 Welcome to the Equal Opportunities Committee. It is the third meeting of 2015. Please set any electronic devices to flight mode or off please. I would like to start with introductions. We are supported at the table by the clerking and research staff, official reporters and broadcasting services, and around the room by the security office and welcome to observers in the public gallery. My name is Margaret McCulloch and I am the committee's convener. Members will now introduce themselves in turn, starting here on my right. Oh, sorry. Apologies, convener. Good morning, cabinet secretary. Sandra White, MSP, for Glasgow, Kelvin. Good morning. Crucian, I'll add MSP for North East of Scotland. Good morning. I'm Jane Baxter, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife. John Mason, MSP for Glasgow, Shetleston. Good morning. John Finnie, MSP Hines and Hines. The first agenda item today is a decision on taking business in private. You're asked to agree consideration of evidence heard during today's meeting at item 3 and discussion on your approach to an inquiry on race at item 4 in private. We all agreed. Item agenda 2 is an evidence session with the cabinet secretary for social justice, communities and pensioners rights of our inquiry into the lives of gypsy travellers. I welcome the cabinet secretary and his accompanying officials. I can start by asking you and your officials to introduce yourselves and invite you, cabinet secretary, to make any opening remarks. Thank you very much, convener. I'll begin by introducing myself and the officials. Obviously, my name is Alec Neal, MSP, cabinet secretary for social justice, communities and pensioners rights. On my left is David Thompson, who is head of primary care in the health division in the Scottish Government. On my immediate right is Leslie Irving, who is part of the equality unit in the Scottish Government. On my far right, I am sure that that is not the case politically, is William Fleming from the housing division of the Scottish Government. It is deliberate, although we do not have every division or department involved in this issue. I thought that it was useful just to show how we are taking a pan-government approach to this whole issue of gypsy travellers that we had somebody from health, somebody from equality, somebody from housing. I could have had somebody from planning, from local government, from education and from a range of other departments as well, but I wanted to give the committee a flavour of how this strategy is being developed right across the whole Government. I am delighted to be here again after my visit recently to the Equal Opportunities Committee and to speak in support of the efforts of the Scottish Government in relation to provisions for the gypsy traveller communities. As you are obviously aware after the recent cabinet reshuffle, I now have responsibility for this, although when I was minister for housing and communities, I had responsibility five or six years ago for this area of policy as well. I am fully committed to meeting the needs of Scotland's gypsy travellers who remain one of the most disenfranchised and discriminated against communities in Scotland. Can I first recognise the great work done by the committee itself up to this point? The two recent inquiries undertaken by gypsy travellers in care and where gypsy travellers live have underpinned our activity and shaped our agenda over the last two years. As recommended by the committee, the Scottish Government is working to develop an overarching strategy and action plan for gypsy travellers, which we expect to publish this summer. The strategy is being developed in consultation with a range of key stakeholders via the Gypsy Traveller Strategy Development Group. The group includes members of the Gypsy Traveller community themselves, which I know is something the committee places a great deal of importance on quite rightly in my view. In relation to accommodation, ministers and officials have visited sites, have met with key groups and convened a national site working group to gather views and consider the issues further. Our role is to set a robust framework and promote good practice so that those needs can be properly assessed and met at a local level. We have already delivered new guidance on local housing strategies and housing needs demand assessments. Those stress the need to assess and fully take into account the accommodation requirements of gypsy travellers. We have taken on board the lessons and information gathered through our visits and meetings to now set out a clear plan of action for the months ahead. That includes publishing minimum standards for local authority gypsy traveller sites, which every site must adhere to. In relation to tenancies, we will also publish national guidance on the rights and responsibilities that are expected for every gypsy traveller site tenant. In addition, guidance on unauthorised sites will also be published. As I have stated previously, I am committed to consulting gypsy travellers on guidance and decisions that affect their lives. Their views will be integral to the development of the guidance on sites that I have just referred to. In the longer term, we are looking at promoting good practice on planning to identify the best way to help the gypsy traveller community to make best use of its assets. As the committee will appreciate, the community is a diverse one with a range of needs. Improving attendance and attainment in gypsy traveller children is a key priority going forward. To support that, the Scottish Government has reconvened the Scottish Traveller Education Review Group to improve access to education. The group will develop and then promote guidance on the education of young people from travelling families and support the development of local inclusive approaches across Scotland, which address some of the challenges that are faced. Draft guidance is expected to be ready for consultation by the end of 2015, with publication thereafter in early 2016. We remain committed to finding innovative ways of tackling barriers to improving the health of gypsy traveller communities. For example, over 60 gypsy traveller families have now benefited via the Better Break programme and Take a Break programme, which provides short breaks to disabled children and young people with complex needs and their families. Both funds continue to be widely advertised in order to encourage future funding applications from the gypsy traveller community, including promotion via the traveller's times in the hope of supporting many more gypsy traveller families in the future. Of course, that is just a snippet of the activity going on, and I look forward to taking questions from the committee in due course. To give you an indication of the five areas that action will be taken over the coming months, first of all, our equity outcome, the progress and our own equality outcome for gypsy travellers, which is to reduce discrimination against gypsy travellers, we will be publishing the progress in that in April. We will also be publishing our planning guides on sites for local authorities in April. In May, we will be publishing our guidance on the quality of sites and, as I said in my speech, the rights and responsibilities of both tenants and occupants. In the summer, we will be publishing the overarching strategy that I referred to, as well as a briefing for local elected members on that issue. Finally, as we have indicated previously, we will be running sometime, probably in the autumn, a marketing campaign to improve awareness and understanding of the needs of the gypsy traveller community and to try to reduce the level of discrimination against those communities throughout Scotland. I finish by saying that we recognise that resolving the issues that are faced by gypsy travellers is a challenge, and our approach has been very much to look at qualitative issues, not just quantitative issues, and to take all the key stakeholders with us, because the gypsy traveller community is not a homogenous community, as people around this table know, and we need to make sure that we take all sections of the gypsy traveller community as well as other stakeholders with us. Solutions do require a collaborative working approach between the range of partner agencies, including national and local government, NHS boards, education authorities, third sector organisations and the community itself. We are determined to do all that we can working with the committee to reduce discrimination with the objective of eliminating discrimination against the gypsy traveller community in Scotland and ensuring that, in terms of health, education, housing and all the other amenities and public services that we normally expect of ourselves, that they have equal access to those services on an on-going basis. Thank you very much Cabinet Secretary for that update. We appreciate how you are working to a tight timescale this morning, so I will pass you straight over to John Finnie to ask the first set of questions. Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, and thanks for that update. Cabinet Secretary, if I was a young gypsy traveller staying in a site for the first time I had a street sweeper in the day before the minister arrived. If the utility blocks were painted for the first time in many years, urgently, over cables, beautifully white painted over cables over windows, if the school, the unit in that site, was presently unoccupied and representations to have a safer route to school put in were told, there is no point, there is no interest. Why would I believe any of this? We are 15 years on, we have had repeated and I do not doubt your good faith and engagement in this, but why would I believe any of this? This is just more words from remote officials. Well, obviously I would disagree with that, John, because— It is a little bit difficult, but that is genuinely the perception that you must engage with these people in a one-to-one, and you have heard all this before. Yes. Well, we are engaging with them, but to be honest it is not always the easiest of communities to engage in because of their long-standing, over decades suspicion, in very justified in many cases, of officialdom at all levels. Of course, we rely also on the goodwill and the intentions of local authorities and others at local level, because we can only set the national framework and the policy framework, whether it is in health and education and housing and planning across a whole range of things on the equalities aspects, but we rely on others not just to stick to the letter of what we are trying to do, but actually to do it in the spirit of what we are trying to do. I am going to be planning a series of discussions myself between now and the end of the year with the gypsy traveller community, because my approach to this job, whether it is gypsy travellers or tenants in local authority houses or any other issues, is not to believe what I am told entirely through official channels, but to find out for myself what is happening on the ground. That is the best way of finding out is all of the stuff that we are doing with the best of intent, actually having the impact that we hope and are intending it to have on the ground, because it is not. We need to look at why not and sort it. For the voice of any doubt, I was not questioning your role in seeking to address this issue, but it is an understandable perception. It has been very helpful that you have used to term discrimination and disenfranchised on a number of occasions, because that is how those people feel. Can you explain, cabinet secretary, when you say that your engagement is directly with the gypsy traveller community, who do you mean by that? You are right to say that it is just like any other community, a very diverse community. I remember when I was Minister of Housing and Communities, there was a particular issue raised by Brian Adam MSP around the Aberdeen area, and there were real problems in Aberdeen of a much more critical nature than anything that is currently that we are dealing with. I took responsibility for that. We formed a working group, and we involved the gypsy traveller community in that. We actually went and spoke. That involved the police, it involved housing, it involved the various local authorities, it involved ourselves, and we involved Brian and a number of other MSPs to make sure that it had cross-party support as well, and we actually worked with the members of the community. Now, there are not a lot of formal representation groups in the gypsy traveller community, so my view is that you have to go and actually talk to the people on the ground and find out what their views are. As you say, John, sometimes they are reluctant to do that for obvious reasons and for largely historic reasons, but also because they are still subject to discrimination very often and therefore they are not sure who they can trust and who they can't trust. However, during that exercise, we went out of our way, and I think that we ended up eventually with a situation that was acceptable to everybody. The gypsy traveller community got the need for sites addressed. At the same time, the wider community was satisfied that we had a better solution than had been the kind of makeshift solution that happened previously, which caused enormous irritation both for the gypsy traveller community and for others. I think that you have to go and talk to people. A similar group is the showman's people. I have a meeting with the showman's people coming up at the instigation, initially, of Dick Lightley MSP. I think that it is the next couple of weeks. I am deliberately wanting to talk to people who are from those communities rather than, if you like, the suits, who are the middle people between me and the community. Can I also ask about research? Is the Scottish Government pulling together research? You mentioned MECOP. In my own area, Northargyll Carers Centre, I do tremendous work in conjunction with MECOP with the gypsy traveller community. We have heard that the British Irish Parliamentary Association of Economic and Social Equity was calling on British and Irish jurisdictions to consider a strategy obligation in all authorities to co-ordinate provision. I think that there is movement between the different component parts of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Can you comment on pulling some of these together, please? First of all, in terms of research, I think that we have had quite a lot of research going on. If you look at the work that is being done by way of preparation for the overarching strategy that will be published in the summer, which involves people from the gypsy traveller community in that work, then, obviously, before you get to developing a strategy, you need to do the basic research. What I am going to do is demonstrate the pan-government work that is being done. Briefly, I am going to ask each of the officials to give some examples of the research and the co-ordination work going on in their respective departments. I will start with David at this end and will work to Leslie and William at the other end. That is fine. Talking specifically about research, we have done the research into handheld records with NHS Health Scotland, which has shown some of the advantages of that, but some of the difficulties in delivering handheld records both within the health service and within the gypsy traveller community. We are also working on, as part of our work on the new GP contract, which we will have, hopefully, in place by April 2017. We are looking at various different new models of care and how they address the needs of particular communities, particularly in the context of the new integration authorities and how they meet the needs of their local community. We are working with GP practices on a number of different models, looking at different issues within communities. We have worked with the Conan Doyle practice on some of the issues within their community in Edinburgh and we are also in the early stages of working with a more rural community general practice, which has a constituency of gypsy travellers and we hope to have a project in there soon. There are various different things that we are using to inform the work that we are using going forward. As David has explained in relation to health, the equality portfolio is also engaged in a range of initiatives that will add to the information and knowledge that we have about the communities. Obviously, we had a question in the 2011 census about identity as a gypsy traveller for the first time, so our statistical colleagues are continuing to process the information from that. There has recently been a release of information about gypsy travellers in relation to employment and health and a number of other factors. That is on-going work that will continue to build the evidence base. It is something that we committed to do some years ago. Not Scottish Government directly, but the Quality and Human Rights Commission has recently produced some research into site provision, identifying good practice in three sites in Scotland and Carlyle in England, and has made some useful recommendations there. We will know more about that. On the work that we do in the development of the strategy and in our funding programme on the equality side, we fund a number of organisations. MECOP has been mentioned this morning already. We also fund article 12, which works with young gypsy travellers in particular. As Mr Finlay mentioned, we ask the young gypsy traveller to believe anything that we say, and I absolutely take that point. One of the ways that we are trying to address that is to build a cohort of young gypsy travellers who have the capacity to engage and to be involved in consultation and to speak for their community and to be the leaders of the future. That is certainly what we aspire to from that funding. We are also funding the Friends of Romano Lav, which is a representative group for Roma people in Scotland, who very much want to be engaged with the Government and on behalf of their community, but again realise that they have some way to go before they have the capacity to do that. We have brought them on to the strategy development group in order that they can have that experience and learn from that too. A whole range of things that we are doing both on the hard research side with the statistical evidence gathering and analysis, but also in our funding of organisations to enable them to work directly with the community and add to the evidence base. On the gypsy traveller site working group, the group met four times last year and quite a large part of the meetings were taken up by receiving reports from various stakeholders and also asking some questions. We sent out questionnaires to local authorities trying to get updated data on numbers of sites and conditioners sites. We also as officials have made a priority to go out and meet gypsy travellers in their sites, not just local authority sites but also private sites. I am looking at my notes here, but I think that we have paid a couple of visits to unauthorised sites as well. We are trying to get an understanding first hand of the conditioners sites and also of the individual's experience of those sites. We are learning from that just how varied that experience is. We are learning quite a bit about how good sites can be developed, often privately, in places such as Lanarkshire. We are learning too about the experience in Falkirk, where over quite a lengthy period of time the community was brought round to understanding how a site could be integrated and made acceptable, and we have been looking at that in terms of some academic research that was carried out by Salford University and trying to draw out the lessons that might be applied in other areas. We are using the working group to acquire a better understanding, both in the abstract but also, as far as we can, first hand from our own experience, a bit like the Minister trying to get out there and understand from what we see to understand the nature of the problems. John Mason, you wrote to the convener that we have got the copy of the letter in January, and you talked about a forthcoming briefing for elected members, local councillors, I think. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about that. Do you think that the problem is that the local councillors do not understand what the responsibilities are, or is it just that, in some cases, they are so much under pressure by vocal groups in the settled community that they find it very difficult to, for example, produce sites and things? I think that it varies from place to place, John. Certainly, five or six years ago, when I was Minister for Housing and Communities, there was no doubt in my mind at all that councillors, both in Aberdeen City and in Aberdeen Shire, were under enormous pressure about the unofficial sites in and around both Aberdeen Shire and Aberdeen City. The seafront in Aberdeen, if I remember correctly, was one of the more controversial unofficial sites that were being used by gypsy travellers, and it had caused enormous problems with the local community, and was one of the reasons why Ryan Adam approached me to see what action we could take. Sometimes, as I will be quite honest, the attitude of local councillors itself is not always as enlightened perhaps as it could and should be. I think that we have some educational work to do in some areas as well about, you know, these are human beings who have the same human rights as the rest of us. Indeed, one of the areas of work that I am taking forward, both in relation to gypsy travellers but more widely, is in relation to SNAP, the Scottish National Action Plan on Human Rights. I had a meeting the other day with the chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, Professor Alan Miller. I am setting up a cross-government group just to look at the progress that we are making in terms of SNAP, the Scottish National Action Plan on Human Rights, and, obviously, improving the delivery of human rights in all its different guises for the gypsy traveller community's part of the action plan. That will be another tool, as it were, that we will use to measure progress along with the commission in terms of how much we are actually achieving on the ground with all these initiatives that are going on. I take your point, and you made it in that letter as well, that decisions are best made often usually at a local level with local knowledge and local accountability and the reality is that we have not seen progress. We are dealing with a national issue here, aren't we? One of the things about the gypsy travellers is that they are not attached to just one area, they are often attached to a number of areas. I wonder if you feel that there is either call it a lead, or you are talking about guidance—I do not know how strong that guidance is, really—but some kind of pressure or lead from the centre on local authorities to really get something to happen? I would not say that we have not made progress. I do think that we have made progress. If you have heard what David just alone said in terms of access to GP facilities, I think that there has been some progress made in that as one example. I think that there is progress made in aspects of housing and various other things, but the progress is variable across the country. There is no doubt about that. Overall, the progress is not as fast or as great as I would have liked to have seen. We have got to look at the strategic work that is going on, which obviously involves members of the gypsy traveller community. What do we need to do in this strategy to make it happen much more than is the case and to make it much less variable and less of a postcode lottery than it actually is? Obviously, not every local authority has a gypsy traveller community. They tend to be confined to a number of local authorities, and therefore we are working particularly with those local authorities. I have already mentioned Aberdeen and Grampian area, Falkirk, which is another area where there is a bit of a concentration of gypsy travellers. We need to work particularly with those local authorities where there is a permanent gypsy traveller presence, because there are some local authorities where there is very little or no presence whatsoever. While accepting that there are signs of progress, when we were up in Aberdeenshire, for example, we very much got the impression that it was the isolated primary school where there was a good relationship. It was an isolated GP practice where there was a good relationship. It was far from common. In fact, gypsy travellers were often going to places because they knew that school, unlike the majority, had a good relationship. That GP practice had a good relationship. We had a quote from Mekop—not to read the whole thing, but part of it was them quoting a gypsy traveller saying, "'Surely by now the Government has enough evidence about what needs to be done. Can't they just get it done instead of endlessly talking? Only then will gypsy travellers like me start to take it seriously.'" My fear is that we have made a lot of effort to engage as a committee, but there does come a time when people start shutting off because they just feel that there is no progress. I have no doubt that there is an element of that and an element of frustration, but I think that there is also clearly members of the gypsy traveller community who do recognise that progress has been made. Those people involved, for example, in the strategic working group, are not wasting their time in there because they believe that it is going to make a difference, but I do accept that there is a lot of frustration that is not happening quicker and more universally, and that is a frustration that is shared by us. If we need to take a more deregist approach—if that is what the strategy says—then I am prepared to take a more deregist approach if that is what is required to make it happen. However, how we do that, I would suggest that it has to be informed by the strategy, because the whole point of the strategy is that it is involving the stakeholders, including and in particular the gypsy traveller community. Cabinet Secretary, when the committee published its report in 2013 about where gypsy travellers lived, there were real concerns about the quality of sites and the conditions of sites, so I would like to know what has been done to address those poor conditions. If councils are non-compliant, what will the Scottish Government do about that? Are they going to monitor the outcomes or will there be sanctions? As I said, what we are going to be doing in May is publishing the guidance on the quality of the sites and the rights and responsibilities of both the owners and the occupants of the sites. If I can draw a parallel with the social housing more generally, as you know, we have the Scottish quality housing standard, which is the way in which we monitor the progress of social landlords, both councils and housing associations in terms of the quality of housing that they provide. I am equating the guidance that we are going to publish in May, and I expect it to have exactly the same standing as the Scottish quality and housing standards, because very clearly the objective of every social landlord in Scotland is to meet those standards, and indeed every investment plan that we approve and we do not provide funding if it does not. Every investment plan in every local authority area for housing and in every housing association at its core has the need to bring all their housing stock up to the Scottish quality housing standard by a certain period, so I want to see as vigorous a system applied in terms of the quality of sites for gypsy travellers. What if they are not? If they are not, we then have to have a look at what we need to do to get it sorted. There is a possibility at the end of the day of sanctioning the local authority. There is a possibility that we say that there will be grant funding for various things if they don't actually raise the standard. The starting point that I always have in these things is that if they are failing, as some have failed, I mean genuinely speaking, for example, local authorities are much further behind in the Scottish quality housing standard than are the housing associations. My approach to that has always been initially to try to use dialogue to get the local authority sector to improve its performance, and very often that works, particularly in relation to specific local authorities. The thing that works the most effectively is to say, well, look, if you don't improve, then don't bother coming to us for grant funding for more council housing. Why would we throw good money after bad? Very often it's the cash that speaks the loudest when you're dealing with local authorities. When you move on to the next question, I'm just changing the subject slightly, cabinet secretary. I'm interested in the implementation of the Children and Young People's Scotland Act, in particular GERFIC, and in particular the named person, which is a little bit controversial, but I'm wondering how all that's going to apply in the context of the Gypsy Traveller community. My view is that the name person system, and of course there's been a lot of rubbish written about the name person, utter rubbish in the practice about it, but I think that the name person concept is particularly applicable in the Gypsy Traveller community, because by definition they are travelling people. One of the problems that we have, whether it's making sure that they get proper access to health services or proper access to education services or proper access to any housing services that they wish, is the fact that they are travelling. Very often the travelling is travelling from one local authority area to another, and that makes it particularly difficult. In terms of implementing the named person legislation, there are particular challenges around the Gypsy Traveller community, but there are challenges that I will even have to face and find solutions to, and we're working with our education colleagues in all of that. Thank you very much, and we'll move on to Sandra White now. Thank you very much, convener. As I said, good morning. I wanted to pick up on what David mentioned when he was replying to John Finnie in regard to the NHS and working with the Gypsy Traveller community, particularly in the way of carers. Obviously, you mentioned about the respite care for disabilities. Can you tell me how you're going to speak to the NHS boards to get them to actually come together with the Gypsy Travellers to ensure that they get the same rights as anyone else in regard to caring facilities? Of course, Gypsy Travellers should have the same rights as anyone else, and that's very clear in our approach. What we've found is that, as part of the work of the strategy development group, we've had presentations from a number of NHS boards as to their approach. We've had NHS Health Scotland, Grampian and Fife as part of the development work. Each of those has taken a different approach to health Scotland. Obviously, did the research and have some conclusions for the strategy. With Grampian, we heard about the Clinterty halting site and the work there. I think that the committee has been to visit the site. It's fair to say that you did there get a situation where Gypsy Travellers were travelling to that place in order to get medical services. The interesting example that we heard from Fife was one where they've undertaken a needs assessment of Gypsy Travellers in their community. That took place in 2013 and has had a very specific plan coming from that where, for example, there's been sharing of information amongst health and social care staff. They've worked with NHS24 in the Scottish Ambulance Service to support the community. They've put in place named leads for education, health visiting and other things. That's something that we could potentially learn from in the context of the strategy development group. It would also be helpful to say that another good example is with NHS24, with the new 111 number, where NHS24 has, over the past six months, taken specific steps to work with the Gypsy Traveller community to promote the use of the 111 number to Gypsy Travellers. There are all sorts of different initiatives. The key is learning from those in the strategy. Can I mention another one, Sandra, in relation to that? When I was health secretary, we took the decision that everybody in Scotland should have an electronic patient record by 2020, if not earlier. The electronic patient record, one of the benefits, will be that travelling people will have their own record. Even if they travel from the health board area to the health board area, the fact that it's an electronic patient record, so if they go into a GP practice or into an A&E department, for example, they will be able to access their medical history immediately, provided that they have the authorisation from the patient, which one would assume they would have in those circumstances. The electronic patient record will be another tool that will help us very much. I'm particularly concerned about youngsters in terms of inoculations and all the rest of it. The electronic patient record will capture all of that, so it will be very quickly able to establish exactly what their medical history is, and that will help in terms of treatment as well. The other thing that David mentioned in his previous remarks, which I think should not be underestimated, is the opportunity of the new negotiations on the GP contract, which must be completed by May 2000 or April 2017. As you know at the moment, the GP system operates on the basis of a panel of patients, and if you're not on the panel of patients, then it can be very difficult to get treated. Again, this is a very particularly difficult issue with travelling people, because by definition they're travelling from one area to another. Even if they're in the same local authority area or the same health board area, if they're travelling between different GP catchment areas, then it's very difficult. Very often they don't bother registering with a GP in the first place. One of the things that the Government wants to achieve out of the GP contract negotiations is a system that would make it much easier for travelling people to access primary care services without necessarily having to be registered with one particular GP practice. That's obviously for negotiation, but it's an opportunity for us to improve the service. I don't think that we should underestimate the importance of that opportunity. Thank you very much, and I think that you sort of pre-empted in my question regarding handheld records. It would certainly improve the electronic one, because obviously we have evidence that health boards are saying that it's a problem with the handheld records and the gypsy travellers saying that it's an excuse they're making. I'm assuming that that would make a great improvement in that respect. Absolutely. Handheld records are a problem for everybody, not just for gypsy travellers. As you know, I represent a constituency in Lanarkshire, and one of the common problems that I have in dealing with complaints against the NHS is that somebody perhaps being treated between two hospitals, say between Monklands and Heremias, when they attend Heremias, their notes are in Monklands and they've not been transferred for an appointment. Sometimes if they're dealing, for example, with the Beatson in Glasgow, but their notes are in, say, the Monklands, and the notes haven't been transferred to the Beatson because the Beatson's only for one appointment and they're still basically hosted by the Monklands. The handheld records are a problem for everybody. It's not unique to the gypsy traveller community, and it's one of the reasons why the introduction of the electronic patient record, I think, is so important and could be so beneficial to everybody, but particularly beneficial to the gypsy traveller community. Thank you very much, and we'll move swiftly over to Christian now. Thank you very much. A couple of questions. First of all, I was included last week, cabinet secretary, and Biomisa spoke directly to the gypsy traveller community. One of the things very important, the message was given, is that local authorities have failed. This committee has failed, just understand, as the country government has failed. We maybe progressed a lot on the understanding of these communities, but we're not progressing at all on the practibility. One of the things which was, you know, the message was very, very strong, because local authorities have failed, because the country government failed, because we failed at creating new sites. Is there not time to empower, and I'm quite happy to see that on your letter that explains the way of promoting good practice and ending planning application, for gypsy travellers' site, but would it not be better to empower communities to have their own site and finding a way, because we know the sensors, for example, sites which have been created without planning process. I think that we are asking for a backdated planning application, but it's so important. How can we help to do that? Do you think that that's really the direction that should we take on powering these communities to have their own sites? Well, we need to be subject to some kind of overall planning mechanism, obviously, because you can't just go and set up a site anywhere, they could go anywhere, willy and elly and build a house. You have to have some kind of management control over that local authority level, land use control, planning control and all the rest of it. But in the same way that I could decide what site I want to build a house on, and that I then apply for planning permission, I don't see why we shouldn't have a parallel, similar system for people in the gypsy traveller community who identify a site and would like to have a permanent site there. It has to be subject to approval by the local authority, because you can't have anarchy reining in any of this where people can just decide to build houses or establish sites or anything, just wherever they like, without any kind of planning or building control or whatever. Subject to that qualification, I think that they should be able to identify areas where they want sites and then apply for the appropriate planning permission or building warrant permission or whatever permissions are required to do it, absolutely. Do you mark some site as well for community buyouts? Again, I don't see why not. It provided its subject to the normal and the whole point is to the normal procedures that would happen where a community buyout today. We can't just have people doing it willy-nilly without going through proper procedures, because you have to look at the wider picture, but, in principle, why not? I love you to come and meet some others. We'll fix up a time, and the next time I'm in the Aberdeen area, we'll do that, Christian. Good. One of the questions that I would like to ask is about what direct work you can do to reduce discrimination against safety travellers for the committee. You talked about you were going to have a campaign in the autumn, but you're thinking about having some of the work during the summer. Are you thinking maybe of having a big event or something, really, because a campaign could be sometimes seen as another campaign? How can we really make a big difference? I mentioned the marketing campaign because it's the first time it's ever been done, but, before we decide the shape of the campaign, you asked earlier about research. We're actually doing a lot of market research on what would be the most effective kind of campaign to run, what should be the tone of the campaign, who should the campaign be aimed at, should we use social media rather than, say, TV advertising or press media? So, there's loads of questions that we're doing market research just now on putting that together, because it's such a sensitive issue that we need to make sure we get it right. I don't want to end up with something that is counterproductive, because we haven't done our proper research and our proper preparation, and I also want to make sure that we end up with a marketing campaign that's effective and targeted at the right people. You reckon it's going to be a positive campaign more than ever? Absolutely, yes. Thank you very much. Does anyone have any other questions that they'd like to ask the cabinet secretary? Thank you, convener. I just wondered how direct support payments, how that would fit in. I know of not that much time, but would we be able to write to the cabinet secretary, would we get an update on that? How that would work in with, obviously, health and social care? Self-directance is what you mean, Sandra. Self-directance support. Sorry, yes, self-directance support. Absolutely, and I'm sure David will make sure that you get a comprehensive reply to that. It might be useful, actually. I don't know if we've got the stats, if we're able to identify how many members of the Gypsy Traveller community are already on self-directance support. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary and officials, for coming along and giving us that information. We'll take up your offer and write to you, asking some other questions as well. That concludes the public part of today's meeting. Our next meeting will take place on Thursday 5 March. I'll now suspend the meeting for the committee to move into private session.