 Welcome to the Equal Opportunities Committee, the 10th meeting of 2015. Can you set any electronic devices to flight mode or off please? I'd like to start with introductions. We are supported at the table by clerkin and research staff, official reporters and broadcasting services, and around the room by the security office. My name is Margaret McCulloch and I am the committee's convener. Members will now introduce themselves in turn, starting here on my right. Sandra White, MSP deputy convener. On that, John Finnie, MSP Hinds and Islands. Annabelle Gold, MSP West of Scotland. Good morning, Krishna, MSP for North East of Scotland. Morning, I'm Jane Baxter, MSP for Mid Scotland and Five. John Mason, MSP for Glasgow Shetleston. Thank you. The first agenda item today is the decision on taking business in private. You're asked to agree consideration of the work programme at item five in private. Are we all agreed? Yes. Agenda item two is to hear evidence from the Minister for Local Government and Community Empowerment on an affirmative instrument, namely the Equality Act 2010, Specific Duties Scotland, amendment regulations 2015. This instrument is laid under the affirmative procedure, which means that the Parliament must approve it before the provisions may come into force. Following this evidence taken, the committee will be invited to consider a motion to approve the instrument under agenda item three. I welcome the minister and to the company official. Can I invite the minister to make any opening remarks? Thank you, convener. It's wonderful to be back, however, briefly. I'm pleased to be here today in consideration of the draft Equality Act 2010, Specific Duties Scotland, amendment regulations 2015. The draft regulations propose to make routine amendments to the Equality Act 2010, Specific Duties Scotland, regulations 2012, in consequence of the establishment of some new public bodies and office holders in Scotland. That follows the order that the committee already approved on 5 February, which added to the list of bodies subject to the public sector equality duty in the Equality Act 2010. All of those additional bodies are now listed in the schedule to our draft amendment regulations. If approved, the draft amendment regulations will ensure that recently established bodies and office holders will become subject to the 2012 regulations, our Scottish Specific Equality Duties. Those include Historic Environment Scotland, our health and social care integration joint boards, regional boards for colleges, children's hearings Scotland, Revenue Scotland and Food's Standard Scotland. The committee will be familiar with the Equality Act, which introduced the public sector equality duty, requiring listed public authorities to have due regard when exercising their functions to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. The purpose of the Scottish Specific Duties is to help those authorities listed in the 2012 regulations to improve performance of the general equality duty. The regulations came into force on 27 May 2012, so they are still relatively new. Those set a robust and proportionate supporting framework for the duty in the Equality Act based on data collection and evaluation, transparency and accountability, and in this way they help public authorities to perform the PSED better. The framework requires listed public authorities to report on mainstreaming the equality duty, publish equality outcomes and report progress, undertake equality impact assessment of new policies and practices, gather and use employee information on equality and diversity, publish their gender pay gap and a statement on equal pay and occupational segregation if they have over 150 employees and consider award criteria and conditions in relation to public procurement. I should add these go quite some way beyond the comparable duties in England. Listed public authorities were first required to publish equality outcomes, mainstreaming reports and employee information by April 2013 with progress reports due by 30 April 2015. Statements containing equal pay and occupational segregation were required at the same time with new statements to be published every fourth year. The draft amendment regulations propose that the new authorities are subject to the same reporting requirements and intervals as the 2012 regulations. Initial reporting deadlines are proposed for April 2016 for all the new authorities except Historic Environment Scotland, who we propose should report one year later by April 2017 with intervals continuing as normal thereafter. Historic Environment Scotland will replace the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, better known as Arcams, a public body established by Royal Warrant and Historic Scotland, an executive agency within the Scottish Government. Historic Environment Scotland has the general function of investigating, caring for and promoting Scotland's historic environment. The new organisation that I should add is already subject to the public sector equality duty and is currently operating in transitional mode with the two existing bodies prior to taking on sole responsibility from 1 October 2015. Historic Environment Scotland will be ready to report on the Scottish-specific equality duties within two years. The draft regulations would change relevant references to ensure that the 2012 regulations continue to apply to publicly funded colleges and universities as well. Finally, I would like to assure the convener that we have consulted with the Equality and Human Rights Commission in keeping with our statutory requirements and that the commission is content with our proposed consequential arrangements. I hope that the committee will recommend that the draft regulations be approved. Thank you, minister. Is this the straightforward instrument? I do not think that the members have any questions. I am proved wrong on that. John Mason? Thank you, convener. I think that I said that I might not have, but I have just thought of one. Seeing the ministers here, I might as well ask them a few questions. I am just slightly disappointed that this is not a little bit more of an automatic process, and I suspect that that is not within your control or MD Els's control. Clearly, the principle would be that we want all colleges and universities to be under the Equality Act, and yet we are having to actually do something to bring the regional bodies. I suppose that I am a wee bit more concerned, because the University of the Highlands and Islands has been going for some time, and the fact that it is only coming in now, I hope that nothing has happened that should not have happened. The same is with the Historic Environment Scotland. If the two bodies that were previously subject to the Equality Act, and we are now bringing them together and we have to do something, it just seems a cumbersome process, but I do not know if the minister could comment on that. Any process by which additional duties are placed on a public body is obviously going to a wish for a fair level of parliamentary scrutiny. That is something that has been considered in the past. It is very rare, I have to say, to come in front of a committee and for a committee member to say that the Government should subject themselves to less parliamentary scrutiny when they want to amend legislation, but I will take that and consider it. I think that an affirmative procedure in order to bring some quite onerous duties on to additional on-to-new public bodies seems to me to be a proportionate way of doing it, and certainly it is something that we have taken opinion on in the past. Thank you. Sandra White would like to ask a question next, please. Thank you very much and good morning minister. I do welcome the definitive instrument, and obviously the new body has been put forward in this particular way. I think that any form of tightening up in the quality act is most welcome, and as you mentioned yourself, it is even more powerful than we have in other parliamentary buildings. The one that I specifically wanted to raise, as you mentioned, is the regional board for colleges and obviously the regional board for Glasgow colleges is one that I am particularly interested in, and the quality duties about eliminating discrimination. I wonder if minister could perhaps clarify for me the gather evidence. We know that four people have resigned from that body, also the chair as well. There is some unrest in regard to allegations of harassment. Can you give me some clarification into the fact that if this does go further, will this go before the ministers in the Scottish Government in your particular portfolio if there is evidence of harassment in that respect? Obviously, I do not want to comment on any on-going legal or disciplinary or other disputes. Certainly, the education side of the Government has powers and ultimate, what has certain powers with regard to good governance within colleges in Scotland and certainly has the portfolio responsibility for this. It is an area where I am aware that education colleagues are monitoring specific issues with regard to internal disputes within any organisation. That is not something that would normally come to us, but I would advise anybody in any organisation facing that kind of behaviour to make those kinds of allegations to make the reporting under the methods that are available through the helpline. John Finnie. Minister, that is a bit lateral, but a number of my constituents would be surprised if I did not raise the issue when we were talking about the qualities of the food standard Scotland in a situation where the new body previously, the constituent bodies, had their logo and letter heads bilingual. Gallic has dropped from that. If we want to show equal respect for both images, would you throw your weight behind the reinstatement of bilingual letter head and indeed logo for that organisation? There are certainly strong reasons for every organisation in Scotland to consider very carefully the role of Gallic and indeed legal burdens under that now as well. I will undertake to go away and investigate the matter further and to report back to the member. Many thanks. Morrentine. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions that we would like to ask the minister? No? Okay. Moving on now to agenda item 3, calls for the committee to formally consider and recommend approval of the motion namely S4M-1307 that the Equal Opportunities Committee recommends that the Quality Act 2010, specific duties Scotland, amended regulations 2015 be approved. I would like to invite the minister to speak to and move motion S4M-1307. In light of having already spoken formally moved. Thank you. The question is that motion S4M-1307 in the name of Mark OB-RGB be approved. Are we all agreed? Yes. We all agreed. That concludes consideration of affirmative instrument and we will report the outcome of our consideration to the Parliament. I would like to thank the minister for his participation. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Agenda item 4 is a consideration of a draft annual report for the parliamentary year from May 11, 2014, to May 10, 2015. Does anyone have any comments that they would like to make about the draft report? Is everyone happy? John Finnie. Thank you, convener. I think that it's a very good report. I did mention to the clap before whether we should mention that particularly in relation to paragraphs 15 and 16, that a debate was held on that, albeit that it was a Scottish Government debate, I think, perhaps with a link in the report to the debate. Yes. Yes. Happens that? What we do usually, you know, owes a link from the back page. The reference? Yes. Is that a bit cumbersome? It's a new change in formatting of reports that's been taken forward on a new template. I'd like to link something on the bottom of the page. If you're happy with it to leave it as it is. If I'm told it's a new template, then we need to add it there too. Can I just speak a comment in item 4 where it says that we agreed to meet an Easter house? Can you add in in Glasgow? Because on one of the other pages you've got Easter house in Glasgow as well, we're assuming that people know where Easter house is. Are we then agreed and as if all the members content with the report? Yes. Yes. John? Yes. Okay. It's not substantive. Because I've been sort of in and out the committee and when I was looking at the report, I wondered if anyone looking at the report is interested in committee membership and changes, or maybe there is a template for all Parliament committee reports that this is how it is? I think it's a template but I would imagine the overacting on your report will show the membership. Fair enough. Clarify that and bring it back to the next meeting. It's not serious. I was just interested. Okay. Anybody else have any comments? No. So we were happy with the report overall and the amendments that's to be made. Okay. So that actually concludes the public part of today's meeting. The meeting will take place on Thursday 4 June. I will now suspend the meeting for the committee to move into private session.