 Welcome everyone to the Equal Opportunities Committee, the 14th meeting of 2014. Can I ask everyone to set any electronic devices to flight mode or the off position please? Today's only agenda item is evidence on the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and we'll start the session with some introductions. At the table, we have our clerking and research team, official reporters and broadcast room services, and around the room we're also supported by a security office. I'd like to also welcome the observers in the public gallery. My name is Margaret McCulloch and I'm the committee's convener. I now invite members and witnesses to introduce themselves in turn, starting here on my right. I'm Mark Obiagie, I'm the deputy convener. I'm the MSP for Edinburgh Central and good morning. I'm Alex Johnstone, a member from Rockleys, Scotland. Good morning John Finnie, MSP Highlands and Islands. I'm John Mason, MSP for Glasgow Shetleston. Good morning Christian Alad, MSP for the North East of Scotland. Good morning Alasdor Pringle, Scotland director of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Good morning Chris Oswald, head of policy and communications. Thank you both for coming along. I'll start asking the first question. It's about your budget. We see that in 2014 your budget 14-15 is £17 million. When the EHRC was established in 2007, it actually had a budget of £70 million. Can I ask how the reduced budget and staffing is actually impacting on EHRC's ability to fulfil your statutory obligations? For example, the monitoring of the public sector equality duty, please. Yes, you can indeed. The last time we gave evidence, which I believe was 2012, we talked in detail then about the impact of the budget. In fact, at the time, the key reductions were around our grants function and our helpline function. Both of those were then removed. The helpline function, as you'll be aware, was moved to a UK provider with Cytel. On top of that, we then faced probably what was considered to be a similar reduction to those of other NDPB-type organisations. Obviously, since those budget reductions had to do a significant amount of reorganisation and review of our functions, we believe that we are now in a more stable place and that we have the staff in place in Scotland and across GB to continue to deliver our statutory functions. What is probably important in relation to all of this is that the budget cuts were based on a review of what our statutory functions were. Rather than an arbitrary cut to the resources that we have, the review, which was called at the time a core budget review, looked at what was set out in statute to what that cost and formed the basis of our budget. That was the case for this year and it will be the same case for next year, so we are on a level footing for our budget next year. Obviously, we have to work differently. We do not have nearly the number of staff that we had in Scotland. We now have a head count of 17, which is approximately 14.75 full-time equivalent staff, with three vacancies, which is quite a difference from where we were when the EHRC opened back in 2007. We have to work more strategically, but we still place a significant amount of investment and resource, particularly around issues such as monitoring of our public sector equality duty. All of our budget is used for delivering our core functions or statutory functions. As you are probably also aware, we also have access to this year in the region of about £8 million, which is a discretionary programme fund from the UK Government. So far, we have managed to access the region of about £3.9 million of that fund to develop a series of programmes that are probably a bit more promotional or proactive around issues such as participation in sports. There is a piece of work that has just started around LGBT hate crime reporting, which are probably the sorts of projects that we would have undertaken in the past. In summary, I would say that we are still able to deliver our statutory functions. We no longer deliver some of the functions that we did when we were first established. The grants function no longer exists at all, but the helpline function is delivered by the quality advice and support service, and we work more strategically to deliver what is set out in statute. Thank you. Mr Oswald, do you want to say anything? I think not. Can I now pass over to Alex Johnson? I was just going to ask, having spoken briefly there about budgets and trends, I wondered how that actually matches workload. Do you feel that your workload is continuous and even, or do you feel that a change in workload that is perhaps full on a different pattern to budget? It's difficult to say whether there is a specific trend. One thing that we have noticed around our legal work, we have invested quite significantly in going out and speaking to advice givers and advice agencies and legal firms to continually remind them that we exist and that we are in business looking for strategic cases and strategic referrals, which sits alongside the role of the quality advisory and support service. That has definitely paid dividends. Two years ago, when I joined the commission, there were certainly a lower number of strategic referrals coming in, and I think that there was a mixture of reasons in relation to that. I certainly believe that we are almost at capacity now around the range of strategic cases that we are dealing with in Scotland. In relation to the public sector equality duty, a new set of reporting requirements came into play last year, and that, again, has taken up a significant amount of our staff time. Most of that can be planned for, and most of that we have a level of control over how we plan going forward. I don't think that, at this current moment in time, there is a flow of work that we are not able to deal with. We are able to work fairly flexibly to respond to both the strategic cases that are coming in and their response to the work around the public sector and the quality duty in particular. I think that the last thing that we had on indication of the number of referrals of potential legal cases that you were getting was back in February 2013, I think, according to my notes here. How many referrals have you had and what has been the trend in referrals since then? Are you talking across all areas of work? Well, I'm interested in all areas of work, but I'm also interested in any areas that show particular trends that may differ from them. Unfortunately, I don't have those figures to hand. On my head of legal who was here last time, probably we would have had those to hand, but I'd be very happy to try and provide a summary of that for you in writing. I'd be very grateful. Thank you. No problem, thank you very much. Can I now pass you over to John Mason? Thanks, convener, and good morning. The whole area of monitoring compliance with the public sector equality duty, some of the points that we picked up on EHRC found that employee monitoring was patchy and inconsistent across all sectors. Overall performance was poor. Of the 184 public authorities examined, only 27 per cent produced the full set of information on the protected characteristics of their staff. Can you give us any comments as to why performance seems to have been poor? On my hand over to Chris Leeds, our public sector equality duty monitoring work, and I'll pick up any other points. We've done a lot of work to assess the performance of public bodies against the public sector duty, published three reports looking at outcomes, particularly employee monitoring. We are moving into a diagnostic phase, what we're calling a diagnostic phase, working with the Scottish Government to try and get underneath the data. We can see the outcome, which is poor results, as you've highlighted. We need to know why that is. In terms of employee data, we know that there are issues about disclosure, that people may not feel comfortable with disclosing their sexual orientation, or their faith or belief. That may be some of the issues. There may also be issues about how data is collected, how it is analysed, how it is moved around inside the organisation. Some of the protected characteristics that are to be monitored, some have come into play relatively recently, so there are adjustments being made inside public bodies to be able to capture that data, to be able to analyse it. The situation is not as good as we would have expected, and one of the pieces of work that we are now engaged with, with the Scottish Government and other partners, is to try and get underneath the skin of the data, find out what the problems are, which are common across all public bodies, to identify where the best practice is, and to try and translate that best practice from the good performers to those who are not succeeding at the moment. As I said, there is a range of factors, some of which are not always in the control of the individual authorities, such as personal decisions, about wanting to disclose or being able to disclose. Once we have got under the skin of that, we may be able to then suggest better questions, messaging that can be given to assure employees that the information that they are giving about their own personal characteristics is confidential and will be used for the proper purposes. Presumably, some of the examples that you give, such as sexual orientation or faith and things, people might not want to, but you would expect that to be the case in every employer, but you are suggesting that some employers are doing better than others, is that the case? I think that there are some employers who have a more complete set of data, but when you look across all of the organisations, there are particular deficits in terms of recording around sexual orientation, around gender reassignment. Pregnancy and maternity was the lowest one of all and that was common across all organisations. What we want to do is to identify, what we are in the process of doing is identifying those people who are working best, find out why that is working best and start to try and transmit or transfer that learning from the best to the ones who are struggling. Will you tell us who some of the best are? We have taken the decision not to name and shame in that we will be... No, we are not. It is quite a challenging area. It has been an issue that the EHRC has been working on for seven or eight years. Having previously worked in the Scottish Government health department, I remember receiving letters on this very issue. The discussions that we have been having with the Scottish Government around what we are trying to achieve here and what we are trying to achieve is that public authorities are able to demonstrate fair employment practices, fair recruitment practices. The way that the specific duties are set out require public bodies to count beans and that involves large-scale systems. If you look at the NHS, most health boards have their own individual HR systems. They have been taught for a long time about an EHR system that will solve the problem or another sort of system that will solve the problem. Those systems have never been introduced. I think that the time is right for us. As Chris has said, to diagnose the problem properly rather than just continue to write compliance letters because people are not counting numbers instead have a more detailed discussion with public authorities about what is getting in the way and how we might resolve what really feels a little bit like an on-going cycle here. You could have optimised it that we are improving just a wee bit if we are patient for a bit of time then we are going to get there or are you not? To be honest, I do not have the answer because it is a difficult problem as I say and I had responsibility for aspects of this across NHS Scotland. There is not one answer. There is not one way of turning this around because it covers staff attitudes. It covers societal attitudes. If people are fearful about their sexual orientation being disclosed then they are going to be less likely... If they live in an environment where they fear that they are going to be less likely to tell an employer. There are a whole host of drivers, I think. I do not think that it is sufficient just to say that you have to have 100 per cent employment monitoring in place by. I think that it is important to look at progressive improvement and we have seen some progressive improvement going back to the NHS when there was an investment in what I think was called the equality diversity information project which did a fair bit of scrutiny and support work with health boards. We did see some improvement there but without that continual investment and support I do not think that we have seen the gradual improvements that we would hope to and I do think that our measuring at work showed that quite clearly. We met recently with the Scottish Government and they are leading a national programme of work to look at the range of findings from our public sector duty monitoring, employment monitoring, equality outcomes and pay gap issues. I am trying to think about all this a bit differently because certainly pay gap and equal pay has been an issue for a lot longer than the last seven years and again is not going away. You have mentioned the NHS specifically. Who are the other key players, as a cos law player in this, for example? We are in terms of the improvement work that we are doing. Yes, so how else is on board to push it? We are currently developing a group of public bodies and particularly intermediary bodies so cos law will be one of those, the NHS, other organisations. If I can maybe just come back to a point of clarification on the employment duty. The previous duties around race particularly was an absolute duty. It was you must collect this data. The current duty is a duty which says you have to take steps to collect that data. So it is a progressive realisation duty rather than an absolute you must have this done by a fixed date. So we are working towards that, trying to understand what the problems are and assisting organisations to improve rather than simply battering them over the head because they are not able to deliver a full panoply of data. Just to add that there is also NGO engagement in this broader programme of work in completing organisations like bridge the gap. There are a range of players that are already involved and engaged under this national equality piece. So they would be able to go into a particular employer or sector and help them to how they would work it out? Well I think that the idea is to go back to the diagnosis but to understand what the problems are to look at who is doing stuff well and to look at who are having problems and bring them together and do some of that information sharing. Another example is around our equality outcomes work and we have taken the lead. So there are different strands of this work. The HRC took the lead on the equality outcomes piece of work and again you will see in relation to the number of public authorities who had what we classified as poor equality outcomes we have worked with the poorest performing and sent out invitations. We have been working with 45 public authorities in detail working with them to self assess where we think they need to make improvements. We are very much welcomed. It is not the approach that the commission might have taken in the past which might have been a compliance note. Instead we have invested quite a lot of staff time one to one support for public authorities with individual members of staff bringing them together with those who have performed well. The evaluation for that piece of work will be due in November December and the feedback is so far really positive and we are seeing improvements in outcomes. I think that the approach is right because we are planning to take the same approach across the other strands of work. That was 45, you mentioned. There was also a noted 27 authorities were subject to further review. Is that the same kind of idea? The 27, yes. Those were situations where there was simply no publication or outcomes or the publication was so poor that we intervened. The 45 are a group where we felt particularly that the outcomes were not precise enough or the performance measurements were not clear so that the organisation would not be able to say at the end of the four-year period meaningfully whether or not they had any progress or not and that is what we want to focus on is to make sure that they can demonstrate progress or a lack of progress. My final point then. You have emphasised that the way you are doing it is a little bit different than it was in the past and it is much more getting alongside people who have enforcement powers. Can you just spell out a little bit as to what they are? The range of enforcement powers? Absolutely. I know that this was an issue when we were last here. We do have a range of powers at our disposal and we tend to focus on trying to be as effective as possible and as strategic as possible. Our end game is always achieving positive change. Something can be really resource intensive and I know that you will be aware of some of the work that we have done. For instance, our inquiries around disability harassment and human trafficking where we are looking at societal issues so that is one power that we can use and that could take a couple of years to work through be resource intensive but lead to quite significant change across a wide range of agencies. We can undertake assessments using our section 31 powers of how public authorities are meeting the requirements of the public sector duty. That is looking across the piece and we used that particular power in 2011 when we undertook an assessment of the Scottish Government's work around equality impact assessment and that led to the report, Better Policy, Better Lives. That sort of power would be used if we wanted to look across an organisation's work. We can intervene in court cases where we believe they touch on issues that relate to our work. In court cases, is that by supporting giving legal advice? Normally supporting giving legal advice. The sorts of cases might be the Supreme Court ruling on equal pay in Dumfries and Galloway where we would offer our support and our expertise around equality law. It wouldn't necessarily be us taking forward the case but others are taking forward a case and we can apply it and intervene. There's a range of examples. That's quite a frequent aspect of our work. Another case might be around the Awidah and Chaplin and the Del cases which are around the freedom of thought and conscious religion in the workplace. There's a British Airways case and others. A lot of our work is also around either formal agreements which are generally confidential in nature. They avoid entering the court. Where we believe an organisation may be behaving in a discriminatory fashion, we can engage and approach them if we think they will be amenable to that. An entry into a confidential agreement where they agree an action plan and we formalise that agreement. It's that sort of approach or even an informal agreement that we would prefer to take wherever possible because it avoids that sort of compliance culture, it avoids significant costs and generally it will get the result for us. That sort of sets out the range off from the sort of two, three year investigation. I'm not sure if you saw in the press. We've only ever done one investigation before which was into Glasgow City Council. We've now started a new investigation. It was in the press on Monday and it's into the Met Police. That is again looking at sort of quite systemic and systematic discrimination issues around race and sexual orientation bullying and harassment. That's the second time we've used that particular power. We have to balance really the powers that we use. I know that there is an appeal to be seen to be taking people to court. That would show us using our teeth perhaps. We do use our teeth in a range of different ways which we think are more proportionate and a more effective way of achieving what we want to achieve. Anything to add, Chris? We have launched a consultation on our approach to strategic litigation and that's just commenced in the last few days. It's an open invitation to the legal profession, people with an interest in equality and human rights and anyone else, any other body, to help to shape the future strategy. I think that maybe just one observation on the approach in legals. I know from many years working on these issues in Scotland that there is a tendency when we approach organisations with issues or complaints that they will say, well, what can we do? Where do we go now? How do we improve this? We generally meet a reasonably positive response and the approach to regulation that we take is a proportionate one. There is an opportunity to move issues along without having to take a formal legal approach. We will do that. We will seek to address the issues in the most reasonable way. Obviously, if there is a point of law or if the behaviour of the organisation is so flagrant, we would take action in those circumstances. However, there is a general presumption towards trying to resolve, rather than getting into a litigation situation. There were a couple of little issues that I wanted to add on to this. First of all, you talked a few moments ago at some length about equality outcomes. I note in a letter that we received from you this year that you have now agreed a national improvement approach with the Scottish Government and other stakeholders to improve the quality of equality outcomes. Are we essentially talking about the same thing there? Yes. The only other thing that I was really interested to know was on the subject of enforcement powers. You said, as everybody would always do when we raise the subject of enforcement powers that you want to work on a partnership arrangement, take it forward and that sort of thing. Have you used the enforcement powers and do you envisage that the enforcement powers will have to be used and used more as you go forward? I think that some of the examples I have already given which are around things like undertaking inquiries or intervening in specific cases, serving compliance notices. Chris will correct me if I am wrong here, but in terms of getting public sector bodies to reply and to fulfil the requirements under the public sector equality duty it was a compliance notice that was sent out. We use the range of powers on a regular basis, to be honest. The answer is yes, we use our enforcement powers. Do we foresee using them more in the future? I am not entirely sure. I suppose that would depend on if there is a significant increase in discriminatory practice by any bodies. We have to work within our resources and that is always a challenge which is why we have to work strategically and we have a fairly detailed decision making process in place both in Scotland around public sector duty practice. We have a public sector duty panel. Any complaints or any issues that are raised with us will go to our public sector duty panel where we will assess whether it is strategic, whether it is going to test out the case law, whether we think it will impact on a significant amount of people, whether it is truly a breach of the public sector duty before we will take action. We also have, at a GB level, a regulatory decision making process which is where we really allocate our legal funds because, obviously, some of the ways in which we can intervene will require significant cost but we believe that it will be worthwhile. For instance, the investigation into the met's behaviour we believe that it will have ramifications for other police forces as well and that would be part of our decision making. It is not just about whether we think that a one-agency is at fault. Do we believe that this is going to change the face, in this case, of employment practice in institutions? Thank you. You mentioned our reports as one part of enforcement. I am just wondering because it seems quite odd to do a report as an enforcement practice unless something is coming at the end of it that demonstrated from the key action that you would be taking on that individual, that body, that sector. Out of those reports, what enforcement action has been taken other than to have a report into an issue? I mean, we would rarely have a report without recommendations and we would then work with whoever, whichever public bodies were named in those recommendations to take that forward. I am not sure whether there are any specific examples that you can pick up on, Chris. I am not quite clear about the question in terms of which reports you are referring to. In evidence, three times reports will be mentioned as enforcement. I thought that if you are using that as an example you would be able to tell the committee how that report has then gone on to mean that enforcement action has been taken to investigate and people read it. I mean, we are all capable of having a report into an action to read it and then it goes into the long grass and nothing is done. So what action has actually been taken if it is enforcement action and the word is enforcement that keeps coming up that that is a power that you are using the report to enforce something. What has been enforced? If we take perhaps the work that we did on the outcomes as an example we have issued reports on three different reports assessing the performance around the duties so that was essentially an analytical report. From that we identified 27 bodies who were not compliant for we took action at that point. We then identified a further 45 bodies in terms of the outcomes where we felt that further work was needed. So it is a graduated approach in that sense. Have you got another? I suppose our human trafficking inquiry and our disability harassment inquiry both led to some significant changes in practice across different agencies so for instance the human trafficking inquiry has led to much improved multi-agency working across a range of services including police, the ground office so that was one of the recommendations. I wouldn't say report as an enforcement action a report may come out of an aspect of enforcement action such as an inquiry or an assessment but it would never be considered enforcement action on its own. Do you review those? Obviously the human trafficking that was picked up in the media people are very aware of it now but to say that work has been done and I'm sure it has been done and things have changed will that then be reviewed to show that this is what we're looking for this is the timescale what we're looking for we're in year 3 of dedicating resource to the human trafficking inquiry work we're in year 4 of dedicating resource to the disability harassment inquiry work so we don't stop after producing reports we have staff from the commission sit on the government led human trafficking task group and our job there is to hold government to account to deliver what they said they would deliver as much as possible with the bill team around human trafficking to ensure as much as possible the recommendations are built into the human trafficking bill so we don't produce reports and stop our work there it is challenging because a lot of the issues that we're trying to address are widespread systemic aspects of discrimination and we do have to at some point stop our focus in one area and turn our attention to other more pressing issues but I think that the human trafficking and disability harassment are both examples of where we've continued to invest resource because we do believe that there are important areas significant human rights and discrimination issues that we need to continue to invest energy in I understand that you'll have people working with the Scottish Government and various other aspects and bodies but will there be more reviews published so that the general public can see what's going on obviously they're not involved in everything that you're doing and know that you're doing so you've published a report as you said in year 3 of one year 4 of another for the general public they won't know that they won't know how those recommendations have been taken forward so are those things published for them in a fashion that they would understand? Our EHRC Scotland annual review what we're trying to do here is highlight the wide range of work and hopefully you'll have received a copy of this that covers all our key areas of work and it covers transfer of expertise our worker in human trafficking our worker in disability harassment and we explicitly set out here the impact what we set out to do what we did and what impact we believe we have had and the role that we've taken in relation to all these issues so that's published every year as a high level report of the work that we've done and we're investing our resources out of the work for the year ahead I understand what you have done but what I'm asking is the impact across communities about what you have said that has gone wrong because you're saying enforcement so a report has been taken because something is badly going wrong be that human trafficking be that disability, be it the local authorities whatever that may be something has gone wrong people are interested in it and what you're saying is obviously you continue to work in that but then in your annual report you'll focus on what you've been able to achieve and how that's been taken forward and not necessarily how the recommendations have been met or not met in the timescale that given so again, will you publish something like that or do you? We publish a range of information sometimes it's for us too other times it's not for us too and as I said earlier quite a bit of the work that we do is confidential so it's not for us to publish agencies if we're working with them to let people know what they're doing and it may not be for us to do that so it depends on the individual case that we're working on to be honest so again our work around public sector equality duty we produce these reports and we'll continue to produce reports about the work that we're doing and the improvements that we've seen in relation to the work of the public sector which is one of the reasons that we're doing an evaluation this year of that particular piece of work and these reports are all available on our website so the answer is it depends on the issue whatever possible yes we will be able to let people know what we've been doing what impact that's had for individuals for communities and for agencies Can I just go back to that and ask a question it might seem quite a very basic question but say we've got a local authority who are not collecting the data and information you require say for disabilities and race etc I'm assuming you go in and you work with them do they have timescales to actually achieve the criteria that you're looking for or do you just go in and speak to them and say you're not achieving this this is what we'd like you to do and then walk away or are they giving actual deadlines that they've got to complete for you to revisit them again and monitor them again? We would never enter into an agreement without clear timelines and clear expectations about what we would expect and by far the vast majority of times Chris has already said it is rarely if never a case of people not wanting to do the right thing it's often it hasn't been prioritised or they don't have the skills or the resource and we can help with some of that so we would never just go in and have a friendly chat and walk away What percentage would you leave them with the development plan that you would monitor and review on a regular basis then? If it's a formal agreement then we would expect an action plan to be delivered to us within a set amount of time which we would review and decide whether we felt that was satisfactory and it would achieve what we felt was compliant and if that action plan wasn't delivered in time we would then consider the next part of enforcement action What could you explain? Say they decided we really don't have time to do it it's not a priority and they kept putting you off and putting you off and not achieve what was set in the action plan what would you actually have the power to do? Ultimately we could take them to court for a breach of law but you'd obviously hope to work through that process first and get agreement in cooperation first It's not in anyone's interest How many times have you taken someone to court for not complying with an agreement that you've made? Are you talking about a public authority? Just in the example as the convener has said if they're not complying how many times have you taken them? In Scotland we've never taken a public authority We've never had to Have they always actually achieved the agreed objective that you've set out within the action plan? To the best of my knowledge yes they have delivered what was required of them at the time The work that we're doing now in the public sector equality duty we're obviously having to invest quite a lot of time, energy and resource to seek progressive and measurable improvement particularly around areas like employment monitoring Do you find, because the reduction staff and funding you find that is maybe not one of your top priorities or you haven't to re-prioritise this workload because of the lack of resources? If we have more resources there's more that we do without a doubt and every agency, every public body would say that in Scotland across the land we have had to change the way that we work and in part I think that the change in the way that we work is a bit more resource intensive so there are probably things that we might have wanted to do that might have been more proactive in the past or more promotional in the past We have had to dedicate it's much more an improvement model so we look at improvement and use our regulatory powers where necessary and also encourage best practice and the development of evidence to share across public bodies Without a doubt we have had to change the way that we work Our focus remains on our statutory functions one of which is on public sector performance In terms of viral, in terms of heading policy where a lot of that work in terms of public sector duty is located it is the top priority and if we had to go back to for resource reasons stop working in some areas that is the area that we would always preserve Okay, thank you Anybody else get any questions on the back of the subject now Can I move on now to John Finnie please Thank you Good morning, I would like to ask questions about the business plan which you alluded to in your letter of 29th of May and three points from there of a May The first one is about the engagement with businesses across Scotland to promote employer guidance How has that gone, how is it going and how would you tackle resistance People might perceive that it is due to get a more listening ear from the public sector than perhaps from private employers Partly because of the reallocation resources in our staffing in Scotland we we hadn't had much engagement with the private sector probably not since the days of the disability rights commission and others we made the Scotland committee made a conscious decision to work to re-engage with the sector at the end of last year and we undertook a range of activity with it was Glasgow Members who we worked with we basically put out a contract for someone who already works in this sphere to work with us to test out different approaches some of which were successful and some weren't it's an area that is very different for us as you say it's not like we have a private sector duty with which we can work I would say some of the more successful approaches that we've taken have been to develop case studies around employment law and film those and make them into resources that certainly seemed quite popular and holding a range of legal transfer of expertise type events with primarily HR and HR employees from private sector firms we're particularly keen to look at how we engage going forward with small medium sized enterprises given the sheer number of them in the country and how many people they employ we'll continue to work to deliver some guidance advice and support through a transfer of expertise events that run throughout the year but the other area of focus that has probably been more successful has been our sort of thematic approach so work particularly around the cleaning sector looking at vulnerable workers which has been a GBP piece of work I'm going to let Chris say a little bit about work we're now doing to transfer learning from our previous meat processing work over into the fishing industry and our colleagues from the north-east might be interested in that particular work and two other large scale pieces of work one which is looking at clarifying the law around religion or belief in the workplace we think on the back of various cases last year there is still a lack of certainty about what the law allows and doesn't allow and religion belief in the workplace so we're doing a significant piece of work engaging across GBP with employers and with service providers and with those who receive services who have experienced discrimination or have questions about religion or belief another major piece of work is around pregnancy and maternity discrimination it's been some 10 years or so since the Equal Opportunities Commission undertook a large scale survey into the scope of pregnancy and maternity discrimination we're following that up now with a detailed survey work across Britain and that will also include Scotland looking at both employers perspectives and employees' experiences around pregnancy and maternity discrimination so our work in the private sector is challenging without a doubt we've come across we haven't found it easy to gain a lot of interest and we are going to continue to look at different approaches we're always open to new approaches about how we can tap into that sector but our sort of thematic work certainly because the areas where employers across both public and private sector have expressed concern or interest in issues like religion or belief we expect to have more buy-in Chris, do you want to say anything more about private sector work? Alice has described a lot of the work like every organisation or regulator we have difficulty in engaging with SMEs it's not a secret, everybody has that difficulty so we're trying to find ways of getting in we tend to get contact from SMEs at the last point where something has gone wrong and that's where we try to engage with them or where they want to engage with us what we're trying to do is to continually turn that round because those are the basics that you have to know about this is how it works we're happy to work in support sectors but it is always a challenge and I'm not going to make any bones about that specifically on the fishing industry which Alistair mentioned this is something where we did a large inquiry where we had grounds for belief of discrimination particularly around London in the meat processing industry particularly about the employment of migrant labour and the terms and conditions of that we've had some discussions with the STUC there is an interest in particularly the fish processing industry we don't have the same grounds for belief I have to stress that we had for the work in London but we want to have a look at the sector it is again particularly migrant labour and women concentrated in the industry at the sharp end of the industry and we want to take the learning that we've had from the meat processing industry seeing that it's a very similar type of industry in a similar employee profile and try and prevent problems rather than simply respond to them through litigation I'm presuming that you'll engage with trade bodies and the like do you also involve the trade union movement this is a very early stage I have to stress so we are working with the trade union movement just now we're just about to start to talk to the migrant groups once we've got that sorted out we will then obviously engage with the bodies themselves the employers themselves The Gypsy Traveller it's an organisation you've had involvement in that in the past can you give us some idea of the timing and the research you're doing into site provision and how you envisage the findings may be used a very long and on-going issue personally I've been involved in this for 20 years from an area from a race relations point of view and then moving into the EHRC and it's a situation that we're not seeing resolution to and it's a situation which I think is predominantly about attitudes we can take enforcement action we have got very few cases coming through to us on that but there's an attitudinal shift which needs to happen in Scotland about the provision of sites a piece of work which we've commissioned this year and we're just at the point now of publication we just simply need to get the seminar set up to do this it's looking at four areas three in Scotland, one in Carlisle which is close and similar enough for us to include it in and it's looking at how continually when sites are proposed there is public opposition to the press or through community councils or community organisations we were interested in looking at sites where that type of heat wasn't generated so we've identified three in Scotland, one in the north of England where preparatory work was done where a positive approach was taken to engaging with the community both the gypsy travel community and the settled community we're just at the point of launching that just now we will want to promote that particularly at the moment as you'll be aware the Scottish Government has convened two or three groups looking at a national strategy for gypsy travellers which we wholeheartedly support and a specific group on housing both of which I'm on I think like the committee our sense is that until we get the site provision and accommodation issues it will be very difficult to make significant progress on education employment, life expectancy or other forms of health so it is a major issue for us it's a complex issue in terms of responsibilities there is no legal responsibility strictly speaking on a local authority to provide a site they have to assess need and they have to work towards meeting that need one of the things which I'm particularly keen looking in at the moment in the housing group in Scotland is to review where we've got to the guidance which has been provided by government has not resulted in new sites and that's the fundamental issue so we need to find ways of representing the issue we can learn from areas where site provision has not been contentious what is it about those areas the approach of the elected members the approach of the planning authority what is it that they've been doing which is successful in stark contrast to some of the other parts of Scotland I remember seeing you up in the site in Aberdeen on the north-east we have virtually it's a stalemate it would seem similarly on the west coast around Glasgow there is a significant lack of site provision so we will use the research it will feed into the Government's group it will feed into the strategy we will promote it with local authorities again one of the things that we're looking at doing is that making that link between successful authorities where planning applications are not seen as being contentious and trying to transfer that learning to those areas of Scotland where it is clearly contentious I could ask a particular personal interest in this and I could ask you questions if the community would not allow that will the findings be shared with the committee because the committee has already been involved in two strands of inquiry involved in the gypsy travel community that's the delivery of care and site provision and I wonder if you'd comment on one aspect that I have a frustration that a number of local authorities keep their head down so if they do nothing they're fine but if they do something and there's issues about that then they can get a stick from various quarters so if you're looking at a needs assessment then the needs assessment given that you've an itinerant community can't stop at the boundaries of your local authority there needs to be a broader approach taken and I don't know if that's something that's been picked up along the way Abs...no I mean I completely agree there I think if you take an area like East and Mid Lothian, East and Mid share a site that's absolutely fine and as long as there is provision in relevant, in an accessible and appropriate place the fact that one authority doesn't have it in its space I'm not particularly bothered about that I think in the North East which is the particular area of interest for us we need to have a regional approach to site provision and it's a mixture of transit and permanent sites in public, private or community ownership so that's the backdrop that we need a national strategy I think we also need regional approaches beneath that so we would want to see far greater working between the authorities in the North East, we had the Craigforth report some years ago which was very helpful extremely helpful in this issue but we haven't seen any progress from that I have two further questions and indeed one of them has been answered and it was about the legal aspects the final one related to something you told us in May and that was the preparation you were making for the referendum on independence now are you able to say said we will ensure proper thought is given to equality and human rights and effective post referendum structures are in place during any transfer of powers to full independence or further devolution I take it that you are keeping a very active watching briefing implications absolutely both as a Scotland directorate and with the Scotland committee and also as a GB organisation with the GB board we undertook two events leading up to the 18th one was probably more academic looking at what was what the situation was in different countries in terms of equality and human rights looking at what's possible and a round table event more with conversations to hear their thoughts and views our our sort of starting point and our key principle is around no diminishing from existing powers we are now hosting, planning to host in the second of October a further discussion and we're going to bring that whole range of people back together to hear where their thinking is at and what their views are to help inform our thinking so that we can respond appropriately to any implications around any further devolution so we are keeping an eye very firmly on the shifting landscape as it were OK, thank you, that's reassuring OK, thank you very much Mark Obiadio Just as a follow-up to that one I take it then that there is an intention to engage potentially with the Smith commission any further mechanisms because I'm aware of two equality organisations to me and I think to other MSPs that they would be interested in further devolution of equality laws is that a fair interpretation of what you just said? Well that's what I think other organisations have said I mean our role will be to respond to any proposals rather than to be setting our own proposals to be honest as a regulator our role is really just to sort of say this is how we think this may or may not impact on protection and promotion of equality in human rights but that's what we want to be prepared for and make sure that we are clear about what the range of stakeholders will have an interest and we've also been approached in the last few days by various organisations which is really helpful Excellent The thing that I wanted to ask about was again from the business plan it was about the work on identity based harassment in Scottish schools can you provide an update on where that is at the moment? Where are we? I've just read the research report the final version of the research report so we're now preparing that for publication that is really really helpful it contains a literature review of everything that we know in terms of research and data that's being done particularly in Scotland but then also looking slightly elsewhere and then two surveys which were done by the contractors one with 1,200 pupils and please forgive me I'm not completely under about a very significant number of teachers as well That report is as I say ready just being prepared for publication now so I hope it will be out in the next six weeks so thorough what we're now moving to do is to start to look at an intervention and again this is very much the improvement model that Alistair has been talking about that we will invite schools a very small number of schools to be fair because we have limited capacity here and it's we would want a typical school not a school that is particularly bad or a school that is particularly good at dealing with this issue but an average school and to put a resource into them to help them to learn from the report to look at the recommendations which have also already come out from my own wall and respect me just pulling all of that information together and putting testing and intervention in a school at the start of January from January through to March to evaluate that and then to be able to make a set of recommendations to other education authorities across Scotland about how we could start to improve practice one of the issues which has continually come up in this work is that there is no requirement on schools or local authorities to collate and publish data about identity-based harassment and that's an area which I think we will be wanting to pursue with the Government going forward because it is a it's an anomaly, a strange anomaly that we have a lot of police data which can tell us about the activities of school-aged children outside the school but we have no comparable data being inside a school and I find it odd that there wasn't a read-across between what happens just outside the school gate and what happens inside the school gate so it's an area which I think we would want to pursue it would help a lot of criminal justice agencies and a lot of the rehabilitative agencies to have that sort of data available about why, when, how of these types of incidents are occurring but particularly what can we do what's the culture that we need to place in schools what are the procedures and reporting mechanisms that we need to have to engage people's confidence but to move towards reduction inevitably in the way that these things work I would expect that as we introduce these programmes reports of harassment will go up because people who are less confident will start to be more confident that's a success measure so firstly over time we would expect to see that go down The model you suggest for further action of having a pathfinder is very interesting Going back almost to what Siobhan was saying about the follow-on from reports do you envisage a substantial level of engagement then beyond that with here is the example and actively promoting that to different schools and local authorities breaks me that if there are almost 400 secondary schools in Scotland as there are that would stretch anyone's resources 17 of us I think it would be wrong to think that the EHRC is the sole arbiter and the sole body responsible for these types of things the duties that we promote and that we are bound by are shared by the whole public sector in Scotland to set the measure we can develop the resources but for that to be effective we have to find a way of that being mainstreamed inside education authorities so we would be wanting to work with the Government the issue about statistics and making sure that the Government is collecting the right data ensuring that local authorities are doing that we will work in partnership but to a certain extent we've set the margin very much with the disability harassment inquiry areas we've defined the issue we've set out what good practice is we've worked with some of the key strategic agencies but the bubble has now passed to them All these pieces of work will have a sort of scale model so it is very much about us being able to input our expertise and resource in one or two schools testing what works taking it to the next level which might be 10 schools and then moving up the way to the improvement team in Scottish Government building on the model that has been used elsewhere like the Scottish patient safety programme so it does have a little bit of science behind it as well and we're using the same model working with Audit Scotland around audit and inspection activity so we're currently working with Audit Scotland to look at court efficiency which is one of their areas of inspection at the moment to look at how you would effectively build equality and human rights considerations in there look at the lessons learned in inspection and it's one way of trying to respond to the current climate Can I pass you over now to Christian Allard Thank you very much, convener I just wanted to go on three different parts and the first one we talked about it already which was of course human trafficking and I would like to explore maybe a bit more with the new laws coming in in Scotland about human trafficking your work you talked about year after year in the next three years will be more prioritised into the Scottish laws or will you have a GB wide agenda? We're interested in the issue of GB level there's obviously the modern slavery bill in England and Wales in human trafficking bill being developed in Scotland so the human trafficking work we are dedicating some Scotland resource to we have both a lawyer and our head of parliamentary affairs working with the trafficking group looking to develop that bill we haven't looked into the work we're going to do next year on that to be honest so the resource that we've committed to is only up until the end of March this year we'll work with the Scotland committee to look at what resource we have available and what the priorities are for next year so our key focus now is to make sure that the recommendations from the inquiry and the issues that we've picked up and follow up a year on and the year on report are built in as much as possible into the human trafficking bill in Scotland OK, and regarding enforcement to come back to the point of enforcement again, do you think that enforcement is more at the GB role and not you haven't got that kind of autonomy to have a different level of enforcement but it is at GB level? We've got a GB level litigation strategy which sets out some of the priorities in the ways that we work but we have a dedicated legal team in Scotland and they have a significant level of autonomy to undertake enforcement work on Scotland priorities so I wouldn't say that the lead there is GB we've got a GB legal team Scotland obviously that we're working with a different legal system and legal structure so we have a significant level of autonomy to undertake enforcement work in Scotland as we decide upon the key issue really is funding for cases so if funding is required for legal cases that then goes into a GB pot most of our funding is GB funding so if we want to apply to intervening cases we would need to go through the process that I described briefly earlier which is the sort of regulatory decision making process and we'd be asking the same questions is the strategic will it test out case law there might be an argument if even if case law has been tested out in England on the issue that it hasn't been tested out in Scotland so that may well in fact that has recently swayed an argument for undertaking a piece of work in Scotland which might not normally have gone through that filtering process It's again GB lead it's a well we're a GB organisation but we do have a significant level of autonomy to decide what work we would undertake and partly it depends on funding The question would have been if you had more autonomy would you consider enforcement differently No because the quality framework that we're working within is the same framework so we would I'm satisfied with what we currently take to enforcement in Scotland regardless Another question that's totally different on the modern apprenticeship programme against something which is very much Scottish based and what I would like to know is how do you monitor I know it's difficult to go on we need to go on to the skin of the data we talked about at community rival but we need to measure improvement as well on both sides to the programme for young people with disability and for ethnic minorities and also to reduce the extent of occupational segregation in all those programmes Can you tell us a bit more about that This was a piece of work that initially was going to be GB but Scotland took the lead on and this is one of the benefits of the ways that we can work as we can look at different themes or different areas of practice across GB Chris has led on that piece of work with the impact that that work has particularly on the wood report and I'll let Chris say some of the work that we're now doing to monitor progress and improvements I think you've hit the nail on the head and the issue with the modern apprenticeship programme is accessed but also monitoring when we looked at this we managed to get data about the amount of people by different characteristics who are in the current programme as we expected significant gender segregation but also very low participation from ethnic minorities but also particularly low participation from disabled people The difficulty is that in Scotland there is no monitoring of applications for apprenticeships so we don't know who's coming forward and if you don't know who's coming forward all you see is those people who have been successful so one of the recommendations that we're working on with Skills Development Scotland is to get that monitoring of applications in place because if young women are not applying for engineering apprenticeships in any number then that starts to explain that's one diagnostic thing equally if young women are applying for engineering apprenticeships but not getting them at a higher level than men we need to know that there are three things that we're looking for the first is monitoring as I said we're discussing that with the employability team and also with Skills Development Scotland and we're moving forward on that targets we think that there have been a lack of rigour or aspiration in the modern apprenticeship programme it's been very successful in its own right but in terms of equality it has not been successful so we want to see targets not quotas but targets being set which start to focus resource and thinking on why is it that only 0.3% of apprenticeships are going to disable people just now we want to have progressive things that's been recognised by Wood by the Wood commission and we endorse the targets that the Wood commission has started to set out and then finally the area that we're working on is about contracts that we feel that it will be of benefit to actually state specifically in the contract between the funder Scotland and the college or other providers of apprenticeship programmes that there are particular targets in place which they have to meet or they have to work towards not quotas but targets this has led us into a significant area of work around procurement as well where we are now working with the Scottish Government to develop what we're calling a worked example of equality and human rights in action in procurement so that we're not just looking at the isolation of modern apprenticeships but taking the learning from that work and taking it across all Government contracts and local Government contracts the NHS police colleges so we're hoping that this will be there are things that can be asked the research that we did I think indicated very clearly that there were improvements that could be made in contracting and in procurement and it's an area that we really want to look very closely at in terms of improvement over time it has a massive role to play in promoting equality in the private sector and also in communities Have you got a timetable for this work you're doing with Scotland? I'm currently trying to we have the group I'm trying to get the group to meet it's been a very difficult time in the last couple of months to get anybody to meet about things we're hoping to meet next month to commence the work we want to look at two or three live examples of procurement so that we can actually influence something as it's going through I anticipate that running through to the end of this financial year possibly a little bit longer it'll be written up and again the way that we've worked on procurement particularly is that we're working inside the Scottish Government's procurement journey so rather than publishing standalone guidance which may be a danger of sitting on a shelf we're integrating all of that thinking into the mainstream procurement activity and advice that the Government gives and that gives us immediate access to somewhere like 7000 procurement professionals across Scotland The last point I wanted to make and I'm delighted to see that as an office MSP that you've recognised that so again would commission there are good things coming out of the north east and when you took I worked myself as a fishing industry for 30 years and I'm quite interesting to know the assessment you made to decide that the meat example in London could be replicated in the north east of Scotland in the fishing industry and particularly John Finlay Michael asked a question about trade bodies I would have thought that the first port of call would have been trade bodies did you do the same thing in London was it trade bodies you talked to but first of all on-show and off-show we've got SFF off-show we've got Sifu Scotland on-show so there are trade bodies there and we'd be interested to have a strong dialogue review we've talked about dialogue with local authorities I think in private sector we should have the same type of dialogue Absolutely, it's a stage process we're approaching this in a very different way from the meat processing inquiry in England that was a formal investigation where we had grounds strong grounds for belief that discrimination was occurring or difference of treatment was occurring we don't have those we don't have that evidence just now it's an industry which has similarities in terms of its employee profile at the moment we are simply it's an exploratory piece of work it's not we're not going into this with the assumption that the industry has discriminatory practices we can't do that what we want to do first is to speak to some of those the employee representatives either that being through unions or through migrant organisations to get a sense of what they are hearing and what they think may be happening inside the industry if that were for example to come back saying everything is absolutely fine in the industry then that would affect our approach we will be taking a round table approach on this, I have to stress it's an area which we have only just started work on it's very early days on this so we have not got a full plan worked out for it at this point we're more than happy to come back to you either in writing or through other appearances to keep you updated on the work it's interesting about the engagement you have the private sector and the engagement you've got with the public sector you talked about your engagement with local authorities I think out there in the private sector people would like to have the same kind of engagement and not having enforcement first and then a discussion absolutely this is not an enforcement approach that we're taking we have no evidence at this stage of discrimination we've had a couple of cases but we have a couple of cases from different industries all the time it doesn't mean there's a significant issue it's an industry which by its profile suggests there may be vulnerabilities but we're not walking into this with any assumptions much as anything sharing good practice from elsewhere and seeing whether it's relevant and whether there may be some relevance if we can alter our guidance at all and share it with the industry to improve practice so it's absolutely not about enforcement can we take you back to the modern apprenticeship issue Mark, would you like to ask a question then I'd like to come in the back of it yes you had referred earlier to the difficulty of collecting data on sexual orientation and faith in all of our examination of modern apprenticeships those two haven't really come up yet and I wonder is that does that reflect that the data isn't being collected or does it reflect something else are those two strands being looked at with regard to modern apprenticeships and any early conclusions and struggling now to remember all of the tables that were produced by the I think from memory and I really would have to come back to you on this the data is being asked for across the protected characteristics part of the problem was that that data wasn't being collated some of it was because of very very low numbers and so again one of the areas that we would want to look at with particularly in terms of the monitoring and the setting of targets is how do we get better data on those areas at the moment we have really quite glaring findings about race, disability and gender which give us enough to be getting on with but absolutely we would want to extend that monitoring to get better monitoring data back on those areas again to start to determine whether or not inequalities are in balances and access for those other groups as well You mentioned you looking at Skills Development Scotland training providers will be set targets to actually achieve the set targets for people with the various disabilities, religious etc How are training providers actually able to achieve those targets if it's actually the employers who actually provide the modern apprenticeships to the training providers and most of the employers tend to be SMEs in the private sector so it seems to me that the work that your organisation has to do is to go in and contact those organisations and raise the awareness so that you actually do have the people that are disabled ethnic backgrounds, females etc working in the industry because training providers can only provide modern apprenticeship training to people that's employed with an employer so I'm kind of putting the ball back in your court and saying you really need to raise that awareness with the employers but then the training providers and Skills Development Scotland can actually achieve the criteria Absolutely, it's a very different situation from other parts of the UK where there is a direct access to apprenticeships so we're very, very aware of that that said 0.3 of all apprenticeships go to disabled people I don't think that that is representative of a young disabled people's employment pattern I'd said that there may be it may not be the 20% which is the general figure that we look at because of the age issues about disclosure there are a number of issues there so yes it is dependent on that pipeline coming from employers I still don't think that the 0.3% is in any sense reflective of that as to who should be doing this Absolutely, when the commission has a role to raise awareness as we are doing generally across the board with employers specifically around that but again as we've talked about in other areas our job is very much to set the pace in this area it's important that the agencies like Skills Development Scotland the colleges that they take the responsibility for this and that they take this forward because this is their full time that's their purpose to influence that and to ensure that the way that they are working promotes the greatest accessibility for all people so we're working with them, we'll help them we'll look at strategies but we don't have the resource or the remit frankly to go in and do that detailed work with every employer I suppose the conversations that we had with Sir Ian Wood as he undertook his piece of work also about how we influence elsewhere so working with agencies like Skills Development Scotland meeting with Sir Ian Wood to share our findings and to work with his team to look at what possible recommendations there might be leading to 13 of the 39 recommendations in the report focusing on aspects of equality and access which then starts tapping to some of the upstream factors about expectations of school leavers and some of those other pipeline issues so again with limited resource that's how we tend to try and target our expertise and our final question is from Siobhan thank you I'm just wondering of course that we've now got a cabinet secretary for equality so how many times have you met with Shona Robison since her appointment? we've met once since her appointment again I go back to Chris's point it's been quite a busy time to engage and meet but we have had a discussion with the gypsy traveller work for instance and whether the cabinet secretary would be willing to work with us on launching that particular product so to know and how many times have you met with Rosanna Cunningmore over the last three years given that she's got responsibility for religion and still does even though we have a cabinet secretary for equalities? we have met in a variety of platforms I don't think directly one to one but in a range of discussions thank you I imagine that issues come up but given that for instance one piece of work has been the offensive behaviour and threatened communication bill where religion is a big part of that to have a minister that's responsible solely for religion you would have thought that she would be engaging one to one with the HRC so it's just to get that information you mentioned pay gap issues and talking about some of the things that have come up with discussions with Scottish Government officials I'm just wondering how given that you have spoke about that how you're taking that forward as much as having a discussion at that level which is welcome and I'm sure the committee will welcome that it's about taking that forward and getting real progress on an issue that a lot of us are frustrated by so is there anything concrete at the minute that you've set out that you wish to take forward with the Scottish Government? The national programme In terms of the public sector again we have problems with the in the way in which pay gaps have been identified and measured in the public sector is inconsistent, is wildly inconsistent at the moment and one of the things that's part of the programme of what we're doing with the Government, one of the particular areas of that is around the pay gap and payback calculations as I say there is a variety of different ways which are being adopted by public bodies working with the Government and close the gap what we want to do is again to understand why there is this variety of ways being taken forward and to start to recommend particular approaches for particular sectors so that we can get more uniformity across that area we're just in the process just now of finalising that project with the Government met with them yesterday as Alasdair said further discussing that close the gap we hope will be engaged to lead that work forward and to come up with a set of proposals which we can then put in place from the start of next year in terms of again that improvement work of identifying those public bodies are doing it well and who we can be confident about their calculations and transferring that learning and knowledge to those organisations who are struggling at the moment it's very difficult to to make any comparison across or between sectors just now about equal pay performance because of that variety of different ways which have been employed the commission can't we can recommend we's are doing it but we can't we simply what the Scottish specific duty says is that data has to be produced it doesn't say how that data is produced just to add a GB level I mean this is an issue that the commission is interested in across the piece and we are looking at a fairly significant programme of work starting specifically on pay gap next year working up the details of that to make sure that it aligns with the Scotland specific duties which are obviously different from specific duties in England and in Wales so we expect to be putting more and more focus on this issue the committee informed of the work that you are doing on that because I think that would be very interesting for us all the initial proposals are in draft so if it would be helpful to see as soon as they are available to circulate more widely we would welcome people's contributions and thoughts that would be great thank you a phrase that has come up in the business plan whether there are expertise or transfer the knowledge that that has come up lots, I am just wondering has the HRC carried out a skills audit of its own staff given that obviously I am sure you don't profess to be the expert group on everything so have you carried a skills audit of your 17 staff and transferred that knowledge between groups who wish to work with you I am not entirely sure whether we have done a formal skills audit we have when we were looking to recruit our last set of Scotland committee members we did a bit of a skills audit across the organisation and the existing committee to identify areas where we felt we didn't have so much expertise and we used that information to target recruitment for Scotland committee members the transfer of expertise programme is quite a specific piece of work which goes out to inform we have done one specific event with third sector for instance so we have tried to target the transfer of expertise programme not just at lawyers or advice givers but also to the third sector to understand the scope of the public sector duty and how it can be used to influence change not just in courts but through a range of mechanisms I don't think that quite answers your question though but we do try and use our intelligence we get information and requests from a wide range of audiences to go off and speak we regularly on a quarterly basis we assess who is asking us for information who is asking for us to go and speak or to contribute to working groups to make sure that we are covering the range of protective characteristics in human rights which span our remit and if there are any gaps we would then try and address that go off and speak to different groups to find out whether there is anything particularly good to do to help so we do a range of things to try and match up what we do, what we know, what people want and what they are asking us for and that also helps to inform our business planning process It would be helpful if you could undertake the skills audit in a formal capacity in that obviously you have done a report into what powers and obviously you looked at independence but further devolution will mean that you are taking part because you have been on this train asking for more powers and devolution anyway but we need to know where you are at at the minute to be able to establish where we want to go so as a formal process that would be helpful to the committee and for others to look into if you could just finally on the guidance and lots of guidance that you have published a lot of voluntary organisations in particular have raised concerns with us that they might not be included in that guidance because they are an open and transparent organisation that they might not be at the table when such guidance is formed Is that something that you are looking at to include voluntary organisations in particular but those who have an interest in equalities and human rights bring them to the table to issue guidance and not necessarily rely on your own organisation? I think that in everything we do we look at who the appropriate stakeholders are so if we want to engage with business then the appropriate stakeholders are not necessarily voluntary sector organisations it is probably trade bodies or others so we do look at all the work all the work that we do and work out who is best to sit round the table and I think that the piece of work that we are engaging in now with the Scottish Government and as we have said already we had a full-up discussion on this yesterday the work is looking at issues like pay gap and bridge the gap who are an NGO organisation around the table on that so I do think that we target our engagement appropriately we also have a role in statute to undertake the development of various pieces of supporting guidance and at times it will be appropriate to get other views and at other times it won't to inform our approach around constitutional reform we've had very wide reaching engagement with everyone from inclusion to stonewall and others so I'm satisfied that we have a robust enough stakeholder engagement programme in place to respond to the as you can see from our business plan and around your review really wide scope and range of activity wanted to take I would love to be able to do more but we have to focus our attention on the resources where we can If I could maybe just add to that It depends very much on the nature of guidance some things like codes they have a very specific legal function and they have a particular purpose other areas and just to give two pieces of guidance that we issued recently one about seek articles of faith absolutely seek community was completely involved in that it would be nonsense not to have involved them in it procurement it's a much more abstract area the link between equality and procurement people in Scotland who have that knowledge so where the audience for the procurement guidance is very clearly the procurement professionals Would trade unions be part of that then procurement just because you mentioned procurement did you engage in trade unions SDEC on procurement? I would have to go back and look at it I remember my team did it directly involved in it myself but I'll happily to come back to you on that I think that another important point is that part of our role is to ensure that public authorities in meeting their duties engage appropriately with organisations and their communities and that's where we think again we can add value in terms of different voices contributing to improving services Thank you both very much for coming along and passing on the information and answering more questions That concludes today's meeting and our next meeting will take place on Thursday 2 October Thank you very much