 Welcome to the 10th meeting of session 6 of the Qualities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have no apologies this morning. First agenda item is to agree whether to take item 5 in private, which is consideration of today's evidence. Are we all agreed? Our next item is consideration of an affirmative instrument, the Draft Equality Act 2010, specific duty Scotland amendment regulations 2022. I welcome to the meeting Michael Matheson, Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport, who is accompanied by Scottish Government officials. Officials Ewan O'Neill, lawyer and Charles Stewart-Roper, head of environmental governance and strategy unit, Future Environment Division, Scottish Government. I refer members to paper 1. I invite the cabinet secretary to speak briefly to the regulations. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the committee. The SSI that you are considering today is routine and concerns the application of the Scottish specific equality duties to renew environmental governance body, environmental standards Scotland. As ESS is established as a non-ministerial body, part of the Scottish Government administration through, although independent of ministers, it is automatically covered by the Public Sector Equality duty in the Equalities Act 2010. There is therefore no need for a separate order to add ESS to the scope of that duty. The Equality Act 2010 specific duties Scotland amendment regulations 2022 will apply the Scottish specific equality duties to environmental standards Scotland by adding it to the Equality Act 2010 specific duties Scotland regulations 2012. Those will require ESS to, for example, publish equality outcomes and report on progress towards achieving those outcomes, report on mainstream equality and publish information on the gender pay gap and equality and equal pay. It is important that ESS is included in the full range of equality duties expected of Scottish public bodies. Committee members will be aware that the Scottish specific duties are currently under review, and there is a consultation on going on proposed changes to the 2012 regulations. However, I do not think that it is reasonable to delay the inclusion of ESS in those duties. ESS will then be included with other public bodies in the scope of amendments to the 2012 regulations. I hope that that provides a useful overview, and I am happy, of course, to respond to any questions that the committee may have on that. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. Are there any questions for the cabinet secretary? Pam Duncan-Glancy. Thank you, cabinet secretary, for bringing us to our attention this morning. Just while we are standing in front of the committee, I wondered if you could give an indication as to whether you intend to include ScotRail in one of the organisations that will be subject to the public sector equality duties as well. Given that ScotRail is just about to commit to public ownership, it would then be part of the Scottish administration to be covered by the Equality Act 2020 in relation to any further changes that we plan to make there. That is presently being considered by the Minister for Transport. Any further questions? Thank you. No further questions. We then move on to agenda item 3, which is consideration of the motion for approval of the affirmative instrument. I invite the cabinet secretary to move the motion. Do any members have any final comments? No. In that case, are we all agreed? Thank you. That is agreed, and I invite the committee to agree to delegate to me the publication of a short factual report on our deliberations. Are we agreed? That, too, is agreed. We will briefly suspend while we change witnesses. The next agenda item is to take evidence and hear an update from the Minister for Qualities and Older People. I welcome to the meeting Christina McKelvie, Minister for Qualities and Older People, Jenny Kemp, strategic lead for gender, LGBTI and disability policy in the quality inclusion unit and the directorate for equality, inclusion and human rights, and Nick Bland, deputy directorate for equality, inclusion and human rights in the Scottish Government. You are all very welcome. I refer members to papers 2 and 3 and invite the minister to make a short opening statement. Thank you very much, convener. It is a pleasure to be with your committee today. Delighted to be here. Convener, my focus is on ensuring that government continues to do all it can do to address inequalities and ensure that equality and human rights become part of the fabric of how we deliver for all people in Scotland. I am very aware that this committee met with the Gypsy Traveller activists in community last week, so I would like to start some of my comments there if you do not mind. We continue to implement our Gypsy Traveller Action Plan in partnership with COSLA and other partners and have made much progress. Funding has been allocated to new sites, we are expanding the provision of community health workers, we are supporting young Gypsy Travellers to improve their mental health and we are taking steps to tackle still the pernicious discrimination experienced by the community. I will continue to regularly meet with the community. We have community conversations and the joint ministerial committee where we meet often. Listening to what matters to the community and working with partners to translate into practical, real and on-going change. Convener, I am also aware that concerns were raised last week around the so-called Tinker experiment and its impact on families. I wanted to recognise and fully acknowledge the unacceptable historical practices faced by the community. I am therefore able to announce to the committee that I will be commissioning independent research into the Tinker experiment to ensure that we fully capture and understand its implications, identify who was involved and affected and ensure that the community has an opportunity to share its story. I will be happy to share that work with the committee when we undertake it. Let me turn briefly a few other areas. I will crack on through them. In my portfolio, we are tackling all forms of violence against women and girls through an equally safe strategy and the £39 million delivery and equally safe fund that supports 121 projects. Funding for now is at record levels and we are committed to ensuring that funding arrangements are fit for purpose. I have also established an independent strategic review of funding. One of the issues that this sector has faced for many years is the precariousness of its funding. There will be members of the committee who will have experience of that. An independent chair has been appointed by Leslie Irvine, and she is in place with an advisory group and has been appointed, which we will meet for the first time in May. I wanted to make sure that we had an independent review of this process, so that it allowed us to have a good critical friend to tell us what needed to be done. Also, working closely with lived experience, we are updating our disability strategy. We have committed over £5 million in funding to disabled people's organisations, including funding the Access to Elected Office programme, which seems particularly pertinent, given that we are coming up to the local government elections just in a few weeks' time. We are also listening to our older people. Last week, I had very valuable discussions, as they always are, with our older people strategic action forum. We are investing over £2.2 million of funding in supporting older people's organisations and age equality projects. We are delivering our immediate priorities plan to tackle racism and address the unequal impacts of Covid-19, as identified by the expert reference group on Covid-19 ethnicity. That plan takes forward actions across Government, including health, employment and education. The Government is clear about the need to act to end conversion practices, as we discussed in the recent debate and congratulate the committee on that debate and the work that you did on the report. It has been incredibly insightful and helpful for us to move forward. I am pleased to tell the committee that our expert advisory group will meet for the first time on Thursday, and it will complete its work by summer. I will meet with them on Thursday to support and develop that work, too. I can give you an update on that as soon as we have that. A new human rights bill will be introduced in this parliamentary term, and we will consult on it this year. Later this year, we will also consult on our first equality in human rights mainstreaming strategy. Those are work in progress. I am happy to update the committee as we go forward with that work, too. On equality in human rights fund, which totals £21 million over three years from 2021 to 2024, supports 48 organisations tackling inequality and advancing rights. Finally, convener, we continue to support your human rights defenders. This afternoon, I will meet two participants in the Scottish human rights defender fellowship programme, which is delivered by the University of Dundee in partnership with the Scottish Government. I am the State of the International and Frontline defenders. I have to say that those women demonstrate remarkable bravery and leadership in the face of daily threats to their safety, and it will be a privilege to spend time with them today. I hope that quick run-through of just a few things that cut across all of my work has been helpful to you today, and I am happy to take any questions. That's great. Thank you very much, minister. As you say, there's quite a large number of areas there. One of the areas that we've obviously spent some time on is our inquiry into conversion practices, and thank you for your response to that and your response in the debate a couple of weeks back, which I thought was very helpful. One of the areas that you touched on in your opening remarks was around the expert group, and it's good to hear that it's meeting soon. Are you able to tell us what the membership of the group is at this stage? I absolutely thought that the debate that we had, I think that the tone that was set, was superb by the committee, and it allows us to move on in a really positive way. The group will meet for the first time on the 31st. However, over the last few weeks and after the debate, we had a bit of a think about who should be on that group, whether we had touched all of the intersections and all of the issues that we needed to focus on, and that debate really helped us in that area. We've added a few additional people to that group, and they have yet to respond to say whether they can participate or not. We will know that by the 30th. I can update the committee at that point about who the membership is, but please be reassured that we took a real wide view on that to make sure that every person that could give us some support to develop that policy was on that group. We also wanted to make sure that there was really good, detailed and intersectional lived experience there. That's where some of the additional members have come from. They will develop the work that they're doing, and the remit goes pretty broad and deep in recommending what practices should be prohibited and considered in the definition of many of the things that we discussed in the debate. As soon as I know on Wednesday or Thursday, I'll let the committee know about the membership of the group and give you an update on what they decided on Thursday. That's really good. Thank you for that. As you know, the committee is really keen to maybe have more of a collaborative approach with government at the development of legislation in this area, and so I appreciate to be kept up to date on progress going forward. I guess that one of the other areas that we talked about in the chamber to some extent, and certainly was covered in our inquiry, was around the intersection between reserved and devolved areas in relation to conversion practices. Have you managed to have any further discussions with the UK Government in terms of how we make sure that there isn't unintended loopholes in any future legislation? Obviously, you would have heard me in the debate saying that I didn't think that the UK Government's plans went far enough, but I was happy to work along with them. We continue to build that relationship as we speak. Once we have met on Thursday with the expert reference group, we will know about the areas where they want to advance in some of that so that we can really focus in on that. At that point, I will make another approach to the UK Government for an update on where we are now, because since they published the work that they were doing in the consultation that they had undertaken, we have moved on. I think that we need to get that as fresh as possible. As soon as the group meets on Thursday, I will go back to the UK Government and ask for an update on where we are. I will try to release some of those tensions around reserved and devolved matters. We want this piece of legislation to work for everyone, and we obviously want it to work in as many jurisdictions as possible. That means that we have to work very closely with our colleagues at Westminster, and I am happy to do that. Does any of the committee members want to come in on supplementary in that area, conversion practices, or are we good to move on? Thank you very much. Good morning, minister. I am really happy to see you with us this morning. Welcome to our committee. Thank you for starting and opening your remarks talking about the Gypsy and Roma traveller communities. Last week's session was a really important part of the work of this committee. We heard several concerns expressed by witnesses last week around the long-term sustainability of Gypsy traveller communities, and some of those concerns are not new. Davey Donaldson especially spoke—he said five years ago that he was talking about stagnation on work on the action plan and other support. One of the things that came out quite strongly was that, at the start of Covid, there was very clear coordination across services that has now fallen away. My first question is how can you comment on how we can collectively ensure that the partnership working that we need, the overarching holistic approach that we need, is not piecemeal but reaches into the different policy areas, the different support areas, in an effective way that secures the long-term sustainability of Gypsy communities? Absolutely. There are a few ways that we are tackling all of that. We published the Gypsy traveller action plan in October 2019. We got on into doing quite rapid work very quickly in that. Covid hit, we had to pivot everything that we had to make sure that we could support Gypsy travellers in communities with temporary sites, negotiated stop-in, all of the things—sanitation—all of that had to be put in place. We put in an action group to do that, working alongside stakeholders and the community and our colleagues in local government. We are able to pivot that work and put that support into place very quickly. To deal with some of the issues that have been on-going for a very long time around new sites and negotiated stop-in, we have learned a lot from all of that and we intend to apply that to the work that we are doing now. We are getting to your point about the worries about sustainability. I had a community conversation that we do very regularly with the group just two weeks ago. We had a joint ministerial group with the community representatives last week. Bang up to date and all of that and all of those concerns in your committee work last week have obviously complemented all of that to hear the comments coming in and the priorities were incredibly important. What we have done is to re-establish that work. We decided to extend it because the plan was for two years—that two years has been eaten up by Covid—so we agreed to extend until October and I am now having conversations with the community about how further we can extend the action plan work, which means that that joint ministerial group, jointly chaired by our colleagues in COSLA, will all remain in place to drive it right across all the areas in which we need to drive all of the changes. We have made lots of progress. I have a list of things that I could run through very quickly of the things that we have done—the Gypto Traveller Accommodation Fund, which was an initial £2 million, which has now been spent and we are just waiting for local authorities to give us an update on the progress that they have made there. We also established the Gypto Traveller community's housing needs and accommodation needs into a housing 2040 at the very beginning, which established a £20 million fund. We have had three local authorities bid into that and we are just about to start the next phase of that with other local authorities and that money as well. That is about more and better accommodation, which is the terms that we used in the guide. One of the things that the Gypto Traveller community told me at the very start was that things get done to us, not with us. When I look at my portfolio and the things that I do, the term nothing about is without us is just not a term for us. It is an actual working ethic. We have lots of opportunities, lots of working groups and lots of stakeholder engagement to ensure that the policy development part of all of that happens with people not for them. That is where we have done this incredibly well in the Gypto Traveller Action Plan. One of the things that they told us at the time was that the design of sites was not designed in a culturally appropriate way. What we have now is a site design guide. The three local authorities who have got the money now—one of them is Clackmannanshire, Aberdeenshire and I think—where is the other one? Off it's open my head. I can't remember it. I'll come back to it. They are using the new site design guide and they are going to learn the lessons from some of that and then we can tweak it to make it work much better. Some of the ideas that the community themselves have come up with that are more culturally appropriate were like why was that not done before? That wasn't done before because of that. Just really quickly, community mental health as well. We have five new community mental health workers recruited from the community. That was one of the things that they asked for as well, to have those links that people in their own community were the people who were given them that support. We have some additional funding coming in for that. The same with early learning in childcare, the support to pivot to digital working. For a lot of Gypsy Traveller children seem to be a very successful way of learning, so we are learning some of the lessons on how we can do that, working with STEP and the funding that we have put into place for them. Hopefully that reassures you a bit. Hopefully you have understood that stagnation is not a word that is in my dictionary when it comes to this work. We will continue to drive it. The Joint Ministerial Committee means that we have health ministers, employment ministers, social security ministers, planning ministers, all sitting at the same table, driving across their own portfolios what happens here. I do a monitoring of that very often to make sure that we are making the progress that we need to make. Super, thank you very much for that. That is reassuring. Two things come out of that for me. You mentioned monitoring. One of the things that we heard last week was that the accommodation fund was really welcome, but it was quite slow. There is not always the certainty of the follow-up that is being spent in the right way, in appropriate ways. Would one way to help that work be to include a statutory requirement to set out a delivery plan for public bodies like local authorities and health boards? We heard that as one of the recommendations last week from one of our witnesses. There is a duty here. It is not just a nice to have, but it is an essential part of what our public agencies and bodies need to do to help to finish the circle, to ensure that there is a very clear follow-through in delivery. I am open-minded. I was interested in the comment that was made last week. I am happy to take those conversations further to see how that goes. We have the public sector quality duty in place, so there is already the responsibilities place. We have the review. It is still open to the 11th of April, so if you have stakeholders or yourselves want to make a contribution to that, please do that, because the more specific and detailed contributions we get to that, the better outcome we will have when we set those new duties. We have that. One of the key things here is those community conversations meetings that we have very regularly and the re-establishment of the joint ministerial group, because that will drive both at government level and at a political level that change from the top down, but working with the community to make sure that they can drive it from their needs up, rather than things being done too, rather than for and with. I hope that all that will again reassure you that we take that extremely seriously, but the public sector quality duty is already there. We are reviewing it, and there is space there to add any of the details of the comments, but that comment that was made last week, I am really keen to investigate that a bit further. Just to say, I do not know what I said properly at the start. If any of the members who are joining us virtually want a supplementary, please put that in the chat to make sure that we can have it in relation to the same topic. Thank you, convener, and good morning, minister. Delighted to see you here. One area that has continued to progress has been the improved transparency and the public participation when it comes to budget processes within this whole area of equality. It would be good to get an update from you about how things are developing, because it is important that we continue to build on the capacity. We have talked about capacity here in the past, ensuring that there is the opportunity for ministers and officials to ensure that the Scottish budget spend advances and tackle some of the equality and human rights issues that are in the Scottish population. It would be good to get a view as to where we are with the minister, because I am aware that there have been some progress in that. Obviously, Covid had an impact on all of that, too, and it would be good to get a sense as to how we are managing to capture that. If there are areas that still require a bit more attention. There are two areas, because the work would generally do on human rights budgets in advance in that work. There is the work of the Scottish Government's budget and the finance committee here, and the equality budget statement that comes along with that. We have had a very detailed equality budget statement from the recent processes, and we are currently investigating all of that to see whether progress is in how we can maintain that. You will know that one of the first decisions that I took when I became a minister was to appoint an independent chair of our equality budget group, because we felt that it was important to have that independence of that group to be that critical friend when we needed them. All of that is currently on-going. That ties in with our review of public sector equality duty, where we should place those duties in those responsibilities and how we should strengthen them, too. There is a bit of work being done to support all of that. The women's budget working group are developing awareness. They are training, creating and understanding about the contribution of gender budgeting in the whole process. We have committed £220,000 to the Scottish women's budget working group to do that for us. Again, there is an independent source that will be a good critical friend that will help us to examine the areas where there are those gaps. A piece of work is on-going right now that I am happy to update at a later date when we have some of the recommendations coming through from that work. You identify, minister, that it is all about trying to capture those who have the lived experience and ensuring that that is fed through, because funding has always been and continues to be a slight issue for many organisations and individuals as to the length and the transparency of all that. I am trying to capture that and ensure that you have the process in place that supports the organisations or individuals to ensure that they get that funding. It is so important for them in their forward planning themselves as to how they can deal with the short and medium terms. That approach itself. Are there other ways that you have, as a Government, managed to identify the lived experience and ensure that that takes part and is involved in the budget process? It goes back to the points that I made earlier about how, in my policy area, I do not do anything in isolation and we certainly do not develop policy in isolation. It is always with participation and that lived experience. It is not just lived experience but living experience, because there are people who are experiencing that right now. One of the things that we are doing is developing a participation framework to ensure. During Covid, one of the things that we had to do was go straight out to stakeholders and say, what do you need and try to address that, which I think that we did very, very successfully. Certainly, in my portfolio area, that is what we had to do, whether it was our vials against women organisations, whether it was older people's organisations, whether it was disabled people's organisations. What do you need to get through here? A lot of service redesign, a lot of enhancement of current services, all of that. We have learned a lot on how to do that. The other places where we have learned a lot on how to do that and implement lived experience around the national advisory council, women and girls, for instance, which they have taken a real interest in our budget and processes and how we make those more equal and how we limit and reduce inequalities. The other area where we have continued that piece of work is around how we engage. The social renewal advisory board, which was an excellent piece of work, led and driven by the participation. We have learned a lot of good practice and a lot of good lessons on how we can mobilise very quickly and flexibly to deal with a crisis in which we did. The participation framework becomes incredibly important. I can give the committee more detail on how that will work if that is what you are interested in. One of the things that will come from that is how we use good practice and engagement and participation at the level that people need it. A simple thing to disabled people's organisations, if you ask them to come to an event at 9 o'clock in the morning, they are all the best will in the world. That is a 5am rise for some people in order to get organised to be there because they maybe need support to do that. It is even just thinking a bit differently about how we address and create the opportunities and the access that people can then have to help us to build the policy that we need to build that works and gives the outcomes that we want. It is about being creative as you have identified. Not one size fits all in this area. Everyone has a contribution to make. There were some recommendations that came from the Equalities Budget Advisory Group. Can I ask where we are with that? Has the Government and yourself taken on some of that and how are some of their recommendations filtering through? We are currently considering that, so I will get you a proper update. I will get you more, because that sits within another portfolio, so let me get you a proper detailed update on that and come back to you. Pam Duncan-Glancy wants to be supplementary on HR budgeting. Thank you Minister for your responses so far. It is also just to say on record that it is lovely to have you back. I wanted to ask the question specifically about disabled people's organisations but also other civic society organisations. There was a report published last week by Inclusion Scotland on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled People, and one of the things that it says is that it recognises the importance of funding disabled people's organisations and others. With the view to incorporation, how will the Scottish Government ensure that DPOs and other civic organisations are adequately funded to provide a wide range of support, including peer support and capacity building? Thank you very much, convener. As you say, thank you to everyone for all of your wishes. I am glad to be back too. Pam, I hope that you are feeling better, so it is good to be here. There were three great reports published last week, Inclusion Scotland report, all the UN's guide report and another one published last week that we are currently considering. All the reports, the impact that Covid has had and the areas where we can work to create and tackle some of the inequalities on that. I was pleased to see the work that disabled people's organisations are doing around about incorporation of UN CRPD. It is something personally and professionally and politically I have been advocating for it for a long time. We have the human rights bill processes under way right now. It will be led by the cabinet secretary, Shona Robinson. I currently chair the advisory board for that. We have learned lessons from the social renewal advisory board and also the work of the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls. We are hosting a number of stakeholder opportunities to hear from people, disabled people's organisations are front and centre in that, which you will not be surprised to hear. In particular, GDA and the work that it does, and I know that Pam Duncan-Glancy is like me, and Harold's GDAs and other organisations work hold it in really high regard. GDA and a number of others have been very pivotal on the work that we are doing in developing the policy around about the development of the bill. They have contributed to the advisory board and they have also looked at some of the intersections with disability and race, disability and age and all of that as well. We are working on all of that. Getting to the crux of your question about how we will make sure that we are adequately funded, we are not quite sure yet what they need and what we will do as far as incorporation goes. We are still in quite early stages with that work and how that will look. However, what it will do is incorporate a number of treaties into Scots law. What it will do is give people remedy to challenge public authorities when their rights are not being respected. That is a huge shift in how we do things. As a Government, you would think that we would be a bit nervous about that, but no, we are actually really full centre on that and ensuring that we create a Scotland where people—hopefully they will never need to have a judicial route to realise their rights—hopefully all the other work that we are doing emphasises the responsibilities on public authorities to deliver. However, to know that you can have that remedy and use it, and certainly for public authorities to know that they have a responsibility there, or that they could be challenged in that way, is a real step forward in how we do that. Again, the advisory board has started to meet again. I met with them just a few weeks ago. They are looking at a whole host of issues around about incorporation. How far we can go with that within our devolution settlement does challenges. It is a huge piece of work. However, a piece of work that we have all entered into with open hearts and open minds and lots of drive into termination. Disabled people's organisations are incredibly important in helping us to understand that. They are there at the beginning so that they get the outcomes that they need at the end. Again, if I can update the committee as we develop this work and get back to the specific question that Pam Duncan-Glancy is asking, which is a question that I usually ask, what difference will it make and how will we make sure that it works? I think that is where we are focusing right now. We will come back to you on that. Thanks, convener. I join my colleagues, minister, in welcoming you back to the committee today. It is great to see you looking happy and healthy and very enthusiastic about this area of work, which I think that we all know is something that you have been a lifelong champion of. I wanted to ask about, in your portfolios, as the convener said at the start, the racial equality framework, an issue that I know was of high priority in the last parliamentary session. You would have appeared at the committee as well as the racial equality cross-party group, which I chaired in the last session, several times to discuss it. You will also be aware that in the last session and from stakeholders there has been some criticism of the framework in terms of making slow progress. I was quite pleased to hear about the new immediate priorities plan that you outlined at the last session that you were at. I wonder if you could talk a bit about how that is progressing, what we hope to get from that and maybe a particular focus on issues around the employment gap for ethnic minorities and occupational segregation. Okay, yes, absolutely. One of the things that we established very quickly at the beginning of the pandemic was the disproportionate impact of Covid on our diverse communities in Scotland. That has been a global issue, but we recognised it very quickly and we set up the expert reference group in Covid ethnicity, which did a huge amount of work and powered through many areas where inequality was always there but Covid exposed it in all of its raw detail, which gave us areas in which we knew that we needed to focus right in on. The expert reference group produced a number of recommendations, some of them policy areas and some of them practical areas, so we have two sets of recommendations. We have taken forward all of them and accepted all of them as well. One of the ways that we looked at it was, okay, here is the practical things that we need to do quite quickly and we put some of that into place. Having culturally appropriate media and advertising on the vaccine, making sure that all of the information around about Covid and where you could get support was culturally appropriate, funding the ethnic minority resilience network, and if you have not had a chance to meet with that group, but grows every day, please have a look at meeting with them to fund culturally appropriate food, culturally appropriate interactions with people and support through Covid as well. All of that practical stuff. There was some other stuff, some of it historical, about our relationship with slavery and how we look at that, how we challenge that, how we change that, and there is work being done with our cultural colleagues around about some of that as well. Really looking at the endemic, ingrained discrimination that people face, all of that came from the expert reference group and gave us a lot to think about on the work and did expose some of the areas where we needed to focus a bit more. That's where the immediate priorities plan came from. The immediate priorities plan, we published it quite recently, it was published in September 2021, so hopefully you've had a chance to have a look at that as well. That looked at things right across the impact of Covid. It was looking at our race equality framework from 2016 to 2030. It covered across many portfolios, health, employment, education, housing, poverty and other areas of government. It took a comprehensive and strategic review to inform our planned programme of systematic change. The immediate priorities plan group is just being established. It will be chaired independently again from government by two people who will take that forward. They come from a lived experience background and have a high profile in many of those areas. Again, that is nothing about what is without us. We need again our stakeholders and people's lived experience to inform the process of this so that we get it right and make the changes. That will be called an interim governance group and that will develop an anti-racist accountability and oversight view. It will deliver on all of our commitments and, as I said, it will be independent. We will also explore models for permanent external oversight. Although we currently have the EHRC and the SHRC's regulators when it comes to discrimination, we felt that it was important and one of the recommendations that came from the ERG, the expert reference group in Covid, was to have an external oversight governance body that takes account of the progress that has been made and holds government and public authorities to account, as it does that as well. The interim group will look at that and develop that model and will come up with recommendations on how we move that forward. That responds directly to those challenges of being a bit slow or that we have not seen much progress here. There is lots of progress across many areas but, if our stakeholders are telling us that they cannot see it, we need to take the responsibility for that. That is why we felt that the immediate priorities plan was a way to do that, to have that independent chairing of that group and to have that oversight body in place. On employment and the occupational standards, I know that Mr Lockhead is working on that right now in particular areas that he has picked up. Again, it sits within his portfolio responsibility, so I will endeavour to go back to him and ask for him to give you an update on where that is all sitting right now. The ethnicity pay gap sits within that as well. I will get you an update. Thanks for the very comprehensive response and I anticipated quite a few of my possible supplementaries. The convener will be glad to know that I do not have many more, but I am just focusing on the employment aspect that we ended on there. It is, obviously, across other portfolios as well, as you mentioned. From a general overview, do you feel that by implementing that plan, if that plan is successful and what we hope to achieve, that that will have a big impact on employment? Do you know yourself how much of a concern that it is? In the previous session, I know that it was not exactly the same committee that had a review on it. It is something that comes up as you know so often. No, absolutely. There is a real driving determination to limit all of those inequalities, because they sit there and we have a responsibility to do that as well. The work that we have done on the Gypsy Traveller joint ministerial group is incredibly important here because that model has worked incredibly well in ensuring that other ministers are driving across their portfolio changes. The work of the previous committee informed that process. The work that we commissioned CREAR to do, which they published a report last year that we commissioned them to do informed that process as well. Rather than pulling things out the back of my head on what the other ministers are considering doing, let me get that update for you and give you that. If you want to bring us back to discuss it at a future date, I am sure that Mr Lochhead or myself would be happy to do that. Pam Goswll, please. Thank you, convener, and good morning, minister. My question is a supplementary question. We heard from witnesses that during the pandemic, Beymoon felt misunderstood by mainstream services due to not having the understanding about their culture. Therefore, they were less inclined to use the mainstream services after suffering domestic abuse, and there was increasing resilience on the third sector due to that. Can the minister tell me what is being done to tackle that flaw in the current system and in order to achieve capabilities and capacity set out in the race equality framework? Thank you for your question. You are good wishes, Pam. We had a lovely day during the International Women's Day event, and lots of questions like that were brought up there. There is lots of food for thought. I was very mindful of ensuring that we had a culturally and diverse communities approach during the pandemic and worked very closely with a number of stakeholders, but I recognise the issue and it does not sit just squarely within our race equality plan. It sits within our violence against women work as well. You will know that the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls did a piece of work the year before last, I think, on intersectionality and brought many new voices into those circles on access to mainstream services, how we tackle FGM or honour-based violence and some of the cultural nuances that are in there. We have taken all of that on board as well. We are doing an immediate update and refresh your equally safe plan. We are also looking at the long-term sustainability of that, and that is what the Lesley Irvine group will do. We are also looking at those intersections and how important they are in the intersections with race. One of the things that we have looked at is how our equally safe joint board is made up. That is jointly chaired by me and Kelly Parry, who is the spokesperson at COSLA right now. We are taking forward across many portfolios as well, including with our justice colleagues. However, one of the priorities that we are looking at is primary prevention and how we ensure that that works very well in that area and how we tackle those intersections. One of the things that we did do was look at some of our key partners and talk to them about how they could engage with the board. It was very apparent that we needed some of them to come on to the board as well. I am really pleased at Mary Amamed, who I think Pam Youll-Noir. I have known Mary Amamed for a number of years at Amana. She will be joining our joint board. She will be helping to support us in our responses and the actions that we take in understanding how actions could work around about honour-based violence and FGM through the lens of an equally safe strategy, which is a wider strategy around about reducing violence against women and girls, and taking that gender and race equality lens and placing that on it. I am really looking forward to working with Mary Amamed on that, and I hope that that will give you some reassurance that the issue that you have brought up today about that gap or that concern, that we are attempting to address that. We will stay with Pam Gossel for her substantive question now. Sorry, I just want to say minister thank you for that, because that is very promising, because that was something that they brought up, that representation on the boards was not there, hence why they could not understand the culture. It is really good to hear that you have got Mary Amamed on board there. Just on my question, you did to actually touch on FGM, so obviously the paper said that most of the FGM 2020 act is not yet enforced. In 2019, a Scottish Government publication revealed that there was no available data on occurrence of FGM in Scotland, so I would like to ask the minister whether there has been more focus on collecting that data in order to accurately identify communities and spaces where that horrific practice may be taking place. Yes, it was quite poignant that the last piece of work that this Parliament did before we went into lockdown was to pass that bill that day. It was great to be able to have that bill and pass it, but then again we went straight into lockdown just mere days later, and all of our work had to be focused towards supporting people in their communities in all the ways that I explained before, including through the ethnic minority resilience network. The work on the FGM guidance has been delayed and difficult decisions had to be taken at the time. We are now re-establishing that work. There are a couple of key achievements that I think are developing and that will be a publication of our multi-agency non-statutory guidance on FGM as well, because I think that it is important that it is right across all agencies, because some of the areas where we have seen work that needed to be done was around education, health and justice measures. All of that was included in that bill, which is now our act, and we are continuing to re-establish that work and implement it and use it to enhance our equally safe strategy as well. There are specific references in our equally safe strategy to FGM, and we know that it is a practice that is important, as you say, and abuses human rights. On data, data has been raised a number of times along a lot of equality measures. The chief statistician is undergoing a piece of work and looking at how we can collect more equality data, the responsibilities that will be placed on public authorities to do that and how we use that data to force and drive change as well. His work is undergoing, and he has published some of that work already. Again, I am happy to initiate the committee having an update on what we are calling the EDIP, because it is about equality data and the work that we do. Let me do that as well. I will get back to the points that you have raised, Pam, on how we collect that data and how we use it to drive change. He is working on that right now. Again, I will get you an update. For covering the wider data point, we are really appreciated by the committee to get that update. It is something that we have heard on a number of areas that quality data is really important in the committee's remit and your remit, so that would be good to get that update. Thank you, convener. It is an absolute joy to see the minister before us this morning for many, many reasons. I would like to ask, in regards to the equally safe strategy, is there any updates on the review on that? A couple of areas that I would like to focus on is that we have been hearing a bit of feedback in regards to the intersectional approach on that and also the equally safe within schools, if there has been any feedback or review on how well that is doing. I know that there has been a lot of talk in regards to preventative measures and the focus and onus being the perpetrators as well. I am just wondering if that has been taken into account within the strategy. Thank you very much for the question and the good wishes, Karen. In response to Pam Gosel, just before you would have heard me saying that one of the things that we have done is to include Mario Mamad on the equally safe board. That brings all of her vast experience in the work that she has been doing at Amana and in the wider work that she does within her community. That brings all of that to the table and allows us to really focus in on that intersectional approach that we all want to see. I am really pleased that Mariam has given up her. She is a busy woman. To give up some of her time to come and help us to develop all of this is really welcome and we are really grateful for it. On the points around primary prevention, it is one of the main pillars of our equally safe work and it is not just equally safe at schools. We have equally safe in higher and further education and we have equally safe in the workplace. Those areas are driven by other ministers in the work that they are doing. Recently, we have been hearing about the benefit of equally safe in schools and further and higher education. You will be familiar with the work of Fiona Druett and Emily Test and how she is driving a lot of that across campuses across the whole of Scotland. She is absolutely formidable and we are grateful for her for driving all of that work. One of the things that we looked at after elections when you come back and you look at the strategies and the things that you have been working on in the action plans and you think, right, where are we starting from now? One of the things that we asked the stakeholders was, do we do a big long-term full refresh? They said, well, no, because we think that this works. Can we just look at some of the areas where we need to maybe put a bit more focus? That is what we are doing with this short-term refresh that we are doing right now. I met with the board just a few weeks ago and we started to action at a number of those points. I will come back to the committee with a fuller update on that in the coming weeks, if you do not mind. We had 100 days commitment to direct new funding into the area of £5 million to rate prices, centres and domestic abuse services. That was to cut waiting lists because we noticed some of the challenges around that. We have a new delivery and equally safe fund. We fund 121 projects to the tune of £38 million across 112 organisations. We could have done that three times for the bids that came in from that, so there is a lot of work going on in this area. We have now just opened our new victim centre approach fund, which opened in October and that is to support victims of crime. I know that is an issue that has been brought up a few times. We have also funded the respect phone line for perpetrators because we have a number of programmes for perpetrators. Primary prevention is about consent, healthy relationships, equally safe in school, where to go for support, how to do all that, the same in further and higher education and the same in the workplace and how you can maybe support colleagues or colleagues can be supported through all of that. Another aspect of it is how we deal with perpetrators to change culture. White Rib and Scotland do a fabulous piece of work here on men taking responsibility. It is great to see the narrative changing from women having to be protected to men taking responsibility for their actions. Do not be that guy developed by Police Scotland was a superb resource and really got people to stop and think about your behaviour, especially men, and to think about their responsibility as a bystander or an intervener, if that is safe enough. There is a huge amount of work going on across all of this and we were looking at all of that and how we focus in primary prevention being a key aspect of that and the funding to do that in place. Alongside that is the review that Leslie Irvine is looking at, because one of the other big issues that the sector faces and I have just reflected it in the amount of people who put in bids for the Delivery and Equally Safe Fund is the amount of work that is being done and needs to continue to be done in this area and how we make that much more sustainable and less precarious for all of those organisations. Leslie Irvine has started that work that I met with her just a few weeks ago. Again, I am happy to come back to the committee at a later date or give you an update on the work of that group. I am sure that Leslie was the head of the equality unit in the Scottish Government for a long time and she has a very long professional background in violence against women's services. I am sure that she will come back with some incredibly robust and probably challenging but very welcome recommendations and, again, when we have that update, I can let the committee know. Minister, you talked about the primary prevention work that is going on and I know that I am very familiar with some of it, especially in schools. Has there been any attempt to try and co-ordinate the continuation of that into further and higher education? I know that the fearless projects in Glasgow and Edinburgh are well off the ground across university campuses, but I think that it is important to have that kind of overview of that work and to ensure that white ribbon is involved and to ensure that it is not just a central belt thing, because university and college campuses elsewhere function within the same patriarchal system that the rest of us do. I was just wondering if you had any comments on the connections to our wider further and higher education institutions. It sits within another minister's portfolio because one of the things that my role includes is to ensure that in mainstreaming things across the whole of government that ministers drive that within their portfolios. I am in awe of the work that Fiona Druett does and I know that ministers met her quite recently. Again, we can get you an update from the relevant minister on that area, but it is one of those things about how important that sector is. It is not just about making sure that sector has a focus on it, it is that continuation of when boys and girls grow up and go through the system that respect and dignity and safety is built into all of that, but also cultural change and how we can drive that. Colleges and universities are not just places where students go to have that experience and that learning, it is where thousands, tens of thousands of people work and research and academia and all of that. We are looking at how we can engage all of that into the work that we currently do, because I think that that important aspect of it is that research and development. Sometimes we look at what we need to do, how do we fill the gaps, how do we make sure that we make things better and sometimes you need to take a step back and look at what the rest of the world is saying about the work that we do here in Scotland and taking some pride in that, but also realising that we are a bit of a beacon and how can we use that beacon to drive that change. It is not just about things being fragmented, it is about how they join up and the journey of a person through their life and how that life is respected and people can just be who they are and basically create that society that we all want to see. The minister will be aware that equality groups have written about the Covid-19 inquiry and he has specifically said that there is no mention of women, black and minority ethnic communities to several people, LGBT plus people, older people, young person, subject to no recourse to public funds and other groups who experienced the brunt of the pandemic in the remit. They felt let down and I am sure that the minister will know that. I quote that they have recently said that there was absolutely no evidence that they were listened to and they closed the door in our faces. I hope that that is not the intention and I am sure that it was not the intention. In addition to that, the Government and Lady Poole have also suggested that the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers will not be included in the Covid-19 inquiry in Scotland as it remains reserved. There are a few questions in those areas. Starting with that point, does the minister accept that local authorities and NHS health boards play a significant role in the treatment of those groups and therefore would you agree with me that that should in fact be included in the inquiry? On the issues from equalities groups that were raised and the work that the committee has done on women's unfair responsibility for unpaid work, what more could the Government do to ensure that voices are heard within the inquiry? What actions can the Government take to address the issue of unfair responsibility for unpaid work? Further to that, what more could you do and what do you intend to do to implement split choices and universal credit payments that could relate and specifically support women in those situations? Thank you for all your questions, Pam. There is a lot in that. You will know that the Deputy First Minister is leading on the Covid-19 inquiry work. I am sad to hear that organisations felt there was a closed door, because it is certainly not the way I see it from the work that we do here. However, you make an incredibly powerful and important point there about participation and how people feel listened to. If you will allow me, convener, I am happy to take that back to DFM and let him know about that, because I think that that is important and where we can go with that. I know that he had written to the committee some weeks ago with a lot of detail in all of that, so let us do some of that as well. I know that colleagues across Government have been looking at the impact on women and the impact on unpaid work. Again, it does not sit with me in my portfolio. Again, one of the things that I will endeavour to take away and raise with the relevant minister is to bring back to the committee, convener and Pam Duncan-Glancy, on her questions. The issue around universal credit payments—I just wish we had control a universal credit in Scotland, because it would not be in the shape that it is now, and it would not have a rape clause and a two-child cap in it, for instance. I hope that our launch of the adult disability payment pilot and the horrible process that people need to go through to be reassessed over and over again for conditions that are just not going to get better, that that will end in Scotland. It is a welcome advance and an indication of how we would do things very differently if we had the control of that in Scotland. I am an advocate of splitting the universal credit payments, but, again, there are things that we can control here and things that we cannot but are always happy along with relevant ministers who have responsibility in this area, which would likely to be Ben Macpherson in this case, to work with them to challenge the UK Government as many times as we possibly can and are happy to take that on board again. If there is a renewed push around that, I would be happy to raise that with colleagues in the UK Government and take that forward for Pam Duncan Glancy on that. If it would help a one-to-one Pam for you and I to have a catch-up with some of these things, because you will have an ear in many of the communities that I will find incredibly helpful to hear the brass tacks and what people are experiencing and feeling. I would be keen to do that if you are open to doing that. Thank you, minister. I am very happy to do that. I would appreciate it. My understanding is that the split payments is part of Scottish choices in universal credit, and we have the powers here in Scotland to make some adjustments as to how universal credit is paid. I was hoping that, perhaps in your role with the qualities that you could make representation to the minister for social security, to ask at what point we intend to implement those, because I think that it could have a significant impact on women and could help with some of what we have heard in the committee. I am more than happy to do that. Minister, you mentioned in your opening remarks some of the work that you have done in relation to older people. I know that one of the things that you were very proud of was the work around loneliness and isolation. Can you give us a wee update on where we are with the connected Scotland strategy? I am absolutely delighted to give you a really exciting update on that. I met with the social isolation and loneliness working group just a few weeks ago. We developed some of the key actions that we are going to take forward. During the pandemic, one of the things that we did very quickly was to go out to those organisations to say, social isolated and lonely people, we have a strategy, we know the actions, we know the areas that we need to work on. There is a whole host of new people who are going to face that challenge over the pandemic. How do we tackle that? There was a multi-pronged way to tackle that. Some of it was about connecting people with local organisations, supporting some of the emerging new local organisations that sprung up all over the place. I have the Hamilton Covid Warriors, the Hamilton Help in Hands and the Larkhall Rainbows and the Stonehouse Covid action group, who are still continuing to work. One of the things that they took on board very quickly was about the impact of social isolation and loneliness. We know that it is a public health issue and that it has the same physiological effect on people who smoke 15 cigarettes a day. That is what the scientists tell us, but we know how insidious and difficult it can be. One of the things that we did around this area was to fund the organisations to develop some of that work. Again, rapid reorganisation. We learned lots and lots of lessons out of that. One of the things that we learned was that those emerging groups and organisations were how to hang on to them and make them sustainable. We are looking at that as well. One way that we are looking at that is a lovely welcome £10 million investment in this area. We have tendered for a fund manager for that. We are almost at the very end part of that process. I will be able to update the committee on that very soon. I met the group last week to say that we have spent £1 million because we have spent £1 million from the £10 million over the winter to sustain all those groups. How can we use the other £9 million to make sure that we build that resilience into everything that we do? To be honest, that local connection was one of the things that broke some of the taboos that people had about how do you access services and everything. Folk were going to just chap in their neighbours' store saying, do you need a prescription? Do you need some shopping? Do you need somebody to talk to? We have got many organisations to do that. We fund the Age of Scotland helpline, for instance, and a number of other support mechanisms to do that. We have a great opportunity ahead of us now with a very substantial investment in this area. If you have ideas on how we do that, I will have to tell you that social isolation and loneliness stakeholder groups have great ideas on how to spend not just that £9 million but much more. However, we will start with the £9 million for now. I have a question. You touched earlier on some of the issues and some of the work that has been done to improve the data collection that we do. I know that the quality data improvement plan is under way. You have also been speaking about the work that Lesley Irvine will be carrying forward. I am interested in joining the dots between the data that we get and how we fund third sector organisations to deliver support and other services. One of the key challenges, as you will know from many third sector organisations, is the project-focused funding, which does not necessarily allow for full-cost recovery, for back-room support, in a trauma-informed way. I am wondering how your thinking is developing around joining the dots between the data that we know that we need to collect, the evidences that we need, providing the expert support organisations that are out there with the full costs that they need, not just the front-line service delivery costs. That is a great question. If my memory serves me right, Lesley Irvine has already met her chief statistician. She has either met him because she has done lots of engagement over the past few weeks or she is just about to meet him. We can update you on that, but your points are well made about how we connect the dots. It is something that I initiated at the very beginning, because none of those things sit in isolation. Whether it is a public sector equality duty review, whether it is a review of the funding, the immediate priority plan, the Gypsy's travel action plan, our quality data budget, and they all have to be part of the same mechanism to end inequality. It is incredibly important that that data, and the points that I made earlier about equality data, how we collect, how we collect it, and then how we use it to drive change becomes incredibly important. That update from the chief statistician, you will be interested to see that, but I will confirm it with Lesley Irvine about whether she has met yet and made those connections or whether that is happening. I will update you in due course. I think that Nick is going to add that, because that has been involved in some of this when I was not here. I just wanted to make a connection with the Quality and Human Rights Fund that the minister talked about. Data collection is a key element of that. Inspiring Scotland is the fund manager operating on a behalf with all the organisations funded under that fund. We are just going through a process now through Inspiring Scotland of agreeing that data collection and reporting from those organisations. As you are aware, this is a new fund, a new arrangement through Inspiring Scotland for the Government to put this funding out to those frontline services. We are going through a process now where I think we will get a lot of learning about precisely that issue, about proportionate data collection from those projects, and those projects were funded including that proposition that they needed to collect some data for reporting on the progress of their work. We have got a real opportunity to learn through that fund and through those arrangements better processes in relation to the issue that you are talking to. Thanks both very much. Nick, I might come and pick your brains a little bit about that outside of this meeting in the future. Thank you. Okay, thank you. We are almost at time. If there was any last brief, precise questions, I know Pam Duncan-Glancy would like to come back in, but let's keep it tight in terms of the question. On the basis of the UNCRPD report that Inclusion Scotland published last week, I wonder if the minister could tell us whether she believes that we will meet the targets of having the disability employment gap by 2038, and if so, how and could we get a short update on the progress of the disability employment plan? Thank you. Another great question from Pam Duncan-Glancy, but not one for me. I'm sorry, so I'll get the update from the appropriate minister on that for you. Certainly, the work that we are doing around about the incorporation and our human rights bill puts the UNCRPD right in front of the centre in that, but as far as meeting the targets, I wouldn't hazard a guess at where the other minister is sitting with that right now, so I'll come back and give you the update on that. Okay, I think that's slightly gone over our time. Thank you so much minister, it really is really great to see you back here today and thanks for your time and giving us a bit more of your time than we previously agreed. With that, we'll end the session and move into private. Thank you.