 Good morning everyone and welcome to the Equal Opportunities Committee. It's the 17th meeting of 2015. Can I ask you to set any electronic devices to flight mode or switch off, please? Apologies have been received from Sandra White. I'd like to start with introductions. We're supported at the table by the clerkin and research staff, official reporters and broadcasts and services and around the room by the security office and also welcome to the observers in the public gallery. My name is Margaret McCulloch and I'm the committee's convener. Members will now introduce themselves in turn, starting here on my right. Good morning convener, Drew Smith, member for Glasgow. John Mason, MSP for Glasgow Shetleston. Morning Annabelle Goll, MSP for the west of Scotland. Good morning John Finnie, MSP for Highlands and Islands. Good morning Christian Allard, MSP for the north-east. The first agenda item today is a decision on taking business in private. You're asked to agree consideration of a draft report on your inquiry into age and social isolation at item 3 in private. Are we all agreed? Yes. Agenda item 2 is an evidence session on our inquiry into removing barriers. Wraith, ethnicity and employment. If witnesses or members wish to speak during the discussion, please indicate to either me or my clerk on my left-hand side. We are restricted for time today, so can I ask you please to keep your answers focused as much as possible? I welcome the panel this morning. I can ask witnesses to introduce themselves. I can also invite witnesses to briefly outline the work of your organisation and any current projects for the members. My name is Naira Dhar. I am the Racial Quality Mainstreaming Officer for Central Scotland. Central Scotland is a national inter-major organisation and a strategic partner of the Scottish Government. We deliver a wide range of programmes to the minority voluntary sector, including areas such as leadership, graduate internships, social enterprise and financial inclusion. We have also been working in the last three years on a race equality mainstreaming programme, working with the public sector, voluntary sector and the statutory sector to look at how they implement race equality within their organisations. That, again, has raised a number of issues that we will probably have further discussion with here today. Hi, I'm Jack in Harry. I'm the director of the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights. We're a strategic anti-racist social policy charity funded by Glasgow City Council to do local race equality work in Glasgow, funded by the Joseph Rountree Charitable Trust to do parliamentary activities across Scotland. We're currently funded by the Scottish Government to work with them and other partners on developing the new race equality framework for Scotland. Hi, I'm Suzanne Munday. I'm chief executive of MECOP, which is a minority ethnic health and social care organisation. We are also a strategic partner of the Scottish Government. One of our projects working with Gypsy Traveller communities has strategic intervention status. I'm Rami Usta, the chief executive of Beams Scotland, which is the umbrella national organisation for the ethnic minority third sector and the community of this sector represent. We are a strategic partner to the Scottish Government and we work across Scotland within a membership of organisation-based. Our main work covers three main overarching objectives, which is capacity building and empowering active citizenship for the diverse communities, policy and influencing policy through research and proactive intelligence and consultation gathering, and to promote education for democratic citizenship and human rights education setting. That's in very briefly. We'll start the questions off now. John Mason. Thanks, convener. The area that I'd like to start with is to do with how it's important that we differentiate amongst different ethnic minorities, because I think there has been some suggestion that if we just use the generic term ethnic minorities as a kind of homogenous group that that is not helpful. I wonder if you could comment on that and perhaps comment on any particular groups that you feel we should focus on or that tend to get missed out. I was interested in Beams in your submission and it talks about understanding and service provision to identify ethnic minority communities as being identified solely upon visual identification and lazy jargon unrepresentative of census data. That was quite strong, but I thought it was quite good. Some of you could expand a wee bit on that. There's always been discussion and we spent enough time with stakeholders arguing whether the context of identifying minorities as black and ethnic minority, black and minority ethnic minority. Now there's a new term called black, Asian and ethnic minority. It's our belief that the Equality Act 2010 does not give hierarchy to any ethnicity. The vision between identifying visible and invisible minority has caused lots of problems for certain communities to remain below the radar and when data are quoted, usually quoted in certain settings that reflect the visible minorities. For example, I read some comments to say that ethnic minorities in Scotland have increased from 2% to 4%. Actually if you identify visible and invisible minority it adds up to 8.2%. This is an area that we are always keen to see stakeholders and policy makers acknowledging. It's not about acknowledging in documents and going back to when you produce documents to refer only to visible minorities. It's not fair because some groups are disappearing under the radar when we're talking about this. The issue for example when you talk about the Polish community data, the Irish community data seems to be sidelined when official documents or official things coming from the government. This is an area of concern for us. For us we acknowledge ethnic and cultural minorities but when we talk about the census of the data, when we talk about classification which says white, non-white, that is a serious term for us. It doesn't help you to identify within the subgroup setting of who are the group meant to this. Our concern is when ethnic minority is used as a classification rather than a description. This is an area that we see it again and again in policy making. This is leading us to show as if ethnic minority continue to be there. It's them and the rest of the population it's like us here. This is an area we invite the committee to acknowledge please that ethnic minority is not about colour coding, it's about identity, about culture and about diversity even within the minorities themselves. Picking up on that point and reiterating what Rami said, I think in using a term that homogenises communities and by doing that actually detracts from individual experience both within and out with communities is not helpful. We would argue that different population groups within minority communities actually have very different experiences. For example, the position of women within minority ethnic communities, young people, disabled people, carers within the workforce for example, they will all have an experience that is unique to them. To adopt a unilateral one-size-fits-all approach does not take cognisance of different experiences and barriers? The fact that if you have 8 per cent when it is a whole group, even though that 8 per cent is all different, 8 per cent is a serious amount, so I suppose it gives a bit more clout, doesn't it? There are differences between different ethnic groups obviously, but it's a silly argument and I hope we don't waste too much time today talking about it. When the employment rate in local authorities in Scotland is less than 1 per cent on average for all minority groups, it's silly arguing whether that affects Pakistanis more than Bangladeshis or something like that. I think when we get to a stage where we can have those discussions, when the numbers are much higher, absolutely need to have those discussions, but not now. At the moment, the problem is generic across all minority ethnicities, but also let's not use this to diminish the issue of colour discrimination, which is what some people want to do. Colour discrimination is still a main problem in Scotland, and also in terms of white ethnicities, there's a generational issue here. I will always be black, my kids will always be black, their kids will always be black. If you're Polish and you assimilate in two or three generations, nobody will know you're actually from Polish origin if you choose to hide it. If we look at how many MSPs are of Irish origin, I have no idea, but there are a whole number of you who are of Irish origin, but we know who the black MSPs are and they will always be there. We did get an impression from some of the spice briefings that some groups were more disadvantaged than others, even within an Asian context, that people from some backgrounds were doing better than others. Do you feel that that's not an issue that we should be looking at? It's not important. I don't think it's the main issue in employment, because the figures are so low across all minority ethnicities. Obviously, if there's a particular problem, then we need to address that. I don't think an employer says, I'm not going to employ you because you're Bangladeshi, but I'll employ the Pakistani guy. I don't think that happens really. I think I just wanted to make a point that when we use the term ethnic minorities, we put everybody under one umbrella. What we don't recognise within that is the differences between second and third generation minority ethnic groups that have been here long established and those that are new members of the community. The issues for those that are in second and third generation facing employment are not the same for those that are coming into the country in the last few years. We don't have the same barriers in language and education, but if you look at the statistics, there is still that barrier in access to employment. I think that some of the things that we want to discuss in detail today is why we have young ethnic minorities—I will say Pakistani because it's a large ethnic minority group in the young category—that are represented highly in our higher education establishments but are not seen within our employment workforce. That's an absolute tragedy because you're the potential for Scotland of losing all that talent and leaving when we have an ageing population. If I can carry on, that was helpful. In your own quote from Sembo, I saw one point that interested me. The lack of consistency in relation to collection and publication of data means that in Scotland at present the level of non-disclosure varies hugely. For example, across all 22 health boards, a small number have achieved excellent results in recent years but with apparently little attempt from others to learn from the good practice or to level it up, which I thought was quite good and quite strong. What should public bodies be doing more than they are at the moment? There seems to be a whole issue around self-reporting and people not reporting what their ethnic background is. What we find is that people are applying for posts and at that stage they are disclosing their ethnicity to some extent. What we are finding is that there is not enough data to find out who is actually being employed. In my mind, this is not a new concept. We have been expected to collect data from public sector organisations in the NHS and others for a number of years. What is the hidden agenda that they do not want to disclose exactly what number of their workforce is from a BME population? I find that it is quite concerning that the HR departments are not wanting to be proactive in this manner yet claiming that they are following the guidelines of the Equalities Act. In some respect, yes, because we know now that figures are dropping, but we are also finding that people are refusing to disclose because they do not see the nature or the understanding of why they are having to record that information. Also, there is a suspicion now that that is going to be used against them. In that respect, it has become very blurred because there has not been a consistency, there has not been a clear direction or leadership in terms of what we do in recording employment. Our workforce is in relation to race and ethnicity. I think that Jatin mentioned earlier that we have local authorities in some places that are less than 1 per cent. They must know what that means. They have known what that means. There needs to be a bit more enforcement of actually expecting and requiring local authorities in the NHS to be more proactive in understanding and doing something about their data. The collecting of the data in itself is not enough. I think that there are nuances. It has been my understanding that the data capture around ethnicity and other equality indicators is more advanced within new recruitment, but there are particular issues around the established workforce. We see a lot of problems with data collection where you have your existing workforce. That is one issue. I think that there is a failure to learn from existing good practice because there are public bodies which have much higher rates of data collection than a lot of others. I think that there is an issue about sharing good practice and learning about how they have actually approached this issue. I also think that there is quite a high degree of complacency amongst public bodies with regard to data collection. We have had reflected back to us that the number of our BME employers reflects the percentage side of the population within the census. If that is good enough, it is clearly not good enough because public bodies are meant to work towards exceeding that baseline of representation. I think that complacency is an issue also. Travel to work areas should not be matching where people live and where people work, because a lot of people do cross boundaries on that. Exactly. You know that people are increasingly travelling longer and longer distances to work. The fact that your workforce has 1 per cent does not tell you the catchment area from which that 1 per cent is gathered. If some people can do better at monitoring, why can't everybody? It is not an endemic problem because some people have done it. I think that we quote that Lothian health board has only got 50 per cent knowledge of its staff, but other health boards have got 80-90 per cent. So, what is the problem there? Are you nervous about asking? Absolutely. They are nervous about asking. They actually don't ask probably. It is back to the leadership thing. In the health context where you really need to know patient's ethnicities to provide a real good service, if the staff can't disclose their own how they want to ask a patient, there are lots of issues there. There are solutions. There is a move towards self-reporting on a computer system, so nobody has to see what you put on the form. I am not sure that is the best thing, but it is there if you want to use it. I would be afraid of doing a head count and managers identifying if that is what it takes to initially get a baseline, because we need that baseline. I am okay, but I think there is more. Just to go back to the whole question of the public bodies and the reporting of ethnicity and data. There is a general agreement among us that public bodies are failing in keeping records or reporting on their public sector equality duty settings in relation to data. However, there are issues in that regard that goes beyond the negligence. We came across a Syrian public body recently who was required to keep ethnicity data. Some of the suggestions from them that there are some minorities refusing to give their data, so they are authorising their staff to guess the data and write it down. That was a serious concern for us, still ongoing by the way. The only alternative for them is to revert back to say black and white. This is one sample of a national, major public body in Scotland. As Justin mentioned earlier, leadership, advice and we feel some of public bodies get intimidated when external bodies like us are not trying to advise them or interfere in this setting. We believe that the EHRC could play a more role. They have been playing a positive role and should be directed to have more monitoring role on public bodies in this context. What would your advice be to that organisation? They obviously feel they are stuck. They cannot force people to tell them their background, so they are making guesses. What would you suggest to them? At the same time, they are required to report on this data recording. The main issue is just to see how they can understand the census data. The way the census recorded the data, for example. If people are not willing to disclose their ethnicity, they do not want to disclose their ethnicity. It is not like there is something they have to or to put a bullying tank, you have to disclose it. We came across some use, for example, in some of the programs on employment we are doing. They are ethnic minority use. They do not see themselves as ethnic minority. They see themselves as Scottish citizens. There is no point in forcing those people to pigeonhole them in certain ethnicities. It is the same with the wider setting. This is an area that can operate within cooperation, within training on public bodies, but not to sit and guess what ethnicity is. Actually, I asked the senior person to guess my ethnicity and it took him 10 good minutes and he could not. I could not understand how senior people take this decision to allocate, I am not going to say that the public body is sorry, that they can guess and write it down. This is a complete deformation of the purpose of gathering this data, reflecting on their policy, on strategy, on what is required by the whole Scottish Government and society. This is an area that we have to pay attention to. I think that I have used my time. Would it help if, at the stage of sending out letters for people to come for an interview, at the interview stage and also at the induction stage, if this information was explained clearly to people the reason why the data is very important? Do you think that that would help? Definitely, because even minority people will be hesitant to disclose this for fear of discrimination, fear of racism, of other settings that are relevant to them, but that is a good idea. In terms of employment, it is a different story where you can get disclosing your ethnicity without having to know who you are. This is with almost employers and the sector, definitely the third sector, to deploy that setting. It did come up when we were having a discussion with people like Skills Development Scotland for the modern apprenticeship and their numbers were very small, so I meant to ask that. That probably does not capture people like Polish groups, which work in a lot of the industries, where there are modern apprentices in the hotel sector, tourism as well, so that is really interesting. We can take you very briefly, but we have to be very quickly, Susanne and then Nira. Going back to data collection, I think that there is also an issue about public bodies not using the information that they are collecting, and sometimes it is almost data collection for collections' sake. I think that there is an issue about potentially more guidance being needed by public bodies to use the information that they collect. I am picking up on the point about encouraging people to disclose ethnicity, sexuality, et cetera. Our experience has been that the employer will often give information, but it will be one-off, and it will not be sustained. Very often there is a turn through the workforce, so it is something that needs to be repeated in terms of reassuring people about why the information is needed, how it will be stored, how it will be used, and that has to be on-going. The example that Rami gave in terms of asking the questions, I think that there is a huge training requirement in terms of giving staff confidence to ask those questions and an understanding of why they are asking them. I think that confidence is not there because the leadership around equality is not there, and if the senior directors do not understand why they are doing it or how to do it, then how do you expect front-line staff to do it? That is a really good point. Thank you very much for that. We will move now on to Christian. Thank you very much, convener. It is the same kind of line, and you answered a lot already. I just want to go a bit further, maybe. You just talked about the confidence for people to ask the questions. BEMIS, for example, and key recommendation, asked that the Scottish Government should take that kind of leadership to decide what should be the questions to make sure that the people who ask them have confidence to ask them. That is part of the inquiry that we are making. Unfortunately, we seem to get a lot of conflicting answers of how we should go about it. You talked about, and we heard that before, about making sure that we are not putting people in pigeon holes. Unfortunately, if you want to have the question, if you want to have data, do we have to do that? Or do we need... I have one of the written submissions from CMVU regarding the example in Northern Ireland where the Equality Commission guide has encouraged the principle method of direct questions. I don't know if it's a method we could think about, and that's what maybe what you talked about, is seeing the individual and making sure that maybe that will help, give confidence to the people who ask the question, asking direct questions and maybe seeing more the person. Is that a way we could maybe answer the problem that we seem to have of pigeon-hauling people? Two points in this context. I agree with you with regard to pigeon-hauling and all this. First of all, when we ask for data collision, it has a purpose. We're not doing it just to identify people or to classify people in terms of their ethnicity. When we do this, or when stakeholders do this, we are enabling what we call evidence-based policy to develop evidence-based. Rather than if we don't do this, we will end up with policy-based evidence. The same with evidence-based strategy or strategy-based evidence. This is the risk where public bodies are running by ignoring to take evidence-based on ethnicities. But within BEMIS perspective, especially if you understand that we have the young generations in Scotland from the minorities differ dramatically from the older generation. The way we operate with this group is we have to identify the whole concept of ethnic citizenship within the minorities, where we, as ethnic minorities, we live in Scotland as citizens. We don't live in Scotland because we're ethnic minorities. So we enable or empower the young people to function in that capacity. However, nothing is taking away their ethnicity. They should be proud of it, should be able to sustain it, but this is when barriers become because of their ethnicity, to enable them to come around the table as full citizens, that's when we can operate. But the aim is not to keep on all their life in that capacity. It's them, black and this, black and this. If people feel they are ready to move to forward within the citizenship setting, that's what we should have structures in place to enable them. And I must take one more extra minute, sorry. Having worked in Europe for the last eight years as BEMIS organization on active citizenship equality, we come back to Scotland to compare the policies, the setting, what we have. We say we are well advanced from Europe. Some groups don't like to hear this and that's their opinion. We think everything is great, wow, brilliant Scotland. What we are saying is Scotland has achieved a lot and has prepared us as minorities to develop and function as citizens. So we should take this step by improving the setting. Rather than sitting there just asking for our rights, that brings me back to the whole concept of a human rights education. Our role is to empower the minorities to understand their rights, but to understand their responsibilities and to act on these rights. It's not just my right and sit on it. When it comes to employment setting, if we come across, for example, certain public bodies are discriminating, is to teach those individuals how to stand up to this, how to build their own skills to challenge the setting. So what I mean by pigeonholing is when with the census the whole thing they have to go under black. It's ridiculous for young generations who feel proud of being Scotland. Even our modern apprenticeship programme people acknowledge their ethnicity but they said, what do you mean? Develop this, enhance this, rather than drag them back to the classification setting. Description of ethnicity is something and classification is something else. It's a dangerous thing. Should we go to a different way, maybe like Northern Ireland does, asking direct questions and letting people say individual answer to where they want to answer it? In this context it's actually not about what the individual feels or who they are. It's about looking at whether there's discrimination in the recruitment process or whether there's data to show whether there's an imbalance in the figures and if there's an imbalance then you look into why that imbalance is there. Sometimes there may be good reason, sometimes there may not be any, you can then prove discrimination. I think we need to twist this around. I'm happy with a black-white definition at this stage when the figures are less than 1% for public sector employment. There's no point arguing whether Bangladesh is a bit more discriminated than Pakistan is all the other way around. At this point there's general discrimination against all people of colour and that's what we need to address first and then maybe in five, ten years we can look at whether there's individual semantics within all that. I just have a problem with this. When we decide something, it's for the future, it's not for the present. So it may be create a problem for five or ten years in five or ten years time. There's an issue there in our inquiry and we're really trying to see what we're going to do and making sure what we recommend is fit for the future. So is there a balance there? I'm not sure what your question is, but one more point. Because we need the data and we need to compare it to something, that's why we have to use the census categories at the moment because there's no point knowing how many one-legged people there are in the workforce if we don't have a baseline to compare that to. The census figures are adequate for now. The census classifications. I would say that the census is always going to be a bit of a crude tool. Absolutely. But in the absence of anything else it does serve the purpose of establishing a baseline from which we can begin to measure progress, whether it's forward or backward. The other point that I would like to make is that ethnicity appears to be something that we ascribe to minority communities forgetting that we all have an ethnicity and that is a point that I wanted just to make. The point that I wanted to make is that yes, we do have these classifications and maybe they're not the best, but in order for us to do comparable comparisons, we have what we have at the moment. We need to be clear what we mean by ethnicity and you can have an ethnicity but how you feel in terms of your identity is two different things and your identity is what you assign to yourself and your ethnicity is what you're assigned to, if you like. It's just worthwhile making that comparison. The example that you gave and it's true that young people today don't see themselves as a minority in whatever category we assign to them in terms of data collection but they do see themselves as young and Scottish but that's their identity and maybe not their ethnicity. That comes to my question it's getting more and more complicated because of that new generation so I think that if there is another inquiry in this parliament in 10 years time, we'll find it a lot more difficult to answer those questions but regarding going back on that age and social class and all that kind of thing do you think we should have too set of questioning the normal ones which we'll find out and another set of questions to try to enlarge a little bit the net and getting more information of what the workforce is and what the real issues are. Coming to this and reflect on the previous setting as well in terms of promoting identity I mean the ethnicity will never be a barrier to promoting that setting, enabling but if we want to sustain it within the ethnicity there will be a barrier to enable those groups especially young generations to progress their identity. The worry for us is it is important to use data it is ethnicity data in terms of employment another setting but the worry for us is if we identify any gap in terms of public bodies or services setting within the ethnicity if we want always to call for an exclusive setting for those minorities that is a risky thing that is not acceptable for us as minorities the idea is to use these gaps to promote what we call an inclusive setting for everybody rather than call for exclusivity based on ethnicity. This is something very very dangerous and the worry for us is when we use these gaps when we identify an ethnicity in terms of employment is we always seems to be viewing that within the discrimination and racism again that's not acceptable for us we should move beyond the setting of everything is interpreted in terms of discrimination racism to question ourselves as third sector as policymakers what are the issues like if there is a gap we know there is a gap there is a gap and there is a gap and the reason behind this gap what we are going to do about what has been done about it that's why I came across some of the presentation given here is things haven't changed for the last 40 because we're not taking a proactive role to explore and investigate the reason for this gap for example beyond saying there is discrimination and racism and all this something has to move on I mean there is discrimination there is racism nobody is denying it but not at the scale that would make us focus all our efforts in that context it's more about creating equal opportunities creating partnership advice and support again there is if I can quote this example as a lot of things there is a serious stakeholder public body approached us for advice on how to consult with certain groups to form their policies and they were amazed that we were prepared to do this free of charge and they were saying that another group asked them for £5,000 just to facilitate a workshop for them that is not acceptable from a public money funded organisation to serve the whole of Scottish scene not to serve only ethnic minorities that's when we say about BEAMIS we are an umbrella organisation for the sector but to fit within the Scottish scene not to fit as ethnic minorities and I asked a question for one of our great ministers to say why we are getting funded to serve ethnic minorities to do what just to eat and sleep and go on cluster or to be active citizens as part of Scotland and that is the thing that we should all aspire to I don't doubt everybody is but the mechanisms differ but please do not identify every gap identifying terms of data for employer within discrimination and racism we should be having more discussion about how to tackle this in different settings sorry thank you very much for that anybody else want to reply? nope we'll now move on to Annabelle thank you very much convener I want to cover the possible barriers to employment and my first question is about young people is there a need for more resources and attention to be directed at young people working or participating in education, training and youth employment initiatives to try and prevent or reduce unequal labour outcomes such as low pay and occupational segregation and maybe later on barriers to promotion a very short response yes our organisation MSM Scotland has worked with BEMIS and in Christmas Scotland to develop a graduate internship exactly that was a short funded piece as they usually are but we got positive results as at the end of that programme because we were able to positively put them in new routes to employment through different forums so I think there is a need to invest because we're having to face the inequalities that these young people face when they're going into the job market that needs to be addressed somehow organisations like the public sector the statutory sector and the private sector but also there needs to be additional support because as my colleagues refer to if we need to have a community that's constantly thinking how do I challenge this how do I have a responsibility to challenge discrimination I have a responsibility to come forward I have a responsibility why do we have all the responsibilities there are generations of young people in Scotland that never even need to think about this my children will have to think about this my children will go to university and graduate and then think oh want now I don't want that for their future I want them to be able to compete equally with everybody else that they graduate with so yes we do need at the moment that additional resource and support for people to combat the inequalities that they're facing I think that one of the gaps that we face is in terms of positive action for BME young people as one of the ways of supporting them into the employment market as far as I'm aware the housing model delivered by PATH is very successful but one of the gaps that we have identified is the lack of data in terms of longer-term impact and one of the actual calls we would make is for the committee to consider some sort of longitudinal survey because we know that people are going into PATH provision five years down the line where are they 10 years down the line are they reaching middle and senior management posts are they having a wider impact on the recruitment retention, promotion practices that they are employed in but equally why aren't we looking at that model on whether it's transferable in other sectors to again enable BME young people to examine and explore possible career paths I would argue we should look at issue led rather than resource led we need to identify what the problems are and then allocate resources and just find money which is what governments often do they throw some money at what they think is a problem without actually recognising what the problem is and certainly no longitudinal measures to see if it's successful but that's the nature of short-term funding for things not necessarily a youth issue but the data we've got and the latest data from public sector bodies that they published in April still shows that people are applying relatively large numbers for public sector jobs they're getting interviewed so they're meeting the qualification and the experience levels required but they're falling at interview we've got data from Aberdeen 13.7% black minority ethnic people applying for posts only 6.8% black minority ethnic people getting appointed so your half is likely to get appointed if you're black we need to examine why that is and then we can address the problem it may be discrimination I'm not saying it is, but it may well be I think the figures are that stark I'm sure there's some discrimination in there somewhere but there may be other reasons but until we know what the reasons are we can't do anything about them Just to go back I agree with Jarton that any intervention should be an issue based rather than resources based but I'm afraid you'll be upset all of you and sending me out in a minute because I'm usually more blunt with my answers to face realities even with us as ethnic minority or third sector organization so it's not always the fault of the others and we have to explore and investigate our own intervention and setting of supporting the equality setting after all we're working within a race equality dynamic and process not within racism and discrimination going to the young people setting I mean like for example everybody knows that ethnic minority youth are underrepresented in the modern apprenticeship setting and everybody's aware of it I was speaking at a conference where a colleague from a similar setting stood up to say to SDS that there is underrepresentation of ethnic minority that's because you're racist and that is ridiculous when I challenged this behavior I said we just to throw this sentence and let them worry about it that's not the way to be responsible and to take things forward I give you an example the modern apprenticeship skills development Scotland already the outcome of that the structure we're putting in place is amazing even for SDS and for us and for the wider scene in Scotland another program we're doing which is called gather together which is addressing underrepresentation of parents and their participation in their children education reflecting on their attainment the school structure the impact of that we can see it in positive settings like even schools, even parents even parent council beginning to see how come this happened although when we did a mapping exercise with parent council about participation of ethnic minorities some of the answers we were getting for example they will say to us we can't get white people never mind them why should we pay for their interpreting and you think wow instead of saying oh they're racist no we work with them to invest in training program involvement and now I think the number of increase of participation of parents in this setting is amazing even to our own expectation so this is an area of intervention when I say by being pro-active by linking to the stakeholders rather than intimidating them and pushing them for a quick gain through funding bit or just to bully them this is something that the sector should be inside all the sector are doing positive things but again there are local minority groups misusing resources we are aware of a couple of organizations supporting employment where they will print the same CV from the internet for the next 50-60 ethnic minority that is abhorrible it's not accountability for public money we should be brave to stand up and say where the gaps within our pro-active role or reactive role and it's not only just but we need the government in their policies trying to support the setting so we have to be blunt in this and I apologise if you see me taking both sides but this is for Scotland this is not for ethnic minority or for anybody else thank you Annabelle I've got a couple of questions the public bodies that gave evidence to the committee on 3 September referred to unconscious bias as one explanation for inequalities in the labour market so very briefly can I ask each of you what do you understand by that term unconscious bias I'm sorry but that's just a new term for saying I actually do not accept that term at all you cannot say that you're unaware that you have discriminatory practices in this 2015 we've had plenty of legislation to inform public bodies what their duties are they've had plenty of time to write their own reports in terms of their own actions and to use a term such as unconscious bias to me as a gauwclos I think it's about hiding institutional discrimination Thanks for saying that submission it's racism until you get caught and then it suddenly becomes unconscious bias I would agree and also say that the focus shouldn't just be on public sector employers but also private sector employers as well I think from our perspective there is no doubt unconscious bias is another terminology to saying that for example people don't fit in certain cultural or stakeholder resistant to cultural cultural change so they blame it on unconscious bias but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen in terms of understanding cultural variations between certain employers and ethnic minority setting but for us as well it's not acceptable it reflects a strong resistance to organisational cultural change I was going to ask but given what the witnesses have been saying the answer to this may be anticipated I was going to ask are you aware of any steps currently being taken to address unconscious bias both in recruitment practice and activity of workplaces and what further steps you think I needed The problem there is so this new term has cropped up in the last few years unconscious bias so people are now spending lots of money training their staff instead of doing what really needs to be done addressing the real issue by raising employment so sending more staff on more training is not going to change the situation it's just another way of not passing the buck but avoiding doing something real that's quite depressing I think we've been if I can come in here it's becoming more of a framework for some people to initiate businesses we've got various groups who want to train on unconscious bias and all this so I agree with the group that there should be more control on how this is handled or even talked about the issue is not about providing training to the staff and all this is well well beyond that I just think there's a rule here for the regulatory bodies to have a clear understanding of how they look at equalities when they regulate public sector organisations and I think a term like that wouldn't exist if we actually had a clear understanding of what equalities and race equality and leadership means within an organisation I've had people in the past in my own experience say things like it was an inexperienced manager so we no longer have inexperienced managers we now have unconscious bias so there's always going to be a terminology that will come together that will try and dilute or negate the experiences of discrimination or institutional discrimination and I think this is just one of them I think you do need to have training to a degree but I think the type of training needs to be appropriate too much focus has been on training staff on the legislation but not actually telling them what they need to do to make a difference and I think that's a key issue that needs to be addressed and I think partly organisations find it easier to tell them what the legislation is because they don't really have an understanding of themselves of what they need to do or maybe that willingness is not there because it's too much of a cultural change for them Very briefly and finally and again I think your answers have maybe pointed a way forward here In your written submissions both Craire and Sembo point the need to do more to tackle institutional discrimination so I wonder if I could ask Naira and Jatton what steps are needed to do this particularly where employers may not recognise that their organisations and workplaces are discriminatory I actually don't believe that employers don't know that they're being discriminatory I think that the statistics speak for themselves I think that to live in this day and age and not realise that none of your workforce is representative of the communities that you serve is hugely naive to say the least I think that there needs to be an absolute acknowledgement within an organisation that discrimination exists because too many people don't want to acknowledge it so they'll put in initiatives but those initiatives won't work with the core issue so therefore there needs to be that acknowledgement within organisations that yes we understand that there is institutional discrimination within our organisation you then need to start looking at how you tackle that from the top down because unless you get the buy in from every level be it middle management because I've heard people say the trouble is the middle managers know it's the front line know it's the strategic direction actually it's all of it and it needs to be fed through the entire organisation may see some change happening and I don't think we've seen that yet to the extent that we should have done by now OK A very senior public servant very recently said institutional racism is the natural state of affairs for the public sector in Scotland and I would totally echo that I think until we recognise there's a problem we can't really do anything about it and the data really speaks for itself so any public body looking at the data they have and if you talk about employment looking at their workforce data but also looking at their recruitment data I mentioned the application to success rate earlier that should bring alarm bells straight away if that imbalance of 2 to 1 is there if I was in that organisation I wouldn't know why that is happening and that's where the institutional racism kicks in people just don't care about these issues they think people have had a fair interview what's the problem and there's lots of other things you can call them institutional racism or you can call them whatever I'm not really interested in terminology but there's still word of mouth recruitment going on certainly in one of the apprenticeships that seems to happen a fair bit that is going to be discriminatory against people who are not in the system already there's all the thing about interns and work placements is about who you know so if you already got family in professions you're going to get an internship much more easily than a lot of black people who don't have those families in professional jobs I could go on and on about these things and the issues are very clear we know what the issues are and they're not difficult to tackle really let's sell open recruitment for interns let's not pick staffs children to do the internships for example do you like to come in on this as well in supplementary because it relates back to the question that we asked when some of the public bodies were in what I asked them about what institutional racism was and how they thought it related in their organisation I remember we got silence from them because no one wanted to use that term about the public sector and there was a real nervousness about it and they weren't much more interested in talking about unconscious bias so there's quite a big disconnect here and I think you've given really important evidence today I suppose what just to get something further I'd like to know what is the trend here do you feel that unconscious bias is limiting your ability to overcome the real barriers as you see them that exist or is it all part of a spectrum that any effort to move things along is welcome I also say we've got another two sets of questions that we've got to get in and we want to finish for 10, 40 so could I ask for you to keep your question answers we can go a bit longer yet and keep your answers short but it's fantastic evidence that we're getting today so keep that coming as well Jatin I looked at some of the unconscious bias training courses that there are some online and actually it's no different to what I was teaching in the 80s do not prejudge people treat everybody equally etc etc there's nothing miraculous about unconscious bias training just do not do not be unfair is really what it is for me as I said earlier it's really a delay in tactic it means we can spend money and spend another three years training staff on unconscious bias and then we look at what the issues are it's a three or five year delay couple of points I am very worried about the increasing use of this term on conscious bias and I just think it's another way of covering up an issue and I think my concern is that with a lot of public bodies when you talk to them about what they're doing in terms of their workforce they will point to multicultural days they will point to the fact that you can have a culturally appropriate meal in the staff canteen as if that absolves them of any responsibility about far more pressing issues I also think that there's BME people when they are employed there's a tendency to see them in terms of working with other BME communities and so-called hard to reach groups and I think what employers are failing to see is that just as employees they bring the added value of being able to work with BME communities but actually they can work with the whole community and I think it's about turning that on its head and saying that there are additional skills and talents that having a diverse workforce brings to you rather than saying oh we need to have a BME employee to work with BME groups Rami, do you want to come in? Somehow similar setting are just discussing the role of public body similar to the NHS and I came across similar statement about like the NHS services are what do you call it institutionally discriminating and all this there is no doubt there is a slight hint of individualistic cases in this setting but it is unfair on our public body to generalize this and to slag institution racism as the way I've been hearing about it I was scared even to go outside and find myself in the middle of South Africa in the 1970s. It's not that there are issues but the idea is how we initiate co-operative partnership with these public bodies to address issues within rather than classify everything that comes across under institutional that's a big statement that's a big series and it's in the eyes of the law should be answerable so we shouldn't play so much on that but rather identify individualistic cases where we can work with those public bodies to tackle them in a positive way rather than just keep classifying institutional racism institutionally it's not fair that's not my view by the way view from our members across Scotland on the ground as one. I take your point to some extent Rami and I think public sector are very scared feel like it is a huge word and you know the media in terms of institutional racism but our role and I think is the representative sitting around here we're not here to point fingers and say oh look at you and then you know it's not school playground what we're here for is to work with these organisations to tackle that issue and we want to do it as a critical friend and work with them but we need to be supported to do that we also need the EHRC to come in and be supported to provide the right kind of support and guidelines for them to implement that change this isn't just about pointing the finger and walking away it's about saying that we are frustrated by the lack of progress within those organisations but at the same time we want the opportunity to work with them to do something about it thank you Annabelle are you okay we can move on now I found that immensely helpful thank you very much indeed thank you join Finlay morning panel come this stage of proceedings most of the questions that we have prepared are answered I'm going just for the record touch on the specific duties under the Equalities Act and just the very straightforward question simple replies would be good thanks do you think the public sector equality duty has been adhered to and do you think the equality and human rights commission is doing enough to ensure that it's been adhered to and that employers are taking steps to overcome barriers on employment for ethnic minorities I know Naira you touched on that just with it laterly there I think they're being adhered to to an extent I think in some cases where there are efforts to do work but they're not going far enough and I think that we kind of alluded to the point that where we're seeing people in minority ethnic community members applying for posts they're getting the interviews they've made the essential criteria but they're not being appointed and that once they get through that appointment stage we have no information or data to understand why that is we have no information or data to understand where people are in employment where they sit within that organisation are they at the first grade level are they in senior management where are they so I think they're partially being met I think there needs to be more more needs to happen for them to be fully met I think that EHRC can play a role and they have played a role but I think they need more powers to do to really go in and enforce some of the changes that need to be made sorry, I'm losing my words now they need to be able to enforce the changes that are required because I think there is a level of complacency which I think my colleague mentioned that if we've done a little bit and it's okay then that's enough because nobody's going to come knocking on our door and check EHRC have just done a review of the April 2015 publications on employment data from public bodies under the PSED and just by one example in relation to staff recruitment only 64% of the public bodies mentioned reporting on race so they're not adhering to what the duties say and these duties are not new public bodies have had the duties since 2002 to do staff monitoring and reporting so 13 years on if we're still only at two thirds and this is just publication the other thing in terms of PSED there is a duty on public bodies to use the data and that's the crucial bit as we said earlier it's not just about collecting and I've seen very few examples of any public body that says how it will use the data it has collected that really is about looking at the imbalances and what is our action plan so I would actually want the government to go back and reword those duties to make public bodies have an action plan rather than just use the data I know there are sort of differing opinions and degrees around data collection but I do think it is really really important and at the moment we have significant data gaps and we really do need to focus energy on addressing those gaps so we have that evidence base both as a baseline and a measure against progress and I would also agree with my two colleagues that she really is about what people do with that data and there needs to be support given to public bodies to use it effectively again I think I reiterated earlier there is no doubt I agree with my colleagues that the public security they are not being adhered to and they are not being taken seriously maybe this is why we are sitting and discussing under representation and employment force within the public body setting the EHRC they have always been keen to engage even us in reporting on certain public bodies but they can't just jump to investigate something out of the blue they need some data beforehand and we feel that the EHRC have been overstretched and with the cotton resources and all this is not fair on them but we do value their role in monitoring the public authorities ok thank you just one from that but the EHRC have been working with the public body for those things and unfortunately they are not keen on doing any enforcement action in my opinion so they publishes reports and they sort of work with bodies I think if they took some enforcement action it would get changed overnight ok thank you thank you convener I think we have largely covered that area I wonder if I could address a specific point to chat and please just by asking about ways ahead so if you wouldn't comment in these terms please but I noted in what you said that you're keen that we don't replicate previous recommendations rather and I hope this is the right quote that I've noted here examine why previous efforts have failed so with regard to how we're conducting this and it's a stress that the future is something that the convener will conclude with are we going about this the right way people have said that please be assured we appreciate you being blunt and like you we have significant frustrations about this so are we going about it right it's a risk of being really blunt please you certainly won't defend me I think having heard the evidence given by public bodies at the last session and previously there is this culture of complacency if I want for a better word there's no real urgency to take action from public bodies that I can see and the answers on how the public sector equality duties have been or not been implemented as part of that so the problem is just a general frustration we've been here before there's been numerous recommendations on race and employment I was involved in the race equality advisory forum in the old Scotch Executive in 2001 and a whole chapter on race and employment we've had the strategic labour market group that Scottish Government set up back in 2005 that had intense meetings and came up with an action plan and had a bold step off eliminating the ethnic penalty by 2013 but as far as I know nothing really happened so the issue is if you make recommendations how will we get anybody to implement them so A yes there will have to be recommendations so we can actually measure whether they've achieved anything or not in due course but who's going to measure who's going to monitor so at the very least you should commit to coming I know you can't commit future committees but in five years time you should look at your recommendations and see whether anybody actually did pay the bloody attention to them okay thank you very much thank you Camilla anybody else want to briefly comment or move on okay Joe thanks convener maybe just going I suppose there's a couple of questions that I wanted to ask that really around positive action maybe beyond the public sector equality duty and I know that now around your submission you talked about your positive action sometimes getting mixed up with good practice and I think that's partly maybe what Suzanne was alluding to as well with the example that she used so we'll come on to that and ask you what you think in terms of positive action being distinct from the duty or good practice what are the limits at the moment on people using positive action and if it's helpful to go to then take that to and what can we do to change it just a response to that I think positive action has a role but I think it's kind of limited in what it can do I don't think it should be used in every situation or every organisation or public sector should have that because for me the bigger picture is how do we actually make changes where we don't require positive action it's a short term measure we've talked previously my colleague mentioned the positive action training but I would be really interested to understand what impact has that had in the long term are we training graduates to sit in front line posts are we training graduates to actually become managers where have they gone as a result of a positive action measure I don't actually know of many organisations that have taken up this route and I think there is a concern about how that would be viewed within the wider workforce because today even today with all the terminology in the world positive action is still referred to as positive discrimination if they haven't got a clear understanding of the equality legislation of race equality within an organisation then they will not understand how this positive action programme would fit within their organisation I think there is a real kind of energy now to try and not just look at mainstreaming but also look at what other measures that we can do to combat the inequalities so I would take positive action to make a long-term impact in terms of mainstreaming equalities I think the theme of positive action has been going on for a long time and BEMIS we have been very proactive in deploying this scheme in Scotland and in advancing things forward however if I can make a comment explanation symbolically about the difference between positive action and positive discrimination because there is lots of confusion among stakeholders and the communities regarding this the way I always explain it is if we have a racing line where people are expected to run for a race we can't expect ethnic minorities to be given half a mile ahead of everybody else that's positive discrimination and will be rejected by the minorities, anybody is unethical, illegal and not tolerated in the UK and by the minorities however equally is not feasible to allow ethnic minorities to start half a mile behind the line that is where we have to start working on those minorities through advice on their fitness, on their dietary thing to enable them to be on the same line and whoever wins the race after that that's symbolically, when we deal with stakeholders they are still scared of the whole concept of positive action and they do think it's a preferential treatment for minorities which is not, positive action again is understood by certain public bodies on the basis is for example if there is a cultural event for the minority they go and have a stall there I think that's it, it's more should be more focused than this setting some of the positive action scheme for example the government introduced the internship for the graduate internship program that was initially was supposed to be for ethnic minority was supposed to be meant as a positive action scheme but it was against the law because it involves employment payments so we have to advise the government say no this is against the law it can't go as a positive action scheme so it's been referred within a wider equality setting that worked very well where both Senvo and Bemis managed to get lots of graduate to progress into employment in the field however that was temporary and it was cut off or another third organisation which is SCVO to run things for us while those graduate would have trusted us and Senvo to enable them and empower them to have the confidence to progress in this setting but the concept of positive action is valid, is feasible, academic institution love it to work with us on it and it should sustain an interest in any strategy in the future but positive discrimination I think I'm speaking on behalf of Bemis and our members no way we will tolerate it because it's insulting for the minorities Last comment I can't let it stand we're on other issues on gender certainly we've gone to the line where we allow positive discrimination in political parties and we're now looking at 50-50 on boards which will be some measure of positive discrimination we don't like levelling the playing field as a short term measure so positive discrimination if that's what it takes that's what we need and no that's not under our control it as a legislation but on positive action unfortunately most of the initiatives are about addressing what Senvo and we have called the deficit model something wrong with black people before they apply we need to do something to equip them now certainly for some people that's true but for the vast majority as Nigel said very early on black minority people especially young people are better qualified than their white counterparts etc etc so something else is going on when it could have been used when the police were recruiting 1,000 extra police officers a few years back what did they do? They had a golden opportunity there to get 100 extra black police officers if they wanted to I'm not sure they did anything specifically in that recruitment round and that would have been a golden opportunity when you've got such a big recruitment exercise going on to do something and we know all about the underrepresentation of the police can John Mason come in? It seems to me that to take your track analogy yes we can get people as fit as they can and healthy and all the rest of it but if part of the track is harder to run on and it appears that the part of the track given to black and ethnic minority folk is harder to run on then surely they do need an advantage because they're going to have to put in more effort to get to the end of the line How will idea of positive action it doesn't apply only for ethnic minority it applies for example for single mothers so the idea is to overcome disadvantages that historically you've been placed and to enable you to be like anybody else in terms of competing try to say this for example to John or Jason from Drumchapel when you say we want positive discrimination for example that would create tension and would create a lot of inequality in the setting of But how would you answer the point that it's been done for women because that was the only way we could get women into the cabinet it was to say it's 50% shouldn't we be doing the same? 50% is no 50% suppose and with all respect to all the cabinet is the idea just to get people because of their ethnicity like for example am I allowed to be given a job even if I'm an idiot I don't fulfil that job just because I'm an ethnic minority is that the way forward in terms of positive discrimination in terms of empowering women to fit on boards and others through good practice through encouragement, through identifying skills actually on our board this has been well before any initiative was brought in by the government we were in 6040 even but the idea is we are against granting what you call it advantages just because of your ethnicity because even most not only me most of minority people have pride and have dignity and they want to achieve things through their own abilities and as I said like socio-economic things poverty all this doesn't affect only ethnic minorities especially employment but I'm sharing this based on our experience talking to people as I said if I go back to the question of Joan from Drunthchapil or Postal Park to know that ethnic minority can be given advantage by getting employment because of their ethnicity but for them on their socio-economic no it's not right ethically it's not right even sorry I'm really hesitating not to respond with my own view to that I suppose what we're trying to deal with is our structural inequalities you would not accept that you would require structural interventions to deal with that and you can always find examples of individuals and think why are they in that job but that's the case at the moment and that's not those instances are not reflective of a structural inequality where you've got such a significant disconnect between the representation of group of people in society and representation in management positions or in government or the public sector or employment more generally or whatever I think if you go back to this context if you reflect the story and I'm speaking as an ethnic minority and I'm proud of my citizenship and ethnicity but when you get various ethnic minority groups stating for example that I'm not dark enough to be serving in an ethnic minority organisation that gives you a reflection of where the ethnicity classification stage has reached or if we stand to empower the minorities to let them progress themselves in this society with pride and dignity while supporting them to build their skills this to progress on that is something should be viewed as negative no the way forward is to work with our minority communities with stakeholders build bridges between them and empower them to progress otherwise we'll end up for the next two years talking about disadvantaged minorities, poor souls creating a culture of dependency we want to create a culture of citizenship and power moving forward this the stage of removing barriers as Mr Mason said yes he's right why should there be different rules for different people that's the idea where we talk about race equality setting beyond the symbolic meaning of positive action but for us it's about empowerment, removing existing barriers in a positive way it doesn't have to be always by attacking and undermining we have to create structures for our communities to start believing in their abilities to function as equal citizens in Scotland As an ethnic minority and a woman I'm very happy about the 50-50 rule but I just want to say that the whole point of positive action and the reason that it exists is because it's suggesting that inequalities that already exist is not the positive action it's creating those inequalities so I just wanted to make that point Susanne Brithlaw I think positive action does have a place but when you look at it in the wider context so for example going back to BME younger people who have higher levels of educational attainment when they leave school but are not reflected in the job market positive action isn't necessarily going to address that issue when you have such a disparity in terms of people applying and being appointed within public centre to bodies they meet the essential criteria they're getting shortlisted they're not getting appointed positive action isn't necessarily going to address that issue so I think whilst it has a place there are much more embedded, entrenched structural issues that we need to examine and I think it's time to have an honest and difficult conversation I think we have to be brave okay then I suppose there is some agreement just sticking to the positive action and the positive discrimination is separate but there was quite a broad agreement that there is a place for it but there probably isn't really an awareness about what would fit into that category and how well it's used is there anything that can be done to champion an explanation of what is a positive action as opposed to a debate about positive discrimination is there anyone who's charged with that rolling that out across different kinds of bodies and sharing that learning we need very brief answers now because we are seriously running out of time Suzanne do you want to answer? I'm thinking I'll give you time sorry, in terms of positive action we have a partnership arrangement with the Scottish FA to improve participation of minorities in football sport they play anyway it's just to progress them within the becoming football coaches and referees and within mainstream football clubs an outcome of that setting is to facilitate participation of minority women which at the beginning we thought it would be a very hard issue to engage however we have developed more than 60, 65 ethnic minority female coaches now this has been allowed by enabling participation setting in a female only facilities and settings where now they are more confident to go and extend or cascade this training to their local communities I'll answer Drew's question directly I don't know of any systematic interventions or training or advice on positive action maybe instead of spending all this money on unconscious bias training public sector could do something about equipping their staff about positive action I'll go a little bit further maybe in terms of what we spoke earlier about the public sector equality duty there's a duty to use the employee information let's put in a duty for all public sector bodies to report on what positive action measures they have taken so they can be very explicit and they can tell us what they're doing Naira, do you want to comment? I agree with what Jatton is saying in terms of there are already guidelines there are already the EHRC have produced papers to say what positive action means so that people can apply that there is not a direct requirement for them to do it they're encouraged to do it to use positive action but I think that if the public bodies have reported that they are making headway then come and tell us about what they're doing okay, thank you okay, thanks Drew thank you very much the committee is hoping to take evidence from the cabinet secretary for social justice communities and pensioners' rights without evidence, Galen it would be quite useful if you could tell us what issues you suggest we actually raise with them if you want to give us some just now or do you want to take time to think about it and send us sitting writing, Suzanne yes a lot of the discussion today has focused on BME youth unemployment and I think that that is a hugely important issue but there are other people in the BME workforce and I'm thinking of people in their middle years and I'm not going to put a number on that because that's apparently fluid but actually there are quite a significant cohort within BME communities in their middle years who have worked for a long time in very hard occupations and when we look at the census we're talking about retail wholesale, hospitality, service industries and I think that they're at an age now when life circumstances are going to be increasingly impacting on them so for example, poorer health perhaps caring responsibilities and the general downturn in the economy and I would not like that cohort to be ignored within the debate research that we carried out for one of the legacy commissions with this particular age group they came back with saying that if they were ill, if they were caring for somebody, if there were family issues they would hide it for their employer because they were afraid of losing their job and then being able to get back into the employment market and particularly when the employment market in terms of skills is moving on quickly again there is perhaps an issue to look at skills developing skills in terms of this age cohort thank you we will write to you to give you stuff to ask the cabinet secretary but obviously in terms of the Scottish Government itself they have a 20% non-disclosure of their workforce so you could ask him what the plans are about that and then as we just said about previous recommendations the Scottish Government set up this strategic labour market group on race employment 10 years ago what happened to that and that might help you to make sure you don't repeat the same recommendations or at least do something slightly differently I think I would like to point out about the regulation bodies and look at what are they doing in terms of looking at the equalities work that are required of public sector organisations I think there needs to be a little bit more looking at themselves as a regulatory body and how comfortable they are around asking some of the equality questions and looking at intersectionality as well thank you I think an area which we're interested in is to ensure that the Government or the cabinet secretary is aware of the role of the third sector in progressing and assisting the Government in fulfilling its policies or strategy so whatever happens in relation to employment we don't want to see it as if it's the responsibility of the Government only what is the responsibility of groups like us in terms of accountability and responsibility for the Scottish Government thank you very much John, very, very briefly the gentleman mentions a task force as one of the suggestions what would a task force do that no present body is doing it would do all this work that we say look at previous recommendations examine why they didn't work examine what really needs to work go and drill down with these authorities to find out are they actively looking at why they are in balance between it would be a sort of medium term monitoring body that would make sure recommendations get implemented is that part because ECHR is not doing their job partly John Finnie, very briefly no my question wasn't exactly the same very briefly answer again picking up on that question I think perhaps one of the issues that the proposed task force could look at were also other mechanisms so for example in terms of economic development grant aid whether we could look at having a social responsibility clause within that thank you Naira, very, very briefly a task force would be able to drill down to some of the key issues around where are people going where they don't have access to the employment pathways for example one of the areas of work that we are doing is supporting ethnic minority community to set up social enterprises which is great in itself but the root into social enterprise is because there is no other root into other forms of employment so I think there needs to be a little bit more done to understand where the labour market is and what the alternatives are thank you Rami, very briefly talk quickly if possible Rami please I think the whole concept the task force could carry the risk of becoming another group that keeps on meeting and discussing the same things over and over again so unless we know what authority would such task force have or what's role would the Government authorise for this it will turn up into another debating or tokenistic session that, thank you very much this has been an excellent evidence session this morning thank you all very, very much for coming forth and giving us this information some of the main points we've actually heard is things like collecting data making sure developments are issue led linking to stakeholders a rejection of the use of the term unconscious bias institutional discrimination and the role of the HRC if there's anything else you want to actually submit you've not had the opportunity to actually say in this very tight session please actually send us some written information thank you all very much for coming along we've really enjoyed it this morning and that actually concludes the public part of today's meeting we will hear informally from businesses on 29 October and I'll now spend the meeting for the committee to move into private session and thank you all very much again