It's good morning and welcome to this, the ninth meeting of 2015 of the European and External Relations Committee. Can I make the usual request that mobile phones have been switched off or on silent place? Can I make apologies for Ann McTargett, who's not with us this morning? We've got a very packed agenda item this morning, two round tables on our inquiry about connecting Scotland. Our first item this morning is with the college sector in Scotland. I think it's very apt that we're having this session today from the David Livingstone room, given that we are talking about our connections with the rest of the world and Scotland's connections with parts of the world that we view as our friends. If I go round the table and just allow people to introduce themselves, is that okay? I'm Christina McKelvin, the convener of the committee. I'm Hans Lamalic, I'm the vice-convener of the committee. Willie Coffey, MSP for Commander in the Valley. Andrew Campbell, international development manager for Valley College. Roderick Campbell, MSP for North East 5. Dougal Craig, acting chief executive of West of Scotland Colleges partnership. Adam Ingram, MSP for Carrick Cymru and Doon Valley. I'm Shona Pettigree, head of external funding and international business development at New College Lanarkshire. Emma Meredith, international director at Edinburgh College. Ann Kant, international manager for Dundee and Angus College. Jamie McGregor, Highlands and Islands MSP. Margaret Moncton, principal and chief executive of Perth College, UHI. George Hodge, assistant principal at West Lothian College. Good morning and I welcome you all to committee. Thank you very much for the written evidence that you have provided us. We are gathering a huge stock of written evidence on this topic. It's obviously inspired a lot of people to write to the committee and we're very grateful for that, indeed. We're going to use a table example of committee rather than witnesses giving evidence, so we try to make the conversation as free-flown as possible, but if you could just catch my eye and channel through me it means that we can have some sort of an order. I don't expect you all to be jumping in anyway, but if you could just do that, it allows me to flag it a wee bit more in hands of Alice Firstan. Thank you very much. Good morning and welcome to our meeting this morning. I've historically been very keen in encouraging students from overseas to come and study at our universities and colleges. I know that recently there's been some issues about immigration difficulties for students to come. I wonder if you could share your experiences with us in terms of how that is affecting your membership of students coming from overseas and has that, in fact, impacted on your financial situation as well as the offer of topics that you may have been able to offer in the past? I offer some feedback on that. Perth College, UHI, is college part university. When we offer HE-type programmes, we operate as a university. When it's FE, we operate as a college, so we straddle both sectors. We had built up an amazing partnership relationship with Andhra Pradesh region in India, and we were getting whole streams of Indian students who were aspiring to be aircraft engineers because the aircraft industry in India was being invested in, so it was helping the Indian economy, it was helping our economy, and we were getting up to, well, over 200 students a year studying on our aircraft engineering degree. We were subjected to changes under the tier 4 UKBA and now UKVI, the post-study work visa, because the Indian continent is a pretty poor continent. We had to heavily discount the fees, so we were only receiving the same for an international Indian student as we were for a home student. There was no premium for us, so that was truly in order to be international and to have that diversity within our campus. They came to us for year 2 onwards, so they would do their year 1 of their degree in India and they did year 2, 3 and 4 in Perth. The Perth economy got very used to having a lot of Indian students around. They are very respectful, they are very positive young people and their families have to save up incredibly hard to pay for the money that they have to vouch for as being able to live in the country on a funded basis. Those families had to make major sacrifices in order to send their sons, mainly their sons, but we had some daughters as well, which was very pleasing to study in Scotland. A big part of that was them being able to work for two years after their degree, where they could contribute also to our economy. They could do some further useful learning in getting their ASA part 66, which would licence them as engineers back in India, so we could add value to their degree, but they could earn money to pay back their parents. That was a significant part of the equation. The UKVI put in all of a sudden in a July one year that they wanted an additional £3,000 deposit from Indian families, so not only had they to vouch there, they could pay their fees and they could live in Scotland for the years that they were studying. They also had to put in a bond of £3,000 in addition to that, so those who were in the pipeline actually dropped out the pipeline because it was just a step too far. I understand the immigration dilemma in the country, but students are not part of that dilemma, in my opinion. I think that that is where the problem is that we seem to be classing students as immigrants rather than students, which is a totally different category altogether. If they were to remove that category or reclassify that category, it would change a lot. I am not sure about other colleges as well, but we in Glasgow seem to be suffering similar experiences, and it was important to get some feedback from colleges who can verify that that is an issue. We now have no pipeline. After 2015-16, we have no pipeline coming through those partnerships. It simply does not work. We have gone from over 200 students coming through from those universities and some direct spot entries to nothing in 2016-17. We will have no progressing students and no new students from India. Is that a similar experience to others? Yes, I have shown up and then dugled. I will just reiterate what you said at New College Lanarkshire. We are very much reactive in terms of international student recruitment because of the difficulties that you describe. I know that, in our region south Lanarkshire College, in the past, I have had a large number of international students and they are facing the same issues that you describe. I think that these individual examples demonstrate that there is a real strategic problem here, and I think that it demonstrates the need for the Government and the Parliament to work in partnership with the sector to progress this. One of my roles is that I am the only college-based member of a team called the UK team of European higher education area experts. We are tasked with the role of promoting better international engagement for the HE sector. Now, the HE sector does include colleges. As you know, 25% of the HE in the UK is done in the college sector. There is a team of us that are going to be going around about the UK over the next 18 months, encouraging institutions to engage more effectively internationally, to increase the number of students that are coming in to do short-cycle programmes, degree programmes, masters and PhDs. At the same time, that message is driven by Dbiz, but at the same time, you have the foreign and commonwealth office that will be making it difficult for people to get visas to get in. However, the other frustrating bit about that is that there is a big pot of money available under the Erasmus Plus programme called international credit mobility, which is there to support the development of relationships between UK institutions and institutions all over the world. It funds things like sending staff and students over and bringing them in. I think that there is a strategic issue that needs to be addressed. We as a sector need the Government and the relevant civil servants and the Government to fight that case for us. Recruitment. I agree with the comments that have gone before about the reduction in student numbers to the college sector in Scotland but also in England and Wales as well. It is probably also evidenced by the number of colleges now that do not have a tier 4 licence because the risks involving student recruitment are too high versus the numbers that they can safely recruit. You will see that many colleges have had to change the markets that they operate in because a number of them are deemed to be high risk. I think that this is very unfortunate, but this is the position that we are in at the moment. That is the immigration policy, and it is a non-negotiable part of international activity that you have to work with in the parameters of tier 4. You have to do it very carefully in order to retain your licence. Until such a time as that policy changes, I do not see the number of international students growing coming to the college sector in Scotland, which is a huge shame given the fact that there is a rise around the world in the need for vocational skills and training, which we are best placed to offer. I also feel that the colleges in terms of the student applicants are treated differently to university applicants. It is very hard to evidence how and exactly why that happens, but in terms of the number that will go for a tier 4 credibility interview, for example, it is pretty high from the college sector. However, at the same time, it is important to recognise that student recruitment is only one part of international activity that colleges can be engaged in and that many colleges will have changed their strategy to be engaged in, for example, Erasmus Plus projects, but in vocational and professional training, that this is a huge source of potential growth for the college sector and that we have a lot more to offer other than student recruitment. It should remain part of our strategies, but there is a lot more work that we can be delivering as the college sector in Scotland. I am interested in discussing with the witnesses how they can achieve better international engagement and the difficulties of that. I notice from the paper from West of Scotland College that it is notable, with the exception of West of Scotland's support to its member colleges, that there is no overarching European or international engagement strategy for the college sector, and it goes on to say, which you mentioned that for, that you recognise that the leaderships of such strategy have been invested in the regional chairs, but it should also take cognisance of the cabinet secretary's guidance for colleges, and then you end up by saying that you contend that in the absence of such a strategic approach limits the sector's capacity to generate a significant European and international impact on skills and learning as its expertise should permit. How much do you rely on the cabinet secretary's guidance? Does everybody think that? Do they think that they should be guided by the cabinet secretary? How can we improve things so that you can get more international engagement? Can that go? The colleges have a responsibility to follow the cabinet secretary's guidance, that is the way that the SFC directs funding, and the colleges have a responsibility to make the regional outcome agreements. That is a given, that is just part of the daily operation. Is it not suggesting here that there is not any guidance? No, what is suggesting is that, unlike other sectors, such as health, universities and enterprise, we have a set of aspirations in the college sector at the minute. They are pretty diverse. I agree with Emma that it should not just be a rich international student recruitment. There are other things that we can do, but we do not have a collective strategy for taking us forward. If I compare the Scottish college sector with the Northern Ireland college sector, for example, they recognise that they were quite far behind in international engagement. As a consequence of that, the Northern Ireland executive developed a strategy to help to support college efforts to improve their international engagement, and they engaged with the colleges to see how that could be taken forward. They provided some funding, a fairly modest amount, of £40,000 to £50,000 each year for two or three years. However, the other part that is important is that, in order to build relationships with other countries and to influence external funding streams that could support the college sector in being more effective, we need representation on the relevant committees. Because I do work with the university sector and the college sector, I want to see the civil servants in the Scottish government who work with the university sector on international engagement and things like that are pretty well aware of all the opportunities and forums that could influence those opportunities that are around, and they engage with them. I do not think that we are enjoying that same level of engagement from the civil servants who are responsible for the college sector part of things. I see some colleagues nodding their heads, so I will take that as a sign of agreement. I think that we need a strategy that is driven from the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government should help us to articulate a vision of where we want to go. We should set targets not just in numbers but in the quality of things that we would like to do and perhaps in countries with whom we would like to engage. That strategy needs to be resourced. There are good examples in Finland, there are good examples in Sweden and there is a really good example in Northern Ireland, where a fairly modest investment can start to make quite significant differences. I will introduce another barrier to us being able to do that. There is no limit to our aspirations to be effective and to engage internationally. We have been reclassified, the colleges have been reclassified, by the Office of National Statistics, and we are now central government arms length bodies. That restricts the amount of uses that we can make of commercially generated income. I am not saying that we all engage in international activity only to earn commercial income, but that is a nice side line and a benefit of true internationalisation of our curriculum and our economy and our social fabric within the colleges. The current situation is that if we generate commercial income, we have to spend it in the year that it is generated so that we cannot use it for longer-term investment purposes. We act like chickens without heads and try to get rid of the money quickly in order to not lose it. The other alternative under the restrictions that now apply to us as organisations is that we can sterilise the cash that we gain from commercial activity, which includes international fees, by transferring that cash into arms length foundations and then bringing it back out again. We can convert the cash by just transferring it into an arms length foundation and back out. The complications that are arising and hampering our ambition and putting us in a box from which we are desperately trying to escape, not because we disagree with the classification but because we disagree with the fixes that have been put in place by the Government in order that they still want us to engage internationally, they still want us to generate commercial income but there is no joined-up thinking as to how we can usefully reinvest that money in our college premises because that is why we were trying to generate income in the first place was to reinvest it for all our students benefit. That puts a different complexion on the anxiety being currently caused by the amount of millions that are currently sitting in arms length foundations. Most of that was generated over the years by colleges who were looking at this as a long-term investment strategy on their campuses for the benefit of all students and paid for by their international activity. I will go a step back and challenge in a way Wascop in his statement about lack of strategy. The college sector, it is fair to say, has undergone a rational change since 2013. Our overarching agency, Colleges Scotland, has indeed been in the throes of radical change and we are just getting there in joining up the efforts of the sector and our overarching agency, Colleges Scotland. Colleges Scotland board comprised mainly of regional leads and those regional leads were appointed by the then cabinet secretary, Mike Russell, to represent or to sort out the college sector. One of those who happened to be a great guy who was affiliated to St Andrews University led an international working group as a regional lead. If the committee members would refer to the paper that they have from Colleges Scotland and indeed just go to the annex of that paper, you will see that the early work that was done to pull us all together under Stephen McGee established principles with which we could then develop a strategy and a coherent strategy. Life moved on and these regional leads went through a public appointment system and became regional chairs and they now form the Colleges Scotland board. So international has not been lost, the focus on international has been dented by UKVI and by our reclassification but the corporate affairs committee of Colleges Scotland has a grip on a future international strategy for the Colleges in Scotland. It is where we are and we have had a lot to do and international has been de-prioritised quite rightly because we are doing all sorts of other things just now to act as a coherent sector. If I can, just briefly give you another example of the impact of the current restrictions from UKVI. We have a separate limited company called Air Service Engineering Training Limited. We, as a college, bought that company, we would not be able to do so now under ONS but we bought the company in 2000, it was going belly up. So it is a wholly owned subsidiary of the college, it has got nothing to do with the university, it is wholly owned by the college, perth college. It has been trading internationally for 85 years training aircraft engineers and pilots. Across the world it has been just recently recognised in the Queen's Award for Enterprise for international activity in this round. So two representatives from AST will be going down to Buckingham Palace and receiving the award. I've got the badge on my lapel but it's quite tiny but we're very proud of having earned that for international business within the college sector although it is under the name quite rightly of Air Service Engineering Training Limited. It is a wholly owned subsidiary by the college and we have a current contract with Libya that's in place and Libya, as you know, is a very complex country just now. That hasn't deterred AST. The Scottish Government wants us to support the Libyan Government, there's a few Libyan Governments just now but we know which one the Scottish Government wants us to support and we are working with that Government in Tripoli. We have a signed contract for 46 Libyan engineers and 40 pilots. It's two years' worth of training, it's at commercial fees and the essence of that is that we want to establish the skilled workforce in Libya because it has taken quite a dent recently because trained engineers and trained pilots are essential to rebuilding their oil and gas industry. So this is to help the Libyan Government, it's also to help us because it's commercial income. So we received, we have the signed agreements but we're not that daft, we didn't put anything in place until they paid the money. So we asked for money up front, we eventually got £480,000, we received that on the 28th of March and we had to get rid of it before the 31st of March under ONS. So we had to transfer it to our Arms Line Foundation in order to keep a hold of it. So we got £480,000, that's the fees for one year of training. We need, they are being fully supported to the tune of £1,200 per month per student on top of the fees for living allowances. We had to secure student accommodation for them. Dundee City had over expanded their university accommodation, we're about to sign an agreement to use spare capacity for student accommodation and Dundee City. We will be transporting the students daily because they will be studying 9-5, that's their work ethic anyway, 9-5 Monday to Friday so we'll have them gaily occupied, they won't be roaming the streets. We will pay for their transport from tune from Perth every day. The location is beside the mosque in Dundee. We have to look after them socially and pastorally as well as educationally and we have employed an extra member of staff to be their mentor on the streets so to speak. We are only able to do this because of the ambition and the track record of this company across the world. They are trading in Africa, they are trading in Indonesia, they are trading all over Europe. In all the countries we have a second site in Karachi which we had to fight the CAA on so there is some very very interesting international activity well hidden by the college sector. Not talked about, we're not supposed to be doing it because we don't have the financial framework and the status to be able to do this well. Thank you very much. I've got Andrew Campbell. Just to pick up again on the student complexities around the UKVI and I suppose a perspective from Four Valley and where we are on every international journey. We're relatively new to this arena although we have an absolutely fantastic proposition for an international market. In our strategy, which was just recently launched, it focuses essentially across business and commercial engagement, so a bit like Margaret's project that she was referring to there, student recruitment and mobility, as Dougal mentioned earlier on as well. How we engage it in the timing of that is fairly significant. The recruitment is pretty much back-loaded. We are very reactive at the moment to any applications purely because of the risks involved. The reputational risks are absolutely huge and impact daily on our business engagement aspirations. If you speak to any international partner abroad, the first question is whether you have HTS status, are you able to help us with the visa requirements? If you are straight away saying no, they will move on to the next regard of your proposition. Clearly for us, that indicates that there is a real barrier from the UKVI and the requirements and the onus put on colleges to ensure that the applications that they take forward are going to get ticked off at the home office. We have no real control over that. Essentially, we have very little control over that. That is why we will remain reactive to our international applications and not invest heavy funds, if you like, in going abroad and trying to recruit international students. Picking up what Emma said, that is to the detriment of the college sector as a whole. The international dimension to any college, any institution benefits far outweigh any negatives in the home office. In some of the international projects that we are also involved in around our business engagement are predominantly around oil and gas and engineering. We are obviously finally placed in Grangemouth. We have a host of global brands that we currently work with in the UK. We are extending that. We are working with BP and Oman. We have a meeting next week with Sonagall Oil from Angola and a couple of oil companies from Ghana. What we are trying to do is minimise the risks for us where we can get a company to sponsor a student. It is going to better those chances rather than go into the open market for student recruitment. That is one of the strategies that we are working on at the moment. However, if I can rewind slightly just in terms of how we have built our strategy and the stakeholders that we have consulted, we have spanned three local authority areas. Each of those three local authorities has built, bought in and contributed to our strategy. It is in keeping with their city-wide strategies as well. That would be CLACs, CLAC Manager Council, Stirling Council and Falkirk Council. More than that, we have brought in the Scottish Government policy team to find out exactly what they are doing and what direction they could give us, as a steer and building our strategy. Equally, the exporting body SDI is involved at very early stages as well. To answer the initial question, could we be doing more? I am a great believer in collaboration. I do not see any of it across the college sector. If it does happen, it is very, very quiet. We do not shout about it. I look at our counterparts in higher education. They have a brand, Connected Scotland. That is a great opportunity to market to the international student recruitment market. It would be great to see something similar for the college sector as well. Perhaps that might be on the agenda, but I have not heard anything yet with regard to that. We did invite Collegy Scotland to a committee, but they thought it better to send a representative of Collegy, so hence the reason why you are all here. We hear you loud and clear. I have got you in next, and then I have got Duggled, and then George. Two things. I am regarding the international recruitment. From Dundee and Angus College, I would say that it has certainly been organic. We have not jointly gone out and promoted anything. However, over the last six months, we decided that we wanted to collaborate with both the city universities to make sure that, when we are representing our region, the student can fully have a wonderful educational experience, linking where we have joint accreditation on certain courses. That is where we are from a recruitment perspective. On the international scene, what I would like to say is that Dundee and Angus College have a very cohesive international and European strategy, and we have had to put that in place because we have engaged in over 21 European projects, and they span from Erasmus Plus, Interreg projects and mobilities. Those, rather than having a negative feedback, I would like to give you a very positive feedback because, through those projects, we have built up a collaboration of partners who have assisted us time and time again in making sure that we can identify regional issues that are common to all of us and how we can work collectively together to transfer knowledge, understand best practices and disseminate that throughout our regions. More importantly, it is about embedding that learning into our curriculum so that the best practices and the learning techniques are kept up-to-date so that our youngsters can then have the full vocational training, both academic, social and personal, to be able to go into the workplace. Our collaboration is bringing industry into the curriculum so that they are telling us what they need so that there should be no reason why our students cannot get employment. Taking the mobility side and allowing our students to actually go out, and our college has been one of the ones who have benefited from the Scottish Saltire Scholarship, and I personally took two groups of students to the United States to study and work. I can tell you that the feedback that I got from them was that it was able for them to understand that the challenges that they face are the same challenges that the students face wherever they are and how they have to work together, that our borders are smaller and that they have to think global, not local. It raised their aspirations and I just say that it was life-changing. I will try to do four very quick points. In answer to my remarks about the absence of a strategy, Andrew's remarks underline that I have worked in international education long enough to remember in the 1990s when we had Scotland's polytechnic college group that we got together. There were six main colleges that did international work and we attempted to collaborate, but in the end, because of the nature of the way in which incorporated colleges had to function, we only collaborated at a surface level. As soon as we get into our room, we are competing against each other. That is the reason why any strategy that we have needs to have government involvement in it. The way that the sector has now been structured or responding to regional agendas in each of our colleges has some significant strengths and unique strengths. Those are really relevant in the world today. The universities have done well in international engagement because people want to buy or higher education and access it, but there is a huge demand for quality vocational training emerging in the civic countries, the emerging 11 and whatever you want to call them globally. The colleges are the best place to deliver that.  There is no global equivalent of what a college is, so one of the ways that we have tried to tackle that on Wascop is that we have made sure that everyone of our colleges has an Erasmus charter for higher education, because everyone in the world knows what that is and it gets you through the door. The second point that I would make is that I think that there is a false distinction between what is European and what is international. I think that it is a handful one because there are at least a dozen EU programmes that have a global reach now and which offer funding of up to 100 per cent to take things forward. I looked at some of the evidence that other people have given in the first call for evidence and I saw things like one of the bodies was saying that they would help a university develop a joint or double degree. I am thinking that I hope that we did not put money into that because that could all be funded directly by European money. There are opportunities there, but we need to influence how that money is awarded. The way that we have to do that has to be done at a strategic level. That means that the Scottish Government has to make sure that we get seats on the committees that are influencing funding, the health department has done it well, the enterprise department is doing it well, the transport department did it well with the interreg programmes. We need people to do that for us in the college sector, not just for the university and the university sector. The third point that I would make is that I think that we need to acknowledge Margaret's points that we do not have the funding now to be opportunistic and develop things as much as we would like to, but the same token, because of the ONS thing, that any money that we get makes it difficult for us to use that strategically. It is a plea to say that if the Scottish Government or the Parliament wants the colleges to realise the potential that they have for promoting Scotland abroad and not just making money for the sector, you need to work with us. The civil servants that are in the development directorate, as I said, the ones who work for the universities work very closely with them. We do not enjoy that relationship. I would want to reinforce the importance of an international dynamic within the curriculum for Scottish students. We have been developing this over a couple of years now, and by next academic year there will be an international facet and opportunity within almost every programme across the college, with a significant number of students having the opportunity to travel, study and work abroad. That ranges from our motor vehicle student spending time working in Sweden to a project that we are building in Morocco at the moment, working with very disadvantaged street children, might be the most appropriate term. However, while that has had a very positive impact on our students within West Lothian, and in some cases within the life skills development of young people who have been really quite alienated from education, it is difficult to sustain or to mainstream within the current funding arrangements, because almost everything that we are doing is being supported by short-term funding applications through Erasmus would be our largest funder. In an ideal world, we would be building that excellence into the curriculum on a much more sustainable and mainstreamed basis, but at the moment it is very difficult to plan beyond an 18-month or two-year cycle, and curriculums need to be founded on principles that are more sustainable than that. I would echo what Dougal said about the voice of the colleges of Scotland being heard, and the comments that you have made about the sustainability of funding arrangements, which are actually inhibiting development of an excellent curriculum. By now, the committee will have a very clear impression from the comments that international work is taking place across the college sector, that we have gone through a period of real change with regionalisation, changes to the O&S reclassification and also the immigration challenges, but that the work is very much continuing. I wanted to pick up on the point about the partnership working, particularly with the higher education sector, that that is definitely taking place. Now that there are less colleges in Scotland because we have regionalised and merged, it is more straightforward and a way for some of the universities to engage with the colleges, and they absolutely want to do that and that the partnership working is taking place. There are two examples that I could offer from Edinburgh College. One is with Harriet Watt University, where we are working together in Panama, delivering teacher training. Another is with Edinburgh Napier University, where we are welcoming Saudi sponsored students to train up in English and then progress to engineering courses. Those two opportunities would not have been possible either for the college or the universities if we had not worked together in partnership. There is huge potential for an education sector in Scotland that brings the colleges, the universities and the schools where applicable together to present a united front of, this is Scotland, we are open for business, internationally and education. To this end, there are other kinds of fora that are taking place. We have the international directors forum, which brings together heads of international functions at colleges, at universities, it involves a British Council, SDI. It is just an informal meeting, but it has been very productive to bring together different participants from the education sector or those who have an interest in the education sector and are exporting it internationally. I would just like to get support, diggleds and wascops comments on the lack of a clear and focused approach at a strategic level. I would support what you said, that when you look at the Northern Irish model and the collaborative working that takes place there, they understand that the smart exploitation of funding and European activities and European programmes can reap more sustainable benefits and can naturally lead on to commercial opportunities for students. In some of the evidence submitted, it appeared that the starting point for internationalisation was international student recruitment, commercial activities and it sporadically focused on chasing grants and money. It needs to be far more strategically aligned to benefit as a sector working collaboratively. We are moving on to one of our other colleagues in the committee, Rod Campbell. I just wanted to pick up the theme that diggled was talking about earlier on about false distinction between EU and international and to tag it back to issues with the post study work visa. Looking at the figures that College Scotland provided, there has been a 75% reduction in students and colleges from the EU from the period 2009-10 to 2013-14. In actual fact, a number of international students is only down 23%. Perhaps the panel could expand on this issue, a kind of EU versus international, do they agree with diggled? That is a false distinction. We will expand that one a bit further. A second point that I am not sure that anyone can answer that came from College Scotland is part of the framework that colleges are requested to provide a copy to colleges Scotland of their international development strategy. I do not know if you have all provided it, whether you could comment on it and whether to your knowledge other colleges have followed suit. That was provided. I really believe that the EU number will be under-counted because EU students are classed as home students within our record systems because that is how they are treated. They are treated exactly for fewing, for curriculum purposes, and they are classed as home students. It is probably a glitch in the data gathering rather than a true picture because we have seen an incredible number of students from EU. The market that is totally underrepresented in our student body is from the rest of the UK because currently we do discriminate against them. We do charge commercial fees for English and Northern Irish students and Welsh students. However, if you live in France, you will be treated as a home student and that is just a quirk of our funding arrangements. I do not think that we have suffered a 75 per cent reduction and I am sure that College Scotland would provide better data given that insight. I would like, if I can, to cover off a couple of points. We are struggling to retain all the international activity that we have generated and to look for new markets. We are currently deeply involved in partnership arrangements with four Chinese universities, mainly in engineering. We have—this was where the dual degree came about. It is not a university degree. We have been paying money to develop it because we have been developing it from Perth College as part of our strange arrangement within the Highlands and Islands. It is the college sector. I was not aware that we could get Erasmus Plus funding for that, but I will certainly be asking how to do that because it is costing us dearly. We have currently 56 Chinese students who have just undertaken their final exams for year 3 of our degree in mechanical and electrical engineering. We have been teaching them in-country. We know that their English language needs to be much improved, although they study English from primary school in China. It is written because that is their teaching style, and when it comes to conversational English, it is absolutely hopeless. Never mind technical conversational English. We have learned lessons from this year. We have a pipeline at four universities. We have 100 students recruited in one university who will be going on to their year 3 in 2015-16. Only a minor proportion of those will come to us for their year 4 for their honours year. We are restricting that number. They want to send us more, but we are concerned about our capacity to service that demand because we do not want to be overwhelmed and we do not want to take our good resources away from our home students in order to satisfy those international students, so we cannot do everything. We want to do everything, but we merely cannot. Out of those 56 students who will be having a university of the Highlands and Islands graduation ceremony in deepest China in September for our 56 graduates of a Scottish degree, only about 10 of those will come to us for their year 4 honours. We can increase that. It is our limit that we have imposed. China is not in the same situation as our Indian market is. The Chinese are a wealthy nation. They invest heavily in their one child. The post study visa would set my help in that respect, but it does not damage as much the Chinese market and hence our strategy to change focus from India to China. On the UKVI restriction, the 46 Libyan engineers who have been specifically selected by the AAA Government for our training, our two years training, in order to make them licensed engineers under the CAA. I do not know what is more vocational than that. We need to get them through the visa process. It will be very difficult. They have to go to Tunisia in order to go through the visa process, so we have to get them out of Libya and into Tunisia. They will be screened in Tunisia. We are at risk with those 46 of negative impact on our highly trusted status. If 46 are refused visas, we will lose our highly trusted status. That is a big business risk for a business that is wholly international focused. We are putting a pathfinder group of three through the process, because if three fail, we will still retain our highly trusted status. The Libyan Government does not understand why we are putting three through. They think that there is a subplot and that we only really want three, but we do not want 46. We are trying to reassure them that it is the visa process and everything will be fine. They are going with that, so we are currently testing the water with three. Hopefully, those three, because they have the support of both Governments, they have not just been picked off the street, they have been specifically screened, we hope that they will get through that visa control. If the three get through and they end up in Perth and living in Dundee, there will be celebrations, because that means that the remaining 43 will then proceed. We also have 40 pilots who are waiting in the wings, not the flying wings, but the wings to go through that same process. Any help that the committee can give for that specific difficulty that we are experiencing, but also to impact on our UKVI highly trusted status and how we can protect that in a very business-like manner and not in an immigration policed manner, that would be very helpful. Emma. A very quick answer to the question about the strategies. A number of international strategies were presented as evidence for the committee, so hopefully that answers the question that there are colleges that have developed an international strategy that will have been endorsed by our boards of management, our senior management team and which will feed off the main college strategy that encompasses all areas of the college operations. You know what I was getting at was how universal it was. I wasn't, obviously, accept that colleges here have done so, but whether that was actually standard across the board. I think it will depend on where the colleges are, the individual colleges at, in terms of its regionalisation process. For some colleges it will be much more recent that process and probably they will lead if it's the same as at our college, they'll lead with their main college strategy first and then develop the underpinning strategies for the curriculum, for the estates and for international, so it may be why there are not international strategies for every every college that has now realised in Scotland, but equally some of the colleges may not engage in international activity for some of the reasons that we've discussed. Others will absolutely be pressing forward with international work. Thank you very much, convener. There's a couple of clear messages that I'm taking from listening to colleagues around the table. One is the clear willingness for the college sector in Scotland to engage internationally and to attract students to Scotland and so on and so forth, and the second is obviously the clear barriers that many of you have described that appear to me to be more political and strategic. I think that's obvious where the problems lie, so therein lies an opportunity given that there is a new Government in the UK and we should make the most of that, and this is the time perhaps to strike. You'll know that the Scottish Government's position on the post study work visa and so on and so forth and this re-classification issue that's affected the college finances has been very clear. How has the college sector, well the college sector, acted as one in sport of those aims and perhaps tried to make direct representation to the UK Government because you'll be fully supported not only by the Scottish Government but by a whole host of new MPs that you have in this country to assist that practice because I think that's a golden opportunity that's dugled described and we mustn't miss out on this. Margaret, we're really bumping up against time so I have a quick short answer. The short answer to that is through our College of Scotland Overacting Agency, we'll take that forward as part of that board activity but also the sub-committee of the Corporate Affairs Committee within College of Scotland, so that's where we will have the united voice and there's some representatives in the audience here today from College of Scotland and I'm sure they're taking note to lobby that heavily. We'll look forward to hearing from them then. Is there any other questions or comments around the table? There are two things, one was, would you agree that because of the fact that we have a reduction in overseas students that that perhaps has compounded on the position in terms of subjects that we can offer? That's one question, another question. It's not really a question but a comment about the strategy. I think that makes sense to me that we do need a national strategy. Yes, colleges have their own strategies and that's fine and good but I think that nationally we need a strategy as well to support you in the work that you do. Going back to my question about subjects and there's been a lot of criticism of lack of subjects and I think perhaps one of the reasons could be that we've lost a lot of overseas students which would have normally have helped us retain them. We have found that we don't have a brand abroad and we don't have a leak table. It's this identity crisis of what is the college sector in the international arena and what we have found is the best form of attack is being very focused and leading with niche products so it's not leading with a whole lot of what we can do. For your college in particular, I'm talking about Scottishwide. No, it's Scottishwide because what I've heard from a colleague from Forth Valley is that they're homing in an oil and gas, we're homing in an aircraft engineering and music and creative industries is another thing that we are selling abroad so I think rather than going with a whole shop window and confusing the market because they don't see the difference between the college sector and the university sector abroad and that's understandable. I think the simpler the message we can make it the better so it's not about reducing the subjects that we are offering because of any negative reason it's a positive reason because you can focus attention and you can sell in market very particular niche products that are attractive to an international market and that's what we're doing. So you wouldn't agree that the reduction in subjects is a result of lack of students? The reduction in subjects, do you mean the reduction in subjects offered by the colleges as a whole? I don't think there has been a reduction in subjects. All right, you obviously don't live in Scotland then. I don't feel there's a reduction in subjects, I think the international marketplace changes, there are subjects that are popular at very particular points in time, there are subjects that remain constantly popular like English language for example which we're hugely well placed to offer in Scotland and I think in fact for some of the colleges who've merged perhaps we have more to offer because we've become bigger colleges with more subjects, I think what has changed is the number of students coming from specific countries into Scotland because as I mentioned earlier some markets now become high risk and I think the colleges to some of the examples that have been quoted already, India, Libya etc it makes it more difficult for us to recruit students from particular countries because it's going to be so much more difficult for them to get their visa so I see the difference being largely perhaps around the countries that are flowing through to the colleges whether that's represented yet in any form of statistical data is probably quite difficult to say but that's certainly my impression. I should imagine that we need to do some research to see whether there has been an impact on the viability of certain courses. It's referring back some time ago but when I was responsible for international education in the college that had more international students than any it was absolutely clear that those international students kept some subjects viable so I would be astonished if that's not the case and I think we should do some research on that but on the subjects there's one really important point that we can't talk about today because we don't have enough time. As a lot of the stuff we've talked about is people coming in here we need to do more to internationalise the experience for our students and one area where we're sadly lacking is languages. The languages education is almost dead in the sector and we need to revive that. It's almost dead if you look at the college of the... Very quickly it's just something that Emma's mentioned, the riskier markets and I'm going to put out a couple there just from my experience and they might be in Pakistan or India. Although they're risky for colleges and no doubt they are risky for universities as well, the university sector is still pulling in a large amount of student recruitment numbers from those markets and I'm just wondering whether or not there might be some support to look at Emma's suggestion then about the causal link between what is riskier for a college, why is it riskier for a college in terms of UKVI and perhaps less riskier at higher education level. That would be a challenge I would lay down to the committee to perhaps look at research around that area, how we can actually pinpoint. Well, in actual fact there is a so-called riskier element towards the college sector as opposed to the higher education although they are essentially working in the same market or trying to pull students from that same market. I see a lot of your colleagues heads, Ann. I would just like to say that I don't see a reduction in subjects either but what I will say is that the Dundee College and the universities did a little bit of research to try and understand why we weren't getting as many international students in some areas and what we found was that the country that was coming up that had the best recruitment was Australia and the model that they actually used whether it's correct or not but what we were cited back was that they were selling the extra activity around once they had actually graduated and they had received their qualification they were able to stay and work for a further two years, they were given a green card so that was not to say that the qualification was any better the experience was any better but that end being able to add on that extra two years to stay and work not you have to get out the country was seen as a positive that we were facing. Thank you very much, Jimmy. We're over time on this so if you've got a really quick question. It's just that College of Scotland told the committee that this framework for the future of internationalisation for the college sector was published in 2014. I was looking at the international strategy for the Edinburgh College and it appears to be very optimistic and it says by 2018 we will do certain things and it's a very optimistic strategy is that based on the framework or is that your own strategy and what do you think is the best strategy because we've had several different strategies of sorts I can see. Our strategy was actually developed off the college's main strategic plan so it was it was developed off that first before the College of Scotland strategy that you refer to was actually published because we wanted to have as we had an active portfolio of international work we wanted to have a strategy ready as a merge college that we could give to stakeholders and say that we are actively working internationally. I think in terms of which strategy is right or which we use I think every individual institution will have their own strategy you'll see that in the college and the university sector but they will work to overarching initiatives or overarching strategies whether it's a college of Scotland level, national level or a UK wide level so I think that we'll be working at different levels according to the type the context that we're actually operating in. Okay, as you can see we could probably spend all morning discussing all of these aspects but we do have a second panel in relation to this and inquired someone can I thank you all very very much for your time here for your contributions here for your written contributions and should you have any more contributions please bring them to us we're very interested in what you've got to say and I think we've heard your clear messages very very loud and clear today and they'll certainly form some of our information going back to the government as I suspect very strongly but thank you very much I'm going to suspend briefly to allow our witnesses to change chairs and for a very very quick comfort break should you need it thank you. Welcome back to the European and External Relations Committee we are continuing with Robert this morning on agenda item 2 with our inquiry on connecting Scotland and we have a number of witnesses from the third sector and civic society this morning who I believe managed to listen to some of the issues that were raised by the colleges sector in the earlier session. Again if I just go around the table to allow people to introduce themselves I'm Christina McKelvie the MSP for Hamilton Larkon Stonehouse and convener of the committee. I'm Hans-Laum Malick, vice-communer and from MSP from Glasgow. I'm Willie Coffey, MSP Commander at Mildren Valley. I'm Gordon Adam, I'm director of development and communications at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. I'm Roderick Campbell, MSP for North East Fife and for the official reporter, also a member of Amnesty International. I'm Peter Kelly, I'm director of the poverty lines and also vice-president of the European Antipoverty Network. Hi, I'm Allie Cairns, I'm head of European affairs for SCVO. I'm also on the board of our European Network of National Associations. Good morning, I'm David Hope Jones, I'm the principal officer of the Scotland-Malawi partnership. Jamie McGregor, MSP Highlands and Islands. I'm Julie Hepburn, I cover advocacy and education for Amnesty International in Scotland. Good morning, I'm Bruce Edimson, I'm the legal officer at the Scottish Human Rights Commission. Good morning everyone, we've managed to cover all of Scotland this morning in the colleges and now it looks like we want to cover most of the world in this session. Welcome to committee. I wonder if anybody's got any sort of points they would like to raise immediately at the start of the committee. Will we go straight to questions? Jamie, have you got questions ready to go? Question on human rights. You knock yourself out. I was trying to involve in the case the other day of a dairy farmer and with his human rights he considered that his quote had been taken away but he couldn't get a lawyer in Scotland to represent him and the point about this was it seemed to me pretty pointless with human rights. He could only get a lawyer if he gave £25,000 in advance and I'd just like a comment on that because it seems to me that human rights are any human rights if you can access them and if you can't access them through a lawyer we know what's the point. Bruce, have you got any way of enlightening this situation? Yes, he says confidently. I think Mr McGeige has focused on a very key issue in terms of human rights, in terms of access to justice. The issue of milk quotas itself is one that has come before the Parliament and the Public Petitions Committee before. It's something that the commission has commented on. I won't at this stage comment on the individual case but the wider point in terms of access to justice is the requirement for the status to set up a framework, a legal framework to ensure that people can access to justice and get a remedy for breaches to their human rights and the system that we have developed in Scotland is through the legal system and with the availability of legal aid for those that can't afford it. I think it's no surprise to anyone that needs further consideration. It also goes to a wider point in terms of legal education and in terms of the way in which we provide for remedies through the court system and also alternative dispute resolution. I think that there's significant work to be done on each of these aspects. In terms of legal education, it's not a unique experience I think for the constituent that you spoke to to not be able to find a lawyer who will take on their case and I think that the legal community needs to do more to improve legal education in Scotland. There are some very good programmes happening at the European and at the international level on legal training and it's one of the things that the commission is keen to develop further and it links to some of the things that some of the witnesses in the previous session were saying in terms of we could improve on our accessing expertise internationally and bringing them back home to Scotland. I think that there's a real gap there that we need to fill. In terms of access to legal aid and the ability to access justice, I think that there's real concerns there about the cuts to legal aid limiting people's ability to access justice. I think that there's also scope to look at alternative ways of resolving disputes. I think that all of these things form part of the solution. I didn't understand that to be honest. I mean I thought that Jamie's question maybe I've picked you up wrong Jamie. Jamie's question is this is an individual who wishes to pursue a legal end because he feels that these human rights have been infringed upon. Lawyers are not willing to take the case on unless they pay a hefty fee which means and if they're not able to do that how would that individual get justice in terms of his human rights? Am I right Jamie with that? Yeah exactly. I thought that was your question but I didn't get an answer for that and could you perhaps make it be clearer so I can actually understand. I know you probably come from a legal background but I'm a layperson so if you could maybe explain to me how this individual could actually get justice? Okay I apologize that I wasn't clear. I'm sure it's my fault. No no no. The system that we have in Scotland is that the individual if they have an action particularly so that the the instance that we're talking about relates to respect for property rights and so in relation to milk voters my understanding being that feel that their property rights have been infringed by restrictions on them selling this interest that they have. The system that we have in Scotland is that they should be able to go to the courts to seek justice for that and the legal profession should be able to provide support for them to do that. And the the state is required to ensure that access to justice is provided and one of the ways in which the state has said that it does that is by providing legal aid for those that can't afford it. That is challenging because legal aid is not not always available and so particularly when we're talking about a civil case particularly when we're talking about recovery of money it is a problem that lawyers are in the profession of making money as well and I won't speak for individual lawyers and the decisions that they that they make. It's difficult for me now. Yeah okay but the lawyers that were approached obviously took the decision that they weren't able to take the case forward or that they needed upfront funding for it. My point was that one of the challenges is that there are not enough lawyers in Scotland who are trained in human rights issues so the pool of people that you can go to to ask them to take on your case is smaller than it should be and so I think that we can do a lot in terms of improving legal education to improve the understanding that of human rights that lawyers have which would allow individuals to approach more lawyers than than they currently can. Currently there's very few lawyers that take on that type of case. That's one of the points that I was making. In terms of whether legal aid would be appropriate here I wouldn't want to comment on that. You still haven't actually answered the question. Maybe you don't know the answer, I don't know because the question is how does this individual then get justice in terms of protecting his human rights and I think that's what we're trying to find out. Would you agree with me? Yes, because that seemed to me rather a crux of the whole thing in a way that it's already worth saying you've got these things but if you can't access them then it's like a catch-22. Julie, can you get another aspect of this that would maybe help inform? To be honest it's not our area of expertise, the domestic legal side but just to echo people have said that to us in the past quite a lot. It's about access to justice and speaking to various lawyers. There's a great expectation that people will take on human rights cases for free just because the greater good for the principle of it and so you do get a lot of lawyers who are working on human rights cases who end up having to do a lot of work for free and they do it because they believe in it but that is the crux of it. There aren't enough people to take on those human rights cases at a reasonable cost or to have those costs covered. Is there a register or a list or anything of practice in human rights lawyers in Scotland? The Law Society does keep a list. Another point that I would make briefly though is that in order to best protect human rights we need good law policy and practice in place by the time you get to needing a lawyer something's gone wrong and particularly when we're looking at the place that we're in now and the legislative competence of this parliament and also of the government is there's a requirement to put in place laws that protect people's human rights and so we need the legal framework in place. There's a lot of positive things that can be done to ensure that people don't end up in a situation where they are forced to go to the courts to enforce their rights but there is a problem when you do get to that stage with some types of cases in particular. Rod, whilst declaring an interest, would you like to enlighten us too? As a member of the faculty of advocates and also as a member of the justice committee but obviously alternative ways of funding disputes is something that kind of this parliament and justice committee and others have been looking at so it's a kind of involved issue to develop for this session. The central point is there obviously and if you can't actually access your human rights then it's of lesser value. Can I have a shift back to the agenda? Asking the question but it was something that you know I felt I had to ask. Yeah well there's a whole aspect to international engagement that involves human rights as well but one of the questions I wanted to ask the witnesses round the table this morning was you know how do you take forward your international engagement? How do you work together on it? Is there specific aspects of it that you would work with or is there discrete aspects that you do as the individual groups that you are and I'm happy to just catch the eye and I've caught your eye. Yes just talking about what we do we do work with other organisations. The Ross site of Edinburgh recently became a member of Connected Scotland which is a group of eight organisations who are working together to promote the best practice in higher education in Scotland internationally. Those eight organisations are ourselves British Council Scotland, University Scotland, Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Government and the three enterprise bodies, Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and SDI. So we are working together to promote international higher education. We've got three priority countries as part of that which are China, Brazil and Malaysia and we're currently looking at things that we can do with those three countries. The Ross Society of Edinburgh in particular has very strong relations in China. We actually have a memoranda of understanding with the four main learned societies. Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, I'm a lot of names I'm giving you here but Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation of China. In fact we have the president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences coming tomorrow. He's going to be admitted as an honorary fellow of the RSC and he's also going to meet with the first minister as well in Glasgow. So we are working within our own area. We're the countries that we have memoranda of understanding but we're also working in partnership with other organisations too. So we do both is a simple answer. Peter. I think what we like most of the other organisations around here we connect when we need to obviously our main focus is around poverty and our main international focus is on European policy. So we work through the European anti-poverty network at the UK level but also with our colleagues right across Europe. I think in Scotland we've worked with SCVO in the past around some European issues. We've worked with them around ESF and about the development of the next programme for ESF. We've connected with organisations when we need to. We're starting to do more work with NIDOS, the network of international development organisations in Scotland. So we're making connections where we can but I think that the point that we made in the written evidence is that sometimes the European policy issues can seem very remote and so it's a challenge not only to work with other organisations but to work with their own members. They want us to work on those issues that seem most directly relevant. So we sometimes in this being quite honest we sometimes have a job convincing organisations that European policy is important. We believe that it is and we can demonstrate that over and over again. I think in the period that we've got coming up over the next two years then many of our organisations will come to discover that European policy is quite important as we have a discussion around an upcoming referendum. We had an event last week that involved NIDOS and we've seen which I was very pleased to launch on Lanarkshire, the Scotland versus poverty programme, which you've been very, very well involved in. So we've got some of that excellent information. Allie? Hi, well thanks very much for having us today. It's actually great to be talking about this and I think that we'd probably all like to talk more about it and hopefully we'll continue to do so. I think it's fair to say that for us to view in the past a lot of our European work has been filtered through domestic arrangements and focused around the European structural funds and opportunities around that. We've always had connections to our international organisation, Civicus, which is an international alliance of civil society organisations, but our ability to engage and do work at that level has been difficult. In term, we have a much greater focus on Europe and going forward we're going to have more of a greater focus on Europe. We are involved in a network called ENA, which is a network of SCVOs to make it easy to understand, which is the national umbrella bodies within all the EU countries and we're up to about 23 members out of 21 countries because one of our members is a big umbrella over the Balkans so it covers quite a few countries. In that network we have an office in Brussels and we have a couple of staff that have and again we've sort of struggled with capacity. We put a membership-based network and we have accessed bits of money from the commission to try and strengthen that network so that it can benefit not just the SCVOs but it can benefit our members and we've really gone through sort of ups and downs with that but the primary goal of that for all of us you know my colleagues across Europe has been to do more of what Peter has said is to strengthen our ability to engage and influence policy at a European level for us to have greater connections to the Parliament, to the commission, to funding opportunities and all sorts of things similar to I guess have the same capacity that you know commercial organisations and other things have within Europe to do their business you know civil society would like to have that same ability to do that but equally a big part of the work that we do with our our colleagues across Europe is around participation and we all have similar values in terms of their approach to democracies in Europe and that the participating in democracy is a very strong element of the work that we do so not only are we trying to strengthen each other's networks and begin to influence things at a policy level but there is a changing discourse within the European Union around growth being inclusive, what social policies need to grow at the same rate as economic policies and there is a bit of attention and focus shifting to civil society in terms of solutions so we've got a window of opportunity in terms for us for collaborating but one of the things which you know SVO we're very conscious of is that there are lots of opportunities transnationally not just to collaborate to share and to learn but there's funding opportunities that Scottish organisations are missing out on because we have not got the focus and the attention the capacity to grasp them and just beyond the front foot for doing that so as an organisation we've just recently we're going through our new three-year strategic plan and we are very much bringing Europe right up to the top of the agenda so that we can open up fine transnational opportunities for all our members in the rest of the sector and for organisations that we work with across Europe to begin to partner with Scottish organisations because we all know the benefits that that brings and also just to try and mobilise some of the things that bind us together that we want to change within Europe and obviously organisations like Peters and Julie's there are some very key things that are going to come into focus are very matching focus and we are not geared up enough to challenge them we'd a lovely visit from some of your European partners last week we did we did David if you would give us a bit of insight into what your organisation does but for the matter of the record I have been involved with the Scottish Malawi partnership too thanks very much so yes I'm from the Scotland Malawi partnership with a national umbrella agency that exists to coordinate represent and support the civic links between Scotland and Malawi more than 94,000 Scots have an active link with Malawi each year 46% of Scots have a friend or family member with some sort of connection to Malawi and more than 300,000 Scots benefit from those connections with Malawi we're a large and diverse network composed of every university in Scotland half the local authorities 153 schools primary and secondary and hundreds of churches charities community groups diaspora groups all engaged in the civic effort that goes back 156 years to the travels of Dr David Livingston in answer to your question absolutely collaboration and connections are absolutely crucial and I think actually it's something Scotland does quite well it's often said there's less egos and logos in Scotland and I absolutely agree it's easier to build those sort of collaborations we saw it with the make poverty history campaign some time ago more recently the enough food for everyone if campaign our network I think links in very well with with NIDOS who I work very closely with on a day-to-day basis but also the Scottish Fair Trade Forum ideas looking at development education and global citizenship in schools and an SCVO as well I guess the key point I want to make as far as Scotland's work internationally is valuing the role of civic society it's fantastic that we have these networks that we have these strong organisations but the most special thing about what Scotland does internationally I think is what the people of Scotland do with their own time with their own energy and we exist as a network to harness that experience that enthusiasm and that expertise just with regards to the very first question that was that was asked I could recount a couple of fantastic links between Scotland and Malawi about in the Faculty of Advocates and the SRUC helping increase productivity and dairy herding in in Malawi really almost all aspects of civic society have some sort of connection between the two countries between the two countries but I think what's really special is that people to people endeavor and I think it's really important as this committee looks to capture what Scotland does internationally that we don't forget that actually it's the people of Scotland giving up their time that really makes this stand out for the last seven years I've been saying I don't know of any comparable north south civic bilateral relationship and no one's no one's ever corrected me almost every month that I do this job I'm contacted by ambassadors honorary consoles and asked how did Scotland develop that relationship with with Malawi it's I think the the envy of many countries across the world I think it's being emulated across the world and as long as we keep focused on that as a dignified two-way partnership actually it's something we should be rightly proud of well maybe it was provenance that we were here today in the David Livingstone room to do to do this this session and and I think you're absolutely right I had a visit to Malawi a few years ago with the Westminster foundation for democracy to work with women's groups and other groups to stand for their next year's elections and every primary school I went into the children could tell me things about David Livingstone and about Scotland and you know their education system was very familiar there was lots of things that were very very very familiar but you know a very very warm country and the influences that they've had on Scotland and that we've had on them has just been absolutely tremendous so the work that you do to continue that is just something that I will always support so that's for the record as well. Julie, do you want to give us a wee oversight in some of the things that Amnesty is involved in internationally and how those connect with some of the focus that we have not just from political Scotland but from civic Scotland too? The clue is in the name Amnesty International so it's a massive global organisation that's involved at national level in over 70 countries so as Amnesty Scotland it's actually quite a challenge just to connect with the constituent parts of our own organisation. Amnesty Scotland is part of Amnesty UK as well so we're quite a small outpost of Amnesty UK so we spend a lot of time working within our own organisation frankly but we do work with other organisations on various issues so we work with a number of organisations for example on the Arms Trade Treaty very closely but with Oxfam for example we work closely with other organisations to lobby for things like improvement to business and human rights so we work with organisations like Skiath who've done a lot of work in that regard. We work very closely with a number of organisations through SNAP Scotland's national action plan for human rights so there's a number of organisations from across civic Scotland that are involved in that process and SNAP itself is connected internationally primarily through the Scottish Human Rights Commission as well so there's those international links and we also work very closely with the Scottish Government as well on our international agenda advising through things like the international human rights advisory panel and through SNAP as well we co-convene one of the SNAP action groups with the Scottish Human Rights Commission and the Scottish Government so a lot of our focus is actually in trying to use our influence and our expertise to advise the Scottish Government on international matters and we spend a lot of time connecting within Amnesty International to bring that expertise to Scotland an example of that was in advance of the commonwealth games we were asked what are going to be your main issues for the visiting of commonwealth officials and politicians so we spent a lot of time speaking to colleagues around the world who've got the contacts on the ground to say what are the main human rights concerns for you and then we put that together in a monster briefing for the Scottish Government and Scottish officials to help inform the strategy for the bilaterals and things around the commonwealth games so we spend a lot of time gathering evidence and channeling that through to the Scottish kind of organisations the government through the Scottish Parliament as well we spend a lot of time briefing MSPs on various issues so the way I see it is very much we kind of harness Amnesty and bring it to Scotland and try and highlight our campaigns and engage people in Scotland through that process thank you Bruce Scottish human rights commission and SNAP I was involved with the congress of local authorities in regions in Europe and last year they were very very interested in SNAP because they seen Scotland as a beacon almost you know and taking forward you know good human rights policy that actually worked on the ground and you know that that was very very well respected and very well received in Europe and I think they're still looking towards you for more of that inspiration but we know about that in Europe and maybe you can give us some insight into what's happening you know in the wider world as well absolutely and it's a great pleasure to to hear those comments but also to hear the the comments that colleagues have made and it brings to mind a a proverb from my home country New Zealand which is which means if you ask me what's the most important thing in the world I'll tell you three times it's people it's people it's people and I think that comes through very very strongly but with what what all colleagues have said is that that Scotland does incredibly well on the international stage because of its people and because of its people's ability to make these these connections and share best practice the the Scottish Human Rights Commission is I'm sure you all know we've been set up by this parliament in 2006 but the the concept of national human rights institutions goes back to the earliest days of the united nations to 1946 when after the atrocities of the the second world war and the the building of the international human rights framework the economic and social council of the UN said we need another type of body we need we need local institutions that are able to that are not state institutions that are able to to work on the ground and apply international standards domestically but also to provide a bridge to the international framework and give us information at the international level and so that's very much where where the Scottish Human Rights Commission sits along with 106 similar institutions across the world now over 40 of those are in are in Europe and we work together in a number of ways both to to improve international standards globally but also that bridging role of bringing those standards back and I think as as Julie has mentioned and you've mentioned yourself convener that the national action plan on human rights is is one way where I think Scotland is is is leading the way the that's been recognised by the UN also recognised within the council of Europe where the models been promoted by by the commissioner for human rights the council of Europe and and I've been trying to apply that particularly in countries that are going through very difficult circumstances like like Ukraine at the moment our colleagues there are very looking very closely at the Scottish model and what's different about the Scottish model for a national action plan is the way in which it was developed and it links very closely to what to what Julie was saying the concept of having a national action plan it's been around for a long time it was discussed very very extensively at the world conference in Vienna on human rights in 1993 where all the countries of the world agreed that they would set out a comprehensive action plan for how they would deliver on their human rights obligations in most countries around the world that's been a government program that the government's listed this is what we're doing based on the recommendations given to us by the monitoring process in Scotland we did a little bit differently in that we got civil society and government around the table and we tried to reach out to the most marginalised people in Scotland those are really struggling to be heard and create a really consultative process to come up with a negotiated plan that would then be monitored collectively and so it's that that's the thing that's that's a wee bit different and that's the thing that the world's very very interested in time doesn't allow to go into to all of that but it's very much about making sure that that that people's lives are improved in really practical ways making sure that our culture moves in a progressive way and that we develop a human rights culture and that we have our international obligations both in terms of reporting to the monitoring bodies but also making sure that we apply things we bring bring best practice back and also that that we live up to our international obligations and in terms of leading the way and again an example that Julie gave was the the commonwealth games where for the first time when the commonwealth games was held in Scotland a human rights plan was was attached to that in terms of the design of the games in terms of the running of the games in terms of the outcome of the games also things like like climate justice where Scotland's really really leading the way a very very important issue business and human rights the rights of older people these are all things where Scotland is very much part of the international development of best practice um i could go on and on but i'm aware of time so i'll stop. Willie Coffey's got a question for you as well. Well I'm just such a bewildering array of good and positive messages from around the table quite a contrast convener the previous session was was people with a similar focus on international engagement and there's such a variety here and it's difficult to know which one to pick up i was really impressed with what Gordon was telling us from the royal society my attention was drawn to Peter's comments to and also Ali there you were talking about engagement with the european union and kind of civic society and so on and so forth and how you influence european policy and i was hoping to just pick up witty and ask you a wee bit more about that can you see your influence within european union policy development actually happening because it's a question we've raised at the committee on a number of occasions how we best try to influence the european policy agenda through our elected members or through the commission exactly how do you guys try to achieve that it's not easy it is a challenge we the structure at the moment is that there is the european and economic social committee which is one of the two committees that there as well as the commission within europe and on the esc there is a group that's dedicated to civil society and every member state has a a civil society representative on that committee so we have one in scotland that's just about to change actually in a previous colleague of yours iron old father is about to become the scotish representative on the esc for us now the esc in terms of that's the the structure that's in place at the moment is is possibly two things it's maybe not empowered enough to hold the commission to account on to begin to work on some reform but also there is a deficit between that representation role and the sector in scotland and we're going forward going to try and be on the front foot and address work address that a bit better and empower ironing and with our colleagues across europe to try and see if we can make the esc a reform in a way that it's more accountable to the to the sector and it's a more mutual process that goes on so there is a body there that we're that we can work through but that's because that's not being being the best route for us and as civil society we tend to like to do things ourselves and we have as I mentioned earlier our european network of seavills now that's been a bit of a slow burner because of trying to resource it and in terms of influence we have beginning to work our way out around how you influence within the commission I would say we've got some way to go in terms of being able to have the capacity to work with the parliament better and understand how that works there are some very big strong movements in Europe that are doing quite well on particular issues and are quite well organised and Peter's involved in in one of them which I'll let him chat about and but how effective is the influence app to date is probably being reasonably minimal and it's one of the things that we talked about last week we heard a conference here in Edinburgh with the ESC about on the Milan declaration on EU policies which would has a focus on how civil society can engage and influence change and things within European Union and that's because of the pressure on European democracies around their welfare states and that needing to look for solutions elsewhere and there's a whole array of things that are happening throughout Europe in terms of welfare and the changes that are happening in welfare and they're looking at the solutions coming from civil society now there's quite a gap between that intention and and how we get there and for instance if you take Italy for example large parts of health where it's maternity services unit are delivered by civil society so it's how those solutions get the same attention and focus all that you know social innovation that's talked about gets the same attention and focus as you know technology and commercial R&D innovation so we're I'm not sure I've probably gone a long way around to say that we're we're not being particularly influential in terms of European policy but we're trying to get on the front foot and collaborate with our colleagues across Europe to be better at that it's a big question how influential have we been I think the only way that organisations link the poverty lines link a network like the poverty lines can be influential is by working with others and it's kind of as Ali has said you know we we work with 31 networks across Europe now so going beyond the boundaries of the EU and it's only by working with those other networks with our organisation based in Brussels which is absolutely crucial there's no doubt about that that we can have influence and I think EAPN has been certainly in the past extremely influential so the whole elements of the the Lisbon strategy I would say are a result of the the lobbying of particularly EAPN but also the wider social platform in Brussels has made a real difference and link you know many organisations civil society organisations that try to exert influence over policy development sometimes that influence wanes and I have to say in the last few years as we've moved to the Europe 2020 strategy I think we've had less of a an influence over the way that those strategies have developed but the important thing for us is still to be there and still to be discussing particularly with the new president of the commission new president of the parliament EAPN has been fortunate to have meetings with the cabinets of both of those I've been involved so in that way we can we can have a direct influence and in the way that some of the discussions are going but I think we have to recognise that you know this is this is part of a wider change within Europe you know there is there is a degree of disenchantment and disengagement with with european politics in many countries we think we have a responsibility as a as a network of civil society organisations to try and promote that re-engagement and so we work with commission we'll work with political parties we'll work with anyone really to try and engage with people or to provide ways to allow people to engage with a european policy and then for us to have an influence on that policy okay for that can you just let others in hands out thank you like really I mean I am pleased the work that you are doing but I want to come back to our very first question today and to say that you know we here in Scotland have people who might be slipping through the net and I would be really interested to see and hear what options you could offer people like those because I mean working in with people in China and I mean I'm sure it's just as important but I would want to see our own scots getting justice as well and that their human rights not infringed is there any advice or direction you can give us that we could pursue that angle as well well this afternoon I'm going to hot foot it through to go on let's go for a meeting of the snap coke conveners and there are a number of action groups that have been set up as a result of so I think there are five so although we're on the one you know international obligations I think there is one that has a focus on on justice as well and access to justice so it would be well worth giving that feedback to that snap action group is something to take forward because a lot of domestic work now on human rights is happening through my catchphrase the prism of snap this is the way to make progress certainly from my observation so I would contact the action group the snap action group and check that this is on there they're ready I don't know if you know it's on the agenda but certainly it's quite a quite a sort of you know high profile issue that we've encountered in domestic human rights agenda access to justice that's very helpful thank you would would you be able to send me the information that'd be fantastic thank you very much David did you want to come back in in the back of willy's question it's very very briefly we as a network are active obviously in this parliament in west mince there are now colleagues in Malawi active in the Malawi parliament but there is a few touch points that we have with with Brussels as well I want to give just one quick example two or three months ago during Scottish Fair Trade Forum Charles Chaffee a smallholder sugar cane farmer came across visiting Scotland and one of the issues that he raised was coming from the EU the communities he worked with and represented had received a lot of support from the the EU to develop their capacity of growing sugar cane but a change in the rules which I'll say that the details are in 2017 means that it will be very hard almost impossible for those communities to actually import into the EU at all and the UK is one of their major markets and what we were able to do as a network a civic network was to write straight away to Scotland's six MEPs four of them within a week got back to me I shan't name her who didn't who didn't but four of them got back to us and said yeah this is this is something we would like to represent within a month and four letters had been written to significant individuals in in Brussels and a question had been asked in the European parliament I'm not going to kid on that we've been able to effect serious and substantial change but I do think what we were able to do by having an effective network is to listen seriously to those issues on the ground and communicate them effectively through to to Brussels I've remained in contact with with Charles up in Mizzouza in northern region of Malawi since and he was absolutely gobsmacked that he could come to a meeting of civil society individuals and because those strong networks that those issues were able to be communicated to the elected representatives that those representatives felt a genuine pressure to report back on on what they've done and that those issues were taken forward ours is a very small voice in in in Brussels but it was inspiring to see that we were able to use those networks to to listen to the issues on the ground and to communicate them effectively even in the european parliament to come back to hands alas question as well I think it's important to emphasise that any lobbying work that civil society organisations do at the european level or beyond is is not done for any other reason than to try and improve the position of people that we're working for in scotland in the UK but I think his alley made the point very well earlier on there is a question of wider solidarity with in our case with people who are living on low incomes across Europe I think there is a shared destiny for for many people across Europe and I think that that question of bringing the real voices to policymakers is something again that that allows us to have to exert influence over over european policy you'll know yourself you gave us a message of support last year when we sent a delegation of people with direct experience of poverty to to Europe to a major european meeting so I think it's important to to recognise that or our efforts at the european level or internationally elsewhere is about bringing change to scotland it sometimes can seem very slow and sometimes it is far too slow but that's that's the key aim of the work that we do at that level yes I just wanted to comment comment on our european context obviously I mentioned China is important for us but Europe is very important too the main basis of the work we do is the exchange of researchers and research through memorandum of understanding that we have and we have 23 of those with sister academies around the world but 11 of those are within Europe so Europe remains a very important place for our work also we are members of alia which is at the all european academies network and at the present moment one of our fellows Graham Kai is actually sitting on the board of alia so we've got influence amongst other academies within Europe and throughout Europe which is very important from our point of view and it means hopefully that the quality of scotish research is seen not just around the world but within our partners in Europe as well about what scotland is doing and the quality of what we are doing as well thank you just echoing what others have said and when julie started she'd said that the clue wasn't the title in terms of emnesty international the clue isn't the title for us as well it's the scotish human rights commission and we're a national human rights institution so as others have said all of our international work in terms of improving the human rights framework is with a view to bringing that back home into the small places and the scotish national action plan on human rights is very much about that so negotiated actions to come out with with outcomes around things things like like poverty around things like the effect of austerity around the growing challenges for our aging population all of these things are contained within staff and there's real action happening related to them in relation to access to justice just to spend a very quick moment on the first point it is a real challenge some of our sister organisations in other countries do have a quasi judicial function their parliaments have decided to allow them to hear cases they're generally very very big and very well funded because they need to be to take on individual cases we've said that the court system does that and there is work by the justice committee and others to ensure that the court system is functioning effectively in terms of providing access to justice but there's also huge amounts being done to look at alternatives and there's a lot of work being done on victims of historic abuse at the moment there's an apology law before parliaments there's a whole bunch of other things to put in place an inquiry lots of other alternate ways rather than just the court system so there is a lot a lot going on there internationally I'd like to make a point in terms of we work with our colleagues at the European Network so we work directly with the UN where we have speaking rights in a number of fora and use those to try and focus international attention on what's happening in Scotland both good and bad to bring Pesha to bear on on government here at the European level we do the same that both the Council of Europe and the European Union a lot of focus at the European level at the Council of Europe over the last few years we've played an active role has been in relation to the reform of the European courts of human rights which has been certainly in need of reform but has been subject to quite significant attack with the potential to undermine the rights of individuals to seek justice to that court and I think one of the great successes that we've had over the last few years through a huge amount of energy is that it hasn't got worse I'm not saying that the systems of the court have improved but there was real risk that there would have been limitations of people being able to access that court and those things haven't happened because a lot of work's been done so sometimes a success is preventing regression and so I think that's quite important and my last point in relation to that is one of the very interesting developments which I hope that we'll have time to talk about perhaps another time is the role of parliaments in the growing recognition that national parliaments have an important role to play as part of the human rights framework and we've seen this through the resolutions of the UN and the Council of Europe and the EU have all started to focus on this the reform of the European court is now very much focused on this the most recent high-level conference that was held in in Brussels focused on what parliaments should be doing to ensure that human rights are respected not just in your role as legislators but also in terms of serving your constituents so there's a lot that's being done and this is becoming a real new focus in Europe I think the growing understanding of the role that that parliaments and parliamentarians at a national level at a regional level and also those those members who serve in dual capacities like in the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe where you have national politicians sitting in a regional parliament or directly elected ones like at the European Parliament and I think that this is one of the areas where there's a lot of focus at the moment and a lot of opportunity to develop new roles, new understanding for members. One of the things that the council of Europe particularly interested in was how Scotland was taking one direction on human rights and maybe the rest of the UK was taking another one so no doubt the same as me there was a sigh of relief yesterday of no repeal bill but a consultation and I'm sure you'll be taken full part of the consultation at the UK government level. We certainly will amongst others and our position has always been that the test is what will improve the protections and promotion of human rights so no retrogression. How can we go further to put in place things that will improve human rights and that any such change needs to be done in a fully participative way so we certainly welcome any commitment to further consultation and we will be strongly urging with our partners that that needs to be something that's fully participative involving everyone improving education as well. Julie? Just to echo what you're saying about the stark contrast between the approach of the Scottish Government and the UK Government, obviously the human rights situation in Scotland is not perfect in terms of the realisation of rights, that's why we need to snap. The big difference is in the context in which we're working, we are pushing at an open door, there is a willingness to make progress on human rights and you contrast with what's happening at UK level and the human rights act brings that into really strong focus and the political consensus up here, the society consensus amongst the population, the strong support for the human rights act whereas that is not the case and we work across the UK and I speak to my colleagues in London who are very envious of the human rights environment that we have up here and I think there is a lot of potential in Scotland to work together and one of the things that we've recommended is having an international human rights strategy just to pull together the good work that is being done by the Government, the Parliament and across organisations in Scotland and taking that kind of Team Scotland approach to progressing human rights and trying to pull that together to be more of a beacon on the international stage and to try and bypass some of the the negative attacks that are coming from the UK Government on towards human rights. Okay, thank you Julie. Adam. This whole inquiry is about the efficacy and effectiveness of Scotland's international engagement and really I suppose what I'm trying to find out today is or indeed the whole committee is looking to actually make some recommendations at the end of the day how this can be improved. I just wondered going round the table if you could give me one thing that you think needs improved and how we could do it. I noticed the SCVO for example were suggesting that there ought to be some sort of agency which would pull things together for the third sector that might be one idea you might wish to tell us about but for each of you could you give us one area, one measure, one priority that you would have for improvement in what we're trying to do. What do you start, Allie? Just on terms of the agency thing I think in our evidence we're suggesting that there's quite a lot of investment whether it's Scottish Government or attention and focus goes into private enterprise and commercials enterprise to make new markets to make collaborations so you've got SDI, you've got Scotland Europa you know but it's not the same focus and attention given to civil society making its way in Europe or internationally because we do business together also and we collaborate not just around about changing policy but also about changing big societal changes that have a direct impact on everybody so what we were suggesting was that there needs to be more glue around all the disparate bits that happen within Scotland civil society because we've got lots of individuals, lots of organisations that are reaching out and doing some good stuff and we've not had and certainly at SCVO we've not had the ability to focus and harness all of that and we've been on the back foot you know reacting to things and so we our management board have made a commitment now to try and find a way to get us on the front foot and what we would like I suppose is to have a listening ear on how to help us all get on the front foot with some of these things because one of the things one of the key things for us at SCVO as well as all the influencing policy and and trying to get opportunities opened up for the sector whether it's transnational projects and all sorts of things is strengthening participative democracy. There are these two big ideas in democracy about representation and participation and you guys are all part of the representation part of democracy in the traditional sense. Participative democracy for us will bring about real fundamental change throughout our societies and civil society organisations represent to have a different kind of representation. They represent the interests of for instance Peter's organisations because he's sitting beside me, people who are in poverty or suffering poverty who represents his and their interests better or more or continually elected representatives of Peter's organization. He's day in day out doing that so but he will also involve and other organisations like them will also involve all his users his volunteers his members in the work that they're doing so they're participating in their democracies so a big part of what we want to try and achieve is to strengthen that participation that will bring about the bigger changes that are required throughout Europe. Naidos is international development umbrella, would you suggest something similar to that model is that what you're thinking? Well we're trying to look at how we can prioritise investment at SCVO that we can begin to provide some of that glue because we've got a range of organisations that are doing European bits we ourselves have got relations with MEPs with the European Economic and Social Committee we've got our big inner network of SCVOs with some staff in Brussels that we get very intermittent capacity to you know we get a little bit of money to do some work and then it's sort of you know fades away and it's very it's very hard and just getting information out there as well about opportunities you know horizon 2020 has springing a huge amount of opportunities and Scotland there's not benefiting from it enough because we haven't got the same Scotland Europa or SDI chunking out all that information to our sector and our sector would love to be involved much more on transnational work but their ability to grasp it in a in a very fast way is difficult so we're looking at how we can make it easier for people to to take up transnational opportunities we get loads of people get in touch with us saying can you get a Scottish partner for this but Scottish partner for that and we ourselves are not we're not organised enough to do that so to say it's all about us trying to get onto the front foot with that and we're looking at how we can staff up internally in order to provide that glue a bit better for the sector so we're kind of finding our own solution but we're very happy for you to help us with that solution I think is what I was saying. In answer to your question there to to not lose sight of of what Scotland does well and again to re-emphasise this point and that's the engagement of civic society this this committee started off by looking at the Scottish Government's international framework um I thought there was some good points in in that framework obviously while this inquiry has been going on and the updated version has been released for me when I read it though the fundamental basis the fundamental justification for Scotland's internationalism seems to be domestic economic gain that seems to be the the driver for it and I think I think we're selling Scotland short if that's the case if that's what we believe internationalism is all about I think that flies in the face of a very proud 200-year history of Scotland engaging internationally for reasons of global citizenship for reasons of social justice for reasons of solidarity and support of mutual benefit and mutual understanding it's important that there are economic drivers and I understand the reasons for that but if that's the justification I think that's a real weakness and that's actually losing sight of of what we as a country are doing quite differently to every other country in the world and I think if we if we lose that it's just going to be another another strategy another international strategy much like every other one that exists in the world but actually if we can celebrate if we can put at the centre what value add that the people have in this what volunteerism and social justice what role that they have in this I think that that's absolutely important both for this parliament and for the government just giving us a whole string of questions for the minister Peter trying to answer Adam's question I think quite surprising that that we've not come here with a long list of demands on government and I think Ali's put it quite well is that for for us as a sector and for many civil society organisations voluntary organisations we recognise that we need to do better that there are opportunities and we need to think about how we organise ourselves and I know SCV are doing that poverty alliance EAPN across the UK is also in the process of doing that but I think where where we where we could be helped with that is through forums like this I mean this is this is actually quite unusual we don't often have these kinds of discussions I would say so to maintain a relationship with the committee would be very important but I think again David's David's point is very well made it's about saying what it's about having a strategy that says what we're doing differently in Scotland and there are many things and being able to talk for us to our colleagues across Europe about what it is that we're doing differently but also I think as our as our the the agenda develops in Scotland so we're looking forward to the development of a new social justice action plan that will have a horizon up to 2030 I believe as we develop that there is much that we need to learn from particularly other European countries there is a lot that we can learn in terms of employability in terms of reform of our welfare system from other parts of Europe there's a lot that we can try and avoid as well but there's lots that we we can learn and so I think if if there's a demand then it's that that as Scottish Government as a Scottish Parliament that we look outwards and learn those lessons and I think by working with civil society organisations that have those connections then we can we can help with that learning process. Yes I could just say as well that I think echoing what what David said we should be very positive about ourselves as a country and what we have to give one of the things I would say is that we we have these 23 memoranda of understanding but there are so many countries who would like to sign more memoranda with us and that's partly because the quality of research in Scotland is such a high level I mean we punch above our weight in the UK in terms of the amount of money we get in Scotland through our universities and that's because of the quality and there's an opportunity to work even more with countries that we can actually exchange researchers and exchange research at the high level so I think that that is important I think there's more that we can do and if we had more resource then we could do it. The other thing I would say as well is I've mentioned connected Scotland as well I think that working in partnership with organisations that might not be directly linked with what you're doing but obviously offer opportunities to work together on slightly different projects can be beneficial as well. We have been working again I've mentioned the Chinese but we went across to China at the beginning of December last year to do some workshops and what we did were workshops not just with academics but also with industrialists and business people as well and we did that through the innovation centres where we took three of the innovation centres across with us and that was through SFC that we got that opportunity and we also worked with SDI in China as well to get other industrialists and people. Now that's maybe not something that the RSC would have done if it had not been part of connected Scotland and that is building further links so I think developing partnerships is a great opportunity for Scotland and it's all to try and link together a little bit more and that's one thing I might take from today as well as other people around this table thinking perhaps maybe I can link a wee bit more with some of these organisations that I've spoken to as well so I would say that. It's all about connecting Scotland with other people so we're delighted to facilitate that. Jamie, you've got a quick question. David Jones just made the point that Scotland has this incredible history of internationalism going on for 200 years and I mean I think that's true. I mean it's Scotland's influence probably the rest of the world more than any other country I can think of in many ways. I think my question, I mean the Royal Society of Edinburgh is a long established and very well respected body and has been through a lot of history. I suppose my question, I mean I looked at your priorities and I think towards a new enlightenment is a wonderful motto to have and how is that going in terms of working, I mean is that what can the Scottish Government do or the Scottish Parliament do to help with that and are you finding that since devolution it is easier to do it or is it more difficult? A good question. I don't think, first of all let me see that towards a new enlightenment it's very important for us that the Royal Society of Edinburgh's created in 1783 from the first European enlightenment and the likes of David Hume and Adam Smith were all involved in the creation and many of the great inventors and innovators throughout the last 200 nods years have also been fellows of the society so we look to that. I think the belief is that talking to other countries worldwide we know that we are a small country but we punch above our weight because we come up with the ideas that mean that we do and that is why the likes of China wants to talk to us in Scotland they're very keen to have links with us on that sort of research side because they know the quality of what they get in Scotland so I think that that is very important. As regards what devolution has done for us I think from the funding point of view the funding of the the Royal Society of Edinburgh and somewhere in the region of about 40% of our money comes from Scottish Government through the Scottish Funding Council we've moved around a little bit but I think that where we are now with the Scottish Funding Council they have an understanding about what the Royal Society of Edinburgh is trying to do and I think that it's helping an awful lot from what the RSE is doing so I think that that I think that working closely with the Scottish Parliament Scottish Government is very important for us and that's something that I would like to try and develop further over the years as it comes. Rod, you've got a final quick. Very quick because it's just a brief kind of point on back to where we were a few minutes ago. On the human rights point and the importance of international human rights if I can summarise my perception of the UK Government's position is that they are not again human rights but they want to repatriate human rights but can you put the case for looking at human rights in an international context? Yes. I think that your starting premise is entirely right is that the UK has been one of the key drivers for the improvements in the creation of an international human rights framework. UK lawyers were involved and UK politicians were involved in the drafting of almost all of our international standards which is why it's particularly worrying when we see a shift in position to move away from one of the key principles of human rights which is universality. You can't pick and choose everyone by our very nature by being human as human rights. Human rights are interrelated, they're interdependent. The idea that you can pick and choose between human rights undermines the basic principle that we're all human. I think there's massive concerns domestically in terms of sending a message that some people don't matter or some issues don't matter and that there's huge concerns with projecting this message internationally in that a country with such a strong history of human rights protection moving backwards sends a message to other countries that it's who don't have such strong human rights records that it's okay for them to move backwards and that there's real concerns particularly in relation to comments made in relation to things like the European Court of Human Rights where the UK is taking a position not to implement decisions. Countries like Russia and Turkey and others with significant numbers of judgments against them don't say to the court we're not going to follow them, they just kind of take a long time to discuss it and they pay out money to individuals and don't really change things but for a high contracting party to the European Convention to say that it will not follow the rules that it's agreed to sends a very very negative message and I think that that creates danger not just in the UK but around the world. Do you want to answer your question, Maud? We've really seriously used up all of our time this morning as you can see we again you know topics here that we could you know exercise very very well can I thank you all very very much for all of your contributions and offer the same invitation that if you have any other comments or resolutions to problems or ideas please feed them through the committee and we will endeavour to do the best with them that we possibly can can I thank you all for coming along this morning and move on very very quickly to agenda item 3 which is our Brussels bulletin I'm minded to suggest that we note the Brussels bulletin and make it make our other committee colleagues aware of it if anybody's got any burning issue not happy to do that well that concludes this committee for this morning and I thank you very much for your attendance and see you all in the fourth of June now close this committee