 I want to welcome everyone to the 19th meeting of the Standards Procedure and Public Appointments Committee in 2022. Our first agenda item is the decision to take agenda items 4 and 5 in private. Are the committee agreeable to that? Yes, we are. I'm grateful. Our second agenda item is to welcome representatives of a proposed cross-party group on Scots language. Cymru i'r newid i Jackie Dunbar, i'n gweithio i Emma Harper, ac i'n ddechrau'r gweithio ar y gweithgat dda'r dda. Felly, rydw i'n gallu'n gwneud i chi i gyd ddod ar y cwmfaenol y CPC. Felly, rydw i'n gweithio i'n gweithio i'r cwmfaenol. Felly, rydw i'n gweithio i'r cwmfaenol, ac rydw i'n gweithio i'r cwmfaenol, ac rydw i'n gweithio i'r cwmfaenol. It's brought to be here to propose the restart of the cross-party group on the Scots language or the Scots lead, along with my colleague Jackie Dunbar at MSP, where her cell is a fantastic native speaker with Scots Doric. This is in our own national parliament, convener. Scots is a language. It was ratified by the UK Government Charter in 2001 and recognised by UNESCO as an indigenous language. I'd like to pay tribute to former MSP Rob Gibson if we convened a Scots CPG in Session Fower this place. His great efforts to advance Scots our Scotland and his statement of principles, which I have here, it was produced by his CPG. It's still relevant and valuable for a resource to build on. The reason we want to restart the CPG is because Scots is an important part of Scotland's culture and heritage, appearing in songs, poems and literature, as well as modern-day use of the Shetland to Stranraer. Quite simply, the Scots language is of clean importance to Scottish identity. Scots was the state language here, a 4603, so its importance and the need to continue to protect and promote Scots is clear and can be denied. In 2011, the Scottish Census, 1.5 million people had reported that they could speak Scots, and I'm looking for it to the census results next year to see the numbers are mere. Scots is both a historical and modern vibrant language. Literacy giants like Robert Burns, Hugh McDermott and Walter Scott wrote in Scots, and there are many modern screvers who make me prude to see what they write and their confidence in taking Scots for it. However, Scots needs mere national attention, focus and political support. This cross-party group will therefore bring together folk for the Scots community to focus national attention here and across the country to advance and promote spherin and screven in Scots, and we want to raise questions of and provide clarity and guidance to the Scottish Government as they tack for it the promised Scots language legislation in this session. More important, this CPG will work to ensure that Scots is here for generations ahead. We will work to ensure that young folk hear the opportunity to teach Scots at school, which has already shown mere than a scanty increase in attainment. We want to inspire confidence in wanes and bairns across our country so that they can be chuffed when the ye Scots, wherever, whether they are native speakers or no. As the main historian of Scots, Ur Mither Tung sterted money, money years ago, Ur and Digu's language, it is really important that we hear duty to promote, protect and celebrate its contribution to Scotland's identity and future, even if Scots continues to evolve. I therefore ask the Stannars Committee to approve the CPG, and we are happy to tack on equations for the members. Thank you, convener. Excellent, thank you very much indeed. I will open up to questions from the committee. Alexander, would you like to? Thank you convener, and thank you very much for your presentation Emma. The purpose of your outline is to try to ensure that you promote and encourage. In your written information this morning, you talked about trying to ensure that the Scottish Government will take on some legislation. Can I just ask you to expand how you intend to do that and what your purpose of that is? Yes, sure. My understanding is that the Scottish Government is proposing a Scottish language legislation. There is currently a consultation on Gaelic and Scots and how to revise Gaelic, I suppose. Part of the conversation is that we have a border of Gaelic, so do we need an equivalent for Scots or do we take a different path and help to promote Scots in another way? There are loads of experts that I have met in the past couple of years that have ideas of how they would think that we should take Scots forward, whether it is at school, whether it is in public, whether it is in cultural events. That would allow us to have discussions about the best way to suggest how the Government can support Scots. I ask the same question to everyone. I am always very conscious having shared many discussions with Peter Chapman that there are different dialects and I am going to leave it there because Peter, if I said anything out of term, would probably jump on me. I want to be sure in my mind that there are a huge amount of cross-party groups in the Parliament and I know that each of you has commitments to those cross-party groups. In fact, I think that there are almost more cross-party groups than there are MSPs. Do you both feel that you have enough time to give the attention that it so clearly deserves? I can only speak for myself, but I would say absolutely that I am very careful in the cross-party groups that I pick. I am sure that they have to debu my constituency, but the Scots leading for me is just a no-brainer. If I can just take out a wee second. The reason it is so important to me is that my Baron said to me recently that she had just been offshore, so she is a wee bit ealler, but she is still my Baron. Somebody asked her where she came from and when she said Aberdeen, she went and spoke off her posh. She said that is because my mum taught me bilingual, she said that she taught me the Doric and she also taught me the English. That is funny, but it is kind of nae in a way, because I remember going to school, walking into school primary one and suddenly getting told that the way I spoke was not right. Steens with stones, muckel, it was a lot, muckel was a few. They did not even care for a bosie with. A bosie is the nicest word in this world, it is a cuddle. Far does not want a bosie. It is important that we use our language and promote it as much as we possibly can. Sorry, I am going on a wee bit ealler out there. You are convinced that you have enough time in all your parliamentary commitments to do this? Absolutely. I am aware that there are 118 cross-party groups already. I tried to merge a few of them so that we would have a better capacity. If we plan carefully, we will make the diaries work. We have already identified that Jackie and I can be co-conveners. Ariane Burgess and Sarah Boyack are deputy conveners, so we have the capacity to have others to step in if there are problems in the diaries. However, we know that we plan to meet four times a year, so four times a year to me seems quite realistic. There are events throughout the calendar that are cultural that will help to promote the work of the cross-party groups. I am confident that this will be an absolutely fun cross-party group for any members to join, whether they are native speakers or not. I am sure that it will be fun and worthwhile, but it is just to make sure that the commitments are right. I am sure that you are aware of the reports that have to be submitted to the Parliament, and I will probably just leave it there. Just a few questions. I am looking at the purpose of the cross-party group, and one of them is to preserve, promote and encourage the Scottish language on MSPs at the wider Scottish Parliament and Scottish society. We start thinking about our own background, and we are not bringing in our own language, dialects, slang, Scots or whatever. I am just wondering whether in everyday conversational exchanges in this place and beyond, we are using Scots and we do not even know that we are doing it, and it is sometimes about raising awareness. I will be very contrived if I give examples, because I will not do that, but I am just wondering if there is an awareness that is being raised among people who stay in Scotland who have got everyday Scots. We use, but we simply do not realise or we are aware that that is what we are doing, and would that particular purpose help to identify that? It is not about educating people on how to use Scots, because many people will be using it anyway. We simply would not be aware. Thanks for that question. In our work, we have worked with the Scottish Language Centre to help to look at the work that they do and how they can promote and help to support the raising awareness of it. We also have a Scottish language policy in this place, so we have members who are in official reports who are really supportive in using whatever words we use in chamber, in debate or in questions or even in committee that they will make sure that it is transcribed properly so that when we look back at official report, we can find that Scots is used in this place as well. The chief executive of this place and I met before recess because I was keen to look at how we can promote the use of Scots in the Parliament. We now have a wee poster with a QR code that takes you directly to the Scottish Language Centre so that folk, while they are in and about campus, can learn about the resources that are out there to help to raise awareness. There are loads of folk working together, such as we, Wendy's, Urvys, Scottish Language Centre and many others. If we help to look at sharing their information on social media, the people who are using everyday Scots can then realise that that is what they are doing without even being aware of it? I think that that is helpful. Another question I have is that I was quite staggered by the amount of individual members of cross-party groups. Sometimes we are asking the opposite of this question, which is that you have not got very many individual members, how are you engaging with wider society? I am staggered by the amount of individual members who have got as well as associate organisations who are key partners of the group. That presents a very welcome challenge but a challenge nevertheless about how you engage with wider membership. I am just wondering about that wider membership. Of course, there is no requirement for them all to be active, but how many of them do you think will be active and dynamic within the cross-party group? It is quite something to see what is 120 or 130 individual members. It is to be commended, but it is a challenge to keep them engaged. We have had a couple of meetings up until now. It has been online. Because Scots has spoken through Shetland, Teistra and Roir, we find that meeting online means that people can participate and engage rather than bringing everybody here. We have had great attendance and dissemination information through email and engagement and support. Our secretariat, which is the Scots language centre, is the one that has helped to supply us with all the connections and the people. It has already connected and has contact with the 128 potential individual members and groups. I am confident that we will be able to continue to support online engagement and electronic engagement to make sure that we keep folk up-to-date with what is going on. I am encouraging the sheer extent of individual members, but no further questions. It is one question as well. It is an observation more than anything else, and it is to do with the membership. It is very welcome that it is a female membership in terms of your group going forward. Are you doing anything to try and attract male members on to the CPG? Already done it quite. We have got the Joe Fitzpatrick on Tuesday night when he heard that we were coming along and said, why am I in it? I said, well, you never joined up, but you are made and welcome, as it is an open invitation to all. We have got the mannys coming already, haven't we? That is right. We also have, as well as men, diverse backgrounds of people, so we have people who, in the first language, were not in the Scots or moved to this country from South Asia or wherever. We hear them every day when we are out and about. There is an opportunity to not just make this for the lassies but to make this for a wider audience as well. That is very heartening to hear that. Thank you very much. As convener, I always get one exciting question. From the evidence that we have heard today, you are actually using Scots as a collective description for a number of, unfairly so, maybe minority languages here in Scotland, but that is right. You are looking at the scope of minority languages and covering the phrase Scots. I look particularly at the groups including the Doroc Society that have signed up to. Just for clarification, it is not just what perhaps we in the south of Scotland would call our lowman Scots, but Scots in the proper collective definition. Thank you, convener. It is all Scots whether you speak the Buchan Doric that Peter Chapman used to speak in the chamber. I used to love it when he stood up and spoke, because it was like listening to my granny and grandda again. I mean that with full respect. I absolutely loved it. There is the Aberdeen Doroc, the South of Scotland. Everybody's dialect is welcome, as they say in Aberdeen. Welcome and important. Absolutely. One of the things that we were speaking about, as I am learning about the language and the grammar and the grammar that makes Scots different from English, so a couple of examples are where I come through there's a place called Port Patrick in Lochans, but everybody calls it the port and the Lochans or they say I'm going to the toon. So when I was speaking to Joe Fitzpatrick the other night about it, he said that that's replicated in Dundee where folk call, they use the in front of whatever place they're talking about. It shows that Scots is wide and it's spread across Scotland, including Orkney and Shetland. It's not that we've got all these different minority languages, it's just the way Scots evolved, the way it came out of old English and Danish and even Norse influence. We have a language that is vibrant and it needs to be promoted and when we start speaking to each other about the history and the grammar that makes Scots different from English, it just reinforces for me the need to continue to promote it. That's very helpful. Thank you for attending committee this morning. We'll consider the application for the proposed CPG as our next agenda item and the clerks will be in touch with you in due course, but can I thank you for coming today? Thank you. Indeed, committee, we now move to agenda item 3, cross-party approval. Are we in the mind to approve the CPG, Edward? Can I just say I've never disagreed with any of the cross-party groups? You'd be a brave MSP to do so, but I just always like to record on record that the number of cross-party groups in this Parliament I think is huge and I question truthfully in my mind whether all MSPs have enough time to do all their commitments to the cross-party groups. So I'm not going to vote against it, I will of course vote for it, but I have that real concern. The concern perhaps will be borne out when you see the reports from the cross-party groups as they come in, obviously on time, but possibly not always on time. I'll leave that question hanging. Thank you, Edward. Just very briefly, I share the sentiments that Mr Mountain raised. He spoke to them on the record, irrespective of which cross-party group was seeking approval here this morning. We normally ask questions to witnesses about duplication and overlap. We didn't really do that this morning, which I think tells us that there is a clear gap within the Scottish Parliament to cross-party group landscape for this cross-party group. So, on other occasions, we've said, yes, we'll approve this cross-party group. The rule should work closely with this group or that group or another group. We weren't doing that this morning. There seems to be a clear identifiable gap within the Parliament, and I wish Jackie Dunbar, Emma Harper and others on that cross-party group the very best in filling that gap dynamically and positively. I'm sure that the bill should be approved here this morning. Alexander? You cannot do anything but be impressed, convener, about the number of people and individuals that have sought to be involved in this cross-party group and the organisations that they are aligning themselves to. That once again gives us confidence that this will be a group that will be very active, that will take forward its purpose and its role very collectively and responsibly. I'm encouraged by that, and I look forward to seeing how this group, when it does, progresses, because I think it will progress. I'll echo what everyone else has said. I know how passionate Emma is about our Scots language as well. It's a big welcome in Parliament as well that we keep that going, from a cultural point of view, from a Scots point of view as well. I've seen the paper and it came through. I'm very much welcome it. Like Bob said, there does appear to be a gap there. It's, again, just reiterated that it's a big welcome here, and I wish them good luck. Absolutely. Are members agreed to accord recognition to the proposed CPG? Yes. Excellent. Thank you. The clerks will pass that on in due course. I'm now going to move the meeting into private.