 Good morning everyone. I hope that you all are comfortable and welcome to this, the third meeting of this committee for 2016. If you wish to use any tablet devices or electronic devices, you should make sure that they are switched on silent. There should not interfere with our deliberations this morning. I am going to dig straight into our agenda this morning. The first agenda item today is to consider taking agenda item 4 in private as committee agreed to do that. Agenda item 2 is moving on to our proposed work programme for going forward with the committee, and we have, as you see, a big round-table evidence session this morning, and welcome to you all. We really appreciate you coming along, so we are looking, obviously, for areas that we can take up as part of your work programme. I thank you all for taking part in our informal session this morning. We got some very, very good and interesting information and direction from that this morning. Going forward, we are looking to identify what our priorities are. The first goal of the parliamentary committee is to look at how we do things. We have an expanded remit that will be considered by our standards committee, so it gives us a focus, which I do not think will be a different focus, because I think that human rights inequalities sit together. If we can do that together, I think that we make a huge difference in taking some of the issues forward. Over the coming weeks, that is the things that we will be looking forward to. What I am going to do this morning is to go round the table and let you all introduce yourself in your organisation. We have a very limited period of time this morning, so we are going to try to make it as free-flowing and as much information sharing as possible. There will be an opening question, and you can all come in on that. If you just catch my eye and we channel through me, it means that we can organise it a bit better and we do not give our official report people a serious headache when they are trying to record everything, because we do want everybody's thoughts and aspirations on the record this morning. I am Christina McKelvie, MSP for Hamilton Lark-Holland Stonehouse, and I am the convener of the committee. I am Colin McFarlane, I am the director of Stonewall Scotland, we are one of the five lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex equality organisations, and we campaign for equality for LGBTI people in education across our workplaces, in our communities and in our public services. I am Juliet Harris, director of Together, the Scottish Alliance for Children's Rights. We are an alliance of over 320 members, including NGOs, academics, professionals who are interested in children's rights issues, and we work to promote the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Most recently, we have been involved in influencing the concluding observations that have just been issued to the UK and Scotland, of course, in June of this year. Hi, I am not Fias Khan, I am actually Parveen Khan, no relative either, but I am here from the council from the ethnic minority voluntary organisation, and we are a national intermediary organisation and a strategic partner of the Scottish Government. We have a network of over 600 ethnic minority voluntary sector organisations and community groups throughout the country. I am here on behalf of that organisation. Good morning, I am David Duncan, clearly from Police Scotland. My role within Police Scotland is to be a superintendent within safer communities. Part of my function involves the service delivery element of equality and diversity to our communities across Scotland. Good morning, I am Jo and Mee Balfour. I am an MSP for the Lovians. Hi, I am Marvin Brooks and I am from the Scottish Disability Equality Forum. We are a member-led organisation and we support 45 access panels across Scotland, and those access panels are groups of volunteer disabled people who primarily look at physical accessibility, but more importantly, we are looking at the social accessibility for disabled people. Good morning, my name is Rania Cwisasi. I am a lead youth worker with Sahilia, a Sahilia is a mental health and wellbeing BME women's organisation. I am Annie Wells and I am the MSP for Glasgow region. I am Mary Alexander and I am the deputy Scottish secretary for Unite. We represent 1.4 million members across the UK in all different sectors of the economy. Like yourself, I have been involved in the United Nations, ICESC, our process of making representations on workers' rights. Hello, I am Willie Coffey. I am MSP for Kilmannock and the Irvine Valley. Morning. I am Chattin Harrier. I am the director of the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights. We undertake a range of Scotland-wide strategic anti-racist activity. Hello, my name is Gordon McCrae. I am the chief executive of Human Society Scotland. We are a membership organisation with a national charity for people in Scotland, wishing to live an ethical, rational, secular life. We have about 16,000 members across the whole of the country on the campaign for equality of human rights and a more even playing field for people of all faith in none. Good morning. I am Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland. Morning. I am Helen Martin and I am an assistant secretary at the STUC. The STUC is Scotland's trade union congress and we represent over 570,000 workers in Scotland. If we could just note that I am represented in all the equality committees of the STUC and not just the Ormans Committee, as it says in the papers. Alasdor Pringle, I am the national director of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. We are the national equality body for England, Scotland and Wales. We are one of Scotland's two A status national human rights institutions. Good morning, everybody. I am David Torrance, MSP, Cercody constituency. Bill Scott, director of policy for inclusion Scotland. We are a national disabled people's organisation, membership-based like the Scottish disability quality forum. We have 70 member organisations throughout Scotland. Our largest members are Glasgow Disability Alliance. We have about 3,000 disabled people as members. We do a lot of human rights-based work, including at the moment compiling the shadow report on implementation of the UN convention on the rights of disabled people. Thank you very much. Last but not least. Yes, sincere apologies, convener. I am Alex Cole-Hamilton and I am vice convener out of this committee. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. You see we have a lot of interests around the table this morning, but, interestingly, from all of our discussions with you this morning, one of the key elements that came through very strongly was the issue about discrimination and how we tackle discrimination across all different sectors. In each sectorial group had their own issues, but they seemed to be the common thread. It was about discrimination and how we report that and how we challenge that. My opening question is going to come to the police in order for you to give us some understanding of how you are tackling some of those issues and then we can maybe go to some of the experiences of some of the groups when it comes to discrimination and the areas that they feel should be tackled. Superintendent. Thank you. I suppose that my opening observation would be the key to tackling discrimination from our perspective lies in the pre-crime space, so we deal with the ramifications of it when it becomes criminal or when it is reported to us. There is an understanding that a lot of hate crime is woefully underreported due to a lot of factors that may want themselves throughout the course of discussion today. However, I think that a key element in my view for the committee and people around this table today, including myself and my colleagues, is the promotion of tolerance in terms of all the communities across Scotland. I think that we are in a good place to start off with. In terms of having a very tolerant society when you compare it with other societies across the world, including Europe and closer neighbours, the key to tackling intolerance comes from demonstrative leadership. Part of that comes from the Government function of leaders across society. If we can create and maintain and enhance community cohesion, that breaks down attitudes within society, which then leads to a whole range of positive benefits for society, not least a more stable and secure society. It has a tangible impact on the threat from terrorism, whereby you get more community cohesion, the strengths within those communities, the engineer-out elements of terrorism that otherwise would exist, but also in terms of the range of under the Equalities Act and all the protected characteristics that change in societal attitudes towards people who may look or are perceived to be different. Challenging those attitudes and behaviours then lead to the chance to then minimise the number of people who act in a discriminatory fashion and then marginalise them in terms of being able to focus on the positive benefits, which is where the committee needs to apply strategically in terms of that. From a police perspective, we have a zero tolerance approach towards hate crime in all its forms. We record hate incidents, so we take incident reports from the public where there may not be criminal elements and our focus is on supporting the victims of those incidents or crimes and tackling the offender. That is done in partnership with a whole host of agencies, voluntary, public sector, private sector, third sector, nowadays, across those elements and, wherever possible, bringing those offenders to justice. There is a whole host of options that are open in, as I described at the pre-crime space, whereby not everybody gets dropped into the criminal justice process and can be dealt with through other means. When it eventually gets to the criminal justice space and us becoming involved, there is often a lead-in period where there has been misery and frustration of individuals that have been subjected to discriminatory acts. Trying to hide people out of that process before it gets to the crime aspect is probably a focus for us within our preventative work within Police Scotland with partners. Fundamentally, I am rounding that up, we need to demonstrate that intolerance and discrimination will not be tolerated in Scottish society and just use the collective understanding of the issues and the powers and policies that we can all bring together around the table to tackle that. Thank you very much. I think that we all know that this is all a big bit jigsaw and we have most of the pieces but we do not have them all in the right order. You have given us very clear indication of zero tolerance, pre-crime and the issues that we need to in order to educate before it becomes something that comes in at the criminal justice system, but we have some experiences around the table. Rania, I am going to pick on you because you gave some very clear direction this morning on some of the experiences that people have going to the criminal justice. Juliet, you have a particular interest in how young people report crime. Rania, do you want to go first? We were saying that, unfortunately, there is a language barrier that prevents people from going and reporting hate crimes. There is a fear that there is no follow-up regarding reporting hate crimes. We would like to work more closely with police and be able to see how we can tackle that issue, both with young people and with adults that we work with. We would welcome that. We are doing a lot of work to try and break down the barriers to the reporting of hate crime and incidents. As I mentioned in the first response, we recognise that it is under-reported across a whole range of diversity, protected characteristics, race, faith and disability. We are doing a lot of work to refresh our approach to third-party reporting centres, our online reporting mechanism and trying to find new ways to engage proactively with young people and minority communities so that we have an understanding of what those issues are. I would welcome the opportunity to work with you more closely. It is important to note that discrimination against children and young people goes beyond just the work of Police Scotland and hate crime. It is embedded within the Scottish Society. Even within the Equalities Act, which I know is not within the remit of the Scottish Parliament, it actively discriminates against children. That is within the Equalities Act. There is a culture of discrimination against children and young people across Scotland. You see that in the signs of only one child or two children allowed in a shop at one time. The fact that mosquito devices are still illegal, it is still possible to have a device outside a shop that makes a noise that adults cannot hear to keep children away. If we had such a device that discriminated against people with a disability, BME communities, people would be outraged, but the fact that it discriminates against children, people were like, okay, that's fine. Even when it comes down to voting, then I think the fact that children and young people's voices weren't heard in the run-up to the vote on the membership of the European Union can be considered as discrimination against children and young people. We actively need to look at a culture change where we listen to and really respect the views of children and young people in line with article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. When it comes to hate crime, it is important to take a step back and look at bullying within schools because that is not reported as hate crime. That does not make up the Police Scotland statistics. We know from anecdotal evidence from our members that post the Brexit vote, there has been an increase of bullying within schools against children from ethnic minorities. That is something that is not recorded and is not researched. When we are looking at discrimination, it is important to see that it is a culture change and that we need to look at children and young people across all the different equalities groups to tackle the discrimination against them. To pick up on the point that Juliet made about bullying and going back to the element around the pre-element before we get to the stages of reporting of hate crime, we know from our perspective, which is a lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans perspective, that bullying is almost rife and endemic in our schools. 99 per cent of young people hear some form of homophobic language every day in the classroom, but the big issue is the fact that our teachers feel that they do not have the confidence to tackle this issue in the classroom. Only 16 per cent of our teachers in Scotland have had any training whatsoever about tackling or talking about LGBTI issues in the classroom. If we are not fostering a sense of inclusion within our schools, that then leads on to ramping up of issues, which can then lead on to hate crime incidents. We know that a majority of the hate crime incidents that happened against LGBTI people happened between the age brackets of 16 and 25, so that the perpetrators are young that are taking part in that. If we are not fostering a sense of inclusion within our schools, we are not going to be able to tackle hate crime. At the moment, our teachers do not feel confident talking about these issues in the classroom and we need to tackle that quickly. We have been doing a bit—some of our members of the committee have been doing a bit of work with the TIE campaign and looking at some of that, and they have some very good research evidence that they will be published soon on some of that, and we can work from that. Jeremy, you wanted to come in at that point. Thank you, convener. I wonder if I could take one question to Gillette, one question to the superintendent. Gillette, you talk about bullying in school and the non-reporting of that. Do you think that that is across all the kind of equality categories? If it is, why do you think that that is happening? I hear the same that people say, a number of disabled people say that I was speaking to a number of children who have hearing loss last night at a reception, and all eight of them said that they had been bullied at school at some point in their career, but the school hadn't reported it. Is that a fear for my headteacher? My quick question to the superintendent is, which of the equality issues do you think were furthest behind in regard to reporting, and people don't come forward? Do you have any view why that is as well? I'll take the second piece. Anecdotally, what we understand is that there is some evidence to suggest that disability hate crime is very much under reported. What people tell us is that that's probably due to just endemic societal attitudes towards disability and the nature of it. In terms of us dealing with that, we're doing a lot of work to try to understand and provide a better service towards disabled people and again encourage reporting wherever there is a crime or incident that they want to discuss with us. We do that again through enhancement of third party reporting, direct reporting to the police and use of the online facility, but also direct engagement with representative community organisations. I'll start with an overview. Will you be able to answer Jeremy's other question because you've got a sort of overview in all of these areas? What was your other question, Jeremy? Sorry. You've got on to the whole issue of bullying in schools, for whatever reason, and the lack of reporting that people say they are bullied, but if you look at the statistics that are coming out of local authorities, there seems to be very little bullying in regard to sexuality or disability or race or whatever. Yes, indeed. If I can capture that together with another point and actually response to your first question, which is the fact that we did a sort of fairly large-scale piece of work with LGBT youth Scotland and others last year, a year and a half ago, on the extent of prejudice-based bullying in schools. One of my concerns is the extent and the normalisation of sexualised bullying. The lack of prevalence of data there is one of the most concerning of all. So where we have data, we do very little with it, but where we don't have data, particularly in sexualised bullying, is something that I think needs urgent attention. We've also been calling on mandatory reporting of bullying in schools, particularly prejudice-based bullying in schools. We went off to the UN to do that recently around racial discrimination, but I've been calling on reporting on all forms of prejudice-based discrimination. The response to date has been in terms of non-mandatory guidelines, so refreshment of the existing framework for schools. Again, we don't think that's acceptable because we know that the majority of hate crime that takes place is perpetrated by younger people, and we know that that doesn't start outside the school yard. We've been pushing hard for that, to be made mandatory. I think that the Scottish Government's approach is not to make various levels of reporting mandatory for various reasons, but we'll continue to push on that. I want to add to Juliet's point, which is that discrimination direct and non-direct discrimination takes many forms, and it isn't just the role of Police Scotland. It's the role of all our institutions to deal with. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, as a regulatory body, has a few roles here. I think that it's worth putting them on the table because we have a part to play. We have a range of legal powers at our disposal, which, given the size and scale of our resources available, we're a small team in Scotland, 18 staff. We have to use them strategically, but we undertake inquiries and investigations into issues such as cleaning workers' practice and their treatment, so vulnerable workers, or human trafficking and the likes. As a range of legal powers, we can undertake judicial review, we can support discrimination cases if they're strategic of nature, and we do that regularly. Please bear us in mind when you're thinking about tackling discrimination. We also undertake large-scale programmes of research, so we recently published a wide-scale survey into the extent of pregnancy and maternity discrimination in the workplace. Ten years on from the Equal Opportunities Commission's own research, we look at 3,000 employers and 3,000 employees, and we're very concerning to note that there's been absolutely no progress in 10 years. We have that at our disposal as well, but we have the Equality Act and, most important for this committee, a duty on all listed public authorities is to assess the equality impact, and I would suggest also to be considering the human rights impact of legislation and policy. What we see time and again, and I'll give modern apprenticeships as an example, is that unintended consequences of not thinking through equality and human rights systematically, time and again in legislation and in policy, lead to direct and indirect discrimination and outcomes. We have concerns about a range of current government programmes of work, including educational attainment, which is only focusing on postcode, which won't benefit young disabled people, young Gypsy travellers and others who face unequal educational outcomes. There are a host of other issues that we could raise, but I'll stop there without hugging the microphone. We're still interested to hear them, but let us know. Mary, you wanted to come in at that point. To come back on something that Colin had said in relation to LGBTI and bullying in schools, and Alistair, you touched on it in relation to data collection. When you said that teachers aren't confident in dealing with it, are they not confident in dealing with it because they don't have the right kind of training? They can tackle bullying as a kind of bullying umbrella, but not specifically in relation to LGBTI. Is that the same across all schools? Where do faith schools sit in this? We're very careful about not differentiating between faith schools and non-denominational schools because the situation is across the board in all schools. In terms of the confidence levels, in terms of those schools who are doing really good work, it is teeny. It's really small and patchy. In terms of confidence levels, a lot of it is a hangover of section 28. 75 per cent of primary school teachers and 44 per cent of secondary school teachers from our research have clearly stated that they are told by their management that they can't talk about these issues or they can't think that they can talk about LGBTI issues in the classroom. It's not because all these teachers are homophobic and they don't want to talk about it, but they still believe that section 28 exists. A lot of it is around leadership and it's a leadership within the school, so it's from the heads and it's from the management teams who are setting out an ethos within the school. Where the schools are doing really well, it's part of the individual ethos of the school where every child is safe, treated with dignity and respect, but in too many schools that's not happening. Schools will have individual bullying plans. What we have found is that within most of those plans, gender is in there, race, disability, but there's no mention of LGBTI at all. There is a blocker, if you like, this kind of wall that teachers can't seem to get their head round or get over in terms of the fact that they just do not feel confident talking about it. They're worried about losing their jobs, they're worried about the reaction from parents, and what we have found from our discussions with those schools that do it and do it well, the parents are joyful that these conversations are happening in the school because not only does it mean that they maybe don't have to have those conversations with their kids themselves, but it's leading them into a way that they can have those discussions with their children, so the myth that parents are going to react badly is a myth in itself, I think. As you can imagine, as a union, we come across all forms of discrimination day in, day out, and I won't go into any great detail about that. There has been contributions about what's required to tackle discrimination and we've heard culture change, fostering a sense of inclusion, leadership, demonstrative leadership. I recently went to the UN and made representations on a number of breaches of the UN convention on economic, social and cultural rights. In terms of the trade union bill and what became the trade union act, we talked about zero-hour contracts, blacklisting, employment tribunal fees and a whole host of other work-related practices where we felt that there had been breaches by the UK Government and Scottish Governments. I think that when we're talking about remedies or what we can do, I would hope that the Equal Opportunities Committee, with its human rights aspect to it now, would introduce a review process so that the concluding observations that we brought back from the UN, and we went there twice to give evidence and there's a very robust process in place there, so that when those concluding observations are released, they actually come back here and they are acted upon. For me, that's what I find a bit disappointing. I know that the Scottish Government is very committed to human rights, but I was probably a bit silly and excited when I came back thinking, look, there's a number of recommendations here that are actually really important. We're signed up to the convention, what is the Scottish Government going to do now? I hope that the committee will look at introducing a robust review process and ensuring that they are compliant with what they're signed up to and what it says on the can. That's the same for the universal periodic review. We recently went to a meeting where we were encouraged to make representations. I think that the last one was 2012 and there were something like 122 recommendations that came out of that. I don't think that there's many of those being followed through, so that's what I would like to see and I think that that's alongside all those other useful points that colleagues have made. We hear you on the concluding observations. Bill, and then I've got Alex. Just very briefly on the bullying topic, we think that there is massive underreporting of bullying of disabled children in schools. I think that one of the reasons is that schools prefer to be dressed up as something else other than homophobic bullying, racist bullying, disabled bullying, et cetera, because they think that it reflects badly on the school if that sort of bullying is taking place. In actual fact, that hides the problem rather than recognising it, and it leads to the problem not being addressed. Going right back to the original question about discrimination, we believe that discrimination is based largely on prejudice and ignorance. It's about fear of the other and that disabled people are one of the most excluded groups in our society, excluded from workplace, less than half disabled people who work in age and work, excluded from public life, very few disabled politicians, et cetera. To some extent, it's still excluded from our schools. One third of children with additional support needs are not taught in mainstream schools, even though that's supposedly the default position for disabled children to be in mainstream schools. The fact that disabled people's exclusion leads to an increase in discrimination because disabled people become other, they can't be known, we don't come across them in everyday life, et cetera. If you want to begin to shift that discrimination, you have to begin to include disabled people in schools, in the workplace, in public life, and it's only by addressing it in that way that the barriers of prejudice and ignorance begin to be broken down and you begin to see disabled people as just people rather than other and somebody to be petted or feared or, in some cases, unfortunately hated because, going back to Superintendent again, we do believe that there's massive both under-report and under-recording disability hate crime because it's not often recognised for who it is. I think that Mary Alexander's points about the concluding observations are very well made. It's a discussion that we, as a committee, had at our away day that the concluding observations could present a road map both for this committee and the wider Parliament in terms of addressing those areas of inequalities that still exist in Scottish society. One particular concluding observation that keeps coming back to Scotland is the issue of equal protection for children from assault. I invite Juliet to give us her reflections on that frontier of inequalities that we still keep getting wrong. We are one of only something like four countries left in the Council of Europe that still allows children to be physically hit in their homes, whereas all adults are protected from this. Secondly, on a separate point, I'd like Colin Tabottam out and to explore further that cultural situation that he described, the hangover from section 28, in our teaching community. Whether that is something that we need to boil right down to modules within PGCE and diplomas in education so that teachers are equipped with the toolkit that is necessary to address homophobic bullying in our schools. I want to comment first then Colin, and then we'll come to more from you. Quickly on equal protection, that highlights the importance of using the concluding observations as a road map for the Equalities and Human Rights Committee. Equal protection has come up in the universal periodic review, it's come up in the Committee Against Torture, it's come up in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, it's come up in the Convention of Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. It is a repeated recommendation, and it is Scotland's shame that children still do not have the same protection as adults from assault. I think that reinforces the point that I made earlier about the fact that discrimination against children is seen as acceptable. I would really urge the Human Rights Committee to push for action on this because it's an absolute travesty that it hasn't been addressed. It is one of a number of concluding observations that have been made repeatedly by international treaty bodies. I think that Mary's point was made really well about the concluding observations, I endorse that. I know that she talked about the number of recommendations that we had from the universal periodic review, but I would urge the committee not to be overwhelmed by the number of concluding observations because actually you're doing a lot of this work anyway. In the letter that was tabled in the papers by Angela Constance, the work that you're doing on LGBTI and bullying has been raised through three different international treaty bodies, sexual health education, and that's been raised by treaty bodies. By focusing in on the concluding observations, it will just add weight to the work that you want to do anyway and it will make sure that any gaps that aren't being picked up, like equal protection from violence, are taken forward within the Scottish Parliament. Are you talking about directly working within teacher training colleges? You're absolutely right. This isn't endemic to older teachers. What we're finding is that teachers who are going into the teaching profession are also being told that section 28 still exists and so therefore they shouldn't be talking about it. We do think that there needs to be more of a focus on ensuring that within the modules and the training modules that LGBTI inclusion and inclusive education is part of that. We know our colleagues at LGBTI Scotland are doing some work on that and that's very welcome. We ourselves offer a train the trainer programme for teachers already in schools, which is a one-day training session that basically gives them a road map, the tools of which they can then go back into the school themselves and train their peers. From independent evaluation of that, we have found that that has been extremely successful. We can't keep up with the demand at the moment because so many teachers want to come on to that training, which is great. We've been having conversations with the Deputy First Minister in his portfolio as education secretary with our colleagues at LGBTI youth about how we can work with the Scottish Government to ensure that we might be able to accelerate that programme, and we're hopeful from those conversations. However, it is about absolutely tackling it within teacher training colleges themselves, but it's making sure that the continuing professional development when teachers are in schools is also part of that and our teacher training programme should be absolutely central to that. Thank you very much. It was just to follow on. I'm just really echoing what Bill Scott said earlier around the fact that disabled people shouldn't be seen any more differently than anybody else. There's a number of issues that have obviously come up around the discussion on discrimination, and I just wanted to touch on a couple of those points, including communication being one of them. You talked about hate crime. I mentioned this earlier in our discussion that I had. Terminology and the language that we use every day should go back to play in English for everybody, not just for disabled people, but for everybody's sake as well, so we understand what we're all talking about, what we mean, what we want to do. More importantly, for our stakeholders, our disabled people. It's important that we take forward that inclusive communication element. You've got accessibility. Accessibility is still a huge issue around you've got transport, you've got employability, you've got education. Accessibility is just the ground of everything, especially for if you have a wheelchair user, a wheelchair user student who can't access the school, for instance, to get to their education. Employability, a lot of employers are not recognising that they need to invest in reasonable adjustments. Obviously, to increase their uptake on disabled employees. The whole issue around discrimination, I would point out those issues, including communication, employability and accessibility, is most important. You've got housing, which is also a big issue for a lot of disabled people. I'm conscious that a couple of voices have not heard around the table this morning. I don't know if you want to come in on your thoughts as well, and we'll make sure that everybody gets something on the record this morning that will help us going forward. Parvain, do you want to come in first? We're sorry about your name issue. No worries at all. I just didn't want people to think that I'd snuck in ahead of Fias. No, thank you for the opportunity to speak. It has been interesting to hear people's contributions. Within Seven of Scotland, we've, in the past three years, been delivering a race and equality mainstreaming support programme, and it focuses on supporting public statutory and third sector agencies to progress race equality. From what we've learned is that, often within the equality act, we look at, obviously, protected characteristics, and there's nine of them, but any policies that are being developed or anything that's been put into place is often missing out, not looking at strands specific, often looking at this kind of, we know that it's not a one-size-fits-all, Alasdair and I will share that from an NHS background. We've kind of exhausted that, but there is often the attempt there to try and make the policies compliant and meet the needs of all protected characteristics. What you find is, within that, you will miss out huge chunks of the population. Hearing about the anti-bullying policies, that's been my experience. Anti-bullying can't possibly address all the different strands in terms of hate and prejudice against various groups. It can't possibly pick up on disability, it can't possibly do that, because it is more often than not a blanket policy. That's something that we need to get better at and not just look at the business of the organisation and what we are promoting to have the policy fit that, but really take into account that we need to quality impact assess everything from the word go, from the inception of a policy to actually making it happen. That's something that we're working with the organisations on. You mentioned a wee hobby horse and minor quality impact assessments. How well do you think that those are done? Well, I think that there is a real commitment. I think that there is a commitment, I would say that. How well depends again on what your business is. What is your core business? That's where the focus will be. I think that that's where the resources are targeted, that's where the incentive will be and that's where your actual work will be. At the end of the day, we need to think beyond that and actually look at quality impact assessing and all the protected characteristics and looking at some of the intelligence gathering, the data gathering and apply that when you're actually looking at a quality impact assess. It shouldn't be a quick and dirty exercise, it should be something that should be full on. That's what we're working with the public sector, the statutory bodies and third sector agencies to actually say it should be a process from start to end. I think we'd go a bit further and say there really isn't a proper commitment to equality impact assessment. I don't think people even understand what is required so they're ticking boxes without knowing what they're doing. If we had proper equality impact assessments, we wouldn't be where we are now four or five years on and it's not really four or five years on because this has been a longer process than since the Equality Act. Certainly one of the things we are calling the Eclipse Committee to do is after the next round of public sector equality reporting in April to do a full-scale inquiry on what has worked, what hasn't worked, what needs further input. Just to take the other discussion wider, I don't think we should give up on mandatory reporting of bullying. I think the Government might not want it but it's up to Parliament to make the decision at the end of the day and I don't think we should give up on that. That might be a step to achieving some of what people have been asking for around this table today. On a much wider scale, and Superintendent Duncan mentioned this very briefly, it's about community cohesion and promoting good relations and again that's part of the public sector equality duty but probably the least understood, the least implemented part of public sector equality duty. It is probably the more difficult aspect of delivering on piece said but if we don't get that right we'll be having these conversations about these things for ever and ever and finally for now and I don't know if this is the right place to say it but for the record CRER and others are still not convinced that expanding the remit of this committee is the right thing to do. There is so many actual equality issues to be discussed and examined rather than widening the remit into human rights as well so we've written to you and to the standards committee about that. We think that there's still a discussion to be held before that's agreed. Well hopefully we can reassure you that it's not, we won't be sitting in two separate silos that equality will be pushed aside to deal with human rights because I think the view of the committee and I don't want to pre-empt any of this is that it just makes sense for the two things to fit together and we are hoping that that will work. No we are endeavouring I'm not going to say hope because that means that there's some doubt in that there's not any doubt and I think we are absolutely committed to ensuring that sectoral issues are not pushed aside advantage of human rights because we don't see the two things as separate so you know if it's a sectoral issue it will fall within a human rights format anyway so please be reassured on that that we won't be pushing something aside in order to do that. If I can come back that is reassuring so you will agree to having a review of this in a year or two years time to make sure what you've just said does happen. That we have some ongoing discussions about the format and the process that we will go through to ensure that this committee does what it says in the tin. Some of that is sort of obviously in the process right now so hopefully we can reassure you and continue to do that. Helen, do you want to come in at this point? I think from the STUC we would welcome the inclusion of human rights into the remit of the committee and perhaps what I'm going to say shows exactly how human rights inequalities actually fits together really well because one of the issues that we've been picking up on it fits well with what Mary is talking about around Achescar and the economic and social cultural rights is the interlink between precarious work and discrimination. We at the STUC have been running now a campaign called Better Than Zero that looks specifically at supporting young workers on precarious contracts and through that campaign but also through the work that unions do more widely and through the work that the HRC did on pregnancy and maternity and lots of other pieces of evidence we're starting to see a really worrying picture developing in Scotland where we are saying workers who are on precarious contracts, zero hours contracts, agency work umbrella contracts are much more likely to be faced in discrimination than other workers within the labour market and that discrimination is of a style that we perhaps haven't seen in the labour market in quite some time so we are much more likely to see straight up sex discrimination cases where people are being asked to wear short skirts, they're being asked to behave in a certain way, they're being asked to hide their sexuality, they're being asked to do different things to present an image to the customer and if they refuse to do those things they are dismissed effectively because they are not given any more shifts and the workers are feeling very very vulnerable because they are on such precarious contracts, they feel that they are unable to challenge, they sometimes don't even realise that they can challenge because there is a lack of understanding that equality of law applies even if you're in precarious work. We feel that employers are becoming more likely to use all practices where they ask for pictures and they make sure that people at front of house are very beautiful and at the minority people are put at back of house and things that we wouldn't have seen in the labour market for quite some time are now routine practices again and we think that it would be very very useful for this committee to have some consideration of the interlink between discrimination and precarious work and I think that fits well with the Government, it fits well with human rights issues, it fits well with the fair work agenda and I think that it would really be something quite useful that could shine a light on a practice that's extremely worrying and is frankly I think growing and that we don't have a very good understanding of at the minute. I think that I would share with the assurances that you mentioned, we would certainly welcome the expansion of the remit, we have had some concern for some time that a lot of the human rights orientated commitments that the Scottish ministers have made in recent years haven't always had the scrutiny on the back of it that would ensure that the aspirations are always delivered on. One example for us right now is the very recent Children and Young People's Act. It makes very clear commitment for Scottish ministers to consider what further steps they can take to secure rights and we had the UN rights of the child review make a number of recommendations and from our own sectoral interest very clear recommendation that it was time to expand the right of young people, there are currently just a parental right to opt out of religious observance in schools to young people, a right that young people in England and Wales have but has denied young people in Scotland and the Scottish Government have informed us that they have no intentions to do so and we think that those types of when you make a commitment in one piece of legislation we have a responsibility and needs with scrutiny about how we take things forward. For us, as humans, the last year has been something of a tipping point. Scotland is now a country where a majority of people say they have no religious affiliation and humanist weddings now outstrip demand for denominational weddings and I think it does from our perspective demand a bit of a new thinking around well how do we approach a secular society that protects every faith and people of none and in particular I've seen the papers from ministers they talk about faith schools and non-denominational. Every school in Scotland every state school is a faith school there are no non-faith schools we have denominational and non-denominational schools but they are all faith schools and we do think there is still systemic discrimination against non-religious humanist atheist young people who are denied equal same rights as other people. In particular I mentioned the right that young people elsewhere in the UK have to opt out of religious observance but there is a specific issue in some denominational schools around access to sex and relationship education and I know that Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board have expressed real concerns about the access that their workers have to going to schools so I think there is scope for this committee to be looking at what are the consequences of some of the commitments that ministers make what does that require future steps and potentially also to start thinking about what does Scotland in 2016 onwards look like when we are a farm you know there is no single world view that the longer dominates we are a nation of many beliefs rather than one. Thank you Alasdair. A wee bit to my shared hobby horse with you which is around equality impact assessment and just to say that we've been monitoring the publication of public bodies reports around their specific duties since they're introduced in May 2012 and we will be doing a piece of work to look at the effectiveness of the specific duties after the four-year cycle next year, April 2017. Our role is to monitor the effect and impact of those duties and I do have concerns. I've had concerns since I worked in the NHS 15 years ago, since I worked in central government 10 years ago and now as a regulator that parts of these duties just aren't working and I think the sooner that we put that on the table and acknowledge it we can start thinking about what is the outcome we want to achieve and how might we achieve that because the amount of meetings I turn up at as the regulator and this great big file is pushed over and I see some poor soul in the corner sweating buckets is that that's the year's work, 100 equality impact assessments and I push it aside to tell me one thing that's changed as a result of doing that work. So there is something about thinking about equality impact assessment differently and I think part of that is about the language. I think as you move to an integrated equality and human rights mandate there's a real potential opportunity for us to think about how we do some of this differently because for me equality impact assessment and human rights analysis is about going out and speaking to people to say what's your experience of the NHS, what's your experience of education system, what does the equality and human rights, what does the equality law say about what you can expect and what does the human rights framework say about what you can expect and how are we going to deliver that? What are the solutions here? Too often it is junior officials or people in ivory towers sitting without a worldview and I very much welcome the approach that you're taking as a committee this morning being a great example to say what is the lived experience of people using education systems and I wouldn't just be thinking about bullying in schools I would be thinking about attainment and the gendered norms that go on and which lead to the fact that we have to set targets for 50-50 by 2020 because nothing else in the system is working so yes let's focus on equality impact assessment but not the form let's think about how we do this in a more creative way with a clear eye on what is the outcome that that's meant to achieve and is it achieving it. Bill? Yeah, our experience is unfortunately that equality impact assessments are an afterthought rather than a forethought and rather than building the qualities into the planning of service delivery they're done as an afterthought how is this complied with the law to give you a very very concrete example that EHRC know very well modern apprenticeship programme it was a brilliant thing that the government decided to invest in young people in 26, 27,000 modern apprenticeships a year it was a total disaster that actually intensified existing inequalities in its achievements because occupational segregation occurred between young men and young women race bme were underrepresented and in terms of disabled people there should have been around three three and a half thousand four thousand disabled young disabled people taking part in the modern apprenticeship scheme each year instead of which we had 70 or thereabouts now that was a failure to build in from the outset what the objectives should have been and what the outcome should have been for the modern apprenticeship scheme and that's where equality planning can come in and we are very pleased that the committee are going to take on human rights as well as equality because what human rights should be about and what equality should be about is the elimination of existing inequalities over time and the realisation of human rights through the elimination of those inequalities so we're very pleased and the economic, social and cultural rights we think are fundamental the recent jrf report Joseph Rowntree foundation report just released in the last month shows that half of all the people living in poverty in our society are either disabled people or people who live with disabled people taking care of disabled children or have a disabled partner now that is you know a tragedy and and an enormous waste in our society human resources which we should begin to address and you know the independent adviser on poverty and equality has said what we should be thinking about and i think this is where it might be with the committee should direct its attention where can you make the most difference and i think you can make it in young people and crucial stage is that transition from school to work and and if you could look at that and begin as to make a difference to young people's life chances to break that cycle of inequality and break that cycle of poverty by strategically intervening or making recommendations for strategic intervention at that key stage in the developing young people's lives i think for young people leaving care for black minority ethnic people for young women for young disabled people that's where you could make the most crucial difference to their lives i really do you know i think it's a terrible thing i'm in no way do i want you to write off you know working age disabled people or older disabled people but i think you could make the biggest difference if you began to look that and one of the independent advisers recommendations was to carry out a comprehensive review of how policies were impacting at that and if you could do that within this committee i think you could make a huge difference to how policy is viewed and begin to get the qualities addressed in some of the key policy areas that could make a difference thanks bill willy coffee thanks very much i was actually going to try to tease some of that information out of bill that he's just actually shared with the committee there because it was a very interesting conversation i had with him this morning and it was quite an eye-opener actually to hear that so i'm glad that you've done that bill but one of the other issues that you did raise was just what you touched on at the end there it was about how young people particularly with disabilities make transitions from where they are to where they would like to be while all that's into the modern apprenticeship programme or to college or wherever the world of work and how difficult they find that and i think he said to me this morning that the statistics actually get worse as the years roll by and that has to be a worry i think convener for us in the committee so it's to explore with you and i think more than as well how what we could do better to assist young people particularly with disabilities to to make sure that they get access to help advice support to feel as though they're part of the system and i think i'd like to also say convener that i think it was Ryan there that mentioned to you this morning that making things fair doesn't necessarily make them equal and that sometimes it might overlook that so the ranks are less in the area you have to feel as though you're part of the system as well and particularly young folk don't feel as though they're welcome as part of the system to help them through and make transitions so i'd be very much obliged to particularly Bill and Morgan if he could flesh out a wee bit more of that for us and give us some examples Morhen, do you want to come in first then and we'll come back to Bill? Yeah the biggest thing i think is attitudes and awareness obviously of disability especially when it comes to employability the equality internship that was last year wasn't it i think there was 40 applications that went through i'm not quite sure what the final figure was i'll find out of what the figure was of how many actually succeeded in full-time employment from those internships but the biggest barrier there was around accessibility around and it's not just physical accessibility it's actually access to the the the equipment or what they need to do the job now you've obviously got access to work but the time that it takes especially if you're on an internship programme the time that it took to actually get the appliances needed the internship was nearly up so it was a bit pointless also the fact that DWP people's benefits were affected but again this was just an example through the internship programme itself but in real life if somebody was going for a full-time employment job a disabled person needing requirements their benefits will stop at a certain point if they're going into full-time employment but there's a gap there for them and that's not good if you've if you've got needs as a disabled person you've obviously got rent and it's a worry for them as well and it's addy stress so there's a lot of there's a lot of impact there especially around disability and obviously the accessibility side i've talked about obviously the needs to actually do the job but also the physical accessibility as well what we're hearing is that a lot of employers they do need there's a lot of training and awareness required around the attitude what's required reasonable adjustments it is it can be costly for an employer but they also have to take into account longer term how many disabled people they're looking to employ and again a lot of people are a lot of employers class disabled people's high risk and that's just from our sort of research that it's class as they are class as high risk because it's obviously but the impact assessment they'll have to do themselves and obviously the cost associated with implementing those reasonable adjustments as well but we are doing as an organisation we are working with the access panels they get the message across to their local employers around access to the physical accessibility that they need to take into account to help disabled people get into employment in their areas we are also working on an employability hub to collect resources for employers to help them employ disabled people there's also an inclusive communication hub because again communication as well also an element inclusive communication how that's delivered you've also got requirements if you've got a BSL user looking to be employed again there's a cost implication there how does that employer work with the employee if that needs required so there's a lot of things there to take into account there's a lot of training for an employer to take into account but this inclusive communication hub as well that we're working on again it's a resource bank for the purpose of employers to go to to get that information so we are trying to make steps to obviously make that improvement but we would encourage obviously support and get that message across to just give you the figures a young disabled person at age 16 as a school leaver is twice as likely to be not an education trainer or employment as a non-disabled payer but by age 19 they're three times as likely to be in that position so things don't improve after leaving school they actually get worse and part of that is because a lot of the support that is provided to disabled children at school just simply stops the moment they leave school and that has very very practical consequences for example we were up in Inverness earlier this year speaking to groups at work we young disabled people and they were pointing out that the ludicrous situation exists where school children young disabled school children with additional support needs who wanted to go to Inverness college got taxis there and back because they were still at school so they because the college offered those courses they could get taxis there and back but children young people at the same age who had left school had to get there by bus and the bus service wasn't accessible so they couldn't get to the college because social work no longer supplied them with taxis to do so because they'd left school and that's what I'm saying about thinking about this strategically how an investment at that age for that particular group of young people could make an enormous difference to the rest of their life because if they can acquire skills acquire work experience et cetera and begin to get on the employment ladder then that that could be for the next 40 years 50 years if they don't it could be the opposite for the next 40 or 50 years they remain unemployed which is what half of over half of all disabled people are is work class so you know if we can begin to think of the policies that we implement at that key stage in the development of young people and that's all young people but taking into account the particular needs of the most excluded groups and investing in that and investing in employability schemes work experience schemes training schemes et cetera that age to equip young people with the skills of the modern labour market then we could begin to make a real difference and you know keep on coming back to that I think also one of the best kept secrets in the world certainly in the UK is the access to work scheme which actually does fund adaptations to employers premises and provides software if you've got communication impairments et cetera and for small employers that's 100 per cent government grant towards those costs and it simply isn't well known enough and again I think Scottish Government and you yourselves could look at that and begin to promote that to small businesses because if small businesses knew about this some of the barriers which are on their heads which are again based on prejudice and ignorance about the costs the employee of disabled person could be overcome and we might see more welcoming into the workplace and then once you've established a disabled person can work in you and and once an adaptation is made to a workplace it's there forever you know it means not only is it accessible to that worker but to workers that follow them and possibly to new customers who weren't able to access those premises before so there's all sorts of things that we should be thinking about in terms of opening up access to those most excluded groups. We're coming up against time Barry and I've got Juliette wants to come in in this point and Helen it wants to come in and then I've got a couple of members who want to come in as well so if Juliette if you can make your remarks quite succinct and Helen and we'll move on to the other members who want to come in. I just wanted to reinforce what Bill said around the importance of children and young people and considering their human rights and just mentioned to the committee for the record around the Children and Young People Act that there is now a duty on Scottish Government to consider steps to further the UNCRC and as a result of that duty then Scottish Government has to carry out child rights and wellbeing impact assessment on all new policies and legislation and I recognise the frustrations and the limitations of impact assessment but this does provide a real opportunity for the committee to really look at what consideration Scottish Government have given to children and young people's rights and a number of the impact assessments have published so far. Interestingly after what Bill has just mentioned one of the impact assessments is around the national transport strategy refresh and it was decided not to do a full impact assessment on the national transport strategy refresh because it wasn't considered necessary and I think that that really highlights the importance that children and young people's rights shouldn't just be seen in children's services it's not just about education certainly concerns have been raised by our members that we do have a cabinet secretary for education we really welcome that we're really pleased about it we have a minister for childcare in early years but we don't have a minister for children and young people and we need to make sure that children and young people's issues are listened to across the board it's not just about children's services it's about mental health it's about transport it's about the environment it's the whole spectrum and that goes back to the fact that if this committee looks at the concluding observations this will provide a road map that makes sure that children and young people's rights are respected across all areas of policy and legislation and not just pigeonholed into children's services. It's just important when considering young disabled people's how they get access to work to consider the nature of work and what work looks like and it kind of goes back to the previous points that I was making about precarious work so many young people start their work in life in a precarious contract they start in the service industry they start in places where you have to work zero hours and where you're seeing very much as a commodity by your employer and the reality is young disabled people don't get that option they don't they don't get the opportunity to work in those sorts of roles because the employer will not employ them and that increases the amount that disabled people are locked out of the labour market and I think it's very important to consider how that impacts on those young people getting the opportunities that they really deserve to get. I think it's also important to think about young people with hidden disabilities as well we know of cases of young people who are perhaps working in the care sector or a game working very very long shifts on very very poor conditions who and then exacerbates underlying conditions like heart conditions and they've asked for reasonable adjustments to their employer and find themselves made redundant because the employer isn't willing to make a reasonable adjustment. It's not necessarily legal but it does happen and it happens because the nature of the work and the way the employee is being seen by the employer which is they are someone who is there to do a really difficult job for a really long time and if you're not able to do that then you're right and that's the way it's seen so I think the points that that Bill and Warfyn are making are really really important but I do you think this links back into the nature of the labour market and how people are being treated quite generally as well. Mary. I'll be very very brief I promise. In our group this morning we had a similar discussion around the one that we've just had about exclusion from the workplace but it was in relation to the BME community about the barriers that the BME community have about getting into the workplace and the lack of progression for BME people and it's also it's a similar vein to the lack of opportunity for people with disabilities and I posed the question this morning I'm going to pose it to the whole room because everyone around this table will know of the glass ceiling that exists in the workplace for women and the work that's been done to eradicate the glass ceiling but it almost seems as if there's now a glass ceiling for the BME community and for people with disabilities and I'm just wondering if there should be more of a focus on removing the lack of progression or working towards removing progression for BME and people with disabilities. Mary. Just to echo and reaffirm what Helen was saying about the challenges people are facing in the workplace we've heard a lot about different groups and the way that they're treated and what and it's back to this point about you know how do we remedy that in a meaningful way with the powers of the committee and of course with Brexit we've seen quite a lot in the news about you know what the impact will be of that and whilst that there's a big uncertainty around that I would hope that this committee would want to work with the European and External Relations Committee in terms of protecting existing workers rights and I know that the First Minister has talked about having a floor of protection and you know we hope that you will consider that and look at that but also the Scottish Government has commissioned a national baseline assessment on business and human rights as a precursor to developing a national action plan and I think that's something as well that the committee should look at and that's based on the UN's guiding principles and they're based on something called respect, protect and remedy. Now I won't go into that but you know about the baseline assessment plan and the fact that there is a process whereby they're looking at priorities for that action plan but that's been a long time coming. The UK Government has actually had a national action plan since 2013 and in fact refreshed it again in 2016 and I think the Scottish Government really needs to focus on that and I would hope that the Equalities and Human Rights Committee would actually move that process along and also the points that I've made about the European and External Relations Committee as well on protecting workers rights. Absolutely, it's a good direction to put us in just before I go to Jeremy for a final remark because we are right up against the time. Can I just take it from the room that on Mary's point about smashing some of these glass ceilings, that's something where we would all agree on it? I thought that would be the answer absolutely and again it's something then we can ensure that we fall up. Jeremy, you have the last few seconds to say your point. I mean, yeah, this has probably come up a long time as it could open up a whole newton of worms but I do wonder if anyone would very briefly like to comment on how good are public bodies at what we've been talking about. We've been talking, Helen talks a lot about companies and rightly so but I just wondered, experience of NHS local authorities in regard to how open we are to those who have disabilities or other issues or that area that needs to be looked at. I appreciate that we've only got about 30 seconds but float out there for maybe one person. Helen and Alice, why don't the two of you do something very, very quickly? I know that the SCUCs get a particular interest in this area and I know Alice. I think it's fair to say that public bodies don't have the same degree of exploitation associated with them. That doesn't mean that there aren't necessarily problems within the system. For example, a lot of the Government will employ people using apprenticeships so that's a very good scheme, it's a very good quality training scheme, it does bring young people into the organisation but it probably models quite a lot of the problems that we see within the apprenticeship system. If only 75 disabled young people are getting apprentices in Scotland and practically all the Scottish Government's recruitment from school level is coming through apprenticeships, that suggests that there could potentially be a problem there. The NHS has done some really, really good work doing some specific schemes for autistic young people and for other mental disabilities into certain roles and those have worked very, very well. They've also found that they've held retention a lot better in some previously very hard-to-fill roles. I think that there are examples of really good practice as well and how you can use different outreach schemes and different recruitment techniques to actually fill positions that have been difficult to fill in the past. I think that there's some very good practice that can be looked at in those ways as a model of how things should be done but it is fair to say that if you delved into different parts of the public sector, you are likely to find problems but it would look different than the sort of thing that I'm talking about which is more sort of systematic and deliberate from employers. Can you share some of that good practice examples that you've got with the committee? Could you do that? Yes, thank you. Yes, thank you. Alasdair, you have the final word. Thank you for that. That's somewhat daunting. We've actually gathered quite a lot of good practice in terms of equality practice over the years and we have a lot of that available online. We've got loads of guidance and tokens for the public sector which doesn't always lead to improved practice which I think responds to your point. Public services by their very nature are those which can tackle some of the significant barriers and challenges that we currently see in Scottish society. I hope that you've had an opportunity to have a look at Scotland fairer. This sets out progress over the last five years. It's one of the biggest studies of its kind and many of the issues that are raised within it from education access to further and higher education opportunities and indeed is one of Scotland's biggest employers. They've got a significant role to play. Across our monitoring we also find pockets of good practice. Many look to us to try and drive forward improvements. We're a small agency, we can do it on our own. We look to all our partners to collaborate to help us to achieve that. In short answer to your question, we should be looking at public services very much. We've got a few more roundtables with other groups as well. I'm sure that we'll come up with some great ideas and challenges and opportunities in order to fix some of that. I thank you all for coming along this morning. We obviously could use much more time to do much more of that, but we're hoping to be the most open. In fact, we're not, I keep saying, hoping. We're not hoping. We are endeavouring to be one of the most open committees in the Parliament in as much as sharing information and as much information as you've got to share with us. It means that we do policy better and we need your support in that. We're grateful if you could continue that relationship. I ask you all just to stay in your seats right now because we've got another wee bit of business to do and then we'll have a quick break. It just means that I can move on a bit quicker for allowing Alice to the last word. Our next agenda item this morning is agenda item 3, which is a nomination of our EU reporter. Mary, you'll be delighted to hear that this committee will have an EU reporter who will work very closely with the European Committee on some of the work that they are doing because we do see a role for this committee in working with many of the committees across this Parliament in order to equalise proof maybe some of the work that they're doing. Can I have a nomination for this committee's EU reporter, Jeremy? Annie Wells has been nominated to be our EU reporter for the Equal Opportunities Committee. Annie, are you happy to accept that nomination? Yes, I am happy to accept it. I think that the committee is delighted to endorse that decision. Thank you very much. Thank you, Annie, for taking that forward. Any support that we can give you, we're happy to do that. Any support that you can give Annie and her role on that new role, and I wish you well with it. We're going to have a very, very quick recess to allow you all to get out of this hot room and maybe go and get a cuppa, and I'll briefly break for a few minutes.