 Welcome to the 25th meeting of the Equalities and Human Rights Committee. Can we please ensure that all electronic devices are on silent mode? Agenda item 1 is Age of Criminal Responsibility Scotland Bill, and our first item of business today is our final stage 1 evidence session on the Age of Criminal Responsibility Scotland Bill. I would like to welcome Mirri Todd, the Minister for Children and Young People, Paul Bitten, teamleader, Tom McNamara, head of youth justice and children's hearings and Liz Blair, senior principal legal officer with the Scottish government. Good morning, everyone. If I can invite the minister to make an opening statement, please. Good morning, convener, and thank you for inviting me to give evidence on the general principles of this bill today. Throughout my life, I have always believed that how we treat and view children says much about who we are as a nation and as a society. Children deserve to be valued, to be loved, to be cared for and nurtured, and we owe it to them and their families to make sure that they hear that message loud and clear. Above all, we must make sure that our most vulnerable and disadvantaged children and young people hear that message and see it in action. That's why the evidence that we've heard from James Doherty of the Violence Reduction Unit and Lindsay Hambridge of Who Cares Scotland matters so much. Their honest and moving accounts of their experiences serve as very stark reminders to us of what is at stake for young people who come into contact with care and justice agencies and why we must work together to change that experience for the better. As Minister for Children and Young People, I feel hugely privileged to be leading and guiding this bill through Parliament to raise the age of criminal responsibility. That fundamental premise at the heart of the bill shouldn't be overlooked and I would like to ask the committee to consider the change as just one part of the government's work and journey to bring a rights-focused approach into all areas of government policy relating to children, especially when it comes to the children most affected by early trauma and adversity. I know there are some on this committee and in this Parliament and indeed in external organisations who think that this change is much needed and long overdue. I understand that some don't feel that we are going far enough and that the age should be raised further. I'm very keen to hear your views on that but I want to be very clear that in my view the age at which we propose raising criminal responsibility is the right one supported by the vast majority of respondents to our consultation and also in your written evidence. It's the age at which there's shared professional and public confidence in our proposals. We haven't arrived at the measures in this bill in our own. We've taken a very collaborative approach to this work. Many of the individuals and organisations you've heard from were members of the 2016 advisory group. Many continue to contribute to the working groups which have begun the detailed planning for the implementation for the bill if it's passed. Throughout the development of the bill we're making significant continuing efforts to seek the views of those who will be most affected, especially children and young people. And informed by Zara and ongoing engagement and consultation, this bill represents what I believe is a balanced and thoughtful yet ambitious reform package for Scotland at this time. The reforms in this bill need to be considered within the wider unique context of our approach of taking a child-centred approach to addressing their needs. Our distinct children's hearing system plays a critical role in addressing and responding to children's behaviour. It provides a flexible child-centred and welfare-based framework for exploring and addressing the harmful behaviours which some children and young people engage in. Where decisions are taken to safeguard and to promote the child's welfare. That system, focusing on the needs of children, whether perpetrators, victims with broader needs, and of course many of the children are all of those, is almost unique. So the children's hearing system is almost unique and I think that's very important for us to bear in mind when comparing what we are doing here in Scotland with what is happening in other countries. This bill is a very strong statement that no matter what a child has done under 12, it is our ethical duty as a society to treat them as children first and to acknowledge that rarely does a child with no adverse childhood experiences or challenging circumstances engage in harmful behaviour. But we're all so clear that safeguards are required. There will on occasion be a very small number of cases that constitute really serious harmful behaviour and the bill provides that in those very rare situations where it's necessary to use police powers, safeguarding and promoting the wellbeing of the child has to remain a primary focus for all of those involved while setting out the steps which should be followed. We also recognise and appreciate the need to ensure that those exposed to harmful behaviour by young children continue to be properly supported. The experiences and perspectives of all victims require serious consideration and an effective response which helps them to address trauma which they may have endured. We'll ensure that appropriate information and support is available to all of those children and adults who need it. In this regard we've heard a range of views as to what's appropriate to put into legislation and whether there might be emissions currently. I undertake to keep listening to consider carefully all of the evidence and where appropriate bring forward amendments in that regard. I want to conclude on these fundamental points. Every child deserves equal treatment under the law and all children deserve to be treated in law as we ourselves would want to be treated. It's our duty as a Government and as a Parliament to ensure that we put in place the right laws and to enable the right practice that enables our children to flourish and to get it right for every child. I believe that the principles of the Age of Criminal Responsibility Bill achieve this and I hope that you agree. I welcome the very thoughtful approach that you've been taking to date and I thank everyone who has provided written or oral evidence. Myself and my officials are very happy to answer questions in more detail now and as the bill progresses. We're going to move straight to questions from the committee and we've got a lot to get through this morning so I'll just straightaway bring in my colleague Alex Hamilton. Thank you very much. Good morning minister and good morning to your colleagues. I should remind the committee of my register of interests that I'm a past convener of the Scottish Alliance for Children's Rights. Before we get into the detail of the bill minister I'm just keen to understand the landscape in which the bill finds itself. Obviously the first minister announced in the programme for government speech the intention of your government to incorporate the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. A number of those rights are contained within this bill. Incorporation is a very specific ask and language matters here. The international test of incorporation is that if the rights afforded to children by the 42 articles are encroached upon children will have access to justice. Judicial remedy should be encroached upon that matters to this bill. Will that be the case when you achieve your goal of incorporating the principles? I believe so. Yes? Absolutely. That's fine. Good morning minister, good morning panel. I'd like to focus on the age that's in the bill, the age of 12. I listened with interest to your opening contribution minister because you spoke about how we treat you children as much about who we are. We should love and nurture them. We should make sure that vulnerable and disadvantaged children hear that message and that we should have a rights-focused approach. You also said that we needed to be ambitious and that the bill was ambitious. Could you explain to me if the bill is ambitious that the UNCRC recommends a minimum age of 12? Why do you think that moving to the minimum is ambitious? We absolutely recognise that there are people who passionately believe that the age of criminal responsibility should be higher than 12. I have to say that I understand those arguments. I understand that the proposal to raise the age of criminal responsibility was first made at the very first Cabinet meeting after devolution. It is this Government and this Administration which raised the age of criminal prosecution. It is this Government and this Administration which is proposing to raise the age of criminal responsibility. The length of time that it is taking probably illustrates the lack of consensus across the country for that move. We are there now. We have worked collaboratively with a number of groups across the country to achieve that. We believe that changing the age to 12 is absolutely the right choice for Scotland at this time. It marks a significant transition from childhood to adolescence. It is an age that already has significance in Scots law. That is the age at which children can make a will or veto their adoption. They are considered to have sufficient understanding to express views on matters such as future arrangements for their care, to form a view to express a children's hearing, to receive hearings reports. When we are talking about the children's hearing system, I think that the importance of that unique system cannot be overstated. It provides a flexible and welfare-based framework for dealing with the children that engage in harmful behaviour. Young people, the age of criminal responsibility is therefore part of a much wider framework that takes account of the age and stage that children are at. When we are changing the age we have to be confident that our professionals share an understanding of what works and what to do when things go wrong and that our systems can respond appropriately. Children and families have to know that serious harmful behaviour will be dealt with seriously when necessary. For the child, that should not be a criminalising experience. Young people have to be able to leave behind the behaviour that was associated with their youth, with the lack of maturity. To that end, it is really important to see this bill acting along with and in conjunction with the review of management of offenders bill and the PVG review. There is a much bigger picture going on. The final thing that I would ask you to note is that 12 is the age that commands confidence and extremely strong support. When we asked and consulted in 2016, 88 per cent of respondents supported raising it to the age of 12. When you asked for oral and written evidence, 63 per cent of respondents supported raising it to the age of 12. It is absolutely vital in this situation to build and sustain public and professional confidence. A very careful consideration has gone into choosing the age of 12. If we move to the age of 12, there will be one of only four countries in Europe that have an age of 12. Again, I make the point that we will sit on the floor of what the UNCRC recommends. I come back to my original question about the ambition of moving it to 12. To be ambitious, you would move it more than 12. Did you consider raising it higher than 12? I mean, we have considered it. Absolutely. We have considered all ages and we have settled on 12. I have to reiterate again that that is the age for which there is very strong support. When you look at other countries, it is very clear. You cannot make comparisons directly between countries because the headline age does not capture the nuance. The age means different things in different countries. In Scotland, the vast majority of children will continue to be dealt with by the children's healing system and not by the criminal justice system beyond the age of 12. I think that that is absolutely vital to understand. When I look at the headline, I would also say that cultural context is very important. We will have the highest age of criminal responsibility within the UK. Luxembourg, for example, has a headline age of 18, but there are real idiosyncrasies in that. I would urge you, if you are interested, to look at the idiosyncrasies in the different countries. Children who are under 16 in Luxembourg, although they nominally have a criminal age of responsibility of 18, have to be dealt with in a youth court. The youth court can impose penal measures including deprivation of liberty, solitary confinement for up to 10 days, and there is no age limit on that. I do not think that it is a useful thing to look at just at a headline age. My final question can be now, and then I will allow others to come in. Do you have any proposals to review and increase the age? Certainly the UNCRC advises us to keep further reform in this area on the agenda. We definitely will. Future moves have to follow the evidence. We would need to be sure that the move to age 12 had worked well. The public would have to have confidence in what we are doing. I am open-minded about it. I would be very interested in hearing the committee's views on that issue. I am hearing what you might consider would be a reasonable length of time to let the system bed in and test it, and what you think we may need to monitor in the interim period so that we can have confidence in moving on beyond 12. Thank you. It has taken 70 years for this issue to be looked at again. Do you not accept, like a number of the witnesses that we have seen, that once the decision is made, that could be it for another 70 years? No, I do not. I think that you just have to look at the record of this Government and see the level of progressiveness across the board in a whole area. This is just one aspect of a much bigger picture, so no, I do not. Why, if you think that the bill is inadequate and not progressive enough for yourself, are you not bringing something forward that is more progressive now rather than risking the chance that we could wait another 70 years for change? I think that you have to understand that it is extremely rare on occasion that a child under 12 engages in seriously harmful behaviour, but it does happen and the public and all of the people working in the justice system have to have confidence that we are able to respond appropriately to those extremely rare situations. In exactly the same point that we made about a child at 13? Or 14? Or 15? 16? So this 12 is the age at which we have confidence that we are able to do this. The numbers of children who engage in harmful behaviour and would come into the contact of the system are much smaller below 12 than above 12. That is one of the reasons for having confidence in this. We can look at this very carefully. I do not believe that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I think that you have seen that we raised the age of criminal prosecution some time ago. We have taken our time to be absolutely confident that the systems are delivering us what we would hope they would deliver us, and we are now confident about taking the next step of raising the age of criminal responsibility. I understand that you might be more confident than maybe I am about how much time you maybe have as a Government to make these changes, but does it not worry you that the Children's Commissioner is confused about why you have chosen the age of 12 and says that the question should not be about how to justify raising the age from 8 to 12, about how we justify treating children under 18 in a criminal manner? Does that not worry you? As I said, I understand absolutely why there are people who passionately believe in different ages. I said that in response to the very first question that Mary Fee gave me. I understand that. I think it is absolutely appropriate that the Children's Commissioner, he is carrying out his role appropriately as Children's Commissioner to campaign for that. Do you think that on this issue he is wrong? We have built consensus around that age. Do you think that he is right or wrong? Let the Minister answer the question that you have asked. As I said, we have built. This is not work that I have done on my own. This is work that builds on a great deal of work from 2015 onwards. It is 12 as the age which commands majority support. 12 as the age at which we have confidence is correct. I am absolutely sure that it is the right step to take at this time. A couple of supplementaries on that. Minister, in your opening remarks you mentioned the very powerful testimony of Lindsay Handvidge. I think that everybody on this committee was absolutely compelled by what she had to tell us. She was 13 at the time when that happened. She was taken into police custody as a result of her reaction to being taken into care. Nothing about this bill would have changed that circumstance for Lindsay. In that respect, you mentioned the vast weight of consultation evidence that shows that the public and stakeholders support the increase to the age of 12. Is that because the question that you asked was, do you agree that the age should be raised to 12? Or did they offer that it should go further as well? In terms of the evidence that you have collected, about 63 per cent said that they agreed with the age of 12. They saw that as the first step. With regard to the evidence that you got from Lindsay Handvidge, I found listening to that evidence very harrowing and heartbreaking. That is not the type of situation that we are talking about at the moment. I would say that that should not have happened back then. It was heartbreaking for me as Minister for Children and Young People to listen to somebody who was taken into the care of the state who spent their first night in care in a prison cell. Absolutely appalling, but that is not what we are discussing here. There have been a whole range of issues in which that situation should not arise. It should not have arisen then and it should not arise now. What we are talking about here is serious harmful behaviour, not taking children into care. I will pick that up in my later line of questioning. Do you think that this bill represents a perfect opportunity to create parameters under which what happened to Lindsay can never happen to a 13-year-old again? I think that there are other opportunities to create those parameters when perhaps one of my officials would like to talk about the bigger picture. Good morning. On that specific point in relation to the questioning and to Lindsay's experience, my understanding that the focus of the practice guidance review in relation to joint investigative interviews is directly contemplating the 12-year-old to the 18-year-old cohort at the moment and, alongside that, recognising that there are very little material distinctions between, for example, an 11-year-old and an 12-year-old, what we want to build in terms of experiences for children and young people is more of a continuum of experience that is appropriate to their age and therefore to their increasing maturity. As a minister outlined in her own remarks, the bill should be seen in the context of a wider approach, particularly to children under 12, but it also connects into a wider set of efforts that relate to young people 12 to 18. For example, in relation to the protection of vulnerable groups review, we are looking to encourage a further dialogue in relation to how the state would respond to harmful behaviour and recognise a sliding scale of maturity and experience in relation to them. Good morning, minister and panel. I just wanted to try and tease out a little bit about... I disagree just because it took us 70 years to get to this point and it's going to take us another 70 years to get to another point. I wanted to try and pick that up. What do the panel think? If we're going to 12 just now and that's agreed and that goes into legislation, what are we looking at for a review period? What do you think would be a good time to... I mean, I'm not talking about post-leg scrutiny because that'll be done anyway, but to put some sort of clause in, if it's appropriate, to go back and look at it and see the effect that it's had, the positive effect that it's had, and then to look at maybe then revisiting the age to... Not automatically, but if it's appropriate to then raise the age slightly higher. What do you think that time period would look like? I'm very open-minded to that approach. I said that I would urge you as a committee to consider what you think might be an appropriate length of time to test these new systems, to get them robustly in place and working and to have confidence that that step has been a successful step and we're ready to take the next one. I would also ask you to consider what it is we need to monitor. What evidence do we need to gather so that we can have confidence and can then consider a further step? I'll be helpful just to add to that briefly. If the bill is passed, certainly in outline planning terms, the hope is to have most of the scheme up and running towards the end of 2019 and then therefore is thinking about what would be a sensible period thereafter just like what has happened in relation to the change in prosecution age. What's a critical mass of loved experience and data and evidence in relation to the implementation group arrangements that have set up in parallel to the bill processes and in support of them. There's the hard science aspect in relation to the challenges that Mary Fee posed to the minister around the 12 to 14 cohort, the 14 to 16 cohort, what's the range and what's the severity of the offence referrals and what might be the changes that we see and the consequence of the change. But also in relation to that, to the victim's perspective and in relation to the lived experience perspective, I think we would want to be gathering metrics around what had been the impact that we'd seen around the wider confidence around people directly affected by children's behaviour and their own families and the folks that would be affected by that directly. I think that a more rounded picture would be needed in order to come back to Parliament with a fuller perspective on that experience. Fulton MacGregor. I should probably make a declaration of interest that I'm a registered social worker with the triple SC. Good morning minister in panel. Just following on from the last line of questions, it does appear that one of the major factors in the minister's evidence today for not raising it beyond 12 is about public opinion, because, like the minister and like others, I initially would have been more keen to see it at an older age, but I'm convinced with the evidence around where the public sit as well. Is the minister able to say what steps would be taken going forward in order to help to shift the culture in Scotland to one that's around a child welfare-centred approach, as opposed to a more punitive approach? That's not in terms of the children's hearing system, which I know is a child centre approach, I know from my own experience, but I'm talking about it in terms of perception, so that if we do come back to review this, if this bill was passed into legislation, that would be in a position to take the public with us. I think that you have to take into account that this has been a long time in Scotland that we've looked at the co-branding approach, the children's hearing system, that we've looked at children's needs, not their deeds. We have been progressive ahead of our time in many ways in Scotland. I think that in the last 10 years, you've seen a real shift in a real step gear change in the level of progressiveness and the way that we consider children with harmful behaviour and the way that we try to help them through that harmful behaviour. I think that we've seen, as a result of leadership on that issue, we have seen a change out in the population, but we have to be confident. There is no getting away from sometimes this behaviour that is very, very serious and has very, very serious consequences for the victims of that harmful behaviour. In my mind, we have to be confident and they have to be confident that we are moving at the right pace for them and that they will still be able to respond appropriately. Thank you, Minister, for that. It is very encouraging that the vast majority of respondents regard that an increase to the age of 12 as appropriate. My main line of questioning was around the PVG and disclosure scheme. We heard quite a lot of evidence from various witnesses just concerned about the current system whereby children could perhaps present their hearings on offence grounds and in order to maybe get the hearing over and done with quickly or to avoid a stressful situation, they would accept offence grounds that would later come back to impact on them in later life. Can you explain how the current provisions in this bill would help that and if there are going to be any changes in that system? One of the working groups is working particularly on information that is given to children. Absolutely, they have to have good quality information at the time to make decisions because those incidents may have a lifelong consequence. We are very clear that children should be able to move beyond the behaviour that they had, which was related to immaturity and use. Perhaps I will ask my... One of you would like to say a little bit more about the work that we are doing. As a minister, I outlined in our own evidence that in relation to disclosure matters this bill really restricts itself to ancillary changes that flow from the change to 12. We do recognise that there would be a legitimate expectation that the Government and the connected agencies would address themselves to the experience for older teenagers. For example, if you look at this particular bill, it attends directly to the removal of the offence and the conviction label for under-12s. If we look forward potentially to the management of offenders that will have far-reaching implications for the obligation on the child and the young person to self disclose at children's hearings reducing the journey effectively to zero for children's hearings appearances. If you look potentially at the PVG review and I think there will be more on that in the coming weeks, one of the proposals that was contained within that was potentially to extend the role of the independent reviewer to all children under 18 who would take that very much, individualise that risk-led approach to how that young person had progressed since the incident that was causing concern and to respond to that at the time rather than responding to the concern or the conviction as if it had just happened the previous day. So I think that if you connect those three vehicles, if you like, then we're building towards a simplified and a more cogent approach to all young people under 18. Sorry, Paul. If I could add a little bit about the collaborative approach, it has been one of the great supportive starting points for this work in accepting the complexities, some of the challenges culturally and systematically and in terms of the public awareness, consciousness and support for this kind of work. I've certainly been reflecting on the evidence from victim support in one of the previous sessions in respect of that need to bring victims, children, families and members of the public to an improved state of awareness on the children's hearing system, on youth justice, on those disclosure points, as you quite rightly say. I think that we can be reassured that that collaborative approach set up by the advisory group has continued. We have specific working groups looking at issues relating to victims, on disclosure, as Tom outlines, on investigations, which has been a subject of interesting discussion as well. Each of those include professional organisations closely connected and responsible for that work, as well as those representing working with children. Each of those groups includes within its work plan the need to develop public-facing material, age-appropriate material depending on where that work is directing, very much with that broad aim of telling that story again, of making sure that people understand what the hearing system is for, how we respond when things go wrong for children. Understanding that the responsibility is a broad one to say that those systems need to be ready, they need to be engaged and people need to have confidence in them. If the information, the explanation isn't there, then we need to improve on that. That's something that certainly is moving forward now. Just one more question. Jump in, Fulton. On the independent reviewers' functions, we note that they might be modified in the future. Can the minister or officials say a bit more about that, about what factors would be taken into consideration? Explicit in the title is the expectation that the independent reviewer will operate with a large degree of practice and professional autonomy. There is provision within the bill for ministers, at least initially, to provide guidance to the independent reviewer because, obviously, there would have to be a first one. In keeping with the approach that we have taken to the other challenges around the bill, certainly I am aware that Disclosure Scotland has been challenged on this from the broad base of partners that we are working with, from the police perspective, from victims' perspectives, but also from children's rights organisations and others, to work alongside government to build the initial critical mass of what the functions would be. Essentially, the independent reviewer would be empowered to take information from the children's reporter, from the local authority, from the courts and from anybody else that they deemed appropriate in order to form an appropriate picture in relation to that individual young person and how they'd progressed or otherwise in the time since the incident that caused concern. We would take a degree of inspiration from the independent monitor function from Northern Ireland and others and then look to adapt that to align it with the other kind of internal principles that we have in Scotland to make sure that it was in place, but that wouldn't be something that would be done behind closed doors. It's very much a broad-based effort with the entire care and justice communities. That's helpful, Fulton. More question, convener. I wonder if the minister is able to comment on trends over time. I know that my own personal experience when I first started in social work in 2004 going to children's hearings, offence grounds were extremely common and they just seemed to get less and less by about 2009, 2010. They seemed to have reduced dramatically. Is the minister able to comment on those trends of children appearing on offence grounds over time and the actual use of what is disclosed as well? I think that that's a really important point because really over the last number of years we've been taking a very different approach to children and young people, the whole system approach, which embodies the principles of GERFEC and represents an example of a preventative multi-agency approach, is really about improving outcomes. So there's been fewer children going into the system and being seen at children's hearings than there were 10 years ago. The children and young people who do arrive at children's hearings systems, children's hearings on offence grounds are generally at the more complex end and the children who need our help most. So we've seen that reflected in disclosure in the last, so let me just have got the figures here, so changes from 2014 to 2017. So in the last three years that we have data, there were six convictions accrued when the applicant was under 12, which were disclosed in 2017. That's 92 per cent down from 2014 when there were 79. For the older age group, and I think it's important when we're looking at this bigger picture that we're talking about children under 12 and decriminalising them so that their contact is not traumatic for them, their contact with their justice system, but the bigger picture is that we do not want children and young people to suffer the consequences of their behaviour right through adulthood. So for the older age group, there were 174 convictions accrued when the applicant was aged 12 to 15, which were disclosed in 2017, and that is also down 79 per cent since 2014 when there were 814. So I think that does give you a sense of a much bigger picture of a more progressive needs-based approach. Thanks, that's very helpful. Okay. Thank you, convener. I'd like to move on to police powers, but before I do, I'd just like to talk about the retrospective qualities of this bill. I think it's clear that it will sweep up those young people under 12 who received a criminal record before the bill came into force, but we have just, as a committee, a consultation around retrospective offences in the Historic Pardons and Disregards Bill, and that felt like it had more to it in terms of ensuring that disclosures would never be affected by offences that are now legal if we are effectively saying that if you committed an offence before you were 12 it shouldn't count. What comfort can you give to those young people that they won't have that following them as relevant information on disclosures going forward? Well, I think there's a key difference between the situation here and the situation with the pardons and disregards such as for the historic sexual offences. Those offences are no longer offences. What we're doing in this bill is providing that children under 12 can't commit an offence. It's about the age of the child rather than the incident. I think we're comfortable with what we're doing at the moment. I think it's the right thing to do, but I think there's a significant difference between those two situations. I think the catalyst for bringing this legislation forward was that despite the fact that the Scottish Government had increased the age of criminal prosecution to 12 some time ago, there was still a propensity or a likelihood that young people would carry a criminal record from before the age of 12 for the rest of their life and that would impede their chances going forward. I would put it to you, minister, that having relevant information disclosed on a disclosure for something that you did when you were eight, which can still happen as a result of this legislation, would still impede your chances going forward. If we agree that young people do not have mental capacity to be held responsible for that, how is that fair or justified? I think that in that section of the bill there's really tight safeguards and the presumption is that information won't be released. It'll only be released when there is really considered to be a risk to public safety if that information is not released. So I am comfortable that that will be an extremely rare set of circumstances that anything goes on to an ORI for a child under 12. Test for that to be set. I mean, who will determine the bar for why there's a reasonable assessment that there is a risk to public safety of that information being included? It will be a function that's given to the independent reviewer, the current system for assessment of inclusion of other relevant information on a disclosure certificate, as this would fall to be. It lies with the chief constable. That would still be the case. The chief constable would still require to assess whether the information is relevant to the purpose of the disclosure certificate. So whether it's relevant in the circumstances of that particular certificate that this information goes on to the certificate and whether it ought to be disclosed. So that's a statutory test currently. In addition to that statutory test if the chief constable considers there is relevant information which ought to be disclosed in respect of under 12 behaviour that information would go to the independent reviewer and again that assessment would be carried out but with the independent reviewer has a wider access to information. The bill gives the independent reviewer specific authority to request information from a wider group of people than will be available to the chief constable. The independent reviewer will also have the benefit of guidance on how to apply that statutory test. Would it be helpful just to add to that briefly around the current experience of the operation of the ORI scheme at the moment? My understanding is that through the application of their own quality assurance framework Police Scotland actually haven't disclosed any other relevant information in respect of under 12 at all and I think that's because they're particularly mindful of the maturation and the adolescence process. But the other distinction that I suppose that we would draw to the Pardons and Disregards Bill is that there's been a really kind of mindful working through of the various perspectives and experiences around about how we should look back on previous behaviour, childhood behaviour that was previously dealt with as offending. I suppose the distinction here is that while we're looking to give really close attention to the life chances and the disclosure issues, because as you said, to follow the children and young people into adulthood but I suppose what we're also mindful of was that we're not minimising or disregarding the harm that was done to other victims when the behaviour occurred, many of whom were children themselves because again I think that's the evidence that for childhood harmful behaviour often times that's impacted on other children so while we were making sure that the stigma wasn't following young people into adulthood but we weren't at the same time making a signal to victims and other observers that this was no longer a behaviour that was of concern because I think that that would still be the case. Can I just ask, and you said there hasn't been information disclosed before but just for the benefit of the committee what sort of thing would be what would a scenario be where that would be deemed usual to in the public interest too? The other relevant information I would guess it that would include contextual material around concerns that had been raised about an individual or reports that had been made about an individual that may or may not have resulted in proceedings and or a finding at a children's hearing or a conviction but the police very carefully apply their own quality assurance framework and it's very much an independent chief constable statutory function about what they think would be most relevant for a third party most likely a prospective employer to be aware of so they would have, that would only apply to higher level disclosures as well so the other aspect that they would be very mindful of is what would be the vulnerability what's the role that's being applied for by that older young person who had this conduct in their background are they looking to work with particularly vulnerable groups and therefore what might not be relevant for other more kind of common or garden roles might become very very relevant if somebody was looking to work with vulnerable groups for example but we can certainly look to see if we can't reach out to Police Scotland and see if we can provide some exemplars for you about what might be included there. If I can move on to section 23 which is the powers of the police and particularly the powers to take children under 12 to a place of safety an anxiety that myself and other colleagues have carried really since the publication of the bill was that the only place of safety that actually appears on the face of the bill is the least desirable place of safety which is a police station and anyone who's been to a police station on a Friday or Saturday night would say it's pretty far from being a place of safety so to speak I think to the testimony we heard from Lindsay Hanbridge that that was the default position they came to and that she actually ended up in the cells and when we questioned Police Scotland about this they say that occasionally children will be housed in cells for want of somewhere else to take them does the minister agree that we perhaps need to amend this section to first of all identify the places of safety that should be tried first and also perhaps that this section presents an opportunity to create an additional clause for children over the age of 12 who are not yet 18 around the use of cells and the police's data so these provisions allow an exceptional response to an exceptional situation that's not routine at all the place of safety will only be used where there's an immediate risk of harm or further harm and it'll only be used for the shortest period possible and it really is a genuine place of safety it's not about taking the child away and questioning them or interrogating them it's about providing an emergency space for them to cool off the place of safety in most cases will be the child's home that's a very obvious place for children to go it could be another home it could be a friend's home it could be a relative's home it could be a children's home these places of safety are named they're regularly used in other situations as a Highlands and Islands representative you'll understand I can understand your concern about the police station being there as a last resort but as a representative for an extremely vast and rural area we can conceive of the situation where out of ours there is no other place of safety that a child can be removed to without removing them for hundreds of miles which is also traumatic so I think it does need to be in there as a last resort we're not it won't be used routinely as I said the first place of safety will be the child's home thank you for that minister I understand the need to include the possibility as a very very last resort of taking a child to a police station in the context you describe my anxiety is that if it is the only place of safety defined on the face of the bill it runs the risk of becoming the default not only that but without any detail as to what conditions the young person should be held in when they are taken to that place of safety as a rule of last resort you run the risk of seeing them spending a night in their cells and that happens we heard that from Lindsay Hambridge we heard it from Police Scotland do you not think that amendment is required to specifically adelineate the other places of safety as is defined in other acts that children might be taken to first and secondly the conditions and the operational parameters of what would happen when you get into the bill do you want to come in on this definitions point if it would assist at all section 23 subsection 8 contains the definition of a place of safety and it does it by reference to a provision that's in the children's hearing Scotland Act so that's just a very common way of legislation as you'll know of Crossrefaring and the detailed provision there are six places listed in the Children's Hearing Scotland Act one of which is a police station so I think in terms of whether there's a need to have that on the face of the bill in legislative terms it is there already it might also be worth just on the your question about children of higher age it might be worth knowing what the Children's Hearing Scotland Act itself says on this so section 189 of the Children's Hearing Scotland Act places a restriction on the use of police stations as a place of safety similar to the restriction that's contained in section 23 on the use of places of safety so that it is clear for children under 12 being dealt with under this bill and other children who'll be dealt with by the Children's Hearing system that that restriction on the use of police stations that's been enforced since June 2013 is in place to very closely with your colleagues on the development of that piece of legislation and it was to that that I was referring in terms of the actual list of other places of safety that might be taken my concern is that we're dealing with this bill and yes I don't agree with over-legislating that there's a done way of doing things but still neither in the Children's Hearing Bill nor in this bill are there clear statutory parameters for the use of particularly the cell estate in police stations and I go back to Lindsay Hanbridge in the fact that this country did her a profounder service and at the age of 13 nothing in this bill would have stopped that happening I think we clearly need to act on that and I think there needs to be provision in this bill to make it clear that no child should ever be in place in a cell that's the direct infringement of their article 37 rights and I'll be seeking amendment to that and if I can move on I've just jumped in briefly on that you mentioned there that minister that it was quite rare for children to be taken to a place of safety can you provide the committee with numbers and an indication of under what circumstances they're taken to a place of safety and of that number how many would go to a police station it's difficult to say in terms of numbers I mean we're talking about a very small number of children in a year with regard to this bill a handful you know and not all of those would need to be taken to a place of safety so they wouldn't meet the test of there being an immediate risk of harm the circumstance we thought hard about the circumstances as I said I would expect the place of safety to be the child's home in almost all cases and I think that would be what most of us would expect we've tried to think hard of the circumstances where that might not be a safe place to take the child and I guess in the very early stages after something terrible has happened so for example they have died and it's not clear they have died as a result of somebody's harmful behaviour but it's not clear whose behaviour has caused that there might potentially be the situation where another child in the family is being implicated by parents but the police for example are wondering whether that is correct or not and in that situation clearly the home is not a safe place to take that child and until the child has to be removed from the danger to the place of safety and further arrangements need to be made as rapidly as possible for that child while the facts of the case are established I suppose and I'll ask for your reflection on the overriding purpose of the bills to not criminalise children is there a risk that the provision is in there around place of safety kind of rub against that ethos and how would we let children and their families know that they weren't being criminalised if they're going to a police station so I can it is absolutely as a last resort that that is there as a place of safety and I can envisage we're talking about a handful of cases in a year but I can envisage the situation where a child would have to be transported hundreds of miles away to get to a suitable place of safety which is also a traumatic experience for them and I think it is useful to have it there but I cannot envisage the situation where it would be used except in the most rare rare of circumstances it's an exceptional response to an exceptional situation Thank you for that example A really final line of questioning for me on this section just in terms of the investigative interview sections of the bill section 38 affords children the right to not to answer questions picked up a feeling from some of the witnesses that we interviewed about this that that doesn't meet the test of article 40 obligations and actually that the rights to adult suspects are sort of more robust than this in terms of the right to silence is different than the right not to answer questions tell me what happened is an instruction, it's not a question and nothing about this bill would preclude an interviewing officer from making that instruction do we need to improve that? To put this in the context that an interview is not going to happen in every situation again all of the provisions of the bill are exceptional circumstances for exceptional situations in order for an interview to happen there has to be reasonable grounds to suspect that the child is responsible it has to be necessary to interview the child to properly investigate the child's behaviour they have to apply to a sheriff there's a number of safeguards in place around the interview and one of those safeguards is that the child will have a right to a supporter and that supporter will be both legally qualified and an independent advocacy worker we were very keen we looked very closely at the issue of what kind of person did we think should be there supporting the child in order to protect their rights we do think that they need to be legally qualified Ross was going to pick up on advocacy absolutely thanks I'm glad you touched on that minister because when we took evidence about the proposal that the advocacy workers must be legally qualified there was some confusion as to why that would be and what it actually means the Law Society of Scotland said we would question how these rights will operate when considering the rights to legal advice provided under the equivalent criminal proceedings and the Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance said that it's vital that independent advocacy is not seen or used as a substitute for legal representation or the appropriate adult scheme so can you explain to the committee why these advocacy services will require to be legally qualified that we need to provide robust protection of the child's rights throughout the interview process that's why we think they need to be legally qualified what the child says and does during that interview may well have lifelong consequences for them and I think it's really important that their rights are protected in that situation but equally important is that the child has a proportionate child centered response to them so advocacy is as important as the legal qualification and we think that this provides protection on both fronts protection of robust protection of their rights but also a child centered voice for the individual I don't know if either of my officials would like to add to that If it would help at all I think the manner in which she introduced the challenge was really helpful because while the law society evidence referred to the equivalent criminal proceedings I think the entire premise of this particular proposal within the bill is that it's signally would not be equivalent to criminal proceedings and what we're talking about here is drawing on and then supporting an existing cohort of legally qualified solicitors who are already operating on the children's legal assistance scheme so they'd already been required to demonstrate that capacity for child centered practice and that they have quality assurance mechanism in place in relation to that and they already have the wider obligations and assurance that's offered by that professional solicitor status and that oversight but they would also be able to operate on that very focused child centered way so it's about appropriately skilled individuals who have behind them that appropriately robust set of quality assurance mechanisms but it doesn't feel like a proxy for a duty solicitor it very much feels like someone who has that expertise and those skills to call on but is able to deploy them in an appropriate and accessible way both for a child and for the supporter but also in terms of holding that other adult actors in the room to account about the focus of the interview that this is about finding what are the circumstances yes of the concern and behaviour but what are the underlying needs and risks that have played into that and let's remind ourselves that while there might remain a right to remain silent it's actually probably better to come forward and talk about your experience talk about your concerns talk about what's led to that incident or series of incidents so that we can put in place the right sorts of support round about you and this isn't about you being in trouble so in terms of the numbers of people that are already undertaking this role that are legally qualified essentially solicitors but with a child-centred focus the advocacy support workers that we're using currently that don't have a legally qualified background are we going to upscale them are we making sure that they are going to go through this training to become legally qualified or do we have enough of a cohort at present there are a number of potential cohorts on which we could draw the children's legal assistance scheme has 700 solicitors on it across Scotland and if you look for example at the national safeguarders panel who already operate in children's hearings there are about 160 of them about 40% of them are legally qualified so I guess what we would be looking to do is to build an environment whereby people could access the right sorts of learning and development pathways and accrue the right sorts of qualifications and skills and knowledge in order to meet the need whether or not that be in a child an investigative interview in the conversations with families in between or at a pre-hearing panel or at a children's hearing or at a connected sheriff court proceeding and the other virtue of the proposal that the minister set out for you is that if we were to draw on the children's legal assistance scheme members what that would mean is that the same individual could obviously in the sorts of emergency circumstances we're talking about there wouldn't be that really important beneficial relationship based advocacy that you would like to have because it would just be arriving very quickly but what that would mean is that the relationship with that individual practitioner could continue with the child if matters were to go on to a hearing and they could perhaps continue as a legal rep. You're comfortable that the amount of £20,600 in the financial memorandum is enough for a fully accessible legally qualified advocacy service? Yes. As we work through as you'd mentioned yourself about the importance of learning and development quality assurance and oversight we're working through that with the independent advocacy alliance, with the law society with child law and with the wider sort of advocacy sector and they've agreed to kind of help us with the detail of that and that will just emerge over the coming months. I think the other thing that's important to emphasise is that this is about to be subject of consultation and I think on the rights which attach that you quite rightly bring up this has really been about offering another tool in the box another opportunity to get the right people in the room at that moment where crisis has been responded from the emergency position and where there's now an opportunity for a different sort of conversation so it's about making sure the right specialist support is accessed by the child that the best people are there to help them through that difficulty to address their needs and what legal qualifications look like in that context is about to be the subject of consultation because whilst there may well be consequences from that they're no longer a criminal suspect and the authenticity of that change has got to be reflected in a different set of rights being attached and responded and respected and I think that part of that shared conversation has been really to come up to answer for that so this specialist advocacy role for that very narrowly defined set of circumstances can be fulfilled by an existing cohort and we look forward to the consultation to see what the next steps might be Just on that specific point Paul, can you tell me what form that consultation is going to take what the timescale for it is and who's going to be consulted? Actually my colleague apologies I think it's just been fairly late Lately the ministers have agreed to this but the plan certainly is to go public in relation to the consultation before Christmas and I think importantly while we as Paul said we wanted to delineate the really acute rights challenges that notwithstanding the child centered hopefully focus of the investigative interviews conversation that we wanted to relate that in broader terms to the section 122 of the 2011 act children's hearings act wider children's hearings advocacy service and to invite views on what we thought we'd identify as really broad areas of commonality there around having a kind of that relationship based approach but also to identify and to invite views on the particular points of difference so we'll be consulting on particular aspects of the draft practice model that we've worked on with the advocacy sector along with the specifics that would flow from these new proposals within the bill and put that context together to a public consultation later in the year Thanks Annie Wells Good morning minister, morning panel In the minister's opening remarks she spoke about support for victims and my question is does the minister believe that as the bill set such just now that it does protect the rights of an interest of children who have been involved in harmful behaviour and also to the victims of that harmful behaviour Yeah, I think it's a really important question and thank you for asking it I think that victims are absolutely at the heart of this bill in a number of ways so we've recognised that the children who are involved in harmful behaviour are absolutely often victims of other people's harmful behaviour they're some of the most vulnerable citizens that we have in Scotland and the way that we respond to them in this crisis can help to turn their lives around so they are undoubtedly victims The victims of their behaviour are also at the heart of this bill if you when you speak to victims the thing that they want most is for nobody else to have to go through what they have gone through themselves and at the heart of this bill is a progressive aim to try to turn the lives around of some of these most vulnerable citizens who have landed in crisis and the aim is for there to be fewer victims in future because of the way that we respond to their behaviour so I think victims are at the very heart of this bill and I hope that you would agree that we have landed right through it Thank you very much During the evidence session from victim support we did hear some concerns that some of the victims of this harmful behaviour were receiving information as to what happened to the person who caused the harmful behaviour and I think in some circumstances that helps that person who has been the victim to heal as well knowing that something has been done that has been taken into account so are we content that the information that is given to the victims by the principal reporter is only when it's a serious case or should we have looked at that more about what information is shared I think you're right there's a balance to be struck isn't there so I think it's really absolutely appropriate that victims get appropriate support in information there must be a number of safeguards in there and I think we have struck the balance appropriately in this bill on that issue we can't be releasing information in appropriate circumstances about essentially children and as we all agree that both perpetrator and victim are victims often in these circumstances the principal reporter has to take him in again to this child-centred approach that we have they have to take into account the best interests of the child I don't know if one of my officials would like to add a little bit more about the information That's right I suppose that the provisions the victim information provisions within the bill are in large part about reintroducing the children's reporter victim information service the defence label the power of the principal reporter to provide information kind of hinged on that so we had to kind of build that afresh but I guess it's implicit within your own question in order for information and support to be meaningful that should probably be understood as a backstop because the information that is provided for in the bill is relatively minimal and that's mainly because of the disability of the children who are thought to be responsible but in order to be of most use to victims that needs to be seen in terms of the wider efforts through the delivery groups and I think one of the main benefits of developing the bill has been making those connections afresh between the police, between the children's reporter with Victim Support Scotland and recognising the importance of actually it needs to be round about first contact whether or not that is with the police or with a third sector provider or indeed with the reporter service themselves certainly the experience of the victim information service as it's been operating since 2003 seems to be that if there's an opportunity to have a conversation with victims to say that this has been given attention to by the appropriate agencies but as you know there'll be things going on within the family that aren't connected to the specific incident that we can't tell you everything about and the panel will look at that in much more detail so we'll appreciate that we have to give attention to those in order to attend to the wider risks but in terms of what we're able to tell you and your family it will be quite limited because it's a child and that seems to have been reasonably well understood and reasonably well received so it's a fair and it's an honest calibration of a reconciliation rather of the various competing interests in play and I think that there's a real appetite to refocus on that and make sure that the bill provisions are what they are but they should be the last chapter in a more meaningful and a more regularised contact with victims that provides more tailored information to them about the principles that we're deploying there thank you Mary Fee's been waiting very patiently to come back in thank you very much I've got a couple of follow-up questions the first is on place of safety and it follows up from the line of questioning from Alex Cole-Hamilton the bill, as has been explained to us, uses the definition of place of safety from the Children's Hearing Scotland 2011 act and in the policy document accompanying the bill that lists six places that the Children's Hearing Act recommend as a place of safety can you explain to me then if there are six listed in the policy document why you chose to lift the police station and put that on the face of the bill and not use one of the other examples I think Liz tried to address that point in her earlier response so I must listen to the answer I think so six places listed as a place of safety and in the Children's Hearing Act and in the definition and there is specific provision set provision in the Children's Hearing Act that places this specific restriction on the use of police stations so in effect what this bill is doing is effectively replicating that dual provision so we have the six places and then we have the specific restriction on the face of the bill as to the use of police stations I might be being quite naive or stupid I don't know but there is a list of six places and the one place that's been lifted and put in the face of the bill is police station why didn't for example you lift a residential or other establishment provided by a local authority why did you not lift that one there's no restriction being required to be placed on that the specific provision in section 23 that was required to be made as regards the use of a police station was to place this specific restriction on the use of a police station there isn't a similar need to place a restriction on the use of any of the other places of safety so that's why this specific provision was required to be made and it had to be made on the face of this bill ministers wanting to come in on this if I can reassure you we believe that all of that is captured with the wording it's simply a convention in drafting if you would prefer the full wording to be on the face of the bill we're perfectly comfortable with that can I move on just just going to bring in Oliver Mundell because I really see he didn't get to his question there thank you very much just on a sort of technical point I don't know if the minister had seen Professor Sutherland's evidence last week just around some issues on offence grounds which I think the law society had also highlighted in their written evidence and it was just whether the minister had a chance to reflect on that at all we watched that evidence and we have discussed it and I'll ask my official poll to respond to you it was an interesting exchange and it harked back to some of the written evidence as well I think it's important to understand the context and the consequences that we're potentially looking at here firstly in emphasising the decriminalisation of this work by removing the offence ground there are consequences in terms of the standard of proof and as I mentioned before which attach therefore are different and the evidence that you heard reflected back to some concern about replication of that I think the first thing to say is that I know from my own professional experience that in terms of understanding how the characteristics of children, young people victims, witnesses are taken into account in decision making we can have confidence of the factors as publicly available in the prosecution code for older children and so on that those characteristics are always taken into account when it comes to the use of the referral ground it's already practised just now that if a piece of offending behaviour is part of a broader need that can be weft into that case law which prohibits the use of the offence ground for offence only behaviour which is then addressed within this bill positively the first thing to say is that it's not actually required when we look at 12 the work from through the advisory group and thereafter has been confident that any incident of harmful behaviour can appropriately be addressed taking into account the broader non-offence grounds and that any incident of harmful behaviour can be responded to in that child focused manner and the provisions in the bill provide the rights based safeguards taking into account that change to the standard of proof I think it's fair to emphasise that with the child no longer being a criminal suspect they are they need to be seen in a different context and replicating criminal procedure is not quite in line with that underlying principle of decriminalisation it's important of course that those rights based safeguards are put in place for all of the actors throughout the different stages if we look at the way that offence ground operates just now as I say it's quite narrowly defined reflecting on that evidence one can see particularly in the Police Scotland submission the thought about operating a higher age and a review clause and so on might need to be looked at again and I think that would include discussion about whether those grounds would continue to exist but under 12 I think that we can be confident that there shouldn't be a gap in that regard I think that Professor Simon had mentioned that there were talks around maybe creating a new referral ground or a new category of referral grounds why was that approach ruled out? Well as you say because it isn't necessary for under 12 because the other grounds particularly M&N I think it is in terms of a child presenting a risk to others or being out of the control of the relevant person I think those grounds and others if required can be used to capture all of those instances there's a clear message of reassurance that it wouldn't add any additional benefit So I guess from what you're saying I do understand that but why is an expert in the field like Professor Sutherland and the Law Society of Scotland raising concerns about this if it's not an issue where do you think their concern is coming from? Sorry it would help to reflect back on the broad base of expertise that we drew on in relation to the advisory group that included children's rights organisations representatives from a legal profession that included independent academia in a context where you already have 17 available grounds for referral and as Paul had mentioned although you used the letters there's an available ground of referral that specifically turns on children's conduct having an adverse effect on other people and there's another ground that specifically turns on children being beyond parental control our own legal analysis our own policy consideration and more importantly that broader group of care and justice experts led us to the position where we thought we had confidence that there was sufficient capacity within the available grounds to deal with certainly all under 12 behaviour Mary Thank you very much Just for completeness In your opening remarks and in your answers to a number of my colleagues questions you talked about the very small number of children that commit very serious crimes Can you tell me how many children commit those very serious crimes and what those very serious crimes are? Yes Certainly I can There I'll just As I said there's a very small number of children that we are talking about in terms of the children's hearing referrals to the reporter by age group there's 232 children aged 8 to 11 that are referred currently in 2017-18 Very serious crimes because there is a range of offences So I'm just going on to that if you'll allow me to finish 232 children aged 8 to 11 referred on offence grounds 12 children aged 8 to 11 referred for serious, violent or sexual offences and 42 children aged 8 to 11 referred for weapons offences Does that answer your question? Answers that question Last week in our evidence session we were talking about the needs-based approach and Garfec and it's something that we've spoken about as well we've also spoken about the fact that many children young people that are involved in criminal behaviour or activity come from either care experience or very disruptive traumatic backgrounds and they are victims themselves and one of our panel members last week said that the question we should be asking young children when they are involved in this activity isn't what have you done it's what's been done to you do you think this bill will meet that need? Yes, absolutely and that's the absolute fundamental of the children's hearing system as well in Scotland so the children's hearing system asks us to look at children's needs, not their deeds to shift from what have you done to what has happened to you and I think I can assure you that this is part of a bigger picture towards that approach Ok, well thank you very much for your evidence this morning minister and your officials, we will briefly suspend while we change panels Welcome back we now move into our second panel item of business today which is an evidence session on scrutiny of the 2019-2020 draft budget today we have a panel of local authority experts witnesses looking at how equality and human rights approaches can be taken in local government budgeting so can I welcome councillor Jennifer Leiden city convener for equalities and human rights at Glasgow city council Louise McKenzie group manager for strategic policy and planning at Glasgow city council Rosemary McKinnon principal officer for equality at highland council Audrey Cameron development officer for equalities at north Lanarkshire council and Liz Fergus youth work manager for north Lanarkshire council you're all very welcome this morning can I start things off by asking what methods you use within your local authorities to undertake equality impact assessments can we hear a bit about what evidence is considered and who's consulted please and I'll go to whoever makes eye contact with me first Audrey are you wanting to come in the approach that north Lanarkshire council took particularly in the 2018-19 budget was to consider equalities groups within the proposals that were originally being made and the proposals for the 2018 budget took place in August 2017 so at that point when the corporate management team and heads of service were considering what the budget proposals would be a preforma was developed that asked specific questions around who the budget would impact on would it be service users employees and other services if it impacted on other services as well and then drilled that down a bit to a full up question and if it impacted on any of the service users or staff what particular characteristics of the quality at that particularly a budget proposal impacted upon so that was kind of like a screening process I suppose at a very very early stage of that budget setting process and that was obviously proposals at that point and that was used as a basis for future discussions with elected members and that formed the basis as well of I can speak about within my own service which was education, youth and communities and we took an overview of all of those proposals that were being made for our service and looked at an accumulative effect on particular groups so we identified particularly in relation to 2018-19 that young people obviously education, youth and community service so that was a bit of obvious one but we looked at a we thought that we needed to keep an eye on young people who had additional support needs young people who had communication support needs and young people's mental health that was the kind of the issues that were coming up as those original proposals that process then went out to public consultation and there was a that the public consultation took a form of through an internet email consultation focus groups there was 25 articles in the local press hard copies were put in the libraries and we had specific consultation focus group with the British Sign Language community and also with young people Liz might be able to speak a bit about that young people what we would do is bring in some of the other local authorities and then we can get into that who else would like to come in Jennifer happy to come in well in terms of our budget process there was a number of different stands that took place simultaneously for myself I was part of a budget subgroup along with the treasurer along with another colleague directors of service to discuss through budget proposals and that allowed us to specifically ask about equality aspects some of our budget proposals we went out to public consultation we went out and had a number of community events and online dialogue tool and we also spoke to equality groups within the city so for example the Glasgow disability alliance to get their feedback on the types of issues and gaps that we had in our budget and where we could perhaps make savings as part of our meetings we also undertook equality impact assessments for our draft budget so on our budget day for a full council we had four budgets presented four draft budgets from all the parties and each had an equality impact assessment that came along with that it was very strong in bringing that and making sure that that was through the entire process thank you I'll just maybe follow on some of the points that council laden has made I mean what's really important in our approach is the strong political leadership that's there and in terms of the consultation process as council laden has mentioned we had a number of community consultation events we're lucky in Glasgow strong and thriving equality third sector and a lot of those groups were present at those consultation events which were held in three different sectors of the city in addition to reach beyond that we have a Glasgow household survey which is a panel of a thousand residents that's waited to reflect the makeup of the city and we conducted focus groups drawn from that panel to discuss again the budget options and ideas that were coming through as council laden has mentioned the equality impact assessment work was done following a mainstreaming model it's done by the services who are looking at the options in addition though for the new administration of the council as well as councillors receiving mandatory quality training to cover the act and the public sector quality duty there's also been a programme of equality impact assessment training which is carried out by the corporate team and which council laden is a fairly practical session so I think that's really helped to understand what members are required to do training and stuff like that I'd be interested to hear a perspective from Highland I suppose we have some similarities in approaches to both Glasgow and North Lanarkshire in terms of approaches to the use of the pro forma template which asks about the protective characteristics and the likely impact at an early stage is identified and highlighted before proposals go forward and that's taken through if a full impact assessment is identified as being needed that will be carried out and presented to members in terms of engagement we've used a range of different forms for years some of that online we've worked with local communities whether it's community councils ward forums and we have carried out consultation with particular groups with an interest in equality and access issues and in particular we've tried to work with groups who maybe find it more difficult to use traditional methods of engagement so we have worked with local communities people affected by mental health issues people with visual or hearing impairments and carried out particular focus groups with those groups in addition to the wider range of groups that we engage with where we do carry out surveys whether they're online or whether it's paper format or through citizens panels we also disaggregate information by in particular disability generally it tends to be feedback that we get it's aligned with the feedback that we get from the general population but sometimes it does give us some very rich insights into the differences different views from some of those groups okay thank you that's helpful colleague Gail Ross wanted to ask about equality training yeah just before I go on to the training good morning panel thank you all for coming along in terms of the focus groups and the citizens panel and the disability and whoever else that you consult with when you're doing these impact assessments if it comes forward that there is going to be quite a severe equality or human rights impact is that suggestion or part of the budget immediately dropped or is it put to elected members and they decide if it goes through where does that work if you find out that a piece of work is going to have a severe impact on a certain group an example around one of the budget priorities in North Lanarkshire last year that was up for consultation was the closure of our outdoor centre in Kobawi and Oben and there was a very strong reaction from our local young people and who were supported through making their views heard around the impact that Kobawi had on them growing up no matter what age the young person was everyone talked about their week at Kobawi with school and the young people really felt strong that that was impacting on their learning experiences going forward and that was put on the committee so that proposal was taken off the table and Kobawi wasn't shut down so that would be a very practical example of you said we did in terms of our young people that's good any other feedback on that I think just to come in on that we would follow a similar process as well we don't want to implement a policy that's going to have a severe impact on those protected characteristic groups so the reason for having the equality impact assessment and having elected members chained in that is that we understand the types of impacts that can occur and that can allow us to work through that policy and if that policy needs to be changed radically or if it needs to be dropped just to follow on that I can't think in the past few years think because there is early engagement and senior officers and members are looking at options at an early stage I think these things might be picked up at those level of discussions before they would get into a wider budget package so we are managing to take a lot of these things out when the impacts are understood at an early stage I suppose yes and we would have a very similar process not all proposals would go forward to council so that some proposals would be dropped or changed along the way as a result of the engagement that's carried out to go on to training obviously you've got your officers and elected member training are they similar, do they differ in any way is it mandatory, is it ongoing how do you do your training I could come in that from a political elected member point of view we do undergo mandatory facilities act training so we go through the legislation however when I came in to post I did feel it was important that we underwent impact assessment training so to understand why we are going through that so our staff within the strategic planning kindly provided us with that training where we work through certain examples and developing policy and I think that helps with a deeper understanding for elected members when we are scrutinising policy and understanding impact assessments yes we have ongoing training both of staff and for members and it's similar training but we tend to like these shorter sessions for for members but we do focus on equality impact assessment processes for members and highlighting the responsibilities to give due regard to equality issues in decision making similar within North Lanarkshire all of our elected members have just recently undergone equality and diversity training with a focus on their roles and responsibilities and power dynamics and going forward with not a specific on equality impact assessments but elected members did raise equality impact assessments at the training that it's an area where they would like to focus further in the future training I wonder and I know this might be challenging for council officers to answer but if it is just don't Jennifer can answer but with all this training and awareness is it an example that the committee could have where elected members have spotted a budget proposition and thought that the impact on a protected group was going to be too great or that the policy would need to be dropped or changed can anyone give an example of that yes we probably had a number of examples over the year one that probably springs to my mind is around potential impact on our employability services where the impact assessment has certainly changed a decision at the end of the day on proposals to reduce costs thank you okay gailer you finished that line no no a lot of our budget proposals we focus quite heavily in Glasgow in terms of social economic deprivation so a lot of the proposals that we do put forward does have a look at that kind of levels of deprivation that is higher in Glasgow perhaps in other areas so I think it is something that our budget proposals have been of medium or very low impact gailer I've just got a small follow up and it comes from a place that I used to be an elected member myself and I know that undertaking training and sometimes getting elected members along to that training can be quite challenging have all elected members had the training or is it patchy I believe we've all had the training in terms of our legislation training and the vast majority of the 85 members have had the equality impact assessment training not all have had training at the moment but we will carry on with ongoing training and encouraging members to attend in North Lanarkshire there was a motion past council that all elected members had to undertake mandatory equality and diversity training which has just happened in the last two months that's interesting if I cut across someone else's question then just tell me to stop I wanted to just ask about training for the public you've talked about officers and councillors but I certainly know from my own local authority that there's a big focus on participatory budgeting and I've heard some of you mentioned focus groups and other bits and pieces because one of the concerns I certainly have is that sometimes the groups who are most disadvantaged or at risk are the ones who are least able to articulate their voice and that members of the public particularly in budgets are tight don't necessarily understand or have the information around impact assessments or other things to make those kinds of choices is that something that you vote to at all one of my colleague who works closely with me has taken forward the participatory budgeting within North Lanarkshire and in conversation with him I had suggested that members of the disability access panel in North Lanarkshire should be part of the steering group that forms the North Lanarkshire participatory budgets so that they can influence access issues and inclusion issues in the participatory budgeting setting so that's one approach that we are looking at I could maybe answer on behalf of Glasgow we have a number of participatory budgeting pilots that has come from our budget this year and the majority of those five are based on particular characteristic groups so we have social economic deprivation linked to child poverty BME group and also just looking at a community of interest so as opposed to geographical awards in participatory budgeting but the main aspect of that is around capacity building and training people how to get involved and get involved in the citizens panels and that also includes some qualities training I do think that there is a risk though that within participatory budgeting that we do get are already very enabled capable community activists and that we do have to take an extremely proactive approach to make sure that groups who are at risk of our marginalised groups do get involved in processes and that takes resource and it takes time to help enable people to do that I know just now that with our care experience young people we've been investing a lot of time to look at how they get involved in youth engagement structure and that requires a lot of support and a lot of training and an additional resource to look at where they're at and to where they're going and the barriers to participation that they're experiencing and how we overcome those barriers so I definitely think that there's still a job to be done to make sure that the voices of those that are most vulnerable are heard Good morning to everyone, thank you for coming to see us today about the training that's going on both across the elected members and the officials but in my own experience the experience of members of this committee that sometimes when something is everybody's responsibility it becomes nobody's responsibility if everyone thinks it's happening it doesn't always and I'm always minded of the time when this Parliament passed the 2014 Children and Young People Act it was the first time any piece of legislation had referred to specific duties of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child but I was convener of the Scottish Alliance for Children's Rights that year and I was horrified to see half of Scotland's councils divesting themselves of children's rights officers the following year because of cuts to financial pressures so my question is are there specific individuals either within the elected cohort or the officials who are responsible for defending and promoting both equalities and rights not just in budgeting but in policy and service delivery in your councils? My role as city convener is to defend the equality and human rights within Glasgow city council so I have a strong leadership role ensuring that that takes place at a policy level we have many teams across both our council offices and our allios who have equality remits the other thing to point out is in our new policy committee structures we had initially talked about having an equalities committee on its own but decided that perhaps that would then mean that all the equalities work went to one committee we have it written in all of our terms of reference that equalities has to be considered in all our policy committees in our policy report templates there is a section that has to be completed detailing what equality impacts have been undertaken and how that might affect so that we have scrutiny over that we also have co-optied members of from third sector and from equality groups who sit on a number of our policy committees and also take part in the scrutiny of our policies in our papers I could just say some further observations because I recognise exactly the dilemma that you pose in terms of trying to get a balance between being somebody's responsibility and also mainstreaming and I think in the time that I've worked in the equalities area I can see that we have strengthened that we do have a small team of people at the centre that work in a range of corporate issues and I do have a number of staff that specifically focus on equalities but in addition we now much have a much stronger group of staff closer to operational service delivery who have a better understanding of these issues in addition given Glasgow size and scale many of our separate we have a corporate equality officers group but then our services like education services will also operate their own working groups within their service and draw people in from the operational side as well to make those links we also have a number of specialists looking at areas for example such as domestic violence and hate crime policy so we have a mix it can't just be something that's driven at the centre and seen as the job of the equality team which I think is where we were 15 years ago or so but we also do need a centre a core to keep driving it through the organisation similarly we have a corporate role which is very tiny it is myself so we do have one corporate post but we have much stronger roles now across services we have across service equality's working group and I do think equality is much much more embedded across all of our services than it has been in the past I think particularly in our care and learning service we have a huge shift forward they have their own equality's working group within their service and equality's work has been taken forward much more strongly particularly within the education side than it ever has been so it is being seen as other people's responsibility it's shared across there are the traditional roles of HR but we also have a lot of partnership working locally in Highland across equalities because other public bodies are in a similar situation where they may have one person staff who is the lead person so we work very closely together in terms of support and networking and where we can work together and I think that's very helpful to us Building on in the Children and Young People Act our children's services partnership have co-produced a partnership agreement on a rights based approach with young people in North Lanarkshire where they have the chair of the partnership and the chair of our council-wide youth fora have jointly signed to say that all business of the children services partnership will be done in conjunction with young people's views being sought out of every possibility so we've moved from the officers considering how they would include a rights based approach into the plan to practical examples now where we do have this partnership agreement and the thing is our young people are very empowered to make sure that the children services partnership actually deliver because I think that when you raise the expectations of young people then they will respond and react To add to that as well and it's very similar to other councils we have an elected member equality champion we also have a youth community inequalities committee and we have young people who come along and contribute to that committee we have a corporate equality working group that has service representatives across the council and we have one role which supports the corporate work and again specialist staff across the organisation working on gender based violence housing mainstreaming it as much as we possibly can again it's very good to hear all of the steps that your organisations your authorities are taking and I think it's fair to say massive organisations as local authorities are can do all the things that they have in their armory to address equalities in human rights but unless you've got a good process by which people who are having their rights impacted or have been discriminated at a local service delivery level unless that process exists then it's all for nothing and my question to you is the most marginalised people in society are often the quietest as well find it hardest to have their voices heard are you confident and can you give me an example of how that process would take so if somebody for example if it's an equalities issue if they have difficulty physically accessing a public space or experience unconscious bias at the hand of a council employee are you confident that they would know first of all that they could challenge that with the authority and how would they go about that I think to answer I think the first part no I'm not always sure people do know that they have stability and know that necessarily a behaviour or a deficiency in the service is discriminating against them I think we do have processes in place though to allow people to challenge that again corporately we do try to we do try to support that and again I think through our engagement with our sector groups and they would quite often I think be the first place that people would go to and our elected members I think it would be fair to say it I think in Glasgow over a long period of time a lot of our elected members not just the ones who are the equality champions have got a strong interest in a range of equality issues such as race and religious discrimination so they quite often would be a port of call if there was a particular issue a very similar approach I don't think any of us would ever say that we're wholly confident that all people will be able to access either access our services or be able to find an effective way of taking forward a complaint however I think the third sector is extremely important here because we try and focus a lot of our training particularly with our frontline staff who come into contact with members of the public in terms of equality and diversity issues that that's extremely helpful in terms of raising people's awareness around maybe people needing different ways to engage different ways of communication and I think that helps us partnership approach I think is crucial with other public sector bodies the police for instance we've been doing quite a bit of work recently with the police in relation to people with learning disabilities and disability hate crime and that's been a partnership approach just with the police but also with our colleagues in social work and our young people services and adult services within social work but I don't think we would be able to reach everyone if it weren't for working with closely with third sector organisations disability organisations particularly deaf services representative organisations as well and we work really closely with I wonder if the panel could give committee some information about how you balance difficult decisions and how you take account of different and competing priorities when you're looking at equality issues we would like to start I mean sometimes obviously as councils we have to make decisions with heavy hearts and I know that that's when we were speaking earlier about budget decisions when we're making difficult decisions and sometimes we do have to make difficult decisions but we might need to look at balancing and mitigating factors putting in place if we have to close a building Rosemary was speaking about employability services and I know something recently was one of our proposals around our employability services was to close a building we know that that was going to impact on people that would use that service specifically so it was we can save the money by closing the building but we need to make sure that we provide the service in other ways by using libraries, using community services centres making sure that people can access that service but in a slightly different way so I think it's about being creative in our thoughts as well about how we balance and make difficult decisions but at the same time making sure that the impact isn't so great that it can't be justified that's certainly the approach that we take I think that this is going back to the role of the equality impact assessment is that we're able to take account of some of the issues at a very early stage particularly in terms of officers being able to flag up what the issues might be what the considerations are what the evidence might be where we've got feedback from local groups as well as national evidence and it's because decisions are taking at very different levels in different ways and on a daily basis some of the political decisions some of the decisions by officers again on a daily basis so it really depends on what those decisions are but I think it's trying to be evidence based where we are making decisions at the end of the day Okay, Councillor Layden I don't know if you've got anything you wanted to add No, I wanted to come in on that I think that we always have difficult decisions to make and we have some challenges however in having a look out we have our council plan priorities and a lot of that is based around equality and fairness and dignity and respect and I think that as others have indicated we look at the evidence base we look at the outcomes and the impact that we can make on people's lives as a way to help direct resources and if we have a look at some of our budget decisions that we made this year for example we've put around 2 million pounds in to mitigate universal credit and the impact that that's going to have in the next couple of months particularly for disabled people and people who have learning difficulties and we know that there's a cumulative impact of protected characteristics we've also put additional monies in for example to deal with child hunger or holiday hunger as they call it and this is also to look at and challenge some of the social economic deprivation that we have in the city OK, one of my bug bears when it comes to equality impact assessments and equality training and all of this is shared amongst some members of the committee is that it's something that's done once a year a box is ticked and it's put back on the shelf to be revisited the following year when you remove the dust from the book and go yeah yeah we need to do this again How confident are you that the equality training that all of you have received and all of your colleagues in your workplaces have received is actually something that's almost a living entity within your working and day-to-day life so it actually is meaningful Come in on that and I think Louise would probably back me up in this but almost every committee there is a mention of equalities and how we are consulting with her each groups so it is a continuous process that we have a look at through all our policy development and service design we are about to start our budget process again for next year and again we are already looking at some of the equality impacts of our budget from this year and reflecting those decisions that have been made and the plan would be to discuss that with some of our third sector colleagues in equalities groups that represent in the city to see if there is anything further that we can do and if they have any reflections on the budget decisions that we have made I would agree with that I would even look back going 10 years and equality would come up very rarely in committees now it comes up at most committees if not all committees one way or another and that's on-going throughout our committees not simply around our budget proposals and budget decisions Established a sub-committee of our education committee which specifically focuses on equalities, young people and communities and I think that that has really helped to make sure that equalities is part of the overall budget plan, the processes and as you say, not something that just sits over there that we dust down once a year I don't know if I could just come in and think about what's been said I think that in Glasgow the make-up of our city equality is very real for our front-line staff who are dealing with it issues that citizens face on a daily basis and some quite challenging issues for some of our newer communities and more excluded communities so I think that at the centre we very much focus on giving them what we need an example, Councillor Layden has reminded me was when we were developing our equality outcomes as well as engaging with equality organisations in the city and with our equality policy officers we also held workshops with front-line staff to help them to shape what they think because they are dealing with issues on a daily basis so very much trying to keep it live We also have an employee equality forum which is for employees we hold regular events for employees and there's also a consultation forum for the council in relation to all sorts of policies including budget decisions and that as well as all of the previous mechanisms that I mentioned about equalities and keeping that focus make sure that it's not forgotten it's always got a high profile and our elected member equality champion has also provided an excellent focus to keep our qualities high up on the agenda and we've recently as well I think the Fear Scotland duty has helped us focus further on equality within all of our decisions and we now have all of our reporting templates to committee we have to provide evidence on how we've considered equality and socio-economic disadvantage You've all spoken about the marginalised and disadvantaged groups that you are committed to engaging with I wonder if across the authorities that are represented here today if you could perhaps give me an example of the specific dialogue and communication you have had with the gypsy traveller community in a time or minority and a disadvantaged group If you can't have an example at the moment perhaps you could I would quite like the panel to see whether or not they've had dialogue with gypsy travellers We do need a gypsy traveller liaison officer within our council who regularly we don't have a permanent site in North Lanarkshire but we do have transient gypsy traveller community coming through North Lanarkshire gypsy traveller liaison officer and their housing needs assessment always takes the views and consults with gypsy travellers on their needs We don't have a specific gypsy travelling liaison officer but our tenant engagement officers do engage with gypsy travellers in Highland, we have four sites across Highland and we have regular engagement with them through our housing service in particular I suppose like colleagues Glasgow traditionally had a low number of gypsy travellers occupational travelling is the more prevalent trend in Glasgow but we have worked regionally with colleagues in the west of Scotland to look at the accommodation and site needs of gypsy travellers and that's been taken, that's been done through our housing strategy We also do have a gypsy traveller liaison person who is located in our social work services Okay, thank you Okay, brief supplementary A very brief supplementary While we're talking about marginalised groups I think it's fair to say that one of the groups in all of Scottish society that experiences the worst life outcomes and the worst denigration of their equalities and their human rights are the people to whom the local authority is arguably most responsible and that's our look to after children on any given day in Scotland there are 15,000 children in the care of the state either at home in kinship care foster care or residential care Can you give me an example or tell me how your authorities seek to meaningful engage with this community and those of care experience who've left their supervision orders Okay, give a response to that So in terms of our look to after and accommodated children we do a lot of work with our integrated joint board who are looking to redesign and transform our children's services and we do a lot of work with our social work services and I think there has been a lot of involvement to try and reshape the way that children's services are being delivered so moving from the model that we have had for a very long time where children are in long term institutional care so for example we now have a family genealogy service running within Glasgow where we try to support children to find perhaps kinship carers through looking at genealogy searches and that's just a sort of innovative way to look at how we can support children within the looked after and accommodated sector within Glasgow I think what I'll do because we've heard from your local authority Thursday morning committees are always a little bit tight so I'm going to just take one from you We have a lot of work in our care and learning department with looked after children and in particular moving away from where children may have had out of area placements as well trying to keep children within the area or bring children back into the area but we've also had a lot of engagement with looked after children and redesign of services and I think that's been really important and there's been some really powerful messages for example children attending committee and speaking at committee about their experiences and that's been valuable Thank you So much to do in terms of improving outcomes for our looked after children however I do think that there is a lot of good work happening and within our authority we have been partnered with the life changes trust and setting up a champions board and I think that that work that's happening is really really important and making sure that our young people who are care experienced past and present get the opportunity and make sure that they participate in the decisions that affect them and I know that our own care experience group today not tomorrow young people have been set up to challenge what's happening in terms of services and particularly they're interested in the services in relation to education, house and employment and we have helped to support them to take part in that process and their last request was while we have six locality forums for our young people that they have their own forum a seventh forum on care experience young people and I think it's important that we act when our young people make these requests and we have got so much to learn from our young people that have been through the system and I think we also need to make sure that we could focus on a deficit approach and we need to make sure that we look at the assets and we learn from our care experience young people so I think we've still got a way to go but I do think that it is an improving picture in relation to improving outcomes for care experience young people I want to ask about cumulative equality impact assessments because obviously individual policies don't sit in isolation and we've had a bit of discussion about partnership working and integrated boards have been mentioned can you tell me a bit about how you do cumulative equality impact assessments if you do do them I know that not all local authorities take that approach a little bit to the involvement of community planning partnerships and joint boards in terms of delivering the services that come out at the end and maybe some of that mitigation or adjustment that you make when you identify that something's going to impact on a group sorry that's quite a lot so I'll just let you breathe but if anyone Audrey was at your local authority that does cumulative impact assessment we have for the 2017-18 budget setting and the previous budget to that as well the last budget when we did an accumulative impact that was difficult because at the end a lot of those budgets didn't go through at the last budget I think the Scottish Government when they set their draft budget we realised that there was a lot of room for manoeuvre, there was a significant difference in the draft budget when it was set so a lot of those budgets didn't go through but yeah we do try where best we can to look at an accumulative particularly it's easier to do that when it's for a budget because there's so many equality impact assessments being done at the one time but when they're you're looking at like individual services maybe doing an impact assessment on maybe two areas a year it's difficult to have the focus Question on that and I suppose it's just how do you do that do you look at the impact from the perspective of a person with the protected characteristic and then what services and decisions impact on them or are you looking at the suite of decisions you have to make and then mapping it it feels like it's quite a complex thing what's your starting point for it when you do them I don't if you want to get back to us that would be interested to hear we've had challenges in terms of accumulative impact assessment in fact we've found it a challenging area so we would be very interested in any models of good practice or accumulative impact assessment what we in terms of community planning partnerships we have as mentioned earlier we do quite a lot of partnership in terms of working on equality issues across equality leads in terms of our outcome improvement plan across our community planning partnership with the horizontal themes which cuts across all of our outcomes which are all focusing on inequality in any sense so that there's a lot within our themes that touches on equality in any sense but equality is a theme across all of that we don't have a joint integration board in Highland with a lead model approach it's slightly different from other bodies and other authorities but within the lead model approach each organisation will have its own approach to equality so we're the lead for children's services in Highland and equality is built into our work in children's services so even where there's the joint working there's the two different approaches that are separate well that's a challenge but it's also the benefits of where we do work together ensuring that equality is included within that work so for example where we have integrated plans of any sense then we need to include equality within that in terms of the considerations that we take on board and I say a lot of the work that we focus on jointly is in its broadest sense around inequality and touches on equality issues and protected groups anyway I think I would agree that that is a challenging area and some of the things that I would say is that it's important that we have no evidence to support cumulative impacts in how we gather that data and having a focus on outcomes but this is also where it is important to do consultation and to continually speak to equality groups to understand some of the cumulative impacts that our services may have Glasgow City Council doesn't formally do cumulative no we don't formally we haven't formally I think for the last couple of budget rounds we've attempted in a very high level way to fly to elected members prior to decision making broadly what the cumulative impacts would do but again like colleagues I think we'd be very interested in more advice and support around how you actually practically do that I think Thank you I'll focus my questions can be in the interest of time so my own patch is North Lanarkshire so I'll focus my initial questions here I was glad that you mentioned Colbau it was an example actually the convener asked an example of a political group taking something forward and I know that our SNP group responded to concerns and took that forward to council and also it was the SNP group to be party political for a wee second that brought forward to the committee that brought forward to the committee for all members to have equality training so I know that members suggested that Mr McGregor I think probably will not talk about a specific political decision I was commenting on remarks that were made and I wanted to comment as well that there's some really good equality working on at Buchanan High School which is really good but how can we make the equality impact assessments even better for for example like the bins situation that happened in North Lanarkshire the winter services in Pylger nursery how can we make the impact assessment better there to make sure that it links in with the minority and disadvantaged groups as other members have said I wonder if we've covered some of that in previous input from the panel in terms of how they do equality impact assessments I think that's quite specific things about decisions locally I was not well so there were widespread there were widespread issues and Mr McGregor I think was quite small political the other thing I wanted to ask as well was in relation to alleles arm length organisations in particular in North Lanarkshire and in Glasgow life how do you make sure that the qualities are brought into these organisations as well sorry I'll let you quite conscious of our time so if somebody could just jump in it would be wonderful I just talk generally Glasgow life is part of our cosy term for our council family so within Glasgow life itself that they participate in our corporate equality structures they are part of our framework for equality in terms of our equality outcomes agreement although it's not a specific requirement of the public sector equality duties they're included as part of our plan they also have a very senior different structure obviously they've got a board but one of the directors of Glasgow life is also their equality champion and I know just from the daily work with them that it's something that they're very upfront about and it's very visible and I could give you a lot of probably I haven't got time for today but I can give a lot of practical examples of the kind of visibility and the types of approaches that Glasgow life have taken so I feel certainly comfortable with them as an organisation they're part of our wider family and they can demonstrate a lot of areas of very good practice in that work Thank you that's helpful I've one final question if I may and it's around the national performance framework and we've spoken a lot about equalities and the outcome in there about human rights can you succinctly as is possible it's always a challenge but let the committee know how that will inform your budget process in the coming coming time That is something that we're starting to have well we can't in Glasgow and officers have been meeting I think with the Scottish Government colleagues to talk about how we can now fit that into and into our quality and impacts assessment training I think in Highland we still have a way to go to fully incorporate human rights issues into some of our decision making I think the area where it is certainly getting stronger is within children's services whereas children's rights are really being considered on a regular basis I think the philosophy of the participatory budgeting is about taking a human rights based approach to budgets budgeting anyway because it's about community self-determining look how their money to be spent within their communities we do have human rights integrated within our quality impact assessment process but I do think that it is still a working process to that understanding about what human rights are I think it's still not at a very conscious level for a lot of people and I think that we still need to a lot of work still needs to be done on that and like Rosemary I think that there's a lot of work done within our children's services and adult services around human rights but it needs to be broadened out along the other parts of the council okay well that brings us to a close this morning thank you very much for your evidence it's been really helpful quite squeezed for time on a Thursday so we may well write out to you and ask you for some more details around things but thank you very much and I'll close the session and ask the gallery to clear