 Good morning and welcome to the first meeting of session 6 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. I am Alexander Stewart, MSP for Mid Scotland in 5. As I am the oldest member of the committee, I have the pleasure of convening the first two agenda items. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all members to the committee and look forward to working with you all. Before we move to the first item of agenda, I ask that all individuals present ensure that their mobile phones are switched to silent. Item 1 is declarations of interest. Each of us has to declare any interest that we have that are relevant to the work of this committee. I will go first and then I will go alphabetically through members of the committee. I have no relevant interests to declare for the work of this committee. If I can now move on to the members of the committee, I can start with Karen Adams. Good morning. I have no relevant interests to declare for this committee. I am currently still employed by Edinburgh Rave Crisis Centre. That might be relevant to some of the programme for work that we discussed later on, but that employment ends on 30 June. I have a couple of interests to register this morning. The first is that I worked for Public Health Scotland until the 11th of May. I do not work there anymore, but my employment ended as I got elected. I also registered in my voluntary, but it is important to mention it now. I served on the board of engender Scotland for three years. That period came to an end at the end of last year, and between 2009 and 2015, I was a policy officer for Inclusion Scotland. Thank you very much indeed, Pam. Joe FitzPatrick. Good morning Alexander. I have no interest to declare. Thank you, Joe. Pam Goswell. Good morning Alexander. I have no relevant interests to declare for this committee. Thank you, Pam. Finally, I would like to alert members to my voluntary register of interests as a registered social worker with the SSC. I was a practising social worker prior to my election in 2016, but I maintained my registration during that period. Thank you very much indeed. Item 2 is the choice of the convener. The committee has agreed that only members from the Scottish National Party are eligible for nomination as convener of the committee. I understand that Joe FitzPatrick is the party's nominee. Do we agree that a committee to choose Joe FitzPatrick is our convener? We do. Congratulations, Joe, on your appointment as the convener of this committee, and I now hand the remainder of the meeting over to you. Thank you Alexander. I thank everyone for your support in the nomination to become convener of the committee. I look forward to working with all of you over the coming years. I think that this is one of the most important committees in the Parliament. It is a committee that has shown the benefits of devolution. I think that, particularly in the last Parliament, the committee showed that, even in the difficult times of Covid, the importance of engaging with the population of Scotland—although I was only a member towards the end, Alexander will have been a member throughout the last Parliament, and we will be aware of the engagement that the committee took forward. I think that that is something that we should continue to do. Obviously, the committee's remit has now expanded, and I think that that is a good thing. Clearly, it means that we will have some challenges in terms of making sure that we manage our time, but we really look forward to working with you all in the years going forward. The next item is for us to choose our deputy convener. The Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish Green Party are eligible for nomination as deputy convener of the committee. I understand that Maggie Chapman is the party's nominee for the post, so do we agree to choose Maggie Chapman as our deputy convener? I am saying nods all round. Congratulations, Maggie, on your election as deputy convener of the Scottish Green Party. We now move on to item 4 of the agenda. That item is to make a decision on whether to discuss our work programme item 5 in private. Is that agreed? Seeing nods all round again, we thank you very much. We will now move over to the Microsoft Teams platform. I invite members to disconnect from Lou Jean's and leave this meeting and then open the separate link to MS Teams provided by the clerks. That ends the public's part of the meeting and we move into private.