 I welcome to the 10th meeting of the Quality and Human Rights Committee of 2018. Can I make the usual request that mobile phones are on silent and off the tables? We accept apologies this morning for a colleague, Mary Fee, who is on other parliamentary business. I would like to welcome to committee this morning our adviser, Murray, who is going to be advising the committee on the work that we are doing on the human rights inquiry. I am going to move on to agenda item 1. Agenda item 1 is a decision in taking business in private. Our committee agreed to take item 4 of today's agenda in private. Before we move on to agenda item 2, because it is in relation to agenda item 2, can I ask our colleague Jamie Greene to give us an update on the focus group visit to Leith on Monday? Thank you, convener. Good morning, guests. Good morning to our adviser. I just thought that I would take this opportunity at the outset of today's session to update you on my visit to Leith. We held one of our, as it was, our first focus group. We are doing a number of those across Scotland. In essence, we are meeting members of the public, but also stakeholders from the third sector and many other representatives of a very wide range of stakeholders across many different communities. The purpose of these focus groups is to listen to people on the ground with regard to what human rights and equalities means to them as part of the committee's inquiry. The first session that we held in Leith in Edinburgh this week on Monday, in the morning, we first visited a housing association where they were doing some redevelopment. It is fair to say that we are historically quite dilapidated in difficult housing that people were living in. We saw some photographs of the conditions that people were living in, and I have to say that it was quite shocking to me. There is a lot of work being done there, but it is fair to say that the work that is being done, I believe, has been financed by Edinburgh Council that none of this would be happening if it was not for the residents who had really taken ownership of the issues that they were facing there. They have been very forceful and forthcoming with their views on this, and that is very important to note. The reason for that is that they believe that their human rights were being breached by the conditions that they were living in, even in modern-day Scotland in our capital city. That was a very powerful testament to what human rights are on the ground, even in our own country, when much of the discussion is around what human rights are overseas. That was an excellent on-the-ground opportunity to go and visit and chat to them. We were invited into their homes and we got to have a good rummage around and see what work had been done. It was excellent. We then held a session in the local community hall. There were a huge variety of stakeholders there. We were over 40 participants, if I am correct, and that was covering a whole wide range of groups, everything from the Sikh community to the transgender community to refugees, women's aid, etc. We also had individuals with their own vested interests in what human rights meant to them. A lot of advocacy groups, too, helped people who were often unable to help themselves. We had an excellent session on quizzing people as to what human rights meant to them. I think that some of that will come out over the course of this morning's discussions and some of that feedback. It is fair to say that it was a real eye-opener. It has really touched home to us as parliamentarians what people's perceptions are of human rights outside of the real world outside of this building. It was a good start. I very much look forward to the next couple of those focus groups. I hope that they will form an integral part of the committee's work and listen to people on the ground rather than just pontificating as members do in the chamber. That was an excellent opportunity. I thank everyone who came, and I thank all the staff who helped to organise it, and also the people who worked at the hall who looked after us so well. I had a great lunch. It was a really excellent day. Thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity. Thanks, Jamie. Each of us are taking a turn in doing one of these events. As you can see from what Jamie has got from that event, we should strive to get the same good feedback as well. For this committee, it has always been stakeholders and people in real testimony. It is at the heart of what we do, because that is where it matters and that is where it is really interesting. Moving on to the substantive part of our committee this morning in agenda item 2, it is our human rights inquiry. With us this morning we have Dr Katie Boyle, who is a senior lecturer at the School of Law at the University of Roehampton. Professor Kurt Mills is Professor of International Relations and Human Rights at the University of Dundee. Good morning to both of you. Dr Boyle, you have got a bit of an overview of the work that you want to do if we can hear from you first. Professor Mills, you have got a bit of an opening statement, and then we will go to questions from the committee. Dr Boyle, if we could start with you. Thank you very much, convener. Thank you to the committee for inviting us here today to speak with you about this. I begin by saying how welcome it is that this inquiry is happening and commend the committee on the work that it is doing. I was really, really encouraged to hear that you had extended your remit to include human rights, as well as equality. I think that you are shown great strides in terms of embracing the full spectrum of rights in the work that you are doing. I should say that in the context of everything that I speak about today, I recognise the fact that great work has been done in engaging with the international human rights framework, as well as statutory obligations and constitutional requirements in Scotland. Thank you very much for having us here today to speak some more about what else Scotland might do and specifically what the Parliament might do. I provided written evidence to support what evidence I might speak about today, so I do not want to go into great detail speaking for a long time about this, but I would really encourage us if there are specific questions or more information that you would like that you ask me to speak to that. Just to give a very brief introduction and an overview of the evidence that I have provided, it is really rudimentary in terms of just setting out the position as I see it and potential opportunities both for the committee and for Parliament and for Scotland more widely. I welcome Jamie Greene's comments about the work that has been done in Leith. It is a really important project and it demonstrates the power in people's own understandings of what their human rights are. It also helps for me to begin by speaking about the fact that we actually have a system that partially favours some types of rights over others. I am sure that in your work that you have encountered that we have a very robust human rights framework in Scotland and the Parliament, the Government, the administrative sectors in Scotland and the judiciary already engage to a great degree with civil and political rights, predominantly under the Scotland Act and the Human Rights Act. There is a division between what types of enforcement you have of those rights, depending on whether or not a matter is reserved or devolved. Beyond the civil and political rights and to some degree the socioeconomic rights that are caught by the ECHR so far as it can capture a dynamic interpretation of civil and political rights, we also have obligations as a state under international law in relation to economic, social and cultural rights. That is where I would see that there is a particular accountability gap. When I speak about economic, social and cultural rights, I am talking very broadly about a lot of areas that are engaged with devolved competence, such as education, health, housing, social security, as it has now been partially devolved. I am also engaging with equality, which is a little bit more complex because of the reservation to equal opportunities under the Scotland Act. When we see, for example, the residents in Leith, what they are faced with is trying to claim the rights under a system that does not necessarily recognise the full spectrum of rights, which can be very difficult if, for example, there is not enough capacity or knowledge to support an understanding of the full international human rights framework. My evidence was to say that I think that the committee can take strides and I would say that this inquiry of itself is a huge step and a very welcome one in considering how we could enhance the protection of human rights beyond those contained in the ECHR and also with a view to trying to mitigate against any loss of rights and remedies under EU law and that that should be with a view to look at economic, social and cultural rights. The broad headings in which I provided evidence was to say that the committee might take more steps in relation to participation and engagement through education mechanisms and also by taking the broad spectrum of human rights work beyond the committee to other work of the Parliament and also by considering whether there would be opportunities to have pre-legislative scrutiny specifically within the committee in relation to civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. I also suggested that parliamentary procedure and process could reflect this and that there could be an embedded human rights scrutiny system across the Parliament and I did very much welcome that idea and I mean I don't know how it might work in practice but this idea of having almost human rights rapporteurs which the committee convened to help advise across Parliament in its work and I also suggested that there could be greater accountability in terms of the Parliament's role in a constitutional sense is to hold the other arms of state to account so to ask the Government what steps it is taking to comply and promote human rights as well as reflecting on what the judiciary has to say about it as well and within this constitutional dialogue I would see that that ought to be expanded beyond just the national level to engage with the Council of Europe systems and I understand that those steps have already been taken to some degree and that you can engage also with UN mechanisms such as the universal periodic review so it's about expanding beyond across the committee's and Parliament and then externally with national Council of Europe United Nations systems in order to just create this very rich culture of human rights knowledge capacity building and empowerment so that people of Scotland can feel that they have access and can claim their rights across the broad spectrum of human rights excellent thanks Dr Boyle I flew in last night from Strasbourg after three days at the plenary session of the council of Europe where we agreed a human rights handbook and it's a handbook of good practice that would then be extended out to local national and regional parliaments and assemblies across the wider context of the European Union the Council of Europe being the 47 rather than the 28 so that's quite an interesting process because actually it looked like we were a wee bit further ahead than most of the rest so that was quite satisfying but no thank you for your evidence this morning. Professor Mills if I can move on to you and for you to do your opening statement and then I've got a series of questions for my committee colleagues. Professor Mills. Thank you. Thank you honourable members for inviting me to speak with you today I apologize for not providing written testimony in advance of the hearing unfortunately the invitation that did not provide me sufficient time to produce this but I'm happy to provide my comments today in written form after the meeting. I'm particularly delighted to be speaking with you today because almost exactly six years ago I in a group of my students at the University of Glasgow where I was teaching at the time released a report entitled Scottish Parliament Committee's perspective on human rights this report was commissioned by the cross party group on human rights with a view to examining how all committees included human rights issues in their deliberations while the report was limited in its time frame it included that the evidence for the period of study reveals a widespread disregard of the normative and institutional framework for conceptualizing and analyzing human rights issues now there was no evidence that this was deliberate for the most part rather most committees did not see the opportunity to imbue human rights in their respective field of activities they called for moving human rights to the equal opportunities committee and renaming the committee to reflect the new mandate now although I'm not assigning any influence whatsoever to that one small report six years ago I'm nonetheless gratified that this suggestion has indeed been implemented the creation of this committee represents a substantial commitment to embedding human rights in the work of the Scottish Parliament and Scotland more broadly now I'm not a parliamentary or constitutional expert most of my work focuses on how international institutions and other actors address human rights issues frequently examining the domestic international interface and so my comments for the most part will reflect this others will reflect on the intricacies of committee action and the constitutional mandates of the committee I instead want to begin by reiterating the potentially transformative nature of the creation of this committee and encourage you to use its potential to not only potentially scrutinize the work of other committees or to routinize the consideration of human rights throughout parliament but also to use it as a platform to embed within broader scottish society the positive values of human rights now I have lived in Scotland for more than 13 years and that timing has been clear to me that scotland as a whole appears to have a somewhat different approach to the issue of human rights than other parts of the UK the open and welcoming response to syrian refugees for example exemplifies this approach the very positive words and actions on the part of the scottish government of parliament parliamentarians contribute to this but this is obviously not uniform throughout society and it is subject to significant regression we have seen this over a long period of time in Westminster with proposals to withdraw from the UN refugee convention the european convention and court of human rights and replace the human rights act was something which is sure to provide less than current human rights protections this committee should be an outspoken positive voice against any such reductions in human rights protection both in scotland and in the UK as a whole since any changes in Westminster will inevitably have an effect in scotland in this regard I have a view specific recommendations first with regard to future proposals from Westminster the committee must be vigilant in scrutinising their effect on human rights protection in scotland this includes the effects of withdrawing from the EU charter fundamental rights as part of the withdrawal from the EU itself now most of these rights are contained in other documents which will continue to apply to the UK in scotland but any reduction in protection should be clarified and plans to mitigate such reductions formulated second there's been much discussion about and some political commitments to directly incorporating international human rights laws such as the covenant on economic social and cultural rights in the scottish law direct incorporation to the extent possible would help to mitigate any attempts by Westminster to undermine protections in scotland the committee should be proactive in investigating these possibilities third the committee can play a significant role in the development and scrutiny of the Scottish government's submissions to the United Nations universal periodic review of the UK the most recent submission was robust and positive but there is a role for continuing engagement in this process including considering the outcome of the review from the human rights council and how the Scottish Parliament might respond fourth and more broadly the committee can play a role in following up findings reports and recommendations from UN treaty bodies and evaluating the implications for human rights practice and protection in scotland it could potentially also send reports and representatives to treaty bodies fifth the committee can proactively engage with international actors such as other parliaments and organizations to draw on best human rights practices globally to inform its work and the work of other committees sixth the committee can initiate inquiries into specific human rights issues including those which might span the domestic international divide or or which may relate directly to reserve powers but which nonetheless may have direct consequence for scotland for example the conflict in Syria and the broader situation of refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean has direct impact on scotland given the open and generous response by scotland to welcoming syrian refugees more generally the UK's response to situations like Syria is of direct concern to many citizens in scotland who may not feel that their concerns are adequately represented in Westminster the committee the committee could thus become another voice within broader discussions in the UK regarding how to address key international challenges seventh the committee can welcome and support initiatives to directly protect individuals from human rights violations internationally this might include making strong statements in support of welcoming refugees and it might mean engaging with initiatives like the Scottish Human Rights Defenders Fellowship which is funded by the Scottish Government and which will involve initially human rights defenders coming to the University of Dundee for a period of respite research and interaction with human rights organizations I am sure that they would welcome the opportunity to speak with the committee and others in Parliament about their concerns and providing such a forum would be an important show of solidarity finally I appreciate the inclusion of academic voices in this discussion and would encourage the committee to continue to draw upon the very significant resources at Scottish universities and elsewhere to support its work now I am currently spearheading an initiative to create the Scottish Centre for Human Rights which would facilitate such interaction but even in the absence of such a formal centre there are many academics in Scotland willing and able to support the important work of the committee in some I would encourage the committee to be proactive and mobilise public opinion in support of the broadest array of human rights civil and political as well as economic, social and cultural and contribute to public discourse in Scotland and beyond on human rights issues this may require thinking beyond narrow understandings of mandates which focus only on scrutinising legislation to a more holistic understanding of positive support for human rights thank you thanks very much very comprehensive professor mills I'm just going to go straight to questions because we do have two panels this morning and we do have limited time so straightforward questions please gail Ross thank you and good morning and thank you so much for such an in-depth introduction I think we can all agree that the the remit now of the committee including human rights is something that probably should have happened long ago but now that we have it here we have to grasp the opportunity with both hands and it's really important what Jamie was saying in his discussion about the workshops that we were having and I just wanted to to touch on I've been doing a little bit of a straw poll when I've been going out and meeting constituents and asking them what does human rights mean to you and most of the time their reply will be well human rights is something that happens to someone else it's a it's it's a prisoner thing or it's a refugee thing or it's an international rights thing so I was interested dr build to see that you had in your written evidence about what we can do to promote human rights to society as well as to the parliament obviously because the scrutiny of policies and other committees is going to be key in this as well and you did make a number of suggestions about education campaigns and things and I just wonder if you could expand a little bit on how we can promote human rights to everyone in society yeah I mean it's a huge undertaking and actually I think education is a very important part and so very straightforward ways of doing that would be to ensure and I have to say I don't have expertise in exactly what the school curriculum includes but when I had a brief look over sort of the parliamentary material around citizenship I couldn't see a great deal about how it engaged with rights also so I think it's about almost reframing our understanding that to be a person a human being living in Scotland comes with this constitutional framework as you know as citizens and living together that you also enjoy rights and so it's almost letting people have ownership of that from as early an age as possible and also just I mean again across institutions and across all sectors public and private civil society within the parliamentary institutions but also in government and the judiciary that we just keep a conversation going and actually I think Scotland does this very very well anyway we are engaged we like to talk you know and a big part of human rights is that it's not top down people's ownership over human rights comes when they feel they're included so it's the phrase that's used nothing about us without us and that's something I think very much that the Leith residents would understand and you will all have worked within your constituencies with people that face really really difficult situations and they might not be caught by our particular legal framework in terms of helping them so I think it's about revisiting exactly what country we want to live in and allowing people to have ownership over that and creating a participatory informed inclusive deliberative forum in which we can talk about where we want to go and I think really that's what we want to we want to be enriching the dialogue that happens across all our institutions all our public bodies and in the private and public sphere about human rights so I mean that is a huge undertaking it will take more than just the committee to do that but I think the committee in terms of making recommendations that's the way it should be going and encouraging and encouraging that across society. Professor Wells, do you have any? Just briefly, I mean I think Katie was quite comprehensive there. I would just note the recent report from the Scottish Human Rights Commission on public understandings of human rights and and say that I think this is a very important work which I think should be built upon and continued in some manner. I mean if we get the centre going one of the things we intend to do is have a yearly report on this but this is also something that I think this committee could support in various ways in terms of having more inquiries like this and in terms of asking for bits of research to be done in this area supporting such research etc. There's a lot of capability out there amongst the universities and NGOs to do this and I think a lot of appetite to continue with this work. Okay, thanks very much. Jamie Greene. Thank you convener. Thank you for the opening comments, very interesting. My perception around falling on from what Gil Ross is saying around people's awareness of their own human rights is an interesting one based on some of the discussions that we've had with people. I think that people fall into one of two categories generally. The first is where they're very aware that something that they currently have or experience is then removed or lost and they feel that loss of human rights and they're only aware of that human right because it's been taken away or something's changed and the other group of people are people who haven't had it all along but just simply weren't aware of it and the example of the people that we met in Leith where was a perfect example of where they were living in conditions which were clearly breaching human rights but they weren't aware of it, they just thought it was status quo or it was bad service or it was a lack of you're just accepting what they have and I find that comparison very interesting. So I guess my question or my discussion point is how do we raise awareness on the ground that human rights affect every part of your daily life, whether it's access to education, health, housing, social care, travel, access to the digital economy and so on. It really touches so many different aspects of life without talking in terms of charters and treaties and intergovernmental agencies and NGOs. People that I met aren't listening to those messages, what are the messages we should be getting out there? That's a very interesting insight and I think it's something that we see all around the world. It's certainly not unique to people in Leith and it's something very hard to get at because frequently the people in these situations don't have access to the types of information and resources and education where you start to understand the fact that the situation is not right and we can actually do something about it and I think this is where supporting some of the excellent work from civil society organizations is absolutely key because they're the ones on the ground working with individuals and groups and community groups to try to get this message across that you have rights and we don't have to talk about the European Convention on Human Rights or whatever to let people understand that they can assert themselves and ask for these rights. I think one of the things the committee could do is to proactively be open to accepting those assertions from individuals and groups. If I might just add there, I think it's really important and it's a very difficult thing to visit as society that there has to be a difference between recognising that people might not have full awareness of the rights and also recognising that our justice system doesn't facilitate access to accountability mechanisms when people's rights are violated and that is a very difficult thing to face up to but it's also a really important distinction because you can also say well we could increase awareness of the international human rights system in helping people claim rights but if there is no access to justice mechanism that allows them to do that then it's almost a futile exercise not entirely and I mean I'm talking about you know it's so important to keep raising awareness and education is absolutely critical and that we have to have these conversations but also recognise the fact that to say to someone will actually this engages with the UN convention of the rights of the child this engages with international covenant and economic social and cultural rights but the end of the day if that person then can't in an institutional sense engage with the local council and claim that as an actual legal right then it doesn't necessarily result in any change so there are many different ways in which we can improve our legal structure to better account for rights and I think well it is critical that we raise awareness and help people have greater awareness of the entire human rights framework to say to them you know if we start talking about housing or health or education and the context of you know and our structures which which has easy HR rights the easy HR rights might not do enough for people in those situations and that's what's really difficult that you know if you don't reflect the full body of international human rights law then it can actually be something which creates this accountability gap and so there is a frustration there for people when they realise what I ought to have access to better you know housing or and so I think there's a distinction to be drawn there between not just awareness raising but also creating the proper accountability mechanisms before Jamie comes back in Dr Boyle is there any examples that you've got we like case studies we like to see where it impacts on a real person and how that impact has impacted on the real person if you get any examples that you could give us off the top of your head yeah I mean at the end of the day you can see for example people accessing their rights under the easy HR for example so article 8 is private and family life and to some extent housing as an example is captured by that such as the right not to be evicted but the right to adequate housing isn't necessarily captured by that so you may have we have quit quite good statutory obligations in Scotland which differs from housing obligations under the law in England and Wales and so you might say for example perhaps that the statutory obligations should be better pinned to international law so that it's very clear you could for example have the an increased regulatory function or inspection function that goes into sort of housing situations to say is this up to standard and those I could draw on many many examples comparatively speaking in terms of how this operates from my point of view I always think that it's very important that Parliament takes the lead in providing rights that the government and executive and administrative sections of society are where it's operationalised and then as a means of last resort if other institutions have failed that you ought to be able to claim those rights in a court and that should be an absolute means of last resort because it should already have been embedded earlier on but I think it helps to embed it earlier on if you have this accountability mechanism as a means of last resort so I'm happy to speak about comparative case law drawn from other countries if that would be helpful but as I say within our particular legal system you can only take ECHR rights for example so far because the treaty is not designed to capture the full spectrum of human rights I don't I could speak a long time about other cases I don't want to know about. Let's let Jamie come back and finish his question and come to Alex next so that we've got you know quite a clear I think we all know where we're going on this so let's let's do that and we can come back. Jamie. Thank you convener I think that's an important point that making that link between the obligations that already exist in international spheres versus what already exists in domestic law and statutory regulations etc and just to furnish it with some examples I think it helps us is you know we often have debates in parliament when we're passing legislation around inclusion of things like statutory targets whether they should be in or out and we often have political debates around that but in effect you know things like class sizes in schools or waiting time targets for seeing specialists and there's a whole bunch of metrics that I think already exist in policy for example when one is in government but how that links back to the fact that if those targets are not met does that then interact in any way with any of the human rights that you have that you are entitled to and I think that link is very missing at the moment and just another point that was made around people's interaction with their awareness or that sort of moment of realisation that the issue that they have is actually a human rights issue and I think the people that I noticed that we met on Monday were who were doing a lot of good work there's the advocacy and support groups so people in their own communities will come together and help each other that peer-to-peer support and at that point they will then come across someone who has enough adequate knowledge of the subject to make that link back to human rights and say well actually the situation you're facing is a human rights issue and these are all the things that we can do to help and I'll close just by not asking a question making a comment and that's on the way out of the session somebody asked me a very difficult question and they said what do I do if I think my human rights are being breached who do I speak to and I pondered and I didn't have an answer for them because in every other aspect of life there's a phone number there's a helpline there's a group there's an organisation there's a government agency there's you know there's a no 800 number you pick up and say you know something's not right but when it comes to human rights I did not have an answer for them and I felt I felt quite ashamed almost in the way to say I don't know who you speak to who is that frontline person that you need to go and talk to if you think your human rights are being breached so if I can't answer that question then there's clearly still a problem, wasn't it a question, sorry? Let's move on to Alex Questions then and we can come back around Alex. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning to the panel. Thank you for coming to see us today. I'd like to cover two areas. The first links into something you said, Dr Boyle, in your opening remarks about taking the work of this committee across the Parliament and embedding a human rights scrutiny in every committee. To a certain extent we've tried to do that on a small level in some ways before and I'm thinking particularly things like child rights impact assessments on new bills, equalities impact assessments as well of course. That is all very well and I think it's fair to say that there is goodwill across all the parties in the Parliament towards human rights. There is a lot of political rhetoric about making rights real but we know that on the ground in the implementation and the execution of these laws that often they are lost in the midst of everything else and actually things like the child rights impact assessment become a tick box exercise and the rest of it. So my question to you is I think you mentioned incorporation Professor Mills. If we can't get this right just by voluntary action in terms of the if we call it that child rights impact assessment and the rest is incorporation the way to give human rights a legal imperative and respect for those rights of legal imperative both in the laws that we passed and how they're delivered on the ground particularly in local authorities. On the issue of incorporation I think so but we also have to and let me put that comment in context because we also have to recognise that the UK and Scotland already has many many legal obligations and the Scottish Parliament is responsible for implementing many of those legal obligations that we already have already through the European Convention on Human Rights and other international covenants. I mentioned incorporation partially because some of these rights are not adequately incorporated within UK law perhaps but also to make it perhaps more real for the Scottish Parliament to say regardless of anything else that's going on anywhere else in the country you know this is something that's really important to us and I think if you make that further commitment that helps to again make it real and helps these ideas and these commitments to work their way down further into other committees and other parts of parliamentary work but this committee in particular I think needs to be really proactive in making sure that actually happens and there's been discussion of human rights rapporteurs for the various committees and that sort of thing and I think that's really important so that there's somebody on each committee that takes responsibility for making sure that this happens and is a point person for this committee to engage with to make sure that it actually follows through all the way down. Thank you. Yeah just to follow up on that I think it touches upon really really important issues because you know when we talk about what are essentially procedural duties so you have a duty to carry out a process which happens to be to take into consideration the impact in relation to equality of human rights those obligations are process based and actually we need to think about whether or not it is necessarily the best way or the most appropriate way or if there are other types of duties that you could impose so you could have a duty to have due regard for example to international law in particular areas or you could have a duty to an actual substantive outcome and you can see different constitutional arrangements around the world that have those different types of duties and we engage with them in many different respects and I think it's important to note because a process duty may not necessarily result in a substantive human rights outcome or a substantive equality outcome and so well it's a helpful step it's important to recognise that perhaps some of the frustration with those types of duties is that the obligation isn't actually to reach a particular point but to take something into consideration so I think that is a really really important issue to note and it's worth further consideration about what kind of duties ought to be imposed and the other thing is about incorporation the Scottish human rights commission are in the process of doing really important work on this looking at incorporation models and also just disability mechanisms for the broad range of international human rights law and I would just echo what Professor Mills has said that you know there is there are many different ways that you can incorporate and we do have partial incorporation of the European convention of human rights already and you know largely speaking it it works in terms of ensuring that people comply with the European convention of human rights so there's a lot to be learned from that and actually comparatively speaking in an international sense people look to our example of incorporation of the ECHR as good practice so I think it's worthwhile exploring the options I did mention in my evidence that it would be within the power of the committee for example to commence a committee bill that might look at something along those lines now that's not to necessarily say that that might be you know there may be other first steps to take but it is something that is there that you may want to take into consideration even in terms of just helping out a set of instructions on terms of what would be expected how should Parliament incorporate and incorporate such a wide term you know different types of rights I think it's really helpful to reflect on the examples of other countries not necessarily to borrow from them directly but if you look to Switzerland for example the Canternell legislators which are the devolved legislators they are the legislators responsible for implementing international obligations they are responsible for ensuring the state at the confederal level is is complying with its international obligations so it's almost you know reflecting on the fact that perhaps if the devolved legislator took steps to implement international obligations through some form of incorporation it can take many different forms it's actually helping the state comply with its international obligations and so it's to you know the Scottish Parliament has the power to implement and observe international obligations including international human rights that's not necessarily a duty but it is a devolved competence so it's about you know to what extent do we want to utilise that that particular power and thank you for that I think the keyword there in your remarks just now was for me was just disability and I think it answers I think Jamie Greene's point to a certain degree where do I go when I feel my rights are being violated and I think you know if we look at the various rapporteurs that come and look at our how we're measuring up to the international treaties to which we are signatory and we have six seven hundred concluding observations of things we must be doing better or could be doing better that clearly we're falling short of those and and I think for me that's always been the lack of that legal imperative there's no nobody's going to sue you because they don't have a right to sue you and I'll leave that for now I want to I'm aware time is short I'll move on to my second line of questioning and that is political controversy acting as a barrier to making rights real and there are certain areas where you have tensions between rights I think the physical punishment of children is an interesting one because there is a view in some quarters that the rights of children and the right to family life clash there but particularly I want to ask about end of life issues because that's a really controversial issue and politicians traditionally shy away from that I think even in an international basis politicians shy away from that there is to my knowledge no international human right to die and I just wondered if you could give us your reflection on what we need to do to transcend those barriers at political controversy that comes in and stops us taking the right decision because we're all worried about getting re-elected. So I think again that hits on a really really important issue and it's one my in terms of my research I would say that the way of potentially viewing what is very difficult and politically controversial issues in relation to human rights is to try and take one step back and I think this is the Parliament's responsibility to a great degree is to and within this committee and it seems very apparent that this is perhaps what is almost embodying the work and the ethos of the committee is that you try and depoliticise what are human rights issues because different political positions may have a different understanding of how to actually implement or realise a right but I'm sure everyone in the room would agree that human rights violations and what you have all seen in relation to what might perhaps some constituents face is not acceptable it's just a different means through which you would like to get to that end goal where there might be difference so I think it's almost about trying to take a step back and depoliticise international human rights and its broader framework has gone through centuries of a dialectic process to get to this realisation that we have some kind of understanding of human dignity as a basic component that we can all agree upon and so it's almost about taking that and using it as legal standards rather than political aspirations or objectives but I think as part of that you also highlight a really important issue is that sometimes there is an incompossibility of rights where you may have rights that compete with each other and actually it is really important that there is space available for those dialogues also to still happen like as you say in relation to end of life issues or where you have a you know the comparison between the freedom of expression of one person and the privacy of another you know these are issues that we face all the time so I think legally you can introduce tests to help balance between rights and proportionality, reasonableness, different approaches and there's so much you could draw upon in that respect but I would see probably the first step in terms of trying to create a space in which these difficult issues can be faced is to de-polititise and understand the legal standards is something that everybody can get round the table to agree upon and I'll just say I think that that's a really important point that we frequently look at how different human rights interact in sort of a mutually supporting way but there are times as has been pointed out where there are real tensions and and the the problem is that there may be real real disagreements fundamental disagreements between two people approaching this approaching this tension between two rights and is this purely political is it really fundamental and moral and and does it get to something really substantial about how how we think about the world and how we think about what rights we have and and and and that's really difficult and I study politics I don't think you can really take politics out of this however much you have legal standards but I think it's important to have a committee like this that is committed to looking at what the law says and how we interpret that law and the multiple ways of interpreting that law and and and acting in good faith to reconcile some of these differences um I guess maybe I'm a cynic I you can't get rid of the politics but but but you can set up situations and approaches that try to minimise the politics thank you thank you very much for that I would just sitting here thinking very much along the lines from the the first sort of a questions as well it's when you're looking at the two different human rights so and they do sort of a you can't pull them apart how then can we actually bring forward and say that everyone has human rights and that your rights are your rights when sometimes they're not going to be your rights because the judicial the judicial system or someone else's rights trumps and so for me it's like I've got a human right to privacy but someone just what you said so how do we get that across not just to to colleagues in here but to school children to people in the communities and to the wider public that human rights is human rights but sometimes there's got to be there has got to be that sort of a comparison and and we have to split them up because I don't know how I would feel having to deal with two two people and having to decide who's who's human rights was more important. Yeah, sorry. I think just to clarify when I say depoliticise I think that we mean we should be able to reach some kind of arrangement for example based on the concept of human dignity or something like that and then the politics can fill in and you know there has to be space for negotiation on different aspects of rights but there should be some sort of minimum standards with a commitment to progressive realisation that is viewed legally and when you talk about when rights clash I think it is a really important point to note because I think when you if for example in the context of educating if you were saying to a child you know you have human rights there are some rights which should be absolute you know nobody should for example be subject to torture yeah we can agree on that you know that so that's it that's what I would say is that then that's just a standard in place that we can all agree upon but there may be competing rights at times and actually the way that I would explain that for example in a school situation would be to say look we also choose to live in a society together which means that we need to share and that sometimes you know one person's right may be take precedence over another's and that's actually about community you know so it's so we almost need to step away from this private rights model of you know and reflect and actually that's perfectly reasonable to that you may and actually in making decisions have to have a view to what will impact the community as well as the individual and so I would reflect upon it in that sense that you know some rights are absolute but not all rights are and sometimes you have to find a balance between rights the judiciary are very adapted doing this they do already through proportionality but I mean ideally you shouldn't be going to have to go to court to get those decisions all the time so it's about trying to embed it earlier on in decision making and balancing exercises are perfectly reasonable ways of doing that and I suppose I'm gonna slightly contradict myself here and and and say yes there there may be competing rights and and need to aid different aspects of different whites but at the same time I think sometimes that's sort of overblown and we have to be really really careful about asserting that oh the right to security is absolute whatever we mean by that and frequently we don't actually know what we mean and so that trumps all these other things like torture like throwing people in jail for weeks and months and years with no due course or anything like that because we say that this one thing trumps everything else and we have to be really careful about those situations. David have you got a quick question because Dr Boyle has to leave at quarter past and we do have another question. I've got two very quick ones. Professor Mills you touched on it earlier about other committees within the Parliament and like many of us on this committee here we sit in other committees. How do we incorporate that human rights into it because take example I sit in delegated powers and when we take evidence or make decisions I don't think anybody's ever says to us have you checked the human rights there so how do you really incorporate it in can you maybe expand on that a wee bit on other committees? Well and I guess I would ask why not? Why is that question not raised and why is there not somebody on that committee whose responsibility it is to ensure that okay while we're dealing with this particular set of issues it interacts with this set of rights in the European Convention, the Human Rights Act or whatever why are we not having this discussion? So I would say there should be somebody with that responsibility to raise that question specifically and then you can go from there. I mean I referred to the research that we did before and I think part of the problem was that there was nobody who had that remit or mandate to actually ask that question and if there was I think that could go a long ways in ensuring that a lot of these issues are actually considered appropriately from a human rights perspective across committees and this committee could play a sort of overarching role to make sure that this process actually happens properly. The second question is Brexit's a year away. Do you think that human rights once the UK leaves the EU will keep pace with European human rights or do you think it will probably become diluted and maybe stagnate? I'm worried partially because of Brexit and partially because of the way Brexit interacts with other things that we've been hearing from Westminster about how certain parties are approaching how we think about human rights, how we think about our international obligations and how we implement those and understand those international obligations domestically. Withdrawing from the EU will remove one level of pressure to uphold human rights. Now for the moment even after we leave the EU we will still be parties to the European convention and the European Court although we know that there are also moves of foot to undermine that too and once we leave the EU that may create momentum for further undermining of human rights protections and so yes I'm worried. Dr Boyle you've got 40 seconds. Thank you and my apologies I have to leave. I have another commitment that I couldn't get out of so thank you very much but I just would echo that. I mean I think the First Minister has taken steps to highlight the fact that it's important to mitigate against Brexit and I really from a human rights perspective I couldn't emphasise enough how important that is because the body of EU law that engages with human rights is much broader than just to say that EU charter of fundamental rights all different parts of EU law engage with different aspects of rights some of which go beyond what we already have and even the existing rights if you compare article 47 in terms of accessing justice with article 47 of the EU charter with article 6 of the CHR it's a much broader right which allows people to access justice more easily and if we remove those types of protections now the EU continuity bill takes steps to mitigate against some of that but when you remove yourself from a system you can you know it's not just the rights potentially that you lose but also the remedies so you need to think also about the context of you know access to justice in that respect but you know it's it's it is of grave concern and also in so far as one of the greatest loss in terms of exiting the EU is that we don't we lose the potential of where that might go in terms of rights protections as well and that's an important point to be in mind as well and it's a good point to complete your evidence to us this morning but you'll realise from our questions that we're no done with you and we may come back and speak to you both again either through correspondence or at committee in order to pursue some of these these areas this is our first opening salvo to this inquiry today and we're really grateful because you've given us very clear lines that we can look at and lots of questions for our next panel who are sitting right behind you so I'm going to suspend committee for five minutes to allow for a quick comfort break and then back in your chairs because we've got another panel can I give our grateful thanks to both Dr Boyle and Professor Mills this morning but as I say we will talk okay thank you okay and welcome back to the equality human rights committee and our continuation of agenda item two on our inquiry on human rights and our second panel this morning with us we have Carol Uatt who is Public Policy and Human Rights Consultant good morning Carol and Sanjita Hosali who is the director of the British Institute of Human Rights and someone well known to this committee now is Mary Snowden who is the coordinator of the human rights curriculum in Scotland. Welcome to committee this morning we're very grateful that you gave up your time to come and you've given us some written evidence as well and have really helped us and put us along on this particular topic as far as the committee's work goes you'll have heard the panel beforehand which was from to very eminent academics who gave us some very clear understanding of where we should go and areas we should look at I'm going to follow the same format this morning so I don't know whether any of you have a brief opening statement it would need to be very brief if you've got a few words you want to say about the overarching work that you do and where the focus of the committee could be and Carol I don't know if you want to kick off with that okay thank you very much convener I'm delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to this inquiry which is very welcome as the agenda states I'm a public policy and human rights consultant and so I thought it was appropriate to tell the committee which clients I have just now because you need to hear my words and understand where I'm coming from I have worked with over 120 organisations in my 20-year consultancy but my current clients are Dignity and Dying, Voluntary Action Scotland, CME and the Scottish Council in Deafness. I'm also the convener of the campaign for freedom of information in Scotland and the committee has a copy of its submission and one of the key conclusions that we drew from comparing the operation of freedom of information legislation with human rights legislation is the enforceability, the free enforceability of FOI rights and that is what is the game changer, it's changed the culture of rights, it's increased people's understanding of their rights, people have more respect for their rights and the crucial thing is that duty bearers understand their rights and I was really intrigued by the evidence this morning because I think from me I would urge the committee to focus on the role of the duty bearer there is absolutely no point in people knowing about their rights and trying to assert those rights if they are ignored, laughed off or absolutely nothing happens, that's fundamentally disempowering. Thank you. That is an excellent point for me to come in. I'm the director of the British Institute of Human Rights and we work across the whole of the UK as a charity to really bring human rights to life so what we do is focus on supporting people to know human rights, to use them in practice so we work with duty bearers, we work with regulators, we work with individuals who hold rights and advocacy organisations and then actually to translate that story of the difference that human rights makes for people in their everyday lives into policy at various different levels so a big portion of the work that we do does actually focus on actually how do you make duty bearers, be part of a culture of respect for human rights and Parliament has a really important role to play with that so I'm really pleased to be here to give evidence but the other part of the work that we do is also international so taking the voices of people, the evidence of people across the UK and using that to influence international monitoring processes and again there's a real role and a real potential for parliamentarians in the international monitoring processes as well because they're not as visible as they could be so there's a real opportunity there so that's something that I'd like to draw on as well. Thank you, thank you, Mary. Yeah, thanks for inviting me here today. I think this inquiry comes at quite a crucial time for human rights in Scotland, I think with the context of Brexit that we've already heard which takes away that framework that protects lots of rights and pushes them on as well as that underlying kind of negative rhetoric that's often there around rights so they are at threat so this is a really important time I think to look at not only just how Scotland can comply with human rights but how we can progressively realise them so to keep progressing them what is the best way of the Parliament having a role in that. I've obviously put in some joint evidence from 15 different organisations so I'm not going to go over it but just to highlight two particular aspects of that because I think they've come out in other people's evidence as well but around using the UN treaty recommendations and concluding observations particularly the universal periodic review as a sort of structure for the committee to look at things we were quite concerned with the last process that it was positive that the Scottish Government responded separately and they had some consultation with civil society but there is this feeling of the recommendations come out there's a sort of a response to them and then there's not a lot done until the next time it comes round and then you scrabble again to see what can you respond to this so our members have talked a lot about it it would be much better to create make a positive process where you proactively look at the recommendations and see and actually implement them and then report on what's being done so just to turn it on its head it would be really useful and actually it's useful in the context of Brexit because to take all that international framework and use that as a way to keep progressing on rights it would be really positive for the committee and just one other aspect is that obviously key to all of this is is the participation side is making sure that you have the voices of different people influencing what you prioritize so and that is actually whilst very challenging is extremely practical it's just about building it into a work plan and making sure that you speak to different groups at different times and that the other committees do so also and that a fundamental part of taking a human rights peace approach is that listening and then letting that affect your priorities. We're going to go with the same sort of round of questionnaires but the questions may be tailored slightly different. Gail Ross. Thank you, convener. Good morning panel. You'll have heard some of the excellent evidence, I've got loads and loads of notes but don't worry, I'm not going to ask you all the questions that I've written in here. I started off the last session by just a broad overview of human rights when I go out and ask my constituents in general what do you think human rights are and a lot of them will come back and say well human rights is something that happens to other people it's to do with immigration and refugees and judicial rights and then you mentioned social economic rights to them and these you know civil political things and there's all right yeah okay it does apply to me so I mean we do we talk about the duty bearers and I'd like to come back to that as well but how do we embed human rights in our society from the very early stages of life right through all aspects because we are a committee now with a specific remit on human rights but it also crosses all the committees all the portfolios all aspects of life so how do we get into that how do we do that with society? I think that's a really fundamental question and there already a lot has been done so I think the committee really needs to highlight and showcase best practice and urge replication so one of the best things I've ever seen is UNICEF's rights respecting school initiative the difference it makes to children addressing bullying disrespectful behaviour from very early age and that needs to be continued right the way through secondary school I've been to presentations where children have explained moving from a rights respecting primary school to a not officially rights respecting secondary school and all the consequential problems that arise from that so I think we need to celebrate the fact that there are solutions there they need to be actually mandatory so I would say that first point secondly when the Scottish Parliament set up the Scottish commission for human rights it departed from previous practice it chose not to establish a commissioner and so far it's had about 12 million pounds and that's a huge amount of investment from this parliament and it shows its commitment to human rights one of the functions is education and training and I think we really should reflect on should it not actually be part of its core work although it's independent there is still the ability of the committee to influence its priorities should it not be a fundamental part of its work that there's free education and training to all 10,000 plus public bodies in Scotland and bodies delivering services of a public nature that would change the culture I would suggest pretty dramatically and I think to echo that I think one of the things as kind of as Carol said in terms of there is quite a lot of good practice already out there and I think it's really important that time and resources aren't spent replicating things that have sorry not replicating but replicating kind of what do we need to do when there are solutions there so we really need to make sure that we do know what the solutions are and I do you think one of the key problems are around this is actually the mechanisms that we have to enforce human rights so how do they work so yes we do there are commissions that we have there are national commissions there are committees actually but how do you use your powers in a way that's going to push that forward I think how do you kind of create a human rights culture from kind of society sort of from right from the start I think that's a huge question that lots of us are working on so actually can we come together how can we bring together the work that we're doing around that but I think fundamentally what are the powers of the committee that can drive that change forward and I think being clear about what you mean about human rights kind of what your the definitions are that you're using I think that education is really important and there's a huge role for the national human rights institutions around that there's a really big role for involvement and engagement of civil society in that process as well but to what extent do we see human rights as kind of part of our core business across the piece so to what extent is it in education so in schools but actually to what extent is it in our mandatory education for our professional qualifications so for social workers and nurses and teachers all of those all of those public officials who actually are responsible for making sure that people's rights are respected on a day-to-day basis there's a huge proportion of what I spend my time doing is actually educating and working with working with those professionals and practitioners and it's great that we do that but actually that should be part of what it means to be a nurse it should be part of what it means to be a teacher or a doctor so I think really actually what can the committee do around driving forward kind of the practice space around human rights and really making sure that those who do have duties to respect them that it's part of their core business I think that's really useful because I think it's easy in some ways to talk about the awareness of individuals and their rights but as has been said already sometimes there can be a frustration that actually I know what my rights are my human rights but actually if that doesn't get you anywhere then there's a real frustration even recently I was being someone from a homelessness organisation they were saying you know that a homeless person has certain rights and yet often it takes a letter threatening a judicial review to actually get them so I think there's something about the committee's role in making sure public authorities take on quite a positive attitude towards human rights and that could be very practical things around for example the training of staff in public authorities one of the things that came up in the UPR was around that and the Scottish Government's response was largely that there is training in human rights for police officers and prison officers but you know it goes much broader than that so I think training is crucial and and the other aspect is whether you have a role in terms of asking public authorities to come in before you once a year and ask them what you're doing to promote human rights how are you taking this into consideration it's very practical but it could make a bit of a difference as well as some of the aspects that were touched on earlier on with incorporation and what that would look like and whether it comes together with in terms of duties or reporting or what is that accompanies that incorporation yeah some very practical things that can be done to improve that I think the committee's written to local authorities asking them that you know a list of issues that we have with local authorities and equality impact assessments and human rights assessments are one of my hobby horses but one of the things that we have pursued them on is on budgeting on a human rights budgeting process because we've embarked on that since this committee started on the budget process here you know and really drilled into some clear issues there we've asked local authorities that if you're setting your budget how do you ensure you know your budget meets a human rights standard which is a very very different budget process from the usual budget process so that's one way that we're attempting to influence that I'm worried that your committee is going to be deranged with lots of public bodies appearing in front of it and maybe the way to facilitate that is to focus on the regulators and particularly Audit Scotland because you know it focuses on 200 of the biggest budget receiving public authorities in Scotland and I think way back in 2007 we saw the Audit Scotland report annual report was going to be a game changer because it had acknowledged that the Scottish Prison Service had set aside £85 million for the settlement of human rights cases slopping out and other issues and therefore given that it's charged with the proper spend of the public pound £85 million in my opinion is a complete waste of money you should prevent human rights abuses not start paying compensation once they've happened and I thought then they would change the regulation system to ensure that human rights compliance was central so that there wasn't a replication of the waste of public money and it doesn't seem to me that that's really changed significantly how they go about the audit so for the ease of the committee it might be best if they focus on the regulators to see what they can do to mainstream human rights compliance in the routine regulatory process those invitations are in the post as part of this inquiry carol so ex be rest assured the regulators are on our radar and gail if you want that's fine thanks okay jayme thank you community good morning that segue is very nicely into my two lines of questioning one is on budget and finance and public bodies perceptions of human rights and my fear is that whenever you mention those words to public bodies that what comes into their head is that the mention of human rights will somehow come with additional workload or casework or additional cost or require budget and there's all very sensitive barriers to public bodies in any discussion so how do you on the suggestion for example that all public servants should have training and there over 10,000 people clearly that comes at a cost etc so how do we approach that negative perception of human rights within these bodies knowing that there may be implications or consequences of of being better at looking at those issues I think human rights are seen as a problem not as a solution and I think part of that barrier is addressed when you undertake education and training and I do think that we have to change the powers of the Scottish human rights commission so that they do have the power to undertake casework and they do have the power to take test cases because the fear of litigation you know praying on that culture that currently operates presumably would voluntarily change practice and I do believe that there is a degree of complacency because you know human rights it doesn't really matter because nobody's going to really enforce them we don't have a culture of third sector organisations supporting their members or their service users to go to court in Scotland we are not litiginous and so I do think there is a role for the Scottish human rights commission in this regard and I think there are there are two aspects to to the question as well I think that it's partly around actually kind of seeing human rights as a solution and yes there is an investment in training and education but every profession every public body will have had some training at some point in their kind of in the career there will be some element of training for them to be able to do their job so it's about actually how do you integrate that into that process so it becomes part of the process and it doesn't become something extra that you end up having to do but it's also about the way that you educate and the way that you empower those public officials around human rights and for them to understand what it is so in the work that we do it's never it's never that now you're the human rights enforcer and now you've got to think about human rights on top of everything else that you do it's how does human rights help you do your job better and that's a really important message and actually once you do once you're kind of in the door and you are having those conversations we've seen really significant shifts in change particularly working with staff in public authorities at front line service level who then have too often kind of are feeling the brunt of all of the difficulties around public service provision but they're kind of actually more empowered to challenge up and to change things upwards and actually when it comes internally from those organisations that's really that's really powerful but equally in terms of budget I think as as Carol said the kind of setting aside 85 million pounds to settle claims a significant proportion of the public authorities I work with have brought us in to support their staff to do human rights as part of their job to prevent them from ending up in court because actually they're being smarter about the way that they think about their budget and their allocation and so it's not that they're finding extra money from somewhere they're kind of actually saying well rather than allocate this amount of money because we're going to end up in court we're investing it to take a preventative approach and we really talk we often talk about human rights as being about prevention and prevention is better than cure and actually kind of doing a bit of smart budgeting around that when you're looking at violence it strikes me that similar when you look at the other committees in the parliament as well that actually human rights shouldn't be seen as an additional burden or additional thing they've got to take on but actually a framework for making their works smarter say and better so they have a framework for the questions to ask and the other way to look at different issues and make sure that you take into consideration the impact on different communities. That leads perfectly into my short second question and that's around how we as a parliament and as committees scrutinise whether or not human rights is at the heart of how we pass legislation in essence because there is a difference between parliament and government. Parliament has a duty to hold the government to account. We work on the assumption that whilst it is important that we talk about Brexit and the long-term wider implications and the bigger picture of that but there are things we could do today notwithstanding the bigger picture that as a parliament we have a duty and a daily responsibility to hold the government ministers, the government of the day to account and the way that we pass bills, the way that we approach amendments to legislation through the various stages. What can we better do as committees in the Parliament and as parliamentarians to ensure that across all the devolved competencies where human rights interact, as they do currently, that the government itself is on track to put human rights and the qualities at the heart of what it's doing? I think that that's looking for some practical suggestions perhaps. In the evidence of the campaign for freedom of information in Scotland, we highlight the importance of MSPs being able to exercise their article 10 rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, which is right to form an opinion by receiving and imparting information. Currently, we do not think that the information that MSPs have in respect of human rights implications about a bill or in respect of an inquiry is sufficient. What we get is an edited summary of the legal advice that has been given to the Parliament. I am not talking about the legal advice that has been given to the Government when they bring the bill, because separately the Parliament has legal advice and you do not see that currently. I also think that the changes have to be instigated around processes that the Scottish Parliament, as a corporate body, has to provide better briefings to MSPs about jurisprudence of the European Court. Other courts such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights—the reason I particularly like that one is because they have been very clear about access to information as a human right. That was a very groundbreaking decision, so we have a lot to learn from other jurisdictions. I also think that when budgets are set—although the Scottish Government may choose not to attach a condition to the budget of individual public bodies or bodies delivering services of public nature, the Parliament should do so that there is an explicit compliance with human rights law. I mean that in the broadest sense, because under the international covenant and economic, social and cultural rights, Governments have a progressive duty to progressively realise to the maximum extent of their available resources the rights contained in it, and so the budget process is a way to give that effect. In terms of the parliamentary process, that is one issue, but parliamentarians, the same point holds true. If we are expecting our public authorities and the staff in public authorities to know what human rights are and to use them and act on them in their day-to-day basis, we should also expect the same for parliamentarians. Where does human rights come in, in induction, when you become a member of Parliament? Where is human rights as part of that process? I think that there is the general awareness of what are the opportunities for on-going keeping up knowledge, as Carol said, the briefings, but are there other opportunities that happen that human rights could be integrated into part of that to make sure that parliamentarians are aware of human rights? We are, again, otherwise expecting parliamentarians to be passing human rights compliant legislation or to provide human rights scrutiny in debates without the foundation necessarily of knowing and being able to do that, so we need to make sure that that's in place. Having specific committees is really important, but what's the role of the other committees as well? When the other committees are looking at issues, how are we making sure that expertise that is developed within that committee is also shared with those other committees? Is that a formal process? Is it an informal process? How does that happen? Is there a way to use powers jointly to undertake work jointly where it's required? I think that there's also some more opportunities to think about how making sure that human rights doesn't become just the job of this committee but becomes the job of all of the committees. I think that tension is always there, isn't it, between you want to mainstream something and embed it across and yet you also need some expertise and some people with specific responsibility pushing it on. Ideally, you'd have a situation where all the committees are taken on board human rights and all that they do in terms of their scrutiny of legislation and their inquiries, but we had quite a discussion between consortium members about what we thought was a good model. There wasn't, to be honest, a firm conclusion apart from that. That's what you want to aim for, is that mainstream across the board. What that might look like in the meantime is things like the human rights rapporteurs on committees to make sure that it's raised, whether they can have specific evidence session within each scrutiny of legislation that specifically questions the human rights aspects. And there's about the information that they have, whether it's the policy memorandum forehand about compliance being much broader and including more in it. I think that there's different roles, but the role of this committee in working with other committees and making sure that they take on board human rights and what they do, I think, is really important. Alex Cole-Hamill. Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. Thanks for coming to see us. My first line of questioning is demonstrated nicely from Jamie's last one, and I think that you've eloquently answered the need to and ways to embed rights scrutiny across the Parliament, and I'm sure others will pick that up. I think that it's when it's implemented in the field that it falls down, and we have a lot of rhetoric and goodwill across all the benches around rights in this Parliament. The example I always use is children's rights, and I've worked with two of you, at least, on this very area. In 2012, we had the introduction of the Rights of Children and Young People Bill. It was meant to be a really groundbreaking bill that does what it says on the tin. That was then conflated into the wider Children and Young People Act, and became a very small part of that act. We went from having due regard to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to having a duty to raise awareness of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. We were welcome as that was. That was then met on implementation with the reduction by half of children's rights officers in local authorities. That was rendered completely meaningless by action from the original political will and rhetoric behind it. My question is the same to the panel. Do we need to get tough on that? Do we need to give it a legal imperative to give not just children, but any recipients of human rights access to justice when those rights are violated? Is the only way to do that through incorporation of the various treaties into Scots law? I think that incorporation is crucial. We should definitely be aiming for it, and we should properly explore the different models of doing that. Incorporation is not just one concept, but there are different ways of doing that. The discussion is already going on looking at what that might look like. I would also say that it's not a panacea in itself. It needs to be accompanied by access to justice. Even when cases are taken to court, by the messages from that being communicated properly, so that that is well known about. One of the bits and pieces of work that we are doing at the moment is looking around how organisations can use litigation and can press forward rights in the courts. Not creating anything new, but just saying that those are the rights that people have and using the courts to highlight them and to clarify them. However, that does not happen often in Scotland, as Carol said earlier on. There is not, for many different reasons, maybe not a culture of it and some of the practical barriers to that. However, I think that that should happen more. We need to look at access to justice, whether within this inquiry it is something bigger, because that is a crucial element of those rights being made real. A crucial element of when there are cases in court, that changes public authorities' actions. There is no doubt about it that you need to have both the positiveness and the push from the courts to make it real. I think that incorporation is an ideal, but I would prefer to see the energies and expertise of the committee invested into making sure that the public sector comply with its existing legal duties in tandem with enabling people organisations to assert and enforce their rights. Again, just to emphasise the experience of FOI law is the enforceability of rights, is what makes the law strong. It provides a great model of FOI. You get free advice from the Scottish Information Commissioner's office. There is a huge range of free materials on their website. You can phone them up. When you make a complaint to the Information Commissioner, that is all free, too. If it was something simple like that for human rights, I think that it would be a game changer. There is nothing to stop you looking at incorporation in the longer term, but I think that you are creating expectations that cannot be delivered within the current culture and practice in Scotland. Coming back to the point that you made about children's rights officers, Alex, you and other committee members have a fine-track record in standing up for rights, but the difficulty is the day-to-day practical experience of people. That is where I would like the committee's attention to be focused on, making those community differences. I would completely agree with that. I think that incorporation is where we should be. That is the point of having those standards, is that they are supposed to be part of our domestic laws and how we work and how we function as a society. One of the risks with focus on incorporation is that we miss the enforcement that we need already with the standards that we have. If we are looking for incorporation to boost the rights that we already have, that is great. If we are also saying that the rights that we already have are not being implemented and enforced sufficiently, then that is going to create a level of expectation. It is probably more challenging to focus on how you secure the day-to-day implementation of what we have, but part of developing that culture of having the rights and then having the ways of enforcing them through court action is really important. I know from my experience in the English and World context that litigation can really help drive through change, so strategic litigation is incredibly important. Equally, it is not the only answer. It has to be what are the other mechanisms that could be looked at. As Carol said, the freedom of information model is really interesting. What do we have comparatively for human rights? What are the powers of the commission? Do they have sufficient powers to make sure that that can happen? What is also the role? If you are saying that, after measures have been passed, the implementation is really poor, what is the role of the committee looking at post-legislation, post-legislative scrutiny and revisiting some of those really key human rights bills or acts or whichever pieces of legislation you are looking at, those which you have identified as a priority that you have worked on, then you have a piece of law. Is it worth going back and looking at how that has or hasn't been implemented? There are some models for having done that in the Westminster Parliament, which has been quite useful. Also thinking specifically what the powers and functions of the committee are, as well as supporting to drive change through other processes and mechanisms, is there a way that the committee could also be looking at implementation part beyond the scrutiny point? That is incredibly useful. My second question is similar to the one that I asked in the previous panel, which is that there is a political anxiety that creeps in and gets in the way of making life real and doing what we should be doing in respect of human rights. That can be where there exists a tension. For example, in terms of extending equal protection to children from physical punishment and distorted views to some people who regard the right to family life as incompatible with that. There is tension, but there is also political controversy that sometimes if you grapple with a particular issue—I am thinking particularly around end-of-life care issues—that there will be a storm in the press or in public wider society, which will see politicians carry away from doing the right thing. In your experience, other countries have transcended this. Are there ways in which we can enable politicians to take those tough decisions? Is that through free votes in Parliament? Is it through honest conversations with journalists offline about how to report those discussions? Over to you. I have long been associated with the campaign to end the physical punishment of children. I still recall in 2003 being mortified that the then Scottish Parliament passed a defence of justifiable assault on children. That was the politicians' idea of doing the right thing and listening to what seemed to me a minority group that was very vocal. I think that all these years later we are in a much better position now than we were then. Round about the same time, when the Scottish Commissioner for Human Rights Bill was going through, the bill made parliamentary history as being the first bill that the committee could not endorse the general principles of the bill because it was said at that time that in a country such as Scotland where abuses of human rights are so rare, do we really need an independent human rights commission? Reflect now where we are in the conversation that we are having today. To answer your question, understanding human rights is a way to navigate the more controversial issues. We support dignity in life, so we should support dignity in dying. Therefore, it is very important that as politicians we understand the human rights implications of issues. Over a long period of time, people outside have been rather perplexed that the new Scottish Parliament, a very early democracy, could have passed a defence of justifiable assault. Do you have to think about your reputation as well as the ability to do the right thing? I would definitely echo that. I would also say that dealing with those difficult issues, that is what human rights is there for, that is what it is for. It is actually to deal with those difficult issues. It gives you a language and a framework to have those discussions and those debates. Rather than coming back to what your political, either with a capital or small p, or your own personal moral judgments are on those issues, you are being guided by a framework that is bigger, which is a principled approach to how countries across the world are saying they want to progress and they want to... Those are the standards for society and for how we should work. It is interesting because, as you say, creating political controversies and hot potatoes and the fear of doing the right thing and using human rights because that is what it might lead to. On a day-to-day basis, that is what I am always talking to public officials about doing. When they are making a decision about whether or not to turn off life support in a particular situation, or having a discussion about the right to life and respect for private life and being able to make decisions, which ones are absolute and which ones can balance, that is a really useful, practical approach that those practitioners take to making really difficult day-to-day decisions. There is no reason why the language should not be translated into the political sphere and the people who are making the legislation and the policy should be using that language as well. I have almost nothing to add to that discussion. Apart from to see that, when you speak to people about what of their rights are important to them, they almost always talk about economic and social rights, which I think we must not lose sight of. If you are talking about the things that make the most difference to people's daily lives, then they are economic and social rights. We also know that if you want to convince people to be positive and supportive of human rights, that is also what you have to talk about. You have to talk about the daily experience. I think that it is important not to lose that. For example, one of the issues around incorporation is that, at the moment, economic and social rights, we do not have a way of enforcing those, but, with incorporation, there is that potential. We have about 10 minutes of question left, so I know that, Gail, you want to come in and be a quick supplementary, then I am going to David. It is something that came to me when Carl, especially, is driving home the fact that we have got responsibilities already and that public authority should be exercising those rights. When somebody's human rights are violated, A, they might know about it, but B, how do they then access that judicial process if that is the way they want to go down? Is there any value—we have equalities officers in local authorities and in different places—a value in persuading them to have human rights officers? They can have twofold, they can obviously have all the knowledge, they can go to the officers and say, this is what you should be doing, but also a person or one point of contact that people in the public can go to if they feel that their rights have been violated? That is an excellent suggestion, Gail. My plea would be that the equality officer is someone different from the human rights officer, because, in my experience, there is a great deal of confusion because people think that they are the same things. I have certainly been at UN hearings where some of the expert committee members cannot understand the UK culture around that, because they say that it is human rights first and then equality of those rights, whereas we go for equality and then we are talking about human rights afterwards. I think that the history of even setting up this committee and the submissions that were made not to add human rights to equalities because it would allow less of a focus on equality shows that there is a bit of competition sometimes among some groups. I do believe that it would be very helpful to have a human rights officer, an FOI officer, a dark protection officer. I think that that would generate a focus within authorities, it would build up expertise, and within organisations where there is the comfort of lots of private conversations, a lot of the myths can be debunked and systems can be put in place so that you do not have human rights issues arising in the first place, because we really want prevention. We do not want a whole load of court cases because it gives human rights a bad name and it costs us all money. It is often very torturous for the individuals involved going through the whole court process. I often say to people that they are never going to get justice, the hope is that they will get some fairness. I do not believe that court cases are actually very helpful and that is why I think that having a focus, an officer, a department, some resources within organisations is very much the way to go. It is also very public evidence that you are taking human rights seriously. Good morning panel. In the human rights consortium Scotland submission, it is to do with committees and other committees, we all sit on them and how we incorporate their human rights agenda. You have called for all committees when considering the legislation and policies should specifically consider its impact on human rights and seek evidence on this. How could we go about this in Parliament and on the different committees we sit on? Our members discussed this when we were considering what evidence to put in. Some of the very practical suggestions were things like specifically having an evidence session within the scrutiny of any piece of legislation that specifically looks at the human rights implications. There is also an element of looking at the participation side. How have people's views been taken into account? How have the impacts been considered on different groups within society? Some of the other suggestions that have already been discussed around human rights rapporteurs, for example, is somebody who is specifically considering that within each committee. The challenge is for each committee to take on human rights aspects as a core part of what they do, whether it is an inquiry or scrutinising the legislation. For each committee, there are particular inquiries or lines of questioning that they could look at around human rights. For example, it could be the Justice Committee ask Police Scotland what they are doing to promote human rights and investigate specific aspects of their work. For example, it could be Police Scotland's overseas work and their training and how they consider human rights within that. As each committee develops the way of looking at human rights, it can identify specific areas to interrogate a little bit more. The two things are done in the same way. I will tell you why I have a thing about equality impact assessments in badly completed ones. When we did our inquiry last year on destitution for people with insecure asylum status, we heard evidence of people who would turn up at social work, put them through a social work needs assessment and then come back six weeks later to do a human rights impact assessment. It just seemed like an incredible waste of time and a big delay in realising the rights of this person who was in a crisis, so to wait six weeks or eight weeks or whatever for that to be done. We made a recommendation in that those two things should be put together and done at the same time. Would that be another way to create a duty on duty bearers in order to make sure that it is an equality impact assessment but that quality impact assessment has a human rights impact assessment incorporated? I think that it has got a lot of merits, but I have seen one where it was incredible that they said that there were no human rights implications at all of what they were proposing. I think that it has to be underpinned by training and I also think that there has to be better quality information gathered to in order the assessment to be worthwhile. I have certainly worked with groups who have tried to undertake them, and the information has not really been there. That is why looking at international treaties and looking at what they tell us about systems is really important. The UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities under article 31 says that there is a duty to gather statistics and information to allow you to determine whether or not human rights are being progressed. I think that that needs to be more of a focus in Scotland, gathering the right information, the right data, so that you cannot just undertake the impact assessment, but when the committee is deliberating, you have access to better information. Thank you. David, you have got three minutes. Three minutes? Okay. I would just think that the comments that have been there previously about Brexit. With it being less than a year away and with the UK leaving the EU, do you think that human rights will continue to keep pace with EU in progress, or will they stagnate and possibly be diluted? The reason I am saying this is because there are many reserved powers there still with Westminster, so no matter what work this committee does or this Parliament will have no effect on it, and to give an example, employment law. Brexit is a fundamental threat to the progression of rights in the future. Some of that is because it takes away the framework that there has been in the EU, but, as was commented on earlier on, there is a risk that we lag behind. Certainly recently, there is a Scotland declaration on human rights, which is a civil society. Organisations have signed up about more than 150 now to say that they do not want that to be the case, that they want rights to keep progressing and us to keep a pace with the EU and what happens there. There are very specific issues at the moment around with draw bills and continuity bills, but a really helpful thing that the committee could do is to build into its work plan, making sure that it keeps up with best practice internationally, whether it is within the EU or broader. If it generally wants to be a leader in human rights terms, that is what it means to make sure that it keeps up with the best practice and to keep progressing on a little bit of rights. I think also that, unfortunately, Brexit brings a weakening of a framework that means that the threat of the repeal of the human rights act or coming out of the ECHR is definitely more imminent. I am particularly concerned at the moment that if there is no legislative consent to the EU withdrawal bill, that sets up an even stronger precedent for what happens in the future. If we similarly have a repeal of the human rights act bill and there is no legislative consent given in Scotland, I am just putting that out there, that is a concern that could potentially mean that Scotland has less say in the repeal of that. We need to continually bear that in mind, that that is the background noise, but to keep progressing rights, I think, is the answer to that. For the Parliament to have a determination within your structures and the way in your work plan to keep progressively realising rights is the response. I agree with that. There are two points. One is substance and one is principle. Essentially, substantively, we are losing both rights and mechanisms to enforce them through Brexit. It is really hard to argue with that because, in fact, human rights are at the moment the thing that is being excluded from what we are going to carry forward. You have the impact of what that means for all the other protections that affect our rights. You have that question. You have then got what happens when you are moving a pace. So much of our equality legislation, for example, has been driven through membership of the EU. Now we are at a place where that will not be the driving force behind that. When regulations were turned into equality's law, it was the EU that was driving that process and we are not going to have that impetus anymore. There is a real question about what rights are at stake, whether they are going to stagnate and the extent to which we are going to fall behind in those developments. I think that there is definitely a huge role that could be played here in that. In terms of a progressive vision of human rights, we are using human rights across all of your functions and pushing that agenda forward. However, it is also the principle matter that we are setting a really dangerous precedent that the UK is saying that we do not need to be bound by international standards. That is not a positive place for us to be in. It is Brexit at the moment, but what will it be in the future? That is when it comes back to what Carol has particularly been saying around that we need to focus on what we do have. We need to focus on the laws that we do have, the rights that we do have and implementing what we do have. If we are not creating that case for why what we have is really important, when we are then saying that we do not know how to make this real against a backdrop of whether we really need international standards, that is going to come together in a really dangerous swell. The focus on what we do have is making it real, implementing it and using the powers and functions that you have to drive forward why human rights is important and why developing a culture of respect for human rights in Scotland is particularly important. That creates a really important kind of backstop for what potentially might be coming. I see Brexit as a human rights issue. I think that it's an abomination, but I won't go into that just now. Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as I said earlier, is right to form an opinion and to receive an impart information. People were misled by the information during the campaign. I cannot speak to the motivation of the people that misled them, but I think that there has to be legal change to protect our other human rights, which is the right to participate in free elections. Those elections have to be fair, and if politicians are deliberately misrepresenting the facts to secure people's votes, then just the same as advertisers and marketeers should be punished by the law. That's the real learning from Brexit, and I think that it's something useful that the committee could progress as a human rights issue. Well, what a place to finish, but we're not at the end by any stretch of the imagination. If we've exhausted all our questions this morning, I think that we have so far, but the same proviso that we gave to the last panel, there's no doubt that we're going to talk about all of these issues as we continue with this inquiry. We've got some very clear lines, but I think that we're pursuing some great ideas from all of the contributions, so no doubt we will talk again. We are grateful to the committee for your participation this morning. You've worked so far and you've continued to work with us in order to realise the aims that we have as well, so thank you. I go to suspend committee to go into private. If you need a quick break, go now.