 Fawr i fy下次. Rwy'n cael ei ddaw yn dda mwyaf o gwaith cysylltu a tyfn taethau pob gyda hefyd. Rwy'n cael ei ddaw i fy wneud o'r Ffiery Pheilon mewn ffordd fyrfor i fy mwyaf a fyddwyr i'w dweudio i fy mwyafolio fel yJaill. Rwy'n cysylltu i'r maes yn ei fawr am y ddarlun i'r cyflin aíc. Rwy'n ceisio datblygu mae'r ddaf yn ei wneud mewn i'r ddechrau i mewn ei ddweudio, a hyrry y cyflenceg errryd i'r ffaith yn eich The first agenda item this morning is an agreement by committee to take agenda item 3 in private, our committee agreed to do that. Our second agenda item today is our substantive agenda item, which is our main business, and it is the committee's work towards human rights day, which is Sunday. We have dedicated this committee session to human rights day and we are looking at underrepresented and marginalized groups. The Righteous ChildOUTS group has been with us this morning, and we had a group of children with us, who came along and gave evidence to the Committee and came up with four primary up, and they were superb. Some of the actions that we took forward from them have where related to the policy at Scottish Government level, but we hope that the focus that we put on this issue drwy i chi, ac mae'n gyd i'r ddechrau i gael, ac neb sy'n ddiolchio ei ddiwedd. Ieithaf ymlaen nhw, rym ni'n d tandem ziwp Cymru. Ieithaf, ac inna Daivys Donaldson yma yn y tynnu, mae oedd pwyllwch yn cyfleoedd. Rydych chi'n gondol i gael ei gael yn rydyn nhw'n gondol i gweithredu gwyllwch, ac yn hynny'n ddysgu eich gondol i gael. Ieithaf ymlaen nhw, mae We have Kerry Musilbrook, Seamus McPhee and Roseanna McPhee from the Bob and Mill project in Pitlockery. Kerry is from the Iris project. Kerry, thank you for the booklet that Iris has produced along with Seamus and Roseanna. It's a very good reminder of the history. We're very keen to hear a bit about the history, but we're much more keen about the future to hear your comments on where we should be going from now. We've got the timeline and the papers of all the work that this place has done since its inception in 1999 to try and push forward some of the challenges and the discrimination that the Traveller community face. We're looking forward to hearing what you've got to do this morning. That's the reason why we have you guys here, the young people, because it's one thing for politicians to ask, what should we do next? That next should be about learning from the past, and that's why we have some of the other people here, but it should be how do we take that learning from the past and use it to change the future? I was going to open generally, David. We're asking you to give us a wee bit of an insight. You gave us an informal briefing earlier. We don't need to do all of that, but if you can give us a wee bit of a briefing on where you think we're at now, we can then talk about how we move that forward to change and end that type of discrimination that you're facing. Just now, very little has changed, to be honest. Certainly from everyone sitting around the table, I'm sure that you can respect that, but from our perspective, speaking to my grandfather, nothing has changed. If anything, things have got worse in certain areas. People seem to be more inhospitable to folk camping. They seem to be more aggressive towards folk shifting and the nomadic behaviour than what my grandad received when he was younger. Certainly, in regards to schooling, education, local authority, awareness of the culture, as well as respect of the culture and society's respect and awareness, nothing has changed. It's remained stagnant completely. Where are we at just now? I did say it informally in the last meeting, but we're at a point where you've got young travellers going to school and the only reason they can access school is because they're hiding their ethnicity. We're at a point where I'm the only Scottish traveller that I know right now, currently, at university. We're at a point where young travellers are having to really struggle to gain employment because of their ethnicity and they're being barred from certain types of employment and there's many barriers to employment for travellers. We're at a point where the culture is being completely constricted to a degree where a lot of young travellers don't see existing in the next 50 years. We're at a critical point, that's basically what I'm saying. For the Scottish traveller community, we're at a completely critical point and we really, really need affirmative strong action from government, from the top down, to impact on local authorities and actually so look, this needs to be done, not I'm recommending this to be done because at the end of the day the local authority will never follow up those. We've seen that, that's been done for years as you've been saying. We need affirmative action where young travellers can challenge hate crime, they can challenge racism and they can actually access the same opportunities that the settled community takes so for granted. So that's where we are just now. I'm sure some of the other travellers around the table as well will want to add a lot to that but that's the summary of where we're at. Is there any other young people that want to say something now or will we get into some questions and come back to you? Roseanna, do you want to come at this point? I would like to say something. This is gypsy traveller history in Scotland. I see myself as a gypsy more than a traveller and I actually found reports in the archives in Blair Castle going away back when Catherine Ramsey, the seventh duchess, interviewed my great grandmother and she said to her why you call me a traveller. I'm a gypsy and I think the linguistics actually point to that. My brother's got a postgraduate from Warwick in linguistics with a merit of distinction and he gave evidence to the 2008 case of Cain MacLennan versus G-Tip which established so did I established ethnicity so I think to keep saying we're all travellers or travellers that's a matter for self determination really. I'd just like to say that plus things have changed because they've got worse. That was me very picking in 2005 but by 2007 I was turned away because they didn't need me. Why did the farmers not need me? Oh we don't need you because we're taking people in from Eastern Europe well that's fair enough but I came first and I was there since I was a child picking berries so you know this nonsense about post Brexit there's lots of people sitting unemployed you'd be quite happy to pick berries for £400 a week and when I picked berries you didn't get that you got 10 or 15 pence a basket. You also got thrown in a barn you weren't getting caravans set up with the electric cookers checked and all the rest of which is what's happening now so I would point to the fact what Antony is saying there in the previous session that it's not a case of it's cheaper to take in eastern migrant workers it's a case of I think it's my perception that it's complete racism to totally blanket ban gypsy travellers from the farms and take in workers from abroad but hopefully Brexit will sort that one out. I think we'll maybe not focus too much on Brexit in this committee today if you don't mind because it's a huge other issue obviously it is and I apologize for the use of language because one of the issues that we all have is ensuring that we use the right language and it's something that we're incredibly mindful of at the committee so. Yes, Seamus. And I said there that you know there's actually been a reclamation of the term gypsy in certain quarters just as there has been in Spain with Hitanos they don't want to be seen as Roma and you know both myself and Rosanna and other members of the Scottish Gypsy Traveller Association campaign for inclusion of the term gypsy in the official designation which was adopted by the Parliament. Davies already told me that his grandfather's a mannush so you know if we're all travellers then you know how does that come to be? No, I think it's important. I think it is completely what Rosanna's saying is self-determination and it's one of these things that you'll never get right because I'll always be a member of the community or an aspect of the community once to be referred to as something else but certainly from my perception on the ground most people wouldn't take offence at being called a traveller so whereas people you would get Scottish travellers who take great offence at being called a gypsy so to me it's more of a I use it quite often because it's a more it's an easier term to not cause offence. Can I just say it out? I wouldn't take offence at being called a gypsy but I would take offence at being called a traveller because it's identified with nomadism and not ethnicity. So being a gypsy means you know there are other characteristics that determine who you are, linguistic, common ancestry, common shared beliefs and you know cultural values. Now if you're saying you're just a traveller that could be Julia Roberts going to a film premiere in Paris. It's a generic term. Just as tinker is a restrictive occupational term, now Rosanna there's a ex-head of department you know in Plotton high school and I'm a translator so I don't hate tin and to me that's you know wholly inaccurate to use that as a pejorative term. We're grateful for the distinction and you're absolutely right when it comes to ethnicity the distinction is what we need in law to ensure that we can push push some of this forward but if we can get into some of the substantive issues about how everyday life is affecting and we've got some questions from committee members here but the way I want to work this is try to be as informal as possible so if you do have a point to make then give me a wee nod or a wee you know something to let me know that you want in to have your your say because I'm really really keen to hear from maybe some of the quieter members of the the group that I've maybe got more to say actually so we're keen to hear from you guys but why don't I go to a question from Alex Cole-Hamilton first and sort of a warm up a wee bit and then we can go from there. Is that agreeable? Yeah Alex. Thank you convener good morning everyone thank you so much for coming to the committee today. I think the discussion we've just had about nomenclature and terms and identity just gives a flavour of just how diverse and rich these cultures are that we're talking about here it's very easy to group them a group everybody's together and with that the overarching prejudice that I think we've heard some of today. I think Antony when you spoke to us in the informal session at the start you referred to the last form of acceptable racism in this country and I think you articulated very well what that looks like. One of the things I was struck by was the reference to broadcasting now we saw some of the references to online comments and things that people who aren't in broadcasting say when articles are posted up but I'm very keen to hear what your view is in terms of the portrayal by the mainstream media of your cultures because obviously the media shapes our national culture and the way in which we view you so can you give us some examples of how you feel the broadcasting lets you down in that way? Us being travellers obviously we're not secretive people but obviously because we live our own and we do our own thing obviously you know it's not that I'm not trying to say that we've been totally hurt up against and we're not you know like that we're not trying to look for something everyday person that goes to work every single day we're not looking for nothing extra of anybody but we're human beings and we're the same as yourself you know we're looking to get on that's it but as you say the last acceptable racism in that that does exist obviously and it's harder getting on with that but for us to try and you know get on with something because we've been portrayed by the media like we're looking for something else as we're going to argue with the government apparently that you know about sites and about this and that they're you know I mean obviously if you were at home and somebody turned around like a bailiff comes round to your house and turned around and says to you obviously you know you own this house and obviously they turn on and say move do you know what I mean it's a shock more than anything we get up with this thing that we're we're going to sit and argue ways all day long all day long all we're trying to do is move on do you know what I mean and and the mainstream media puts us like this big I don't know what to call I don't know what to call like we're a situation we're a statistic we're a number more than anything we're not human beings do you know what I mean that's the thing and and I'd like people to start looking at instead of being you know just a number is looking into the actual life that we lead instead of just going they're gypsy travellers they've got dogs they've got horses do you know what I mean oh they have wagons and they move up and in the country there's a lot more to it we have we have families and we want education we want you know just to move on as normal people it's the same as any ethnic group wants to stop calling different and start just moving on it's civilised do you know what I mean that's that's the thing is we just want to be part of it do you know what I mean instead of being pushed aside like they're different do you know and it's if me standing next to you you wouldn't be able to tell the difference that's the thing as soon as I open my mouth you know that's that's the thing you know what I mean and it's stupid but it's it's there it's a real thing and it's not like it's just there it's it's been there for a long time you know me and Dave and Charlotte as cousins of my grandfather went through went through you know the same is what we're going through today just in a different version you know and and we've got family there that's been serving the country and and going in the army and things and leading the same kind of life is is you know anybody else would hope to and trying to you know stand up for their own country and and move on and trying to get more integrated into it and it doesn't happen as easy as you think you know there's always a it's always a case and I know I please don't think I'm just giving you a sob story and asking for something I'm not I'm just asking you to look at it from that point of view instead of you know off they've got wagons and they've got horses and they've got kids and dogs and they like to make a mess it's not just that case it's we we have people that stay in houses there's lots of us that stay in houses there's lots of us that give up our heritage where we come from just so we can be normal if you know what I mean that's that's the thing and and we're giving up that because that won't mean nicky bit a racism because it's easier for us to just you know to give up just forget it and then that's our culture is forgotten and you see it happening a lot more through travels and things and I'm not asking anybody else for anything I'm not saying that you guys here to blame I'm not saying that anything's going to make a difference because you know there's only a couple members here doesn't account for the few million people in this country do you know what I mean and it never will in in as much as it obviously you know but I'd like to stop being changes like school systems and things because obviously I went to primary school and things like that and from my teachers got treated like an animal honestly I'm not lying to you honestly they hated to see me coming and I'm not saying I was bad because I was there every day but just they hated to see me coming because my last name or because of where I come from the new or because I have to sign a shape paper that tells them that I'm a Scottish traveller as soon as I've got that mark against my name blacklisted my whole life that's it do you know what I mean and it's something as stupid as that that's holding us back that is it do you know what I mean thanks Anthony I think Kerry wants to come in she's got some comments to make on this yeah I just wanted to say a little bit about our motivation for creating this pictorial history because I suppose it was really around challenging some of the myths that feed into our media and our culture about sharing that proud history and heritage and making that more widely known and acknowledging the past because why we all want to move forward I think there is an issue there about acknowledging past wrongs and appreciating sort of the suspicion and mistrust between gypsy travellers and a lot of public services because they have been treated badly and it's all there and my my personal take is that something like this should be used in schools to start young start early so that gypsy traveller history is better known understood and celebrated and for me the next logical step is for you to have your own cultural centre or something like that to be present because they're so marginalised they're not visible they're not seen and if they're not seen they're it's too easy to be misunderstood the casual racism that we've heard a lot about this morning I mean have these even permeated into this building here I remember many of us were shocked when Douglas Ross as msp a conservative msp referred to gypsy traveller communities as a blight had he used that term against any black or minority ethnic community there would have been uproar do you think that we need to do more through legislation to protect your status you know as a protected characteristic and to challenge that kind of casual racism even when it stalks the corridors of power in this place yes I think that the findings of the case of came clinic versus gt 2008 which established ethnicity beyond all doubt for me that should have been built upon and built into the race Scottish government race scheme I have letters from members of the Scottish government saying we treat we will treat you as an ethnic minority no we are an ethnic minority it's on the on the statute book it may not have been in an upper court but there was a wealth of evidence put forward by ourselves and by academics professors who you know are well tutored in the subject and this continual denial coming out of central government that we will treat you as an ethnic minority and we will do something to treat you as an ethnic minority that should have that legislation should have been passed around and permeated all the different services all the different policies at local level hasn't done so I mean it's not happened for instance one case that I advocated in was to do with planning and it was the Inverclyde basin and there wasn't a single site in four different areas Glasgow city Inverclyde one of the renfrewshers I can't remember and one of the Lanarkshers and yet there was no reference to gypsies or travellers in the planning local development plan except we will continue to monitor this what's to monitor the local authorities were saying they don't have any and they were calling me from disused industrial sites saying can you help so if that was in the local plans you wouldn't be seen so much of this let's part my car part let's set up because there's nowhere to go and another thing if it was actually recognising in all the legislation that unauthorised and unauthorised encampment guidelines for gypsy traveller camps should be looked at seriously again because under that it's up to the local authority to make recommendations about what would be official stop in places and they're never going to do that because it's recommendations as we've heard but at the end of the day that piece of policy document is a waste of space that was well just taken out of the equation because no one's paying attention to it for good or bad yeah I mean quite a lot of what's been spoken about is really important I just like to share one example of political racism that I personally experienced it wasn't as high up as government but it was local authority level and I was at a community planning exec meeting and this was years ago and I was the vice chair of the local youth council so I was invited along to these things but no one's sitting around the table it's my first time there and they didn't count I was a traveller and we were discussing NHS provision or something in rural communities and marginalised communities and they were talking about logistics that would come into that and the sorts of legislation and things that needed to be looked at and I was sitting there on the whole way through the meeting they spoke about rural communities people who lived on coastal towns which would be hard to access all this sort of stuff and they were talking about dementia care and things I thought that's really really important to my community so I put up my hand at the end I was shy honest god I was sitting there and it was heaps of folk suits and that here's me sitting I think I was 16 or something like that and I said what about the gypsy traveller community I said I know there's huge issues with trying to gain access to healthcare for the older gypsy travellers I said what about the gypsy travellers and Aberdeenshire is there anything we could put in place for for them and the whole table went silent I was absolutely terrified silent and big guy at the top to this day I can't mind his name and I wish I could talk a complain about what he said but he was chairing the meeting so he must have been important a big suit on that and he looks over and he says who are you and I said I'm David Donaldson the vice chair of the youth council he said okay well here's your first lesson then David he says no one here cares about the tanks and then they just carried on and they completely overlooked my suggestion and it was never even spoken about ever again I was shamed to death I was completely insulted I was so shocked at a man of such high standing because up till then I was very naive I thought local authorities were good and they all had good intentions but it's just another example of what gets spoken about behind closed doors and it happens so much I hear so many times I've got lots of contacts in the council through different work across local authorities and a one specific example I recently heard about was an internal email that had been sent and the internal email actually was speaking about a potential site a potential development that a travelling man was planning and I won't say who it was but there was a guy in quite high position replied to all of his colleagues regarding the email that this man had sent requesting help doing that like planning applications and things don't help him he's a traveller give the help to a good honest man and he did a blanket ban on all his colleagues so that's a sort of internal stuff we're getting a local authority level I mean I'm still naive enough to hope that it's not existing at this sort of level however Douglas Ross really did a dash that those hopes and I know on the ground his comments really did impact on a lot of travellers living in Moray so that's that's my perception of the political aspect Colleagues, questions? Alex, do you want to come back in? Yes, thank you. This is on a slightly different area. We've talked a bit about access to services particularly the barriers that you encounter to access to mainstream services despite paying council tax and the other charges that you pay and you would expect to benefit as everybody else does in society. I'm interested most in access to healthcare and particularly mental health services because particularly and I accept there are different cultures at the table here but for those who have a nomadic way of life where perhaps you're not registered with a particular GP practice and and then you may also experience additional complications particularly around mental health given you know the barriers and significant challenges you face. Could you give us a flavour of how difficult that is and how you get around it? There are significant issues when it comes to healthcare and healthcare provision. A lot of the travellers I know who live in houses have moved into houses to access healthcare and that's from sites so that's not even been on the road. On the road it is increasingly difficult. You've got this level of scrutiny that's getting given to GP practices where they can it's almost as if they're sort of an authoritarian approach on who gets registered with them and if you're only there for a couple of days and you're shifting on to somewhere else it's very difficult to get registered. I've had countless discussions with people in the NHS of all different levels and they all clearly say to me oh yes but on the road you can definitely go to this practice and there's no issues with that there is issues. If you speak to people on the ground who are actually shifted and need to access a GP there are issues you can't do it it's really really difficult. The folk make it so difficult for you most people don't even try. In regards to mental health services it's an area which not just in Scotland but more activists down south as well some of the people I work with are really taken seriously and we're doing a lot of work on it. As I said in the last meeting suicide rates amongst travelling men are increasingly high. There's a variety of different reasons for that some say it's evictions, some say it's the work, basically the perpetual cycle of homelessness and unemployment. So there are issues that really impact on our mental health. There's high levels of depression within the community which doesn't seem to get focused on that much with mainstream charities or really anyone. I do a lot of work with Childline on my councillor and I recently delivered a training to them, their councillors, to try and better help young travellers to access Childline as a resource because up till now there's nowhere travellers can go. If you're a young traveller and you're on the road you've been on the road to your hill life, this is an extreme example but you've been on the road to your hill life and you only know other travellers and the only relations you have with country folk, the settled community, is the police coming and shifting you on or a council woman coming down and giving you a book. There's very minimal relations there and when you start suffering from depression or you start getting suicidal thoughts, who do you call? What do you do? There's a real, we're a missed people, we really are when it comes to mental health services and it's something that really does need to be tackled and I'm glad you brought it up. Can I just say on the issue of health that your health tends to suffer when you're unable to earn an adequate income and it's the downward spiral. For me the situation on the ground is that you're not entitled to the right to work, article 6 of the international covenant, economic, social and cultural rights and article 7, the just and favourable working conditions, you're not seeing that, so therefore people are maybe not eating well, they're not living well, their health suffers then, they refuse access to local GP, people are not playing ball with them in terms of maybe providing them with handheld patient records in order that they can lead a mobile lifestyle. Assessments tend to be based on the English model whereby you have to satisfy everyone in the authorities that you've travelled for over two years in order to be included in an assessment and I wouldn't like to see that replicated in Scotland because that's the danger of being viewed as a traveller, that after two years you lose your status and you're no longer included in assessments for anything, housing, healthcare, anything, but it was a valid point that Anthony raised there about people being blacklisted and had I known that United were going to be staging a protest here yesterday, I would have been outside with Rosanna who hasn't had a day's work in 22 years on a supply list as a teacher despite the fact that we're crying out for garlic teachers in my local area, they couldn't think of anyone suitable for the post. Now what does that tell you about the extent of the racism and discrimination, but there are a couple of points I would like to raise to the committee and in terms of infringements of international human rights, you have freedom of movement which is article 12 in international covenant and civil and political rights. Gypsy travellers on local authority sites in Scotland tend to be bound by the Scottish single secure tenancy agreement which limits them to travelling off-site for 12 weeks up to 12 weeks of the year so therefore that's a violation of their right to freedom of movement. If they can only go off-site for 12 weeks of the year before forfeiting their tenancy on a local authority site then that to me is an impediment to them leading their cultural lifestyle. Also with the right to work you've got blanket unemployment on sites that show sedentaryness does not work and you know there's a mobile workforce I think this is one of the points that Sanna and other people have driven that there is a mobile workforce at your disposal who would much rather be travelling around the country doing work on berry farms or whatever if it was there as a sustainable income. Also right to self-determination recognises the negative right of a people not to be deprived of its means of subsistence. Now that has implications but in terms of you know how gypsy travellers are treated in Scotland so there's another violation. Now what do we intend to do about these violations that's the question as far as I'm concerned. Can I come back to the health issue it's not there's a fallacy that it's if you're on the road you're not getting adequate health provision. We've been registered with this practice for years but the doctors change and a few years back after planting trees for five years I started to feel ill when I had a respiratory infection after a respiratory infection I had about 18 sets of antibiotics and steroids and I said this can't be right I was up the top of Dunach and Hill planting trees with a bag on my back how can I not walk to the shop and asked the GP what was wrong he said he didn't know and I said well can you not send me to someone to find out because I don't want to be like this and he said well who do I send you to I said we'll send me immunology because someone's gone wrong with my immune system and he said well I can send you but they won't want to see you and I said we'll just make the referral and we'll see about that so he made the referral and a few months later I said there's anything come back oh just as I said they don't want to see you said refer me to homeopathy then oh I can do that but they won't want to see you I said we'll do it and see but the secondary care and it's cost and they won't want to see you so we'll just make the referral came back he didn't want to see me but I'd already phoned homeopathy and they said we're willing to see me so I knew that was a load of rubbish so I went in and asked to see my file and he said I wasn't allowed to see it so when he went on holiday I went in with a subject access request under the data protection act 1998 and I got the whole law printed out volumes of it very interesting reading he'd sent a letter to the chief exec saying that it was a local traveller and quite politically active and then I got a letter a week or so later saying I'm sorry there's nothing more we can do for you so I presume that all MSPs here are not getting secondary level care because you're politically active wow thank you thank you Gilross thank you convener first of all I want to thank you all for coming I don't know if I was unbelievably naive before we started this morning's session but a lot of the evidence that I've heard has absolutely horrified me it made me quite angry actually that we are still living in a society that allows things like this to happen I've only been a member of this committee since Easter and one of the first things I did when I joined was had a private session with Mary Fee about the Gypsy Traveller community and we had a really good session and I know that she'd be really upset that she's not here today so I just wanted to mention that I wanted to ask anyone that wants to come in but Davie particularly you you spoke about authorised sites in the session this morning and about how a lot of your camps have been unauthorised now and you also told us in quite a lot of detail about the maintenance, the health and safety issues, the inappropriateness of the sites and I wondered if you would like to go into a bit more detail just to get some stuff on the record about sites I mean sites, there's a huge lack of sites as I mentioned in the last meeting a huge huge lack the majority of people don't have anywhere to go but there's two levels to the accommodation need the first one is of course appropriate accommodation now some Travellers don't want to live on sites they want a house and even access housing can be quite difficult for Travellers with institutionalised racism that's a point that's never really spoken about but there's also the need of course for sites but it's not just permanent sites we need transit sites as well, hauling sites because the traditional way of life of the nomadic way of life and certainly a piece of the culture that I think most Travellers enjoy shifting going on the road is becoming increasingly more difficult our traditional camps the majority of them have been shut down whether that be through private ownership taken over the land or development but those pieces of ground not only are they integral to our culture and we've got oral histories relating to those pieces of ground and in some cases we've got monuments very close to them as well I'm thinking especially about camps in Argyllshire and talking about the Tinkers heart so there's not just the level of culture but also it's just the more practical function of us actually staying there the local community will develop a piece of land like that or local authority will without even consulting the local community and then they just expect us to know where to go after that so if we move into that local authority not knowing that our camps being shut which quite often does happen has happened to my family quite a few times we have nowhere to go and that's when illegal encampment happens and then that's where you get the impact on community relations as well. On illegal encampments can I draw your attention to the guidelines for the management of unauthorised encampments now this violates the right to respect for private and family life because it imposes limits on number of vehicles breaks down in the extended family unit penalises lighting of stick fires and you know infringes the rights of the family encampment as an extended family group but you know as Davie was saying one of the problems is that community buyouts and the creation of national parks have eroded you know our ability to access traditional stop and places so I would suggest that they devise a charter of traditional stopping places using bioregional mapping and historical land use records so that they're safeguarded in the future. Can I come in on that one? A few years back when we were on the Gypsy Traveller Liaison Group for our local area we actually agreed and it was like an agreed stopping place and people went there and everyone knew who they were and most people kept it quite clean. In fact the owner of Murthley estate came out and stopped his can and said it's so good to see you picking up litter and anyway this particular stopping place suddenly went by the wayside but I noticed from looking at Traveller's times online that Leedsgate have won an award for having agreed stopping places and we tried to put it on a contractual basis that if they were there for two weeks or three weeks it was agreed with the council it was agreed to pick up litter and all this that would save a lot of bother it just didn't happen because they said oh if we do that then they'll have human rights. Well I mean we've got a Scottish national action plan now presumably after all the money invested in it's going to be implemented at some point although we don't know with Brexit but at the end of the day if you've got human rights wasn't that a sensible pilot to have in a few regions couldn't it be a sensible pilot and let's see if it saves 12 million in pickup costs because they actually knew the one family out of the eight that made the mess they told me but instead of putting that family out and saying right we're doing you for you know littering up the place they didn't do that they didn't call the police and they didn't charge them they put all the out and then a big picture appeared in the local press going back to what you said and it was totally distorted because it made out everyone in that labour I did this and they didn't it was one family out of the eight that made the mess and they were they were quite blatant about it but then if they'd been moved on the rest were quite tidy. Anna, I just want to get the name right of the project because it leads gate. It was leads gate. I do a lot of work with leads gate. I'm quite well connected in England with activists and that's for me and I'm really glad you brought up Rosanna a really really good example of a progressive attitude. The negotiated stopping schemes which they've got put in place work brilliantly because not only do they take into account the traditional nomadic pathways of the travellers who are actually using the service but it also shows out an element of value from the local authority towards the community where they're willing to actually work in partnership with the community and not in a sort of an authoritarian way. I'd just like to draw attention to one camp just to kind of show you the level to which the shutting down of traditional camps and the sort of constrictive nature upon our nomadic way of life the impact that it's having on young people. We had a camp in Kinloch Rannach and we stayed there every year since ever I can remember. I mentioned it in the last meeting. The camps are now shut down because one traveller family left some mess and now it's illegal for us to stop there but we have an oral family history going right back to the massacre of Glencoe of us staying in that one spot and we've got countless other stories of more recent relatives staying there and all the different stuff that happened and now it's illegal for us to stay there somewhere we've stayed for a very very long time over 320 years. So for a young traveller it does feel like we're missing out on a bit of our culture we're missing out on the opportunity to actually access the traditional lifestyle that our grandparents had. So from our perspective I think the retention of traditional shopping places and nomadic camps by local authorities and local communities working with the travelling people is really really important. So yeah I think it's a level that that isn't spoken about that often but it's one that is really important on on the ground. Okay thanks. David Tons. I thank you for convening on a good morning panel. Can I go back to travelling sites and a lack of good quality travelling sites. As somebody who has been a local councillor for a number of years before I was actually elected as an MSP and I've seen so many difficulties that council faces, how do we bridge gap between the media and local communities because as soon as a council officials put out to consultation a site for the travelling community I have never seen such a frenzy before equipped up by local media and it really rallies local communities against it. So how do we actually bridge gap and educate these local communities? Speaking from somebody who's stayed on a site, I've stayed on a site most of my life. In fact half a mile for here in Craig Miller, Darringston, just there. I stayed there for six years to be fair with you. That there in Dalkeith site, the living conditions is a joke to be fair with you. But it's got to the way we deal with it ourselves. When I go to the warden and ask him there's an overflow, a rat, staying next to rivers, it's a joke as I said. It's funny to everybody else but we deal with it ourselves. I've got the warden and tell him there's rats there. It's not good. I've got baby sisters, I've got family that stays around me that's young. I mean babies and things, there's rats running up in them. You turn around and you tell the warden and they turn around at you and they say, oh, get a cat. That's that attitude. It's a joke. I'm not trying to say like people's not trying for us because a couple of years ago in Darringston there was a new warden came and the guy does try, he tries a million times better than and you can see his attitude is the total opposite. He's like, I mean obvious, I'm getting through to this and he wants to talk to officials and he wants to make it like that. I just reckon if there's more people not trained to deal with us but trained to deal with that situation, it's more of an open minded situation. If they're trained to deal with things like that, instead of being cut off and just say, nah, well it's not my problem anyway. I know everybody's got a job and we all like to make it easier for ourselves but I just reckon if people like that, like it's put in a position to deal with us, I reckon if the right people or if they've got training to deal with us, I reckon it'd be a little better. Do you think that would answer David Torrance's question as far as bridging that gap? Breaking down some of the stereotypes, breaking down some of the clear institutional and direct and non-direct discrimination that goes on, some of the education that needs to go on in schools for people to understand the difference in cultures. We do this already, we do this when it comes to race, we do it when it comes to gender, we do it when it comes to sexual orientation. Why is there a missing link here? And that's the point, if we get that missing link right, then we should start to see progress. That's the thing. The question is how do we find that missing link and how do we get rid of it? We're not used to being able to, this is the first time I've ever got to talk to proper members of parliament and things like this here and give my views out like this. So thank you for that. No, it genuinely means a lot. But we're not used to being able to come to somebody and tell their problems to. We're not used to that. So when it does come to, somebody says there, it turns into like a frenzy when the opportunity is given. Do you know what I mean for us to say something? It does, because we're not often given that. Do you know what I mean? That's the thing. And I know you want to bridge the gap and it will be hard. I reckon it's going to be a, obviously we've always been there. I reckon it will be slow. It will be a slow thing, because nobody can do a perfect thing fast. I reckon it will be slow, but as long as we start moving in that direction, instead of just, you know, forget it, you know? How do we do it? And I think that she and Mrs Goni tell us, actually. Several years ago, when I did a piece of research, I concentrated on the special rapporteur to the UN Economic and Social Council. He visited a number of Eastern European countries, and he noted the absence of any cultural centre that people could drop in to find out about the culture. I'm not on a similar thing in Scotland today. There are centres for every other group imaginable, but I don't see anything in terms of encouraging or fostering intercultural pedagogy. It's a bit like the Enlightenment that never happened in terms of gypsy travellers. You're seeing almost Goya's Capriccio, El Swenio de la Rathon, priority monsters, which is the sleep of reason we get monsters. Everybody's got their head buried in the sand, seeing all these bats and things, and that's what we're seeing in terms of our community, because that's never been addressed, and so the attitudes are still steeped in medieval thinking. Rosanna has something to say about the treatment of gypsy travellers and the recourse to lodging something with the Press Complaints Commission. Yeah, I actually did get a successful case upheld by the Broadcasting Standards Commission many years ago about the local radio station, but the Press Complaints Commission, they were never covered by the Race Relations or Race Relations Amendment Act, so they were opened out and deciding how to self-police themselves, as it were, but the point is that it shouldn't be up to the council to tilt at windmills to, like Don Coyote, can we go down there with the media? It shouldn't be up to the council because the responsibility for the press and media lies again with the state party and the central government. They've got a duty to ensure, under various human rights instruments, framework convention, European convention on human rights, various ones that note the press, the national press and the national media do not revile any one group, and they haven't been doing their job, I'm afraid, so that shouldn't be passed down to the council to do. The council is simply there to do their job as council officers and I appreciate that the community councillors and the local councillors will put that on you, but at the end of the day, you're hired as a council officer to do a particular job, you just go and do your job, you shouldn't have to sell something to the press or the media, that's a matter for the state party to deal with this. David. I'm just going back to about local authorities and I find it quite hard, like the convener and the rest of the panel, if any ethnic minority group there is funding, there is different people there to liaise with them and there is very little on local authorities. I know how hard I worked with Jess Smith to get a tinker's heart recognised and to save it actually, and how hard that was even to get that through legislation to get it recognised. Do, and this is going to be difficult, does central government need to have a firmer hand and we'll go for it, because then COSLA will come back to us and say, you shouldn't be interfering? I had this conversation with Joanne Lamont several years ago when the COSLA representative was present and I stressed that she said that they were autonomous and I said, will they get it? Is it around 86 per cent of their funding from central government? So you must have some clout over them and some input into how they conduct matters, so that's my answer. If they're receiving most of their funding from central government, then that gives you leverage to say, unless you perk up, we'll restrict your funding, your ability to access that. There is legal frameworks there as well that we've spoken about all the articles that we should be using in order to have some leverage over any organisation where it's a health board or a local authority. One of the reasons why, when this committee was reconvened after 2016 election with a new remit, and that remit being some of the new conferred powers and human rights, was why we wanted to take a refreshed look at Gypsy travellers situation in Scotland, because it allowed us to come from a slightly different attitude, because equality legislation maybe really wasn't ticking the boxes as far as a box ticking exercise would go in that basic form, but the human rights legislation actually gives us a renewed focus and a different focus. So although we do have local authorities that will say, well, central government should be interfering with us, and we have maybe got central government saying, well, local authority should be doing this, there is legal frameworks there that I think for us as a committee, we'll be looking at how do we ensure that those are enforced, because I think the enforcement mechanisms are already there, they're just not getting used, and it's how do we create, you know, the circumstances that these get used in the right way and for the best of intentions, and to make the blank indifference, excuse me. I think it's really important what we're speaking about and the gap between local authority and the community on a ground level. We've seen countless times planning applications failing, sometimes through the fault in the application itself, sometimes not, sometimes through racism, but to me it's common sense for a local authority, and a local authority is our skin, I know that, because, well, everyone knows that, but sitting in a meeting, the amount of money on a local authority does, honest to God, see if you could channel that energy into tackling racism, we wouldn't be sitting here today, honestly, but, yeah, so they complain a lot, but they overlook opportunities, not just to save money, or to fondle, to fondle, Lorde, to find relations with the community, but also to actually just be good, upstanding people, you know, you've got countless examples of trefler men and trefler women up and in the country who are willing to pump money into building their own sites, they want somewhere to live, they want somewhere they will enjoy staying, you know, they don't want to be stuck in the side of a midden with the local authority saying, well, that's all you're getting, you know, you complain for accommodation we gave you, they don't want that, but they're just not being helped, in fact, they're being hindered when it comes to the planning process, and quite often local authorities, from my experience, they see these things happening and maybe they won't help with the planning applications or they won't give support to the treflers trying to build it, but they actually go further sometimes and they actually try and impede and make it hard for treflers to actually build those sites and get those sites passed. Now, we've got John here with us today and I'm really keen for John to give a perspective on this because John's from St Cyrus, and the St Cyrus North-East development, I'm sure you've all heard of in the news, and there's quite a lot of controversy up in Aberdeenshire about it, but it, to me, is a prime example of a site being built that's good for the community. I'm not going to go into the planning process, but it's one of those times where the local authority just hasn't helped at the foundation stage, and now it's got to a level at which they're arguing with SIPA and SIPA is involved, and there's a lot of different things involved, and it's really difficult, and there's a lot of tension in Aberdeenshire, and there's a lot of difficulty within the families as well in regards to potentially being made homeless, so if I could give John. It feels like they're just making up excuses, really, but there's over 100 people on Norfolk's, it's going to be put homeless maybe next month, and most of them are women and children, and there's nowhere really for them to go apart from a car park or a lay by or a football pitch even, but Norfolk's is perfect, it's kept clean, there's no bother by police or nothing, and there's even a school on there for education now. There's a school being arranged, and to be honest, it just feels like they're making up excuses. Races, I'm really, I think. Thanks, John. We're really running out of time this morning, and we want to ensure that we can hear as much from you as possible. We're well over time already, but Jamie Greene, I know, wanted to come in. I think Jamie, you'll be the final question this morning, and then I'll have comments from the panel. Jamie. Thank you, convener. Good morning to everyone, and thank you for your briefing before the public session as well. It was very helpful. I've actually got lots of questions, but in the interest of time, perhaps I can arrange for the clerks to have a further conversation with some of the panel outside of the realms of the committee, which I know doesn't put on the record, but I would find very helpful. I've got lots of very specific questions that I think would be helpful for me to understand, so I'll take it more wide in this respect. I mean, we've been talking about this issue really since the opening of this Parliament. I've been looking at the track record. I'm quite new to this Parliament and quite new to this committee, so I've gone back through the timeline of events and all the various things that have happened in inquiry in 2001, a review of the inquiry in 2005, which was quite critical. I know that it's a working group in 2006, a round table in 2009, and I think you see where I'm going with this question. I'm feeling a bit of deja vu in that respect, and whilst I'm extremely hopeful that the make-up of this committee will make some very positive steps and moves forward, how do you feel about it? I mean, as Anthony Johnson said, we're just a small handful of people in a country of many millions, and whilst we're politicians, realistically, what can this committee achieve so that we're not looking back in 17 years having exactly the same conversation? Attempt to tackle the populist view that we are a bunch of parasites who subsist on the thrift and industry of others, and the way in which they can do that is by embracing the European Commission's recommendation that there should be activation in terms of employment so that the wider society can see our usefulness. Now, we've been a resource to the Scottish economy for centuries in the past, and then all of a sudden we're banned. We're frozen out of the employment arena. It's almost like looking at Hungary where there's almost 100 per cent unemployment in Roma who have been placed in ghettos and sedentarised. I think that we need to try to steer the treatment of gypsy travellers down a different route and encourage nomadism again. I think that what James is saying about employment is really important, but there's also a level where a lot of travellers, certainly in my family, will do work like landscape and work or roofing or mobile trades—trades that he can take with you if he's shift or if he wants to upsticks and go to another part of the country. Quite often, as Anthony said in the last meeting, those trades are taught by fathers to their sons and they get passed down like that. There's never really a stage at which a traveller would think of going to college or going to a different apprenticeship, but they would usually learn from their dad. It's a trade that is learned and the traveller ban would usually use that going up through life, but there's so many issues with it in that a lot of people, a lot of traveller folk who learn those trades, might learn mistakes from their dads. Sometimes you get shoddy workmanship and you do, and some travellers do, like every community. They're shoddy workmen in the settled community as well. For whatever reason, we get tired with the brush of maybe that one shoddy person. However, it's important to also realise that that person might not be doing it on purpose, but they might have learned that mistake. We're missing the educational bit. To me, education is a really big factor in that. Not just culturally appropriate education—I know that Aberdeenshire is doing some great work just now in regards to learning packs and steps on some good work in the past. It's not just the mobile education that burns can take with them if they're shifted, but it's also accessing education and accessing education that will actually work. Teachers don't have the first clue about the culture. I've heard from countless people that there's been work done with teachers and that schools and education are up to date on resources to train their teachers. It's not getting used. It really isn't. Teachers are completely in the dark when it comes to the traveller community and it's really impacting on the burns. They just don't know. My girlfriend's mum is a teacher and they had some traveller burns come to the school. At least she had the ability to actually sit down with me and say, right, so how does the culture work and how does this work and how does that work before actually teaching the burns? There isn't that level that normal teachers who don't have a connection to the community have. I feel like they're being left in the dark and it's impacting upon the burns. I've heard some horrendous stuff from teachers. I really have. At the end of the day, they're just people. Politicians, they're just people. It doesn't matter what level you get to. You don't get more interested in equality. You don't get more nice, the higher up you go. We've seen that with Douglas Ross. But there's a level where we're all people and it needs to be treated as a society in regards to teaching the culture. I'd just like to share a couple of the things that teachers have said to me. When I was younger, I went to school and I'd just lived on a camp for a long time. It was the first school that I'd been to in a wee while. My homework kept getting missed, basically, a month after a month. I just kept getting missed. Mum said, right, there's something wrong here. She thought it was me, no data, but it was. She's cracking to her friend about it and the friend says, go crack to the teacher about it, so she does. She went and told the teacher what's happened with the son's work, oh, I must have missed it for the last whatever. Mum's cracking to her friend two weeks later and the friend says, you can this, I heard something really horrible at school gate yesterday and the mother said, what was it? She said, teacher came out and she was talking about me, the teacher, to another mother. She said, why would I waste school resources on him? I know he's a gypsy and he won't do anything with it anyway. That attitude really is fully alive amongst teachers. Another teacher at high school, I was a traveller at high school, we had to keep that quiet for discrimination, my dad getting work, which is another issue that people don't focus on that much, is hidden travellers at school. The teacher was sitting and we had a camp roll-up and the teacher turned down and said, so class, did you see the pikes have moved on to a whole class, so there's a level where teachers are teaching it to the berns. I've done surveys with first year pupils some 11 years of age and some of the things they said, I recorded one saying they're all scum in regards to the travellers, get rid of them and they're giving too much respect. Why do we need them as a society? To me, I presented the whole right up of that report and all of that data as well as some other horrendous stuff to the head teacher as well as to the local authority. Nothing has happened with that report, nothing. In fact it's been shelved. To me, if those comments were directed towards any other ethnic minority group, there would be an absolute outroar. There's certainly not the platform for young travellers to access education right now. I wouldn't be confident saying to my younger sisters or my cousins who had perhaps been on a camp their whole life, go to school, because there's not the level of actual respect there, it doesn't exist and the experience that they would have would be so detrimental to them, I would actually say well to be honest, don't bother. We need transitional programmes as well as another thing. We need transitional programmes not just for kids who might be going from primary to secondary as travellers but also travellers who have maybe just came from a camp and never been to school before and there may be 16. It doesn't exist. The environment of a camp or a site is very, very different to that of a school and quite a lot of the exclusions that we've seen with young travellers is because they don't understand that difference. They're getting punished for something they don't even understand, they're getting punished for, because they don't understand how a school system works because it's so different and there's such a lack of knowledge around the culture. So I think it is a real issue and I think education needs to be looked at again. I think that we need some role models because let's look at Scottish Parliament, how many Gypsy travellers have you got or how many have you got employed, how many is on the Equality and Human Rights Commission, how many are employed, how many is in the Scottish Human Rights Commission, how many are employed, let's go through it all, statistics, the BBC, how many are employed and it comes back to what folk are saying about employment because all the non-gypsy traveller friends I have, they are good friends, they used to come and see me in my car and I met them through work. So if people are not working, they're isolated because they don't have the money to socialise so therefore work has to be a key priority and it's better to get people, I used to work within ancillary service with the job centre too because they couldn't get me a job so they put me in to teach all the people that couldn't read and write and the ancillary service what I noticed is far better for those people, even the Gypsy travellers came in and they wanted a job, they didn't want to sit and do bits of paper, they wanted to do something so it's much better to place people in apprenticeships and mentor them throughout and get them into the workforce and far better for them to be working and claiming benefits because if they're dependent on welfare state and social security for the rest of their life they're never going to prosper and they're never going to have good self-esteem, good health etc so the whole law it's going to save money not only in benefits, not only in support services but also in health services because while I was working planting trees my diabetes was under control, no tablets. I think we've drastically run out of time this morning and obviously it looks like the work of this committee is not done on this at all. Jamie, I know that you had said that you would have a private briefing. If there's any specific questions from that I would be really grateful if you could share that with the committee because any learning that we can do either as individuals or as a committee helps us in our deliberations and our recommendations to government. We're not finished with this issue I think given the committee's renewed focus on human rights it gives us a different angle to look at this from with absolutely clear frameworks in there putting that aside with the frameworks because we know where that is there's a whole host of issues in there education and health and sites and planning and all of that that's still never been resolved and some of the clear institutional racism that's going on there that's certainly of interest to this committee so if you go away and you think I should have said this or I should have told them that please write to us and let us know we will be really grateful to have that information we will probably speak to you again because as I said this issue is not finished for us right any stretch of the imagination next week the Scottish government have a debate on the race equality framework and I've been reassured that there's a whole section in that on gypsy travellers and a response to some of the work that's been done over the years there'll be a debate on that next week and I think it's the reports the strategy's being launched in the morning as far as I know and there's a debate no doubt many of us will take part in that next week so if you've got specific points that you think that we should be raising in the chamber on your behalf then I'm sure as committee members we would be happy to do that too but we're very grateful for your evidence this morning thank you so much for coming along I know some of them some of you didn't have your say but I think you've got lots to say and if you've got a way to say it in a different way instead of being coming to committee then we'll be pleased to hear that too but thank you so much and best of luck with everything that you're doing and best of luck with everything that you guys are doing as well because it really helps and I'm going to end committee at that point and I think I'm going into private session so we're going to suspend and go into private session a quick comfort break and back in your seats please