 Welcome to this fifth meeting of the Equalities in the Human Rights Committee, and this is the first meeting of the committee since our name change and our remit change, and I hope you enjoy the acronym we now have, where the Quality and Human Rights Committee is now known as Eric, so I'll help you to remember who we are when we put a name on it, and I think we'll be filtering everything that we do through Eric, because if it doesn't work for Eric, then it doesn't work for anyone, so we're really looking forward to that. Can I ask you to put any electronic devices into flight mode? I'm happy for you to use them, but if you turn off all the sound because it interferes with the broadcasting, and just another wee thing on the broadcasting, if you can maybe be about a foot away from your microphone, but don't touch any buttons, the broadcasters will do that for us, because if you might switch yourself on and they'll switch you off and then you'll switch it back on, and we don't want to have that, that's not good. I'm Christina McKelvie, I'm the convener of the committee, and we'll just get kicked off straight away with some apologies this morning from one of our colleagues David Torrance, and we have Linda Fabiani here today who will be substituting for David, and we're lovely to have Linda here this morning. Our first agenda item is a decision to take. Agenda items 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 in private, and if committee members are content to do that, agreed. Excellent. So we're moving straight on to agenda item 2, which is a substantive piece of our work, which is our third round table now to look at the work programme for this committee, look at some of the priorities that you may have as organisations, and how we can maybe take some of that through the work that we are doing in order to move things forward on this agenda. I thank all of you who came along for the breakfast meeting this morning, I hope you enjoyed that this morning, it just gave us a chance informally to get to know each other, so I hope you'll feel a bit more relaxed and a bit more able to open up and tell us what we need to know, what we need to hear this morning formally in the committee, and it was great to hear some of your experiences and some of the ideas that you have as well. I'm just going to go round a table, as I've said, I've introduced myself, so we'll go round a table and introduce ourselves, and don't touch the buttons please. I'm Chloe Clemons, I'm from the Scottish Church's parliamentary office, and I'm representing some work about strategic planning that the Church of Scotland has been carrying out. I'm Sandra Daylong-Clark, and I'm from Semper Scotland. It's a police organisation that represents all minority ethnic police officers and staff on issues of equality and race, and also ensures that Police Scotland and Scottish Police Authority uphold the principles of race and equality. Hello everybody, my name is Alex Cole-Hamilton, I'm Lib Dem member for Edinburgh West, but I'm also vice-conviner of this committee. Hello everyone, I'm Maureen Siar, director of Interfaith Scotland. Hi, I'm Gosey Joe-Degway, I'm senior eye health and equalities officer for R&IB Scotland. Good morning everyone, I'm Tam Bailey, I'm the children, young person, people's commissioner. Good morning, I'm Joe Mabalfa, I'm an MSP for the Lovians. My name is Lorraine Cook, and I'm from Cossland. I'm from the migration population and diversity team. I'm Kaylee Thorpe, I'm the campaigns and policy manager at Enable Scotland, the organisation of and for people who have learning disabilities in Scotland. Good morning everyone, I'm Lorraine Gillis, and I'm from Audit Scotland. Good morning, I'm Annie Wells, I'm the Conservative MSP for Glasgow. I'm Anna Ritchie-Allan, from Close the Gap. We work on women's labour market participation. I'm Rosalyn Bragg, I'm the director of maternity action. We work on maternity rights, particularly in the areas of employment rights and benefits, and also vulnerable migrant women. Hello, I'm Willie Coffey, MSP, SNP, constituency member for Kilmarnock and the Irvine Valley. I'm Brandy Lee Loftanell, from LGBT Youth Scotland, the nation's largest youth and community-based organisation for LGBT young people. Good morning, I'm Suzanne Munday, I'm chief exec with MeCop, which is a minority ethnic carers organisation. Good morning, I'm Miri Fee, and I'm with MSP for West Scotland. Good morning, I'm Judith Robertson, I'm the chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission. Good morning, my name is Glenda Watt, I'm with the Scottish Older People's Assembly. Good morning, I'm Linda Fabiani, MSP for East Kilbride, pleased to be here. Good morning, I'm James Morton, the manager of the Scottish Transgender Alliance. Excellent. We've all had introductions, but we'll try to conduct the round table as free-flown as possible. If you could just give me a nod when you want to come in, I've got a wee tick list to make sure that everybody gets to have their say this morning. If we just channel things through me, we'll get through much more. I'm going to do a general opening question. Obviously, we're working on the work programme for our committee. We have an expanded remit now. There's some new responsibilities conferred on this committee from the Scotland Act, and we're looking at all of that in the round and how we can take some of that forward. I think that what we want to do this morning as members of the committee is to hear from you and to hear where you think there is areas that we should be targeting and looking at. In that course, some of the members will come in with some questions on the back of that. Essentially, my question to you is what ideas do you have for where the committee should go with its remit and how does that tie in with the work that your organisation is doing? Brandi. I'm going to tell you about three key issues for LGBT Scotland. One is education. We want education that includes and reflects LGBT identities with adequate and informative RSHPE, as well as work around young people's health and wellbeing outcomes. We also recognise the issue of mental health, particularly for LGBT young people, and we welcome the mental health strategy being revised, but what we would really like to see is a stronger focus on equalities and human rights in that strategy. At the moment, there's not a clear recognition of the impact that discrimination can have on mental health, and we know that when support for mental health is trying to focus on someone's experiences but doesn't think about the discrimination they're having, that can actually just be a barrier to their recovery and or their ability to live with that condition. So what we would like to see is we would like to see the committee ask the Scottish Government about how they're going to ensure that equalities and experiences of discrimination are actually going to be central to people's treatment plans, but more visible in the strategy. So we would really like to see that. Finally, I'm going to kind of tip over to James Morton from the STA to talk a bit more about the Equal Recognition Campaign, but I want to particularly say that for LGBT young people at the moment, we really want to see non-binary gender recognition and the ability for gender recognition for those under 18. And if I can just bounce it over to James to talk a bit more about the Equal Recognition Campaign. Yes, from a transgender perspective, education and mental health are major issues, but in terms of something that we hope will fall across the Equal Human Rights Committee's desk in this parliamentary term is reform of the Gender Recognition Act. Now, there's three calls we're making. One is about making the process easier and more self-declaration based. So in Ireland, they've moved to a process where just as you can kind of change your name in Scotland with a statute declaration saying, this is who I am, this is how I'm going to live my life and identify. They now allow you to do that around your gender on your birth certificate too. So we want Scotland to do that. We also want 16 and 17-year-olds to be able to change their birth certificate gender just as anybody over 18 currently can. And under 16s, where their parents are agreeing that that's in their best interests, then the change on their documents should take place. At the moment, you can change your gender under 16 on other documents such as your passport. Your parents can apply for a new passport and a new gender, but this leaves under 16s with a mismatch of their documents, so some will say female, some will say male, and this can lead to schools refusing to respect their gender identity. The third call, and I would say actually by far the most important of the calls, is about recognising non-binary trans people. That's where somebody sees themselves and experiences gender as not fitting simply that of being a man or that of being a woman, but instead sees their gender, experiences their gender in a more complicated way and may see themselves as falling between or kind of outwith those two terms. What we're seeing is increasingly younger trans people and indeed trans people of all ages actually are saying, well, why should I have to go and move from female all the way to male or from male all the way to female when that's exchanging two different boxes that are uncomfortable in different ways, and instead I want to be a human being first and foremost. I'd like to remove gender off my documents and simply be seen as a human being legally. That's the kind of key call that we're asking for, is allowing people to remove the MNAF off their birth certificates. That's international best practice. What we're seeing is increasingly different countries. Australia and New Zealand, two states in America have allowed this, and there's already a number of countries in other parts of the world, such as Nepal and Pakistan, who allow non-binary recognition. If we can get the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government to lead the way on this, then that will enable public bodies to take it more seriously. At the moment, non-binary people are generally ignored, even though, in terms of numbers, they're probably similar population size to gypsy travellers in Scotland. It's just seen as not really enough, but you wouldn't say to somebody that your religious faith is not really enough because you're not Muslim or Christian. You'd recognise that there's a wide diversity and we think that that should be the case with gender experiences and identities. Okay, we've got Kelly down at the bottom. Kelly? For Enable Scotland, education is also a big priority. Really, whilst I recognise that there is an education committee, there is a huge issue of equality in human rights for people who have learning disabilities and their life at school. That's more in terms of how they're included in the school. We have recently engaged in a national conversation on life at school for young people who have learning disabilities, and we have had an unprecedented response, which is absolutely telling us that this is an urgent issue that people want us to be exploring and to be talking about. To give you some of the early findings within that, more than 60 per cent of children who have learning disabilities don't feel part of their life at school. 25 per cent of them have been excluded from school trips because the support wasn't there to allow them to be part of that. For me, that's an equality act issue that's not being explored. The same with parents, who responded more than half, said that their child felt excluded from extracurricular activities at school. I noticed that the committee is going to be potentially looking at bullying and harassment in schools, so just to highlight that more than 70 per cent of young people who have learning disabilities feel that people in school don't understand them, and nearly half of them feel alone at school. For me, those are part of the education experience, but it's a huge issue in terms of inclusion, equality and human rights. Another major issue for human rights is that right to education and through our survey, which has had more than 800 responses across parents and families, young people themselves and from teachers and educators, 40 per cent of parents told us that their child had been informally excluded from school, which shouldn't actually be happening, but we knew anecdotally that it was happening. We now have figures to prove that. For 19 per cent of that amount of people, that was happening on a weekly basis that their child was being excluded from education due to, we feel, the support not being there to allow them to stay in the classroom and to stay in that school environment, so they're missing out on their right to education. For me, education is a huge thing and does have knock-on effects on the fact that fewer than 10 per cent of adults who have learning disabilities are actually in employment just now, and that is a continuous cycle in terms of that on-going isolation and exclusion from community and from society, so that, for me, is a huge priority that I'd love to see explored. Thanks very much. Caili Towns, do you want to come in at that point? First of all, I want to welcome the addition of human rights to the remit of the committee. This is a very welcome move and it provides a focal point in terms of human rights considerations for the Parliament. Having said that, I would be wary of all human rights concerns somehow being filtered through this committee, because what the committee has a responsibility to do is to make sure that human rights is owned right across all of our committee structures, and I think that there's a responsibility to ensure that that happens. I think that that brings with it a challenge, which is how broad do you draw the remit of the committee. It's excellent that you've hosted a number of round tables, but I think that the example of how many people are round the table with their particular interests and viewpoints to put all of which are legitimate creates a challenge for the committee and how it will narrow down its work. My particular concern is obviously about children and young people. We are signatories to international treaties, particularly UNCRC, which has just produced its concluding observations, and I would suggest that that's a useful starting point in terms of the work of the committee for children and young people, and in particular holding the Government to account in terms of the actions that it takes as a result of those concluding observations. So there's quite a lot for the committee to sort out, and if I was to give advice, I think that the voices of children and young people will help you try to pick your way through what priorities or otherwise you should be looking at. My office would be quite happy to lend whatever assistance in that. Because what's missing from the table so far has been the voice of, for me, children and young people or people whose human rights are people who are living it on a day-to-day basis. I've got a very long shopping list of things that I would want to raise with the committee. If I was to pick one because I'm respectful of all the people to get in, poverty is the most corrosive impact on children's realisation of their rights in Scotland. So it's hard to see past the issue of poverty in terms of the work and considerations of the committee, and I would say actually that that goes right the way through for all human rights. I will stop there because I think other people will want to have an opportunity to speak. I think that it's really important that you've mentioned young people and poverty, and there's certainly evidence that there's poverty among religious minorities, that the Muslim-seeking Roman Catholics are disproportionately likely to live in poverty in Scotland. In some data from the EHRC research in the Is Scotland fairer, I've mentioned that despite better school performance, ethnic minority, people from ethnic minority backgrounds are twice as likely to be unemployed, twice as likely to be in poverty and overcrowded in poor housing. People often, they don't necessarily live in the areas of greatest deprivation, but despite that, we shouldn't think simplistically about that. There still is poverty within ethnic minority communities and, like I said, a less likelihood of getting work. Some of the poorest outcomes are for those of Pakistani Arab and people of Roma descent as well. I think that part of what really needs to be looked at by the committee is that one of the things that I think is very important is the sense that every single local authority and of course the Scottish Government as well has a duty to promote good relations, and it's how do we do this right across schools, local authorities and community groups? What are the structures that are in place to promote good relations between all the different faith communities but other communities as well? It sounds such a positive thing to have that as part of the equality duty to promote good relations, but the thing is what are the structures to do that? How do we promote good relations, rather than just having it as a tick box that we want good relations? We have to have things in place. Education has been mentioned by a number of people. I think that the religious and moral education system in the Scottish schools is failing in some way. Forty minutes a week to look at the diversity of religion in Scotland and promoting good relations is probably just not adequate. The sense also that quite often this subject is just given to another teacher to do. Even they are not getting full training to deliver this well and thoughtfully and sensitively taking into consideration just that incredible diversity of religions that are out there. The maths teacher might be told that you take religious and moral education for 40 minutes a week and you can imagine a biology teacher being asked to take the maths class and think that that would be adequate. Last night, we had a dialogue on religion and human rights with our stakeholders and this came up regularly that there just wasn't adequate education. Really, to have good relations, we have to start with the very young and really promoting that in our schools, across our local authorities and across all our organisations. Something that really looks at the promotion of good relations would be helpful. Many of the aspects that we have spoken about in relation to children also affect our older people's groups as well. That is a good time for you to come in, Glenda. Yes indeed. Picking up on Brandily's point about mental health and young people, there is certainly an issue for older people. I am not speaking about dementia, I am speaking about older people who have depression, anxiety, who probably have long-term conditions as well associated with mental health problems. We have been doing some work with action in mind and age in mind and they have consulted with quite a lot of older people with mental health problems and they are telling us that they are not getting access to psychological and therapeutic services. There is a reduction in services across the board in terms of health and social care and generally people are finding it very difficult to access services. For people with mental health problems, I think that it is a big problem. Some of the stories that we have heard about are really quite sad. Some people who have been on long-term medication, which is beginning to affect their physical being, having effects on their kidney and their other systems. Of course, they are looking to explain this condition to medical people, but they are not understood, they are not believed. Behind this, we are beginning to get a feeling of ageism and people not really taking into account that you get older, you still need to have somebody to speak to, somebody to listen to. I was at an event last night run by the Royal College of Nursing. We heard a councillor speaking about meeting up with older people in their 80s and 90s who so benefited from some counselling and therapeutic interaction. People who were speaking about wanting to come to the end of their life with some peace and needing a chance to speak about it. That is one of the issues that we are concerned about. Another one links into poverty as well. There are about 120,000 older people who are in poverty in Scotland. This is very sad. We know that there are many people who do not take up their benefits. I know from the launch of the Fairest Scotland Conversation and Action Plan yesterday that there are going to be some actions to improve this. That is most welcome. However, there is a real divide between people who have and people who have not, whether they are old or whether they are young. This gap is getting bigger and bigger and we really must be doing something about this. I think that that probably requires a kind of major structural change. Thank you. Thanks very much, Judith. Thank you, Christina. I am keen to set this conversation in the context of what is happening externally and welcoming as Tam has the incorporation of human rights into the remit of the committee. The wider discussion around human rights in the UK is not a particularly progressive one at the moment and is threatening to claw back potential rights that we afford our citizens. From my perspective, that presents a major opportunity in Scotland to do something differently and for the committee to play a role in shining a different light on human rights in Scotland and shining a light that is progressive is moving that agenda forward in our society. All the issues that people, in fact, maybe not all, but a lot of the issues people are talking about here, many of them come under what would be deemed the covenant of economic, social and cultural rights. The framing of our rights in that context is something that is seldom done. Again, it is a role that the committee can have. It is a role that the Scottish Government has said that it is interested in understanding more, progressing more and looking at. What we do not have in Scotland is any kind of backstop of protection to enable a rights-based approach to helping people to access their rights in many of the issues that people have been talking about just now. From the perspective of the Human Rights Commission, incorporation of the covenant of economic, social and cultural rights would progressively move the terms of that debate into a very different place in Scotland. It would mean that people themselves could access some kind of redress when their rights are not established. It would also provide a context whereby our legislative processes were proactively bringing into their mindset economic and social and cultural rights when legislation is planned, designed and set, and the terms of the debate around those rights in Scotland would be very different. That is something that, through our international obligations to the human rights treaties, we are signed up to do. TAM has already referred to the concluding observations. The concluding observations of the Committee on Economic and Social Cultural Rights makes the point that both the UK Government and the Scottish Parliament haven't fully incorporated those rights into Scottish law. That would be something that the committee deliberating on, reflecting on and advocating potentially on behalf of. It would be not just an important thing to do in order to meet our international obligations, which clearly is important, but it would challenge the terms of the debate going on in the wider context in the UK. A lot of the information and ideas that we have from many of the groups that have directed us towards the UN observations and we are looking forward to working with you on how we extract the ones that are relevant to Scotland and how we can do that to go on. Can I maybe just focus a wee bit on women's issues? I am conscious that we have a wee conclave down there of some of the areas and ideas that I have worked with over the years with many of you on some of these. It gives another perspective to the rights agenda and how it affects discrete groups. For your point, Rosalind and Anna, are there issues around women? For maternity rights, one of the really big issues at the moment is maternity rights employment. There has been research by the EHRC released earlier this year showing that three quarters of pregnant women and new mothers in the workplace experience some form of discrimination and one in nine lose their job as a result of discrimination either by being sacked or feeling compelled to leave their job. In Scotland that means 5,000 women a year who lose their jobs as a result of pregnancy discrimination. There is no problem with the law, the law is very clear, it is just not being complied with. There has been some very welcome initiatives from the Scottish Government on this which I think is fantastic in sort of starting to address the problem but it is quite a large scale problem. One in 25 pregnant women and new mothers leave their job because of health and safety concerns and I think it would be particularly useful actually if this committee was interested in pursuing that because I think that is an area where there is some quite concrete work that could be done to document practice and look at strategies to improve practice. A second issue that we would be encouraging the committee to look at is around access to maternity care for vulnerable migrant women. These are the women who have the highest rates of maternal morbidity and mortality and yet there are quite significant barriers for them to access their NHS maternity care. Some of these sit with midwives in maternity services but others actually sit outside the immediate remit of the maternity services. The practice of charging for NHS maternity care affects quite a number of very vulnerable groups and these as I said are groups with very high maternal mortality and morbidity. Alongside that I think some of the practices of the home office in its asylum support system, particularly the practice of dispersal or forced relocation can have a quite concrete effect on women's ability to access maternity care or continuity of care and I think that would be a useful one to explore. I would like to draw attention to a couple of issues and I would certainly agree with others who have mentioned poverty. Certainly women's higher levels of poverty are intrinsic to our work where two thirds of those earning below their living wage are women and women's employment is of course concentrated in low-paid jobs and sectors. I suppose that looking at women's employment in general we have got particular concerns about the public sector quality duty and some discussions this morning that has been raised in other meetings as well. In particular we do a lot of work on the gender and employment aspects of the duties whereby public authorities are required to publish information on equal pay, on the pay gap, on occupational segregation but the work that we have done which has taken the form of assessment work and focus group shows that overall it is failing and from 2013 to 2015 we have seen our regression and in 2013 we have already seen our regression from the gender equality duty before that. We have significant concerns about the lack of progress in reducing pay gaps and reducing occupational segregation across the public sector and we would point out also that the gathering and using of data on pregnancy in maternity is extremely lacking whereby the vast majority of the organisations that we looked at and the sample of our work weren't collecting any data on pregnancy in maternity. I suppose that we would question whether or not the findings of assessment works and compliance work done by the HRC in April 2017 makes similar conclusions in that the sector overall is not performing as it should do in making progress and we would welcome a review to look at the regulation again to see how it can better realise change for women. In the private sector we are particularly interested in the Scottish Government business pledge initiative although we do have some concerns about the very small number of companies that have signed up to take action to advance gender equality. We understand that it is a voluntary initiative as well but we have concerns that the organisation that is administering its Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise lacks the gender competence or the understanding in order to effectively influence account management companies who are often the target of signing up to such schemes. I suppose that one of our key asks would be to look at the account management function in general of the Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise and how conditionality can be attached to public money that has been spent in providing support for businesses and how they can better engage in their qualities agenda. Skills Development Scotland are already taking tentative steps to include conditionality to funding provided to training providers and to demonstrate how they are advancing equality. We think that there should be more accountability in terms of the public funding that is spent by Scottish Enterprise in giving it out to companies and the responsibilities of companies in receipt of public funding to advance the qualities. I do not know, Llyrine, if Audit Scotland has done any analysis on this and maybe that is where we should look at next. I do not know, and that is because I am a fairly new girl to Audit Scotland. Audit Scotland has a rolling work programme. We have a work programme set for the next five years. First two years are fairly set in stone, but there is an opportunity to influence what is in our work programme for the few years after that. As an organisation, we are keen to have dialogue with equalities groups on what things we need to be taking account of when we are auditing and what lines we are looking through and when we are looking at what things are on our work programme. For example, I am looking at our work programme just now and it is available on the internet. Some of the things that we have got that we want to look at in the next few years would be of interest to an awful lot of folks around this room, including things like mental health, early learning and childcare, community empowerment, self-directed support. I was having a conversation with James just earlier on about self-directed support and needing to really understand what are some of the equalities issues around some of that. From our perspective, there is a lot that we can do through use of data and triangulation of evidence, but what we are keen to do is to get past some of that process and speak to people and have some dialogues with the equalities groups and the equalities organisations in a different way. We would also be keen to work alongside the committee in looking at our work programme and seeing if there is anything that would be of mutual benefit, mutual advantage and I am happy to have that discussion. While I have the mic, I just wanted to make a bit of a plea. We have invited a range of groups and organisations to a round-table discussion that we are having internally tomorrow and I am aware that some people are going to manage to come and I am also aware shamefully that we have missed some people out. We are having a round-table discussion in Audit Scotland in 102 Westport tomorrow with a range of equalities groups because we want to understand how we can have a dialogue so that we can include that dialogue in some of the audit work that we do. I am making a shameless plug here. If I have asked you to come, please come. If you cannot come, please send someone to come and if I have not asked you, please grab me at the end of this discussion. Excellent. I think that more of the collaborative work that we do, the better. I am happy for you to take your shameless plug. Lorraine Cook, I was just wondering whether that would be a good opportunity for you to come in and talk about where COSLA is in all of this. In terms of public sector equality duties, there has been a lot of discussion in past evidence sessions as well. We would agree and we welcomed the HRC's comments on a review of the public sector equality duties. It is really a review of what is and is not working, focusing on the results that impact on communities rather than, from some public bodies, an overly bureaucratic process. The focus is on that bureaucratic process. In terms of what is and is not working, in terms of the English-centric structure and focus of the public sector equality duties, there is mention of education authorities, licensing boards, as if they are all separate bodies. We would support our review of the public sector equality duties, going back to poverty as well. We have supported the devolved powers of the socio-economic duty since our Smith response. We are really teasing out what does that look like, what will that involve, producing guidance around it and just really getting it involved in public bodies and wider communities involved in that guidance and what should it look like and getting the best out of it in terms of tackling poverty. James was talking about non-binary. I said that I was giving evidence to the committee and I took it back to our local authorities through the Scottish councils equality network. That was one of the issues that they raised in terms of children that identify as non-binary and the transition to the job market and the difficulties and barriers that they are coming up with. In terms of as simple as getting their national insurance number and the bureaucratic processes that are not recognising them, that was raised by equality officers and there was a lot of discussion around that and a lot of acknowledgement of that around the table. There is a loose link with Glenda talking about health and social care, but we have been doing as I sit in the migration population diversity. We have been looking a lot at Brexit and the impact of Brexit on local communities and local authorities in terms of EU nationals and their rights to live and work in Scotland. They are growing concerns that they are voicing to local authorities of where is their place in Scotland and their right to work in Scotland. In terms of, for local authorities, the impact that this will have, potentially, I mean, nobody knows at the moment, what we are going to soft hard Brexit in terms of freedom of movement, but the way it is going and also how that will impact. In terms of the benefits that those people bring, in terms of the benefits in terms of demographics, around half of local authorities are looking at population, how can they grow their population in EU nationals, their families are key to this. In terms of the benefits that they bring in the economic impacts, that could potentially have. Health and social care, from the feedback that we are getting from local authorities, would have a huge impact on the workforce of health and social care, but it is across the board. We are hearing from companies, local companies, within different local authorities. We have had lists of companies that this could impact on hugely, and very much community cohesion. We are also looking at a range of skills at teachers and education sectors. In terms of community cohesion and the rights of those people, those EU nationals, in terms of being able to live and work and promoting the benefits that they bring to Scotland. You have touched on a topic that is in everybody's mind right now about how things may change and the impact that that will then have on people. I knew that you would be wanting to come in on this, because I know that you have got some quite interesting and strong views on this. I have. We have two main asks of the committee. The first one is to ask for a continuing focus on the lives and experience of gypsy travellers within Scotland. I think with the publication of the recent Scottish social attitudes survey, you will see from that that gypsy travellers continued to be amongst the most marginalised but also demonised populations within Scotland. Despite two very welcome previous inquiries by the committee, we have seen very, very little progress, which directly impacts and improves on the lives of gypsy travellers. I think one of our particular concerns is the ongoing refusal of local authorities to build sites for gypsy travellers, which then force them into a range of other circumstances, which then obviously impact on the settled population. I think it goes to what a colleague over there was saying about community cohesion. That is one of the issues that we would welcome a continuing focus on. The second one is not new again, but it is to ask for a continuing focus on equality, evidence and data collection. I know that with the publication of the Fair of Scotland action plan yesterday, I think that it is commitment 13, where there is a commitment to implement the race equality strategy, and equality's evidence gathering is part of that. However, I would remind the committee that since the Equality Act 2010, there has been a requirement to collect that data. We know that practice across the country is very patchy. There are some examples of good practice, but it is not uniform. Our concern would be that, although we have robust information on poverty within Scotland, it is not matched by equality's data. The danger for us is that a lot of policy is driven by poverty data, poverty indicators, and the balance is going too far in one direction. It is not to say that poverty is not important, it absolutely is, but we still need to get the evidence gathering, the data gathering on equalities. I am very conscious that we have not dealt with some of the other barriers that people face. I think that maybe I will come to you, Gosi, for the point of view of the barriers that maybe some of the people that you work with would face. I work for RNIB Scotland, and my remit is broadly around prevention of avoidable sight loss, with a focus on particular groups who are at greater risk. Generally groups in high deprivation, certain ethnic groups, people living with a learning disability, are all defined by our organisation as at risk. There are roughly 188,000 people living with significant sight loss in Scotland. Every day, roughly 10 people are diagnosed with significant sight loss in an eye clinic. We feel that there is a really strong link between sight loss diagnosis and mental health, and the potential for depression and isolation is significantly higher in this group of patients. One of the services that we offer in particular eye clinics is a vision support service, which is essentially a member of staff who sits within the clinic or close to the clinic, and can take some of the burden, emotional and practical queries of people who are newly diagnosed. We have applied this to roughly 40 per cent of eye clinics across Scotland, and we would like to see that number broaden out in order to catch people at that early stage and give them support. The other point that was made quite prolifically has been around poverty, and we believe that there is definitely the potential for an increasing eye health inequality in Scotland, especially given the increase in our diversity in the population and the growing demographic of an older member of the Scottish community. We have a little evidence to show that there is actually an increasing eye health inequality. Despite the eye exam in Scotland being free for the past 10 years, the uptake seems to be increasing amongst those in higher economic brackets compared to those in lower. For us, that indicates a potential time bomb in terms of how we manage to treat and effectively deliver social care services to people in the lowest edge of society. Is there any detail on the reason for that? Is it that people are not going for the site test because they then cannot afford the equipment that they would need after it? There is some anecdotal evidence to say that the environment of the community optometrist creates a perception that you have to spend money when you are in that particular environment now. We have had this conversation with Optometry Scotland to quite a large extent. I think that they acknowledge that that is a potential barrier, but there is a whole range of other barriers as well. I think that deprivation just brings with it ill health and the potential for a range of different conditions and lifestyle patterns that just mean that preventative health-seeking approaches are not a high priority for certain members of society. That is something that we have to, I suppose, get some kind of greater understanding of. The third area that I would speak about is digital inclusion. We obviously have a very strong policy and drive and momentum in Scotland around digital inclusion. I think that it is important to realise that people with site loss, particularly in rural areas, are somehow being left behind in this particular movement. R&IB, along with partners, have been granted three years' funding by Big Lottery to upskill a number of 10,500 people across the UK with site loss in how to use accessible smart technology. However, the costs of those pieces of technology and the inconsistent network coverage across Scotland makes it really difficult for people to uptake these particular lifestyle-enhancing technologies. We would ask that the Scottish Government keeps that on their radar. Glenda, do you want to come in on a particular point? Thank you really just to support what Goosey is saying about older people. Highland City's citizens network had been tracking the growing waiting list for older people to have cataract operations and this is really causing a lot of concern. A letter was written to the health minister, Shodor Robison, and it has been discovered that not only is this a problem in Highland but in other local authority health board areas as well. The waiting list for cataract operations is on the increase. There was something in the paper in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago, so it seems to be a kind of national problem. However, the point is that if we are looking to prevent people from being—to help people to be as independent as possible as they grow old, then those are the kind of issues that need to be addressed quickly. Thank you. I think that the whole concept of health and social care integration has to start shifting some real focus on preventative approaches so that we can anticipate who our at-risk groups are, have targeted public health input with regards to the likes of sight loss issues. I think that that would be a good starting point for health and social care integration. Thank you. We are getting lots and lots of work to do. Thank you so much for that. Sandra, there is a particular aspect to the work that you do that gives us a different dynamic on the work that we need to do. I am afraid that I am only going to give you more work, but we are not afraid. One of the things that we love for the committee to focus on is that this is in particular to the police service but also to the other public service bodies. It is the use of positive action. If we are in particular in the police, we are talking about having a diverse inclusive workforce, one that reflects the community that we serve. It is important that we not only monitor the usage and the extent and most importantly the success of positive action initiatives. A lot of times we talk about it but we do not put the resources behind it. If we are committing to the outcome, it is something that you as a committee should perhaps monitor. The other thing was about retention strategies. The big thing for the police is about retaining the minority ethnic officers and staff that we have. It is not only that about conducting meaningful exit interviews and informing management about where we are feeling and where we are not. It is not only in the police, it is general public sector and it is something that your committee might want to inquire about. Thirdly, it is about the enquiring public sector equalities duty. Mainly again, how robust is this data collection and performance indicators. It seems like in some instances a tick box because nobody follows it up. Nobody evaluates what anybody gives them so it is just a paper exercise that time has come to either drop it or take it very seriously. We would be delighted to work with Eric on this. One of the key themes that has come through from all the evidence that we have taken over the past few weeks is the use of quality impact assessments and how well they are done. The impact that has on how well strategies and policies are put in place. It is a thread of work that has certainly been knitted through everything that we understand needs to be done and quality impact assessments is a huge part of that decent data collection. Chloe, thank you. About a year ago, the Church of Scotland decided to ask people in churches and in the communities that churches serve what they thought the priorities for the work of the church should be. We called the Speak Out 10,000 Voices for Change so we set the optimistic target of hearing from 10,000 people and in fact we heard from nearly 11,000 people in the course of six months at the end of last year. We asked people to imagine that it is 2035 and that Scotland is a fairer, more equal and more just society in a fairer, more equal and just world and what one thing should the church do to make that happen. If you are familiar with Fairer Scotland it might sound quite similar and had a number of conversations as we went along about that and there were two overriding issues that came out of that when we analysed it. The first one was about relationships which echoes very much what other people here have said. A lot of people who replied to our question told us that a cause of injustice and inequality was relationships and that we needed to ensure that relationships were better and that was a way of solving some of these that they were experiencing. The other overwhelming issue that we heard was the need to tackle poverty and systemic injustice and all of the work that we will be doing going forward will be in the context of relationships and tackling poverty and injustice within our systems. Within that we have seven themes and at the moment we are developing a work plan which will last for around ten years to try and address some quite big issues in our themes. So our themes are building local communities where people flourish, doing politics differently which is about participation and engagement, investing in our young people which will include education but not be limited to education, ensuring health and wellbeing for all, caring for creation, building global friendships and creating an economy driven by equality. I think it would be interesting to talk to anyone around the table about some of the detail in there because that's very much where we are now is in what actual practical actions would we take and also in what practical actions could we take with others so I think we would be very interested in the committees developing work plan and whether there's any work we could do with you. I think the other thing just picking at what's being said around the table is about human rights. We very much think that that is a core issue and all the things that we're doing would be very keen to work on how Scotland could take that human rights agenda forward particularly around socio-economic duty and also a priority area for us. Excellent, Alex. Thank you, convener, and thank you very much to all our panellists for some very fulsome presentations. I think we really do have our work cut out for us. I'm very struck by an emerging theme that cut across several presentations this morning and that is access to justice. Particularly in Roslyn's remarks about maternity rights and the number of people who are dismissed for maternity reasons from Workplace in Scotland and other themes coming out of other presentations around the similar lack of access to justice. I'm struck by the view that if we're to make rights real, that's a big problem. Coming as I do from the children's sector and I declare an interest having been previous convener of the Scottish Alliance for Children's Rights that the failure for Scotland to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child means that children don't have access to justice in that respect. I just wanted to throw it open to see what are the other barriers that make that access to justice so difficult and whether that's things for this Parliament to take on in terms of a certain incorporation of certain treaties or if there are wider practical issues to that. Roslyn? Yes. I think it's really useful to have that issue so clearly put. It is one thing to have rights on paper. It's a very different thing to have rights in practice so what needs to be done to make sure that individuals can exercise their rights. Certainly for pregnant women and new mothers in the workplace and indeed their partners, lack of information is definitely a factor, lack of access to advice services so someone who can talk to you about your situation and advise you on what to do and assistance to actually take forward a grievance or so on. I think most cases will be resolved before you reach the tribunal but at the moment only 8% of women who experience discrimination even raise a grievance. So we're dealing with interventions that are needed even before the point where you're even considering a tribunal so I do think this point where we're looking at the sort of practical advice and support that we can give to women and their partners is the critical thing for pregnant women and new mothers. Maureen, I think you are going to come in there, aren't you? Yes. Most people will be aware of the rise in hate crime and particularly against the Muslim community and the Jewish community as well to a degree. I think that in terms of people accessing justice, fear comes into it. I think that if you're a victim of hate crime and if you're perceived as a target for hate crime it's quite frightening to come forward and actually then access your protections really. Again, people are probably aware that next week is Hate Crime Awareness week and Police Scotland will be with us at Interfaith Scotland on Monday doing awareness raising in terms of just hate crimes. So something about being aware of what causes hate crimes, who are the targets of hate crimes, what can someone do through third party reporting if they don't want to go directly to the police, what can be done when people are a target of hate crime. And certainly within the minority faith communities and the Sikh community are also impacted by that just because of people's perceptions, men wearing a turban, etc. They're perceived as Muslims so this rise in Islamophobia and it links in as well I think to the sense that Scotland has to remain a very outward looking and have a global perspective on this when international things happen to communities abroad. They impact very directly here so terrorist attacks abroad impact on the faith communities and others here. We don't exist in isolation so that all that you consider in terms of equality and human rights should also be within a sort of global framework to really think how are things that are happening internationally impacting on our communities locally. I think that's quite important. Of course we want this committee to press for the incorporation of our international obligations and you just already indicated along those lines. So yes, in the longer term, in the short term there's a role for this committee in terms of the threat to the human rights act. And therefore I think that this committee can actually act as a bulwark to some of the developments in other parts of the UK. So that's really important and I think that will become important work for the committee. In terms of specific access to justice then there are issues with regard to legal aid and particularly children's access to legal aid so that's a helpful reminder. And if I can return to my list, but we're still allowed to hit our children in Scotland and that puts us to shame in the rest of Europe. So there has to be something that we look at in terms of equal protection. We still have the lowest age of criminal responsibility despite the efforts of the government to take consultation on it and I would want this committee to keep a watchful brief on raising the age of criminal responsibility. We still have women and children suffering as a result of the incidents of domestic abuse and that's an infringement of their rights and again I would want this committee to take that serious matter and it's already been mentioned about the mental health of children and young people and the whole of our population in particular issues with regard to children with disabilities. And I should say in terms of families or refugee families then there's a growing problem of families who don't have, who've got no recourse to public funds and that may well become a matter of increasing concern. I think that's me finishing my list. I don't believe that for a second. I suppose I just wanted to reiterate the point in relation to access to justice. If we do not have the backstop of the protections that something like incorporation of the ASU rights provide then there is no chance for people living in poverty to, there's no route through to get access to the justice that those protections might afford. At the moment that doesn't exist. If we were to genuinely map what happens to someone living in poverty in relation to their rights and how they might access justice in relation to that we would find very many barriers in the way of them gaining access to their rights at so many levels. So if we did map that and actually looked at what are the protections that are afforded along that journey and then how discrimination comes into play in the play out of some of those routes which are available to people it's not that there are none. Discrimination plays a significant role in enabling people to equally access justice, whether that be justice via a financial route or just prejudice when they're met within the court system, within the police system, within the different vehicles that people currently have. Even within the complaints mechanisms, which is the initial line of justice being provided around some of the issues that we've been talking about today, the capacity and ability of people to use those routes to get their complaint even assessed can be limited. As Roslyn described in relation to advocacy, support for people to take those routes, citizens and vice-buyers for example, which do amazing work in communities, the reliability and the capacity that they have to do that in an increasing context where need and demand is increasing is something that requires serious consideration. So there's a whole landscape around access to justice from the right to the end where you really don't want to be around just disability and actually court cases to the kind of complaint mechanisms and how accessible they are, how quick are they, how much remedy do they provide and how much change does it actually get on the behalf of the person who's experiencing whatever kind of grievance they have. So that's a difficult landscape and I want to set it in a context of what I think is a wider issue, which is something I saw when I worked for Oxfam as I did previously, but almost a systemic reluctance to absorb and acknowledge accountability and to really understand that as not just public authorities but all kind of authorities, we have an accountability to the people whose lives we are trying to provide services to. We systematically weaken the accountability structures particularly as they go through legislative processes. I've seen it time and time again and we would see it within the incorporation of the rights of the child. We seem to be very cautious where risk averse when it comes to building in accountability structures which genuinely enable people to access those kind of processes in a way that delivers for them fairly equitably and excessively. So I think we need to think about that, reflect on what accountability really means. It's something that the UN particularly has got very strong messages on, it's done a lot of work to understand, it's done a lot of work to invest. To really look at how state legislatures and states can build accountability into their systems to enable people to access those justice processes. So there's an attitudinal piece around accountability which I think would be really across all these pieces which I think would be really beneficial to tackle change, understand and transform. Absolutely, that's a really good piece of advice actually. Suzanne, you want to do it and I've got brandy and we've only got five minutes left and I've got to get Willie Coffey in as well. I'll be very quick, but I'm going to do what Tam did and just come back to my shopping list, sorry. With my carers hat on, we were absolutely delighted with the passing of the carers act which will come into being on 1 April 2018. Also delighted to have worked with Parliament and Government on achieving essentially an equality clause on the face of the act. My ask is in relation to perhaps towards the end of this committee's programme of work, that there's an opportunity to look at the impact of having that clause within legislation. When you go back to the census, both in terms of the 2001 and 2011 census, which is already five years out of date, what we have seen is a doubling in the number of carers within minority ethnic populations. It also goes back to an earlier point in that we have very limited, if any, data on carers within LGBT communities, carers who have a disability or a long-term condition themselves. There are evidence and information gaps, and the equality clause may be a route to getting that information, but I suppose picking up on the accountability, having an opportunity to see what the impact is further down the line. I'm sure that it's something that we would all be interested in, actually, as a piece of work like that. Brandi? I'll be very brief. I'm just picking up on Tam's point about children's rights. In relation to the Equality Act in particular, young people are not protected from harassment from their peers in schools. That's an issue. Going back to the idea of domestic abuse, an issue that's particular for LGBT people, in addition to the barrier of not being aware or not having access to know-how to go about to reporting, there can be a fear that if someone reports that they will be outed in court, effectively, because courts are open, and if they go and talk about their relationship or the abuse they're experiencing, that experience can be shared, and that can be a very large barrier for LGBT people. Thank you. Thank you, Brandi. Willie Coffey. Thank you very much, convener, and again I'd like to echo the comments of my colleague Alec there and thanking everybody for the range of wonderful contributions that have been made today, and it gives us a huge problem, convener, doesn't it? I suppose that's an understatement, but what I'm so proud of, the Scottish Parliament at least, will be and will remain to be a champion of human rights, and that's in stark contrast, I think, to event sales where. In one of TAM's many items on his list, the domestic abuse issue that you mentioned there, there's a bill coming through this Parliament to tackle that TAM, so our hope is it that we'll be able to address some of those concerns there, but, convener, I sometimes think, where will we be in five years' time? And it's a long time we have to look at many of these issues. Where will we be and how will we judge if we've made any progress in all of this? And I think to myself, as I'm listening to everyone, what are the kind of key drivers that might influence change and improvement in all of these areas? Is it tackling poverty? And I've heard it mentioned by a number of colleagues around the table. Is it education inequalities? Is it mental health issues? So I'm thinking, convener, trying to help the committee here. How will we try to gather some of the key drivers, perhaps, that will help all of these agendas to move forward? And colleagues, you will be the judge of whether and how successful we are at something like this over the coming five years of this term of the Parliament. But I'm very much looking forward to the opportunity and the chance to continue participating in that agenda with you. Has anybody got an idea what the key drivers would be, TAM? I think, I mean, there's been lots of really powerful presentations, themes have come up, things like poverty, things like incorporation, making sure that people have got access to justice. I think one of the key things for the committee is to try and make the link between people who are living in communities and human rights, so that everybody feels a sense that this matters to them, because it does. And if you get that message across, then we'll be in a better place in five years' time. Excellent. Right on time. Is there anything that we've absolutely missed, Lorraine? Did you want to come in quickly? I would just probably draw attention to the community empowerment act. I think that we've got a really good piece of legislation to work on. I think that it's a really good starting point, so I don't think that we've really talked enough a lot about what that might bring. The other thing that I would want to say is that I'd be very keen to look at what role Audit and Scrutiny has in terms of a driver for change. I think that Audit Scotland is quite keen to start having discussions on. I think that we're very aware that Audit does have an impact on how public services are delivered, and I think that if we're quite keen to be involved in the process of better public services, I think that there's definitely a discussion to be had about how we understand the experience that people have and how we understand the impact of public services. Audit has on people, as well as the usual audit methodologies that we have to use. Excellent. That's a good, good push in the right direction. I've glendered that really quickly, and then I'm going to go and wind it in. Yes, just very quickly, and it really follows on from Lorraine. It's about connection to the other committees within Parliament, because other committees are covering many of the issues that we've raised today, and I know that reports are there. I guess that there's synergy between... Doing a lot of work. The clerking teams are doing a lot of work in making sure that we complement rather than duplicate across committees, so there's a bit of work going on there already. Linda Fabiani, if I hear words. Just very, very quickly, because I'm aware that I'm an interloper, but I have to say that I've found it absolutely fascinating. Just to pick up on the last three points by two points, Tam and Lorraine, and relating back to Judith's point, I think one of the things that underpins all of this is what Judith called the attitudinal aspect accountability. We can talk about all these things all we like, but until people really understand what we're talking about, until people are accountable to make sure that these things happen, we won't really get anywhere. The accountability aspect means that people will start to understand human rights better and not just see it as some kind of very, very thing that doesn't really affect them today. So thank you for all of that, everyone. For an interloper, a fantastic final point, actually. Thank you. Can I thank you all this morning for your evidence? This is not the end of our process together. This is just to start. I'm hoping that we're all going to work together on all of these aspects. As many interests within the MSP group in the committee are all of the areas that we've covered this morning. We're really looking forward to pushing all the agendas forward as far as we can and being a bit more radical about what we do here as well. Thank you so much for your interaction with us this morning. If you go away and you think that I should have said this, please write to us and let us know. Tam, you can send us your longer shot list, but I'm going to suspend the committee now to allow us to go into private and allow you all to get out of the room.