 Welcome to the 26th meeting of session 6 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, with no apologies for today's meeting. The first item on our agenda is to take evidence from stakeholders as part of our pre-budget scrutiny, and I refer members to papers 2 and 3. I welcome to the meeting Susan McKellar, manager of the Scottish Women's Convention, Claire Gallacher, human rights officer at the Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector Organisations Scotland, Julian Matthew, senior manager, performance audit and best value at Audit Scotland, Sarah Cowan, co-ordinator for the Scottish Women's Budget Group, Alan Foulds, policy and information officer, health and social care alliance Scotland, known as the Alliance, and joining us online in a brown human rights programme lead at the Scottish Commission for People with Learning Disabilities, and Callum Tromscue, national director, chartered Institute of Housing Scotland, who is also joining us virtually. You are all very welcome. We will start by inviting witnesses to make short opening statements in turn. There are a lot of witnesses today, so if we could keep the statements reasonably brief please, and if we could start with Susan McKellar please. I am Susan McKellar, manager of the Scottish Women's Convention. We take the views of women throughout Scotland and put their views into policy and legislation. Hi, thank you very much for inviting me here today. My name is Claire Gallacher. I am the human rights officer at the Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector Organisations, otherwise known as SEMVO Scotland. SEMVO Scotland is a national intermediary organisation and a strategic partner of the Scottish Government's Directorate of Equality, Inclusion and Human Rights. We aim to develop the capacity and sustainability of the ethnic minority sector and its communities. With a network of over 600 organisations, we gather intelligence on issues affecting communities and use that to inform policy and practice. Within SEMVO Scotland, we offer an array of different programmes ranging from employment to financial capability. One of our core programmes is the Race for Human Rights programme, which I work on. The aim of the programme is to embed equality and human rights into the strategic planning and day-to-day functions of public bodies and third sector organisations. We do that by adopting a human rights-based approach. We offer consultancy support, policy reviews, training and workshops in learning webinars. Gillian Matthew from Audit Scotland and Senior Manager in our performance audit and best value group. We audit over 220 public bodies across all sectors to ensure that public money is spent effectively and efficiently and to support improvement. We are independent from all the bodies that we audit, including the Scottish Government, which is really important. Within performance audit and best value group, we do value of national audits, value for money, looking at use of resources, service performance and sustainability. The joint response that we gave to the committee was the joint response from Audit Scotland, the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission, which we work on behalf of. That is all that I will say as a short intro, thank you. Sarah Cowan Hi, I am Sarah Cowan, the co-ordinator of the Scottish Women's Budget Group. We advocate for gender equality through gender budgeting to recognise the different economic realities of women and men. Taking a gender analysis approach to budgets helps to improve understanding of how decisions affect women and men differently because of their different experiences in family and household structures, in paid employment and unpaid work, in caring and providing support to others. We provide training on gender budgeting and do advocacy and research. Alan Falls Good morning. I am Alan Falls, a policy and information officer at the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland. The Alliance is the national third sector intermediary for a range of health and social care organisations, a membership of over 3,000 that also includes, in addition, to third sector organisations, large and small, private sector, statutory sector and a range of individuals with lived experience. We have a vision for a Scotland where everybody, and in particular to save people, people living with long-term conditions and unpaid carers, are able to realise their right to live well, are able to have services that put them at the centre that support them to live their lives to the best extent possible. As part of that, we do not just look at health and social care but also related areas such as social security. We have taken a look at climate change, 20-minute neighbourhoods, gambling harms and, of course, all of that is underpinned by human rights. The Alliance has been a long-standing advocate for adopting a human rights budgeting approach within Scotland's budget processes. Hi there. Thank you, committee members, for having me here today. My name is Una Brown. I am human rights programme leader at the Scottish Commission for People with Learning Disabilities. The Scottish Commission for People with Learning Disabilities' vision is for a fairer Scotland where people with learning disabilities live full, safe, loving and equal lives. We are a human rights defender working to uphold, protect and raise awareness of the human rights issues facing people with learning disabilities in Scotland. I welcome the opportunity to give evidence today and, in particular, I would be keen to highlight the need for improved disability disaggregated data to ensure that people with learning disabilities are visible in legislation, policy and decision making. They need to ensure meaningful participation in budget processes, how we can ensure that support for people with learning disabilities supports both their needs and their aspirations, ensuring that resource allocation supports the development of a new human rights bill for Scotland and the need for partnership working to support all of that to happen. Central to that is ensuring that we listen to the words of people with learning disabilities who are across Scotland, like Fiona Dawson, who is a human rights defender from the South Ayrshire, who said in her blog for the British Institute of Human Rights, that we need to use human rights to stand up for ourselves and make certain that we are heard. We cannot let people with learning disabilities be forgotten about. Thank you again for inviting SCLD to participate and I look forward to hearing the other panelist's contributions. Thank you. Thank you and online again to Calum Humswick. I am Humswick, so I am the national director of the Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland. We are the professional body for those working in the housing sector. We are two and a half thousand members in Scotland, most of them work in the renting sector, most of them work in the social housing sector. I am here to represent their views and talk about the work that we have done on promoting human rights. Brian, thank you very much. I thank everyone for your written contributions to our call for evidence, which obviously anyone can access via the Scottish Parliament's website. I will now open up for a bit of a discussion. The aim is not to have a formal question and answer type session, but it is more of a wider discussion. I wonder if I can start with Maggie Chapman to kick that off. Thank you very much, Joe. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I want to start the conversation around questions of process and how we define and describe the process of human rights thinking in our budget decisions. Una, you talked about, in your opening statements, centring people with lived experiences and centring them in this process is really, really important. I suppose that one of the challenges that we have around access and around the time that budgeting processes take is that inclusion, that participation, which is a key cornerstone of realising rights, seems impossible sometimes. If I can start Una with you, what would a transparent and inclusive accessible process look like for you and the people you work with in support? Thank you. That is a question that is really helpful and that I am happy to answer. For us, in our consultation response, we discussed it as what we can determine meaningful participation in the budget process. For SCLD, what that looks like is about accessibility, inclusion, accountability and change. At times, we are guilty of asking people with learning disabilities what they think or tell us about their lived experience, but we do not always implement what they say. At times, we can clearly see evidence in current conversations that we are having in Scotland about the Scottish mental health law review versus the review of learning disability and autism in the mental health act. meaningful participation needs to mean that people with learning disabilities are involved in those processes at all levels. That might mean that people with learning disabilities are being invited to take part in committee meetings. In SCLD, we are pleased to see people for Scotland invited today. A helpful model of participation for the committee to consider is Professor Laura Lundy's model of child participation, which, I believe, could be developed on. That centres around both the need for voices to be heard and taking account of. Part of participation is also ensuring that organisations that can support capacity building among people with learning disabilities to act as leaders in that area are resourced. Examples of existing work might include together Scotland's work on the Rights Right Now project and its on-going work on rights detectives. We have SCLD, our future leaders programme, which has a particular module in it that might be of interest to the committee that focuses on managing charity finances. Similar approaches could be taken there. We also have our human rights bill, the lived experience board and other positive examples being the human rights consortium. That is not the only example that is happening across Scotland, but it is certainly a number of examples that we are aware of. It is also about accountability. People with learning disabilities need a way to ensure that their human rights are being realised in practice. That is where the potential role for a learning disability autism in your diversity bill in commission or commissioner is needed to defend people with learning disabilities rights. I think that finally the most important thing about achieving positive change that will lead to the realisation of rights is that it cannot be participation for participation's sake. We need to ask people impacted by these decisions to hard questions so that they can help to build solutions. On your point about transparency, I think that documents like the resource spending review are not accessible. Therefore, it makes it quite challenging for them to be transparent to the people's impact and the time and resource that is needed to be given to that. I take your point regarding time, but it is time well spent. It is about calling on those third sector partners, for example, people first and others, who are working with people with learning disabilities to support people with learning disabilities, to have a say in those decisions and about creating processes that are more inclusive. I think that sometimes we can overcomplicate what inclusivity means. We are actually being open, transparent, warm and goes a long way. Thank you. Thanks very much. That is really helpful. I am pointing out some of the strategies and documents that you have, both in your written statement and just now, are useful for us. Along similar lines, Claire, if I could come to you from your work in Senvo, we have heard how inaccessible the resource spending review documentation and process has been and can be. There are obviously things that we need to learn from that. What is your assessment about how we learn from looking backwards and how we purely look forward approach? That kind of revisionist versus what we have does not work. Let us create something new. I suppose that what I am asking is how we get the best of both. I think that a lot of what I have said resonates with how we look back and how it is not just about looking back. We can all look back, but it is about taking what we learn and implementing that and making changes from that. I think that the way to do that is through adopting a human rights-based approach. For us at Senvo Scotland, we advocate using the panel principles of participation, accountability, non-discrimination, equality and legality. Those principles can be used for policy, development, service provision and decision making processes. They are a tool that is there to be adapted to whatever you need to do. The key point of the panel principles is that they allow you to address barriers. When we look backwards and look at what we have done before, we can see that we are struggling to engage with low-represented groups and marginalised groups. It is hard to reach groups however we want to word them, but we are consistently not getting those voices heard at the table. A human rights-based approach allows you to focus on those low-represented groups. When you reach and design a process that is from the furthest away person that you might try to reach, you inevitably include other people along the way. There are also barriers that specific protected characteristic groups do face when participating. There is research, there are lots of papers being published about those barriers, but we have identified a couple of focused ones on the barriers that ethnic minorities face. I think that to look forwards and how to change that is that we have to address those barriers. Yes, we acknowledge them to start off with, but what do I need to do to implement to change that? For example, for participation, there is a lack in the ethnic minority communities through our work. We have identified that there is a lack of trust within public bodies. That might be a result of institutional racism. There are also negative experiences in the past. There is also a really big fear of how my information will be used and can it be used against me. You have to ensure and empower people to know that that is not what we are collecting your information for. That is what we want to hope for the change. The other barrier is apathy. There is a lot of conversation going on about consultation apathy, especially in the third sector. I think that when we are talking about apathy, it is about the apathy of nothing has changed. I give you my opinion, my experience and my valuable time, and nothing has changed. I think that, looking forward, you have to learn from your mistakes, but we have done a lot of learning and given a lot of evidence. Let us make changes in using a human rights-based approach that can address all protected characteristics, but the important part is that it captures intersectionality because it focuses on the human being. Thank you very much for that, Clare. Do you want to come in on that, too? I think that we both start with the outcomes that we want to achieve. If we can set out the human rights outcomes and the standards that we have, we will inform the decision-making. I recognise that that can be a lengthy process, but it has to be a lengthy process. It should be a continual process talking about legislation to incorporate human rights. We need to do a lot of work to identify what a minimum core is just to get it started, and then we look towards progressive realisation. I think that that is an on-going process for the entire country, for all those stakeholders, for service users, for people with lived experience and services. It is an engaged process, and it is a constant flux. We are constantly considering how we meet that minimum core and how we go beyond it. I look at the social housing sector, which I am most familiar with. The social landlords continually engage with tenants every year of statutory responsibility to engage with tenants around rent. The tenants do not always opt to choose the lowest rent. Tenants and landlords have an engaged process, but there is a conversation understanding about what can be invested and what are the opportunity costs and benefits from the rent rises or flat rent rates. That is a partnership. Tenants do not have a veto. I do not want to suggest that. There is a partnership there, and I think that that develops a good outcome. We see from the results from the Scottish Housing Regulatory that tenants feel genuinely involved in the decision-making process from the landlords. They build time and they build the capacity. When you have that skills and experience and you commit to this part of your process, you can. I do agree that trying to look at the totality of the Scottish budget over a couple of months is beyond us. Until we set the standards and outcomes that we want to achieve in the outset, I think that we are always going to fall short. Thank you for having me. That is helpful. I could go on, but I will let up the screen first. Just to say to all the witnesses that, obviously, the committee members will be directing questions at particular people, but if you feel you have something to add to that, then just to indicate, either as Callum did in the chat box of your online, and otherwise I will keep looking around, so just indicate to me if you can. I will move on now to Pam Gosall. Thank you, chair, and good morning everybody. Thank you for coming along. I just want to follow on from what Claire Youve just answered there for Maggie in relation to marginalising groups. I've sat on many round tables with many beam communities and spoke to them about whether it's to do with any policies, decision making, that they always feel that they're not included. Now, you did mention earlier on, if you think it was 600 groups that you go out to and you're talking to, somehow information is not reaching out to those people right on the ground. I understand what you've said that there is a trust element. Absolutely, I come from one of those communities. It's about why do you want to use our information? If you're going to use it, is something going to change? That is, yes, I'm fully aware, that is something that they are all questioning. Do you think that maybe we should be looking at changing our tactics a little bit in relation to, rather than just using those groups that we move out to more wider community groups and maybe in more religious settings that looking at, because that's where a lot of belief is. For example, I can tell you that I come from, you know, my family come from, you know, the Sikh background and if you went into the Gurdwara and you spoke about something, or even if you spoke about, you know, you had a group there downstairs, not where actually the main congregation is, but comes down and you spoke about this information or you gave some kind of workshops out because every single religious place has schools, whether it's to do with a mosque or Gurdwara or Jewish or anything, they have basically schools. Do you think there's an element there that we can maybe look at or have you looked at that to give more information to those people so that they can actually be more involved in decision making? Yeah, I think a change is needed because we're not capturing those voices that need to be heard. I think we'd always ask for a strategic approach to this, so starting at the beginning, not at the end, so starting, let's think about the lowest represented group or the groups that I'm not hearing for and we know that and we know who those people are. If you plan, say for example, an engagement event, focusing on that target audience, there's certain things by using the panel principles that will facilitate you getting there on the way to being meaningfully participative. So for example, for me, meaningful participation, it means about, it's not I've given you the information, now it's your job to come to me and tell me what you think. If you're going to break down the barriers that I talked about before and that you recognised as well, it's that you have to go into communities and you have to go into places that's not come to me and I'll tell you. Go into communities, have the information available in accessible documents but also having different languages available. We live in a really diverse Scotland just now and most things are still printed off in English and then we have easy read English, so I think it's about going into communities, going into religious settings are a really good example. We've done a lot of work with the vaccine inclusion research team where we have went into mosques to promote and share flyers about vaccines and it's about talking to religious leaders as well because that's where your trust is and it's about getting them on board as well to share your message. Not about, as you said, going into the main congregation as such in that hall but these are places that have schools where children are in and I think it's a underutilised avenue to engage with people. We've also just ran six engagement events around the hate crime strategy and that was about going into mosques, going into community centres from Inverness to Falkirk and the information is all there. Once you go in and people see your face you tell them why you're here, why you're there, you empower them to know the importance of their decision, you tell them that when we have finished analysing all your information I'm going to come back to you and tell you what outcome this is mean whether it being a policy change or a direct impact and it's just about sharing that feedback loop and then they're more encouraged to participate in future things as well. No, thank you Claire and I think what you've just touched on there that's very important is going back to them to say that their information you know was valuable and I think that's when they'll feel to get open up again so yeah certainly I welcome the fact that you're saying a lot of change is needed in vaccine shoulders because I know I've seen it in Gordwara's mosques and it was brilliant how we rolled that out and looked at that but I think we should certainly learn from something like that. I just want to add a point around the accessibility of information and as was mentioned earlier documents like the resource spending review being so dense and difficult to make sense of but also each year the annual budget if you look at it it'll be hard it's hard for people to think what differences is making to my everyday life when in fact is making loads of difference to their everyday life so a starting another kind of early point in participation is making the information a lot more accessible and we'd recommend the publication of a citizens budget each year as a way of bringing the information in the budget to explain what it's meaning for people's lives and also to start people feeling a connection to the budget process itself as well so that it isn't just this distant thing that's discussed and there's massive documents about it because only very highly engaged people are going to choose to engage in those kind of documents. That was just heard, sorry, earlier on. Yeah, clear, that was real valid, plain English. Yeah, just before we go to Alan who's wanting to come in there, what would a citizens budget look like and is there any examples of that being used anywhere, no not necessarily the national government but any other? I want to have the examples that we're going to need to come back to after this of where a good example is but it would be breaking down information and say portfolio areas and looking at what that means at a more kind of individual household or community level so that you can see that there's a decision for him out of many millions going in education, well what does that mean for the number of school places and the number of the access at community level and what does that mean for what my household should be able to access as well as what individuals should be able to access so and it would also as I say I'll look for some good examples but bringing some visuals to it as well and I think spice publications in recent previous budget years there's definitely a move in an effort to get the information better broken down so that it can make more sense to people but really bringing it to that kind of level. I just wanted to make quite a brief point building on what a lot of people have said about going out to communities to engage with people and about inclusive communications and that the budget is the biggest thing that the Scottish Parliament does every year is completely fundamental and if we're viewing the budget as an investment in the people of Scotland the people of Scotland should themselves be invested in the budget so I think that there isn't a much better use of resources at budget time than putting some of that resource to making sure that we're able to actually go out to those communities so making sure that people aren't just being asked about their views but actually being supported so they've got those you know inclusive communications where you'll provide in things in braille format and easy read so it can access in different communities talk to the community languages as well and also you know people are sort of getting that that resource the resources there so that they know that that what they're feeding in is able to sort of influence the results and they're seeing what the final outcome of those is. Yeah, right. Thanks. Good morning to everybody. It is still morning, isn't it? It's just been fascinating to hear how this should work and could work and the process of it. I'd really like to ask you Sarah a question and I'm really interested in how this works for women in particular and you know what type of outcomes you're looking for. I was just you know thinking there back to we still have situations where women are mostly still have the burden of care placed upon them so if we have a woman that stays at home raising children for most of our life and doesn't even reach the entitlement for a state pension for example I mean what are some of the examples that you know that we could do that things that could help those kind of situations I mean are those the type of things we're looking at that are those kind of inequalities and also if we're looking to have a health and wellbeing economy here in Scotland what does that look like actually from that you know human rights based approach a bit specifically for women. That's a quite big question. You'll have seen in our evidence that we call for the human rights based approach to budgeting but continuing to have a gender budgeting lens within that because it's really important that human rights and inequalities are working together obviously I don't need to tell the committee that but the analysis is there so as others have explained kind of taking the approach and as Callum was saying like looking at the outcomes from the start from a human rights based perspective but then throughout the approach ensuring you're bringing in the equalities analysis to look at the differences that well from our perspective particularly the differences that women and men are facing but also all the intersectional differences so women face different women face a variety of different experiences and by doing that the for us the care economy would be a huge part of as you mentioned women are much more likely to spend to be unpaid carers do a significant amount more of unpaid work in the economy and and so a human rights based approach that takes equality lenses within it would be looking at how we can invest more into the care economy so that um so that it's a choice for women um whether they're caring or not um that there's access to childcare if they want it from when maternity pay stops and so that that people have that choice of um whether they work or they care for for the children um and we would also be calling that there was the that policies um for employment meant that that care could be shared more echo to play between um women and men but that's that's beyond um the budget process um but that that those sorts of choices um that sort of investment would mean that as um as women get to retirement age there wouldn't be the greater chance of them being in poverty that there is now so women are more likely to be on poverty in retirement um because of the fact as you mentioned in the question so the investment in care is a really crucial element um and and through the human rights based approach um with the equality lens into it um we believe that that that sort of the need to invest in that sector would be um would be kind of highlighted um and um and that's where the investment could focus yeah just coming back in there I was just thinking um and so we're looking at a preventative kind of um system as well so it's not just mitigating perhaps might what might happen to women but even as early intervention as you know um young women and girls as well and coming through school and giving them opportunities and options and making them aware of that choice and perhaps there's opportunity to be invested in that you think um so certainly and um I think from our point of view if you have the information and the analysis and the participation of of women of different ages um that can all feed into the process to look at where the investment is needed and where preventative spend can go as well and I know it can sound um it can sound like a lot of different things being heaped on the budget process human rights budget and gender budget and wellbeing economy but we we believe and these kind of work together and they're not all separate processes but they can work um they can work together and bring the analysis in together so that that we can work for an economy that is achieving its its best and that there can be this kind of wellbeing caring economy through through that process it's helpful thank you and um Sarah sorry I am Susan from the Scottish Women's Convention we totally agree with what Sarah is saying with regards to the Scottish Government in attempting like to do the human rights it's really important for women especially because women are marginalized when you look at the inequalities that women face day in day out you can see that there is major impact on any fiscal decision will have a major impact on a women so when we look at it the large focus that the Scottish Government been doing has been reducing child poverty which is commendable but unless we get the the human rights with regards to budgeting right for women we're always going to have child poverty so we have to look at it in that way we have to incorporate it all I think if we look at protected characteristics if we need to look at what we like Callum had said we need to look at what we want Scotland to be human rights do we want our women to feel that they are less than the men in our country no so we need to change that we need to think about the economic policies that we're getting the budget at the moment is solely focused we would say on entrepreneurship rather than care and that has a detrimental effect for women because women do the majority of care in the social care and in health for their families and they seem to feel for go when we're speaking to women they say that a lot of money is going into staying in finance but actually the majority of work that Stumbull women is in the health and social care partnerships and Alan would probably testament that with lived experience from women from the alliance as well but women dominate these sectors which are the lowest paid which are obviously the lowest valued because when we look at our budgetary process we can see that we don't value health and care as much as what we do entrepreneurship, STEM and finance and I think that's something we have to look at going forward with regards to budgetary processes if we want to get this right we need to start building an infrastructure so that no matter how much money comes into our budget we have got a way of putting that out towards everyone in our society so that they can have their say in it but we would also recommend the gender budgeting strategy adopted alongside participatory methods to consider the lived experience of both men and women and making the current inequalities more visible so for women I've got an example of one woman and what she said she said so many people are working and the women are caring in the service sector they get low paid compared with those working in IT or STEM but so much responsibility goes into caring for someone why is that not valued another one said for me the issues that the as a total lack of economic value typically demonstrated towards the majority of female professions when I work in nurseries early years I had to sit through exams I had to go through lots of qualifications and the pay was dismal that is not at all comparative to other skilled professions which also require qualifications so we have to look at it from that point of view as well and I think the more that we go out to communities they are having these conversations if you go to a mother's and toddler group they're having conversations about how this budget is impacting their lives we are not hearing it because we don't want to hear it I think when we say seldom heard or hard to reach they're not they're there having these conversations what the problem is we seldom listen and I think that has to change if we really want to have a human rights budget and approach and get it right for people in Scotland we need to do the listening and we need to have accountability for that absolutely thank you for that I think that really resonates with the women's voices to a lot of people coming across as white noise a lot of the time and I think yeah we really need to to find out how we're going to hone in and listen to that and it's interesting because the feedback we had in a session earlier was you know this is reaches further them you know our fiscal you know policy because earlier we're talking about maybe a lack of labour so labour shortage you're also talking about the nature of the job women are more likely to do that because it is more flexible with the care that they'll be doing in their own personal lives so it's the nature of the job as well and perhaps maybe you know looking at different employment career progression that kind of thing yeah there definitely has to be more vast isn't it yeah there has to be more flexibility if you look at the maternity policies they're all geared towards women why are we not encouraging men to take up that job why are we not encouraging the same maternity benefits for men the reason is because men are in higher paid jobs if you look at agenda pay gap it means there's more of a drop in that income for that household and that's why that happens so we have to look at it in a bigger picture to understand why we have women in lower paid jobs that are taking part time work that are not fulfilling the potential to get their full pension and it's because we do not give them the social and equal opportunities that they deserve thank you i'd like to come in briefly there just to add very briefly I absolutely agree with what the previous panelists have said I think there's a real challenge we know just building capacity and skills for human rights budget and gender budgeting across Scotland I think we can almost look at some of the examples of EQIAs that we see in our public services they're done we go for a process going through an EQIA but a lot of them don't really impact some of the complexity around kind of equalities and actually address the issues if we're serious about this i think Alan touched upon it earlier we need to build capacity and skills among kind of leaders in the Scottish Government across our public services to actually work with to work with people to work with communities where people lives experience services understand how they improve I could think of an example in Fife where Fife council had an assessment and they are served at domestic abuse services and they were found to be one thing at that point they engaged in a kind of community kind of participative process they worked for two years with victims survivors of domestic abuse really assess what was wrong with what Fife was doing and actually from that they set out the kind of the outcomes and standards they want and we changed the process so it can work it just takes that time investment and skill on that so that's where that leadership okay thank you and Pam Duncan Glancy thank you and thank you for everybody's contribution so far and for what you've given us in advance as well and they were really really helpful as always responses I want to focus a bit on well first of all I have a question about the participation that we've just discussed and I guess it's based on what we've heard about some of the barriers how would you how would you how would you characterise the way in which you've been involved in the budget today and the resource spending review and specifically maybe if Susan and Alan and Luna and Claire could answer that briefly I know that's a lot of answers but but like if you could be really brief I'm just trying to get a sense of how how engaged have you guys been in the in the budget process or how open has it been to you we were involved in the economic transformation talks with the finance minister Kate Forbes and we did discuss all the issues with regards to gender budget and participatory budget and and things like that but at the end of it most of the women's organizations that were involved in that had asked if we could look at that in more depth and were told no because the budget had to be done and we just felt as if what we were saying for the people that we were advocating for wasn't fully taken forward and I appreciate that there's time restraints and stuff to get stuff done but if we really value what these people are saying to us to then say to the finance department that are dealing with the budget then we really need to look at how we are held accountable for that we are given those instructions across about what women are telling us and we came out that meeting feeling as if we weren't listening to thank you the alliance I don't think we've been involved as sort of we've been directly approached but instead we've been responding to sort of the public facing side of things so we responded to the resource spending reviews and sort of the the consultation on the the framework for that and responded to you know various consultations and calls for views on budgets and you know pre-budget scrutiny over the years and I think perhaps a point that I was going to touch on later though is that I think budget processes are relatively open if you are a third sector organization if you are a business if you're a campaigning group if you're a political party but they're not necessarily very open if you are an individual with lived experience now a lot of our organizations you know where the lines when we are representative of people with lived experience but that's it's not entirely the same thing having people who are representatives of involved in the budget process than having the people who have that lived experience themselves so it's it's perhaps a process that's been open for organizations but not but less so for individuals thank you inna we do you like to thank you um aside from as um as Alan said um submissions to some calls for views around about budgets we haven't had the the opportunity um to maybe be involved as as much as we would have we would have liked or to support people with learning disabilities to be involved but that is you know something that we would be happy to be involved in as much as possible in the future thank you thank you much like inna and alan we have not been involved directly with the budget process so far we have responded to consultations just like this one much like what alan had said before i think the budget process needs to ensure that it can incorporate and use data collected from the participation so right now it seems as if we're only gathering quantitative data because we like numbers and budgets go hand in hand but we also need to think about qualitative data because numbers don't reflect lived experience and they certainly don't capture intersectionality and i think that's integral to how we engage people in the budget process i also think we have to recognise that a budget budgets can come with a lot of jargon that everyday people don't understand and that might be that was probably during a disservice a lot of people but i certainly struggled with some of the jargon um but i think we have when you're um is kind of falls into that meaningful participation and that you have to do capacity building with if you're asking people to participate make sure they know what they're talking about don't just ask them to come into a room and say what do you think about x yn z and they don't know what x yn z is and what impact that has on their life so going out and saying this is what a budget is this is how it impacts um your life it's much like a citizens budget but it's about um but also you have to be able to support um specific communities um to do that so i think the budget process has to for people to engage in it more and for people for the what we from what seems to come from this response is that we want people's lived experience and we want this information but our process doesn't really allow us to commute it or then action it afterwards thank you and that's really helpful and the reason i was asking it is because we heard earlier on about the importance of transparency obviously we've all already discussed that i just want to try and get a feel for for where we're at so that we can understand as a committee what what what the kind of scale of the challenges in the same vein then my next question if that's all right convener is around um minimum core um rights and progressive realisation and what do we need to measure so those are big questions um we heard a lot this morning about that um and i know in in your evidence um gelling from audit scotland that there's a gap between the rights that the government encourage or say that people have or want people to have and and the reality of that um and in your evidence Susan the you say that women have been overlooked and i know that evidence from others including SLD and your letter of course to the British Institute of Human Rights in 2016 have really highlighted some of the problems we've got so what what do we need to you can look at budget lines right that like for example in social care and we can see that there's might be more money getting into that or there might be more money getting into social security but actually we heard this morning from people learning disabilities who aren't even able to choose who they live with so that like that so you could you could argue that the budget going up represents progressive realisation but the live reality kind of really doesn't even represent much for minimum core actually um i would i would say so how how could we what do we need to measure and what kind of framework could we use to help us get to a point where we can ask questions about minimum develop a minimum core and then ask sensible questions about about the budget um and i guess i'll just throw that open to anyone who feels they want to give it a go to come in sorry we'll go to jillian first to your egg shape you pointed it to jillian and then we'll go to her yeah i think um yeah again there's a lot in that but um no i think because it's not a simple area is it so it is complex and there's lots of elements to it um and i think a lot the things that have come up already um you'll play into that and i think it definitely comes back to um outcomes and being really clear at the beginning about what it is you're trying to um what outcomes you're trying to reach and how do you do that how do you get there um but then how does the how does the budget and the funding relate to that um because we often find you across um various reports that um you know potentially additional investments going in but we don't really know what we're getting for that additional money um because it isn't linked clearly to outcomes or the measures that are there are not measuring outcomes you know a lot of it's outputs rather than the outcomes so there's and around the the date you know even when there is data there's still a lot of data gaps as well and we we've put a lot in our because i think it's something that comes up in practically every Audit Scotland report is about data gaps um so there's a there's quite a lot in our written submission there around that and um you know examples across lots of different reports but you know an area that we've talked about this morning which i think is a really important area um at the moment and will be in the future obviously is social care which we recently well we did work on earlier a published report on earlier this year um and huge gaps you know compared to health data there's huge gaps within social care so it's really difficult to measure what's going on um for different groups of people um over time um there's we can't really tell what unmet need is and we know that eligibility criteria has been tightened because of tightening budgets um but it's all collected locally but there's no it's not pulled together nationally so it's really difficult to know even um you know there's some there's measures around current demand as in the services that are delivered but that's not the true demand because we can't quantify unmet need because it's not collected properly um so we don't really know that obviously there's a lot of additional investment um being promised to go into that but we don't really know well one where is that going to be targeted to you i know there's still a lot of work to be done around the national care service um but what is that actually trying to achieve um and again we've talked about preventative measures and again it's something that we've talked about quite a lot in our health and social care reports particularly is needing to move towards a more preventative approach um and it's just thinking about investing differently in different types of services um and it's having that longer term um outlook and what is that you know what's that you're trying to aim for in 10 20 years time that's more difficult obviously to measure and think about and plan but if you're looking at that then the things that you need to get to there will fall into place um but the moment we can the information isn't there to measure that thank you so Pam just so you know we've got Una, Claire and Alan all wanting to come in so thank you Una first i think thank you um so i think for SCLD um what's key to the the question you've asked is the the point that the the Scottish human rights commission made in there um their report on human rights budgeting which is that human rights budgeting should make sure that support services are acceptable to all and not one size fits all i think to do that what we need to do is to look at where people's rights are most at risk in scotland and allocate resources based on that and i would point to the work done around around around about the united nations convention on the rights of the child's incorporation scotland bill and the children's scheme where we had a children's scheme that said that we had to identify and address any situation where a child's rights are at risk or significant risk of not being fulfilled and what that then does is means that you can allocate budgets more appropriately based on those who are most at risk of not having the rights realised and who are not having that minimum core of rights realisation in scotland and then how you work towards more progressive realisation as time moves on and i think in scotland at the moment we're seeing a real struggle with that in regard to learning disability so i think it was the Fraser valander institute report on Scotland's adult social care system for people learning disabilities that said that following the financial crisis the means and ambitions set out in the Scottish Government strategy the keys to life had very little chance of actually being realised so we've seen the closing of long-stain hospitals but despite that existing systems even self-directed support at times have been found to make it hard for people with learning disabilities to access the support they need and mean well a lack of support for transitions and housing means that people with learning disabilities are kind of left out from accessing the support they need and this was all compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic and reduced levels of support. What this is leading to is the potential of a re-institutionalisation of people learning disabilities in Scotland so for example the coming home report stated that 705 people with learning disabilities were living in out of area placements 45% of those people had been there for more than 10 years 109 had not chosen their placement and were identified as priority to return and there were also 79 people placed outside of Scotland and the main reasons detailed for this by helping social care partnerships with a lack of funding, service provision and or suitable accommodation so it's about how we can actually put resource in place to address these significant issues and I would just go on to say that to do that it's really critical that we have appropriate disability disaggregated data in Scotland and this has been an issue that we have seen on going for a number of years and is despite the article 31 of the United Nations convention on the rights of the persons with disabilities that states that government should collect appropriate information including statistical and research data to enable them to formulate and implement policies to give effect to the present convention and that includes data disaggregation and this is also despite the United Nations committee on the rights of persons with disabilities addressing the issue around about a lack of statistical data in the UK in relation to data disaggregation on disability including learning disability. We've seen the negative impact that a lack of data and disaggregated data has had for example during the Covid-19 pandemic where there was an unacceptable delay in understanding how the crisis affected people with learning disabilities but the death rate between January and August 2020 was not published until February 2021 and it was based on census data captured more than 10 years ago. So what a lack of disability data disaggregated data does for people with learning disabilities in Scotland is that it makes them invisible in legislation policy and decision making and this invisibility is felt by people with learning disabilities in Scotland who often tell us they feel that they are at the bottom of the pile. The most stark examples of that include Margaret Fleming who was missing I think it was up to 18 years before anybody noticed. We need budget decisions that are truly rights respecting that are based on the evidence and data collection that is better and more looking towards what we don't know rather than just collecting what we do know and what is currently easy to get. Thank you. That's what I think is clear. It was just to pick up on really from what Una and Gillian have said. Minimum core standards are obviously a pillar in human rights law. There are international standards in relation to minimum core of housing budgets. They are available but I think what we have to do and what we've been trying to work on as a member of the leadership panel for the Scottish national action plan for human rights and it's about capacity building and what does a minimum core of for example a right to housing look like for the people in Scotland but once you have that how do the people in charge so the duty bearers and in the budget process the people make in the budget decisions how are we making sure that they are aware of what the minimum core are because at a lot of the times it's not something that's within their everyday job remit and therefore when decisions are being made they're not being made with this in mind. I strongly agree with Una about the problem with data. There is a huge issue across Scotland and specifically amongst public bodies on the collection of data and the high nondisclosure rates and even when you do have good nondisclosure rates the way that it's disaggregated is not consistent but it also doesn't it can't tell you much so we can't use it the way that we want to and to have outcomes and how do we track change and things that we have our outcomes should be depending on our benchmark of data and if our benchmark data isn't accurate which it isn't just now then how can we have how can we really make rights real for people and especially for people whose rights are most at risk. So through our work in the race for human rights programme we talk a lot about data and the disaggregation of data and I think there are lots of barriers to participating in the data process I've talked about them before about trust and apathy but as we've heard today a human rights based approach to data collection of which we've developed a guidance document on that I'm happy to share with is that you prioritise the low represented groups and you make sure there your target audience is such and I think the other part that we have to be aware of is for outcomes and how we track things is we have to underpin them with human rights specifically so we can use human rights as a golden thread to start from a from a budget point of view from generation to allocation to spending and its impact and we can trace is that your right to social security that's respect and your right to an adequate standard of living and to be able to do that you have to have a consistent approach so data collection forms we've seen over the last year or so an array of different types of data collection forms when it's relating to equality but the problem is that it doesn't set any kind of benchmark for demographic so for some local authorities we've seen data within the ethnicity bracket saying white British non-white British other so you're not asking the right questions to begin with and it's across it's not specific in one area and it's not specific to local authorities with different directorates at the Scottish Government don't have a consistent view so if you're not asking the same questions you can't capture the right picture thank you thank you and Alan the minimum core slide of things and I think the alliance made that point in our response that we would generally sort of recognise that investment in social security and health and social care is sort of representative of a commitment to human rights but there isn't necessarily the same degree of clarity that you know that it is actually making impact so I think I can't remember exactly what document it was but one of the documents did have a list where it gave policies that the budget policies that could be pursued and what specific rights those policies were sort of aiming to support so for example the right to the highest attainable standard of health rights to social security and I thought that was a useful starting point but I think what was clear in some of the responses other organisations put in is that and in the spice briefing is that minimum core perhaps hasn't yet been fully defined as Pam was saying when you were someone not being able to have the choice of who they lived with if we're talking about rights like the right to independent living which is in the UNCRPD how do you have a right to independent living if you can't even choose who you live with so I think it would be useful to have that definition for what does the minimum core specifically look like perhaps in a Scottish context and then in sort of budget processes laying out not just what rights each of the budget lines are intended to are intended to help realise but how they will do so and how they will measure that so again just sort of coming to Pam's point because I think it's useful that if we're going to say that a particular investment is to support the right to independent living then that means that people have to be able to choose who they live with that means that people have to have support to be able to live like you know normal lives and go out and you know if they want to you know do whatever they want you want pursue leisure pursue education pursue a career and so on so making sure that there are specific measures we're not just saying this will support this right but it will support this right by achieving these particular aims okay thank you and Rachel yeah so it's just to expand on the questions regarding data Claire I'm interested in what you were saying that I just wonder what existing mechanisms there are in place for non-governmental bodies and civil society to play their part in you know gathering that data and shaping policy I think there are lots of examples of what people do to gather data so I think a lot of us here from organisations we do have a lot of networks and we we try and gather that data but it's about when we're gathering it a lot of the time it's about asking we try to make sure that when we're asking for people's opinions on things people's views people's experiences is that we're valuing their time now there's a lot of work being done by the commission and the Scottish Human Rights Commission about valuing voluntary participants because they're and that's about paying people for their time so yes they shouldn't be out of pocket firstly for transport purposes but also if you're really going to have a system where it values lived experience you have to make it real for people we use through our consultancy support with the software to public sector and third sector organisations we've developed a document around a human rights based approach to data collection and we use the panel principles and what it allows you to do is it allows you to design your process and your disaggregation and what you do with it and how you share with it afterwards to address the barriers that I talked about before and trust and apathy but it's about being all inclusive and it's about having it will ask you to do in your accountability section it might ask you to do equality human rights impact assessment and the key part of including human rights and an equality impact assessment is because it takes in the whole picture of that human being it takes in their protected characteristics of course it takes in their social and economic backgrounds it will take in even their the area where they live whether it be rural or in the city and it takes it in a way that you can design a process that is accessible to all the other good thing about a human rights based approach to data collection is the part that a lot of people start with is the legality section so in my last response I'd said about everything should be underpinned by human rights from indicators to outcomes we have to know what we measure and track it through this I call it the golden thread but however you want to call it but when you go through the legality process especially with data collection you have to address some of the barriers so we know that we have laws to protect our privacy our GDPR we know we ask for data because of the equality act and lots of other legislations but let's talk about our rights in particular and I'll ask you to make sure that so okay I've got my right to private and family life but I want to know information about a certain person's private and family life so I'm interfering with their right okay if I do that I have to make sure that it's pursuant of a legitimate aim and I have to make sure it's proportionate so my legitimate aim is that it might be I want to have positive action measures to make my workforce more diverse that could be your legitimate aim and your proportionality could be I'm going to have targeted recruitment but what you do is you underpin everything by human rights and then you can track the outcomes and it creates a whole bigger system a more focused system and it's easier to track what's going on because I think a lot of the time within third sector we've got information but it's like who wants to know this information because and sometimes we get asked to give the same information time and time and time again and that's a part of the human rights process as well as but empowerment and shading your the feedback like I talked about earlier on yeah and and do you have any interaction with the Scottish government's equality data improvement programme which is up and running right now no okay that's interesting jillian we heard in the previous session that gaining more data would help support disabled people to gain employment opportunities housing improve their health outcomes I mean I think everyone in the room understands that I just wondered how Audit Scotland were monitoring the progress of the local authorities involvement in that and their understanding of gathering and capturing data to ensure that those services are delivered with dignity one example I gave this morning was you know the right to education for for disabled people and understanding that perhaps there isn't the public transport where there are geographical issues with reaching that education so somebody has to travel you know 50 miles per day whereas the family can't support that and so it's very difficult and also the also the support surrounding that individuals needs as well so I just wondered if you can give us an overview of where you are with Audit Scotland's progress yeah perhaps we would do a a kind of annual overview every year on local government performance and last year we did pick up around data gaps and it was it was it wasn't exactly what you're you're referring to there but I guess it was around the pandemic and recovery and how councils were looking at that and how it impacted different groups and if it was equal or you know who'd been more adversely affected and obviously we're aware that some some groups are more adversely affected than others and particularly those that are already vulnerable or within certain characteristics and we found that councils were really struggling around that about collecting data I think it's just similar to what Claire sort of alluded to that it's not done consistently so I think there may be intelligence within individual councils but or it might be just within certain departments but it's actually joining that up and then making it meaningful to measure these kind of things or know what kind of improvements need to be done by using it properly or being able to link the the data together is where it struggles and I think quite often we're seeing in sort of different areas topic areas or sectors that sometimes there's there is local data but it's not joined up nationally so you don't get that overall picture and then the house that feed into the national you know the overall budget yeah I mean I think you're absolutely right I was hearing that some local authorities collect data on the waiting times for services for people with autism spectrum and you know if the local authorities are not able to support an individual who is either waiting or has been diagnosed that's very difficult so I'm just I'm just making this is I'm being clear aren't I I've understood that nationally the picture is not always being done in a sort of a way that the local authorities can benefit and not everybody is doing everything that they should perhaps do even if it's on a statutory footing would that be fair yeah okay I just wanted to ask Una talking about the statutory requirements for data gathering I mean you've used examples of individuals say disabled people who are stuck in hospital for many years and not able to to be discharged but what how can the current statutory requirements for data gathering be improved to meet this inclusion and accessibility thank you that's really important question and I think him for us and well we we completely understand the basis of the language around about disabled people and the social model of disability for us there has been a site issue in terms of the scope in which the equality act is used that and actually how therefore there has been data collection around about you know we don't we may get the figures on disabled people as a whole population and well that's totally appropriate and helpful and it's there we need to look actually within that to people who have learning disabilities and that's what we mean when we talk about data disaggregation to get that level of data so for example we know that disabled people as a whole face particular issues in relation to employment but I think the most recent figures in relation to people with learning disabilities was about 4.1% which is significantly lower than the disabled people as a whole population so it's that bit around about acknowledging that certain groups within certain particular characteristics face it's about facing kind of multiple inequalities as an already a group that already faces unequal treatment and faces barriers so it's actually about acknowledging that saying we appreciate and understand that there are groups of people who present their rights or maybe more most at risk and asking that data be collected around those individual individual groups thank you and just one last point just on gathering equalities data um sarah and the first ministers women and girls advisory council wants intersectional budgeting gender budgeting analysis integrated into the Scottish budget and for that to be put on a statutory footing I'm not sure if your organisation's involved in that at all and also I noted that the Joseph Rowntree foundation and the Fraser Island said this long term concerns about all shortcomings when looking at gathering equalities data again the same question she used I gave to Una what improvements can be made in terms of that data gathering is it just about engaging people as Claire's spoken about as well and just in terms of the national advisory council we support the recommendation they have probably not surprisingly to put gender budget in on a statutory footing and to look at how to do that within maybe something like the public sector equality duty and in terms of what improvements can be made in terms of data on that's collected on a statutory footing there's a few different reviews underway by government just now in terms of the equality data consultation that was just conducted the public sector equality review and there's also the the mainstreaming strategy that's that's been underway as well and we think it's important that these come together so that they're all working I'm sure that there is efforts to make sure they're all working to ensure that we get the best possible data and that there's the clearest advice as well particularly well for across all public bodies and the clearest advice about the type of data to be collecting and to bring that consistency that others have mentioned which which really important as well is that the data can be used intersectionally and that is another kind of gap area where in areas where there is data it's often then not used in an intersectional way so we can't do the kind of step back of what's the experience for disabled women or what's the experience for black women and so it's the need to bring in that analysis once you've got the data too so I just um I agree with all the points that have been made about the need to improve data quality and consistency but there's also a crucial element once you've got there um that needs to start now about improving the analysis that goes into when that data is used and Calum mentioned earlier about equality impact assessments and I think it's quite widely viewed about that the quality of them is very varying and often on the poorer side and equality's budget advisory group made recommendations last year about how the work could be done to improve the consistency on how data is used and to improve kind of in terms of building capacity so that there's better use of data once we have it as well yeah thank you okay thanks very much and Fulton good afternoon to all the panel and thanks for all your contributions so far I wanted to ask about a couple of areas and it's about this area of you know we've talked about I know some witnesses have referred to where the Scottish Government has maybe got human rights goal or or policy but it's not what people are finding that are happening on the ground some wonder if maybe some of the the panel could talk about how this committee and how the the government as a whole could could perhaps or the parliament as a whole could could perhaps you know meet some of these challenges and I guess I'll link into the second part of my question which is how able are local councils able to play their role in meeting human rights aspirations out by the Scottish Government and it might be quite easy for you know somebody walking back and saying well that's just about funding local a government isn't funded enough or the local government is funding enough but I wouldn't want the argument to be about there it's about how does local governments decide with the fund they've got what which services are cut and if colleagues don't mind because they have heard I'll give an example that I'm dealing with locally just now which I think makes this point very clearly. I've got a mobility hub in my constituency which is due to close it was given very short notice that the charity that runs it is going to close it just at the end of this week we are fighting that but the mobility hub serves a large number of people in the local area and allows them with physical disabilities mainly but also with learning disabilities to access town centre healthcare appointments etc etc and I've been around the house he's trying to you know get somebody to stand up and say you know who can save this service but everybody whether it's the Scottish Government the local council the health board or the charity organisation just seem to pass it on to somebody else and there's a real risk that by doing that nobody wants a service to close everybody thinks it's a good service everything's disabled people need it but by doing it by this whole system that we've got a service is there a real risk of closing this week I also should say that I've noted to Susan and something that you said that it's from the mind is the amount of women that use this service is disproportionately high and also even the women who have come to ask for it to be saved are actually carers for the men who use it so a real impact on women as well so I wanted to make that point so that's just an example I do believe I don't expect the panel to reflect exactly on my constituency example I'm dealing with that and I know that members will have similar examples around the country but I think it does make the point that I'm trying to get here is that we do have human rights policies and ideas and goals in this parliament that we all share as parliamentarians across parties and sometimes you know there's things that happen that the general public just don't understand how this can be allowed to happen if the panel get any advice on what the committee can do and the parliament can do to try and you know have a better overview of where this where budget decisions around these human rights issues are taking place as he's chosen. I would just say it goes to diversity who's on the local councils. We were just in barra recently talking to women about what's happening with their health and social care they no longer have a doctor because the doctor's quit because of the way the health board's being run but the diversity on that board is mostly white men and they have not got the diversity to think about the protected characteristics of others because there's no lived experience of that so you need to have participatory people on these boards and your local councils that are able to stand up for the decisions that are being made and put that in a human rights like portfolio. Who's this going to affect? How's it going to affect them? Is this what you're wanting to achieve? It doesn't always come down to money I think with the budgets like we all know we're all being stretched and I know that whatever's happening down south of the borders having a major impact here but it comes down to empathy and compassion for your fellow person like we're all human beings if you're looking at human rights as a human rights approach that's the way we should be seeing everybody. We should be having people with lived experience on boards, we should be having them in local council areas to talk about services being closed and the impacts that that's going to have on their communities and I think until we have that we're always going to have that bounce back because there isn't accountability you'll go to your local authority, local authority will say it's Scottish Government you go to Scottish Government and you'll say no it's actually a local authority point you then go back to your your organisation and they'll say well there's nothing more we can do and it's that bounce back that has caused women especially to to feel disillusioned with the political system and feel that they don't want to be part of it because they're not being listened to, they're not being taken their human rights and the human rights of the others that they're looking after are not being taken into consideration so why bother? So I think we really need to look at that. A really big question Fulton and everybody has actually indicated they want to contribute to the class folk, time is against us to to keep it tight but I've seen Alan, Callum, Claire, Sarah, Una and I think Gillian as well. Apologies, I'll need to go because I've got another meeting just now, I'm really sorry not to stay for this but I'm sure I'll hear the feedback. Sorry about that. Thanks Pam, thanks Alan. I'm finance effectively, so the question about your disjoint between Paul is saying experience in the ground. I want to apologise for saying it's not about not just about budgets but it kind of is just about budgets like you cannot deliver human rights with aspirations and best intentions, you deliver them with cold hard cash and when it comes to local funding in particular, the point that Alliance have made is in our response to you, we don't have a position on the exact rates or forms of taxation that should apply in Scotland, that's beyond our area of expertise but that when it comes to local services in particular there is a clear massive problem with council tax as it's currently formulated, you know there was a local tax commission in 2014 which issued a number of recommendations for potential replacements, is that a tax that is fundamentally regressive, it's been regressive since it was created, it's gotten more of a regressive over time, not least because the property valuations it's based on come from 1991, I don't want to upset any members of the committee but I wasn't even a year old then, it's in desperate desperate need of reform and because it is such a regressive tax, councils have been put in this kind of catch 22 situation where services are being cut, so if they don't increase council tax then those services are cut and people who are most at risk in society are on the lowest incomes and that is largely women, disabled people, people from ethnic minority backgrounds, they find themselves struggling because they're not able to access these services but if the council puts up council tax by the level it needs to and it can only change band D it can't just put it on the higher bands because of the multipliers, that increase then impacts on people on the lowest incomes the most because the burden of council tax is falling on people at the lowest level, so that to me is sort of a key point that we've got to change how funding is done because the committee asked you know as funding as revenue raised equitably and it's not and it's having a real ability on councils and particular ability to deliver on their human rights obligations. Thank you and Calum. Obviously I actually don't always have often don't have any sports at human rights focus indeed and undermine that we had in the recent example in the housing sector is we've had now a kind of rent freeze applied to the social and private sector for the best intentions and trying to address the affordability concerns around the cost of living but we also know if the rent freeze is continued into the next financial year we've seen social landlords unable to invest in the quality so they're unable to build more homes unable to build homes of cultural adequacy you know really undermining the human rights affordability is a part of housing as human right but it's not the only part there's much more multi-faceted and I think the speed in which that decision was made and if it is continued does lead to undermining the human rights of not just tenants but future tenants as well so there's a bit around considering this and around just the rushing into decisions which are with the rent control policy being at CIH's position. And Sarah? I think just to add to what others have said when decisions are being made either about efficiency savings or cuts which may become more likely in the current economic times it's vital that the assessment process that goes into that looks from a human rights perspective looks at the equality perspective and authorities need to be able to justify the decision making so in the case of your constituency example there should be there should be a justification of that that should be made publicly available and that assessment should include a process that looked at where areas had most need and why the decision was made that one area was able to be cut over others and what data was used within that assessment process so those pieces of information and assessments taken place where authorities are having to make these decisions should be made publicly available. I think one of the big things that we need to address is that human rights like you said they're often the goals and in our policies but they're not the reality for people and I think a lot of that comes down to a lot of people in decision making roles at local councils but also right holders do they know what their human rights are human rights can be seen really far removed from people and in our work that's exactly the feedback we get from accountable duty bearers they go I don't know what human rights are but I know we've got an obligation to rights holders saying I thought it was for the most extreme of circumstances for example so I think there's a lot of capacity building to be doing about rights and that's about empowering people to know them and then they can claim them so for example and the constituent is knowing that that is a right that they have and to use human rights language to advocate and protect that right. I also think Alan touched on a really good point that I'm not sure that we've covered a lot and depth though we've covered a lot is that one of the key standards in human rights law is non-retrogressive and I think again that links to my last point do people know that we have that as a standard and then when we're making these policy decisions and cuts are being made we have to realise that we have to balance this with our international obligations that we have that you can't go backwards and it must be progressive realisation and finally I think I've just talked about what Susan mentioned as well about diversity in the workforce is so important and I think Susan said that perfectly so I don't need to discuss that anymore but adopting a human rights based approach using panel principles to things like service provision so for example the mobility hub you by adopting that approach you will go through your accountability principle and you would have a direct route to redress from when something goes wrong or when something goes really wrong and it's going to shut there will be a there should be accountable people named in who they are and then that's where you take it to and there's none of jumping about it's his responsibility it's their responsibility and I think that's what is missing in a lot of these circumstances is accountability I agree with a lot of what Claire just said there particularly around about accountability I guess the one thing I would add to this is that of course you know finances and money is important money to be able to run and provide services I do think we are at a slight risk of you know saying that if there isn't no additional resource then we can't begin this journey towards human rights and actually there are things that people can be doing now within existing budget allocation to begin that kind of progressive realisation around about human rights and when we talk to people with learning disabilities one of the things that we hear regularly is just about poor treatment from services whether that be you know health services or just any kind of service that people with learning disabilities access on a day to day basis so there is something here actually around about culture change and about embedding human rights training in public services and actually working with the third sector and seeing the third sector as a collaborative partnership in that in terms of potentially the delivery of training etc and actually where you know the public sector and also the third sector may be struggling in relation to budget allocation actually about how you can use what you have to deliver some of this training into embed that culture change that we actually need to see in Scotland thank you thank you and finally Gillianne I think the you know what your one of the points was around that sort of implementation gap I guess and I think you know there's often good intentions whether it's national policy or locally but actually achieving it you know isn't it or it's not clear you know how do you achieve that or what what revenue you need to be you know what funding needs to be required to do that and what the outcomes are and you know how you actually want to go about that and we find that quite a lot around our work mentioned already around social care but we looked at drug and alcohol services early this year as well and again you know there's obviously a real focus on and making improvements there and around rights but again it's it's not clear you know how that's going to be achieved what the outcomes are how the you know what funding is going to be needed and where it should be targeted and again back to that point around prevention but I think just to sort of reiterate some of the stuff that Claire had said around the sort of human rights understanding and Khaled mentioned as well around or you know sorry I can't remember around training as well and the language I think you know I think people find human rights a really difficult thing to understand or it's a scary thing but actually when you break it down to the panel principles it's really understandable and that's something we're trying to do within Audit Scotland internally you know around our corporate stuff as well to get everyone kind of aware of that so then we can then apply it to audit work and then look at that across the public sector and try and make improvements there too and help you know sort of to share that understanding and how you go about it. I mean thanks so much time is against us unfortunately I know all the committee members have further areas that we'd like to explore but there'll be other opportunities that's been really really helpful to us so thank you all for your time and your contribution today so that concludes the public part of our meeting for today and we'll now move on to a private session thank you