceberg it must be I mean if you read this research in detail I mean there's clearly cases in there where you'd think well goodness me that must be a tribunal case but the person concerned is just sitting there and putting up with it because they feel that that's their only option so I think certainly it would be much more widespread than tribunal case numbers would suggest I think it's about the power imbalance it's about the power relationships within an organisation and you know low-paid workers are not in a powerful position and so the chances of them challenging what's going on if they might then lose their work you know I think that's a big ask Yeah of course Could I ask just one final thing Margin, it's unrelated to the two previous things but as we spoke about the idea of a national advancement service early which I thought was an interesting idea and I wondered if you just take the opportunity to tell us a little bit more about how you would envisage that working are there any examples elsewhere in the world that you think we should be looking to We're going to be publishing a report in the next few weeks which sets out that proposal in detail and it's part of our core recommendations as part of the anti-poverty strategy for Scotland and for the UK I think the way we're envisaging it working at the moment would be it would be commissioned on a local basis by local authorities to be part of their employment offer but that there should be clear minimum standards from the government setting out what it should offer that it should be integrated into employment services obviously it could because many of the people who will need to use it will be got into work and then kind of left to do their own thing and actually it's about keeping in touch with those people and helping them to move on but there is a client group who currently are not in touch with employment services which this service needs to get to so I think we're envisaging essentially it's something about having some integrated hubs within local areas which local authorities would set up and would commission but you need a strong drive from the centre to say you need to achieve these things you need to give these minimum standards Thank you Sandra Thank you very much I want to concentrate on young people we have spoken quite a bit and I know my colleague Christian is going to talk about the apprenticeship side of that as well you've heard the evidence and you've also got evidence here from the wood commission about the qualification very high qualifications that young people from ethnic minority groups basically come out with and yet they can't find decent employment and obviously that will lead us on to the career situation but I notice you mentioned in your contribution in this situation that sometimes can be done with a very narrow networking opportunities and also we heard evidence in the fact that in some ethnic minority groups the children are expected to follow the family into the career that they had so I wonder if you had evidence on that as well and if there's any cultural aspects in regards to why young people from ethnic minority backgrounds with very good qualifications do not go into a certain career that those qualifications could allow them to so yes I think I would agree with all of that and it's what are some some of the research we funded was particularly about social networks and that was primarily England based but it did look at rural as well as rural areas as well as urban areas and we did actually have other research which included Glasgow and looked at it in that context so yes I think the two I mean I think there is something specific about communities where you have very high levels of self-employment because there is something broader where a family is primarily involved in self-employment and most of the people they know are self-employed and again this tends to be catering taxi driving those kinds of things those young people seem to not have the networks out of that particular sector and that way of working I have said this does affect low-income groups across ethnicities though it's not only ethnic minority young people although there are particular issues there and I think that's this is where there is a really strong role for public services for a public service of careers advice to be opening up people's horizons to be breaking down stereotypes to be really encouraging people to look at better paid work even if it's outside their own family and networks experience and we know that's really not happening at the moment to any great degree Just that on top of that there's also a gender gap so that most minority ethnic girls from low-income backgrounds in Scotland are substantially outperforming boys from the same backgrounds and majority white Scots from the same backgrounds and even with that educational premium if you like the degree of occupational channeling and segregation and under utilisation of skills is even more stark so we need to be quite specific about which groups are most affected by those kind of disadvantages in terms of the labour market where they are so good data on geography and then good sectoral insights and we can start very early with that but we can also use examples like work experience in fourth year as a small way of modelling and demonstrating completely different experiences from the ones that young people would normally have access to and so there's a big responsibility here on what we can expect our schools and career service to do as well as when we get into FEHE in the workplace Add to what my colleagues have said obviously there's a specific issue for more recent migrants who will naturally network with people who speak the same language and so therefore I think we really need to when we're thinking about networks and the impact of networks consider the impact of low levels of English language and therefore you know the fact that if you're speaking English as a second language you're just not getting the information potentially about career options at an early stage you're not getting information about services that might assist you find out about career options etc etc so that is a very particular group which I think needs targeted action to ensure that people don't just move into low paid work because that's what everybody else in their kind of local network is doing because that's the only thing that they get to hear about because you know they've got issues around speaking English as a second language so we need to make sure that that doesn't happen and that sort of repeating cycle doesn't just go on I take your point on that and obviously looking at perhaps a fair work convention in schools as well about more you know resources being put into ESOL and others as well you touched on the career situation career advice as you might say and as David has pointed out we do have a lot of the young people who are well qualified but obviously not either getting the proper career advice or maybe something else there that doesn't lead them on to a career which could be fulfilling for them you mentioned about I wanted to touch on the devolution of employability as you said in the work programme that comes down to the Scottish Parliament perhaps fitting into the fair work convention and also one of the work I think I picked up on is employment services the focus is just to get people into jobs which I found really really interesting any job really so what would your advice be in that respect then for these youngsters who are qualified but are obviously getting the wrong advice would you see this employment service and I know that you mentioned the national advancement services taking over from the career services in the schools that are complementing them Can I just start with I can point out about purpose here I mean job centre plus that their main target main goal is to get people off benefit and into work the work programme does a bit better it's to get people into work and to keep them there for six months a weave an opportunity in Scotland with devolution to have a different commissioning purpose which is more ambitious which Helen has suggested we see as helping people to get into work that will in time lead to sufficient earnings progress to take them out of poverty because that's good for the economy the social security bill people's prospects there's a business case for employers so our purpose has to be different and more ambitious and then it's fine to set a commissioning purpose we then have to be really clear about some of the culture on behavioural things that flow from that certainly for work programme providers but absolutely also for taking this as an opportunity on the back of the wood commission to also reframe what our offer is to young people around subject choice work experience careers advice choices they make at 17 and 18 and given that we're trying to develop our culture participation in Scotland you know I think there's a real space here for young people on a peer-to-peer basis to be fully involved in designing that view of what works for different people in different places and not just making the mistake of thinking there's a better bureaucratic fix that can come from government the more we can engage with young people who've grown up here or recently come here in designing solutions that are likely to work I think the closer we are to having the kind of service we need Can I actually come in on that? When you say about the job centre employment services moving people into better quality jobs what if they can't get those or achieve those better quality jobs or maybe they're not out there is there not an advantage on getting the person into a job in the first place rather than them staying unemployed because I've got experience of this through training and the longer you're unemployed the harder it is to get a job the more your skills go out of date and then you'll end up having health issues as well The consequence of what we're seeing is not that you park people until something better comes along it's that we get people in but then instead of saying once you're over the threshold getting into work you're on your own which is usually what we say or certainly after six months for those who've been long-time unemployed we're suggesting that people who have let's say the biggest risk factors so they may have a health condition or disability they may have poor English they may be poorly qualified they may be in a sector or a place with very few prospects for advancement so when those conditions apply in particular we want to have a service that sticks with people continues to offer them chances for advancement and if their employer isn't offering that then we may look at procurement conditionality or we may say the thing here is to give people good support to get the second or third job that's what we mean by sticking with people and keeping a focus on advancement Can I say does that not then take you to looking at the ability and understanding of the job market and the jobs that are actually out there and then look at you're going to have to train the job centre staff to really understand what the jobs are and tie it into the individual's qualifications but also understand and take time to know what the barriers are for each of those individuals that can't get a job and can't progress Yes, absolutely right so what we're basically advocating is first leave if you change the high level target and incentive for job centres, work programme providers employment services if you tell them their target is to get people into a certain level of earnings progression for instance what you can then do is flowing from that that will lead advisors to be making judgements over for this particular person is my best route to my target take the first job because they need work experience is it to hold off on some of these low level jobs to get a better job or to do more training now at the moment they have no motivation actually to think like that if you change the high level target you create that but I think you're absolutely right it's a really important point you then need the advisors need local labour market information they need up to date local labour market information that tells them if someone goes into this job these are the pathways this is the earnings progression you tend to get so they can make that judgement and they've got to have the training to do that so we're also suggesting a revitalise something like a national college or something for employment advisors to upskill employment advisors so they will be able to do that skilled professional judgments actually about with somebody about what's best for them and then do the follow-up we're talking about employment services staffs becoming careers advisors much more doing that yes yeah absolutely okay thank you okay we need to move on now sorry can we move on to Christian we're running short of time apologise do I need to move on can I not go back on this oh just just a quick observation we talked a lot this morning you talked a lot about good morning first of all about low pay jobs about low quality jobs is there a problem are we talking about and especially about ethnic minorities that we are considering that there are that type of jobs out there that nobody wants to do that somehow you can't get a self-esteem to do them or is it not the problem and I cannot read it on your report as the problem really is that there's not such a thing when a bad job is only a bad pay but in fact some of his some of his job has to be done by somebody and you cannot fulfil them and doing them the only problem is is we are not and I think my colleague John Mason talked about it it's the key the living wage as opposed I wanted to desperately upskill people to get out of that poverty trap and I'm a bit concerned that we are trying to devolwraith some of our jobs when in fact it's a pay the problem not the job itself I think there's probably two things I'd make that one is just on the what contribution can the living wage make there's a bit of analysis we had done a year or so ago which suggested that if you look at in-work poverty about half of it is related to people being paid below the living wage about half of people in work poverty don't have anyone in their household below that wage so even if everyone was on the living wage you would still have about half the level of living work poverty that we see which means it's also about hours of work we know there's a lot of people who want more hours who can't get them and it's about progression if you're supporting a family you may need to be paid quite a lot above the living wage and therefore you do need that progression I think there is something about job design there is something about can we redesign some jobs so that they will be worth more so that employers will actually genuinely be able to pay them more not simply be told they have to and there is something about moving people through them at the moment the problem is with these low paid jobs they would be fine if they were genuinely in the entry level and you could then move on to something but too many of them aren't I agree that I think the biggest thing I would say where what you're saying comes in is the care sector and that's where it's to some extent within the gift of the government national governments to say we will value care work more than we do we will pay it better than we do we will get higher quality than we have and that's something where it is really about how good a care are we willing to pay for to my mind we should value any kind of job being a street or be a care job should be paid accordingly if I can move on oh sorry it was just to really say that Helen just said exactly what I was thinking at the end there which was I absolutely agree with you that there are loads of jobs out there which are being paid really badly and the care sector is one of them and I think you know that that is a sector which we could really focus on in terms of improving paying conditions paying people a living wage but also looking at the care structure opportunities within the care to develop but you know it's an incredibly important job you know and hugely undervalued so it's all about the kind of culture as well I think it's so you know you know it's no surprise that it's you know quite often women and maybe ethnic minority women that are doing it so I think it's about pay but it's also about the culture and that includes a whole load of other issues around how we value that sector yep I apologise Governor because you talked about women I wanted to go back to page I think it's page 10 of your reports the graph about the low pay it's on it's a percentage of employees below living wage by ethnic group and it's quite interesting you've got the percentage for women and for men and I was struck by this you know at in fact the white people are quite there is a huge big gap here which you can't find in the ethnic minority so when we talked about more data let's be clear we might be surprised that some ethnic minorities are better place that we are is um yes you're right the gender gap within the white group is um the biggest I think it is worth saying there's a selection effect there so within some ethnic minority groups women are less likely to work those that do work are those who can command higher wages doesn't take away from your point but I think there is a context I think it also hopefully highlights there's some groups where men are incredibly badly paid and it's because they're concentrated in certain jobs so I think it's a helpful kind of it's helpful to look at it specifically and not just in a kind of very broad way yeah I'm trying to I'm pushing it at the time I'm trying to say by this in some of his data there are things which are positive yes absolutely about the ethnic minorities which maybe the white majority could take example on definitely or go back to to what I was supposed to ask going to about more than about the ship I'm quite confused about the report it's quite interesting when you talk about target you know there are two things that is targeting regarding promotion and targeting groups to go into a system because of course modern apprenticeship is a different system that we have down down in England but you use very specific you're talking about SDS to target people and I found it a bit a bit a bit difficult to explain and you said that he came from the wood commission the wood report on the commission that it was one of the recommendation I read the recommendation yes that it's a setting up of targets but the setting up of targets is so near with people with disability not with people of ethnic background wait is it a mixed up or is it should be back I think I think what we're trying to say is that the kinds of targets that are there should be across the board should be for ethnic minority groups and for disabled people as well and that's something that we'd want to see in a should you think the equality act should be changed we're saying in terms of the wood commission they've made recommendations for the disabled people we think they should make the same recommendations for ethnic minority young people yeah but on the report you don't say that on the report you say you agree with the wood commission and you extrapolate saying that the target should apply as much to people from ethnic minorities than people with disability because the wood commission was very precise trying to make sure to separate the two because the problem of legality is between positive action and positive discrimination yeah I can see where your question is leading here actually and I do appreciate that it might be more helpful to talk about targets a bit more specifically because clearly I think we're not saying that the system should be changed so that you know whatever the percentage in that local area of a particular ethnic minority group should be replicated in the number of people who are then offered opportunities because we can't discriminate in terms of either job opportunities or other types of opportunities we can't specifically say this is how you're going to do it and you're going to have a quota but I think that's different from saying you can take action which will increase the number of people from ethnic minority groups where there's evidence that they have been underrepresented I'm just worried that your report is only on a draft but it might be helpful if you think it is yeah I mean I could certainly because you clearly recommend that SDS should set up targets yeah what I'm talking about is not targets in the sense of quotas I suppose is what I'm trying to clarify and you're absolutely right we can't discriminate against particular people on the grounds of their ethnicity whether that be white or or ethnic minority groups and that's not what I'm suggesting what I'm suggesting is that they put in place some sort of programme which for example they might it might involve for example liaising with local ethnic minority community groups and doing some joint work with them to advertise the kinds of opportunities that are available it might involve going into schools in areas where there's high numbers of ethnic minority groups who are really not getting onto those groups and having specific discussions with those children and their parents about the opportunities that are available so I'm not saying we should have quotas and having taken your point on board I'll say something specific about that we're saying it should be a performance target for SDS they can't fulfil that by through imposing quotas but it should still be a performance target they should be achieving a target to achieve but I think the word is what I'm saying but I want to be shocked when I read it because of course we talked about it beforehand of evidence people there's a fine line between positive action and positive discrimination and we've got to make sure that we stay on the side of the law or we need to change the law yes I mean the target issue I think it's absolutely right I think it's really the fact that we've got those legislation as it stands doesn't prevent us from having positive targets for people to move towards it's just about how they do it but I think that's your point and I think that the programme is not the same band down south it comes from employers so it's a direct treatment a last question if I may just a little one very very briefly because we have to be very brief yep you talked a lot about good English as people speaking to good English you talked about poor English you're taking a lot of those things and Annabel and I and Margaret went to to Louvian's evidence people have used qualification master degrees very strong accent now how we have to be very careful so where we vote our own report your own report when we talk about good English about proper English about you know it's a very fine line we have to be very careful now a lot of people who speak a lot better English than I do but we have a lot stronger accent sorry just to give us a very brief reply and follow up in writing because we've got to finish literally in two minutes time sorry Helen briefly yes I think just to clarify so the statistic I quoted that having good English reduces poverty by five percentage points that is about English language ability within the survey is it writing or all both it's reported in the survey as both but there is a wider question which comes back to the informal workplace practices actually which is about accent and perceptions of whether people are insiders or outsiders actually and whether accent marks somebody as somebody who is seen as an outsider thank you very much for that if there's anything else you feel that we should know that we actually haven't covered I'd appreciate it if you could actually contact us thank you very much and that actually concludes the public part of today's meeting next week on the 19th of November we'll hear from the cabinet secretary for social justice communities and pensioners rights to continue discussion on our inquiry and I now suspend the meeting for the committee to move into private session which we need to do very quickly thank you