Diolch yn faisiadol iawn iagaiddio edrych i equad di ddi sadiau nad wych chi ar lleffen newlyt bump I welcome to meeting Farah Farzana, race equality mainstreaming officer at CMVO Scotland, Danny Boyle, senior parliamentary and policy offer at Bemis, and Jatin Haria, executive director of CREA. You are all very welcome. I refer members to paper one and invite each of our witnesses to make some opening remarks starting with Farah Farzana, please. Good morning, everybody, and thank you very much for the invitation to come to the committee to give evidence. CMVO is a national intermediary organisation and we are a long-standing consult to the Scottish Government equality sector. The aim of CMVO Scotland is to build the capacity of the ethnic minority voluntary sector and its communities. We have established a network of ethnic minority public and third sector organisations throughout Scotland to which we deliver a range of capacity building programmes. Some of the work that we do within CMVO includes being a member of stakeholder network groups, such as the hate crime strategic partnership group and the anti-racism and education programme, alongside the designing of the national care service and on SNAP. We have a range of programmes in the organisation, predominantly the one that I am working on is race for human rights, where we look to embed race equality through our human rights lens. Just some general key messages for over the last couple of years when we got the invitation to come to the committee is that there has been a general change in tone from the Scottish Government. There is a bit more of an acknowledgement of anti-racism and it is coming through in certain parts of messaging. That has led to a degree of awareness about race equality in Scotland and the fact that institutionalised racism is starting to be talked about. However, we would like to recommend that there should be more leadership across directorates and a strong line to focus on visible priority groups. One thing that we see that needs to be improved upon is accountability and implementation, especially in the financial crisis. Obviously, the purpose of this inquiry is to see whether there should be an inquiry. Given the cost of living crisis and the financial issues that we are facing as a nation, is it really worthwhile going for another inquiry when we already know what the issues are? Just to be specific, what is the remit of the inquiry that would be to take place or what are the thoughts of the committee? Good morning, colleagues. My name is Danny Boyle. I am the senior parliamentary policy officer for Bemis Scotland. Just before I give a small bit of background on Bemis and some of the questions or the structure of the discussion this morning set by the committee, I want to express our solidarity with Scotland's Turkish and Syrian communities this morning, who are deeply concerned about issues that are affecting them at home. It is very personal for some of our staff members at Bemis as well, so I would like to extend our solidarity with them at this very difficult time. Also, for the committee's information, I am returning this my second day back at work after a two-month absence due to a health issue, so it is delightful to be back. I apologise if some of the reports that I have noticed have been published within that period, if I am not in a position to give a detailed response to some of that as possible. Bemis, similar to our colleagues at Sembo, with a national race equality intermediary organisation, where equality and human rights are focused, are democratically led by our members. That means that our board is representative of communities protected under article 1 of the international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination. They come from Scotland's multi-generational Jewish community, Pakistani community, Indian community, African, Roma and many others, so we have a really good representation of Scotland's communities who this sort of inquiry, potential inquiry and work should be focused on and be able to engage directly with. In that sense, our membership and our networks are also reflective of those communities in Scotland. Some of them, as I said, are multi-generational and fall within the scope of those article 1 provisions in the definition of race, which falls under the Equality Act, covering colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, so they are multi-generational. As I say, it could be Jewish, Polish, Irish, multiple African groups, Pakistani, Indian, newer, water-term migrant communities from Eastern Europe to a migrant, Roma community, Polish again, and a significant number of people who have moved to Scotland from our African communities over the last 20 years, the largest or the most significantly grown ethnic minority community in Scotland from 2001 to 2011. We would assess again as we get the outcomes from the 2021 slash 2 census, which is coming now and is going to be incredibly important to inform any inquiry that the size of that community will continue to grow. Just one final point. The sort of structured way of structured it, we would assess it as a beneficial time for parliamentary oversight of some of the issues that should occur. We obviously had to completely and unbelievable experience of the pandemic and the impacts that that highlighted for ethnic minority communities in Scotland from these diverse groups. We have then moved into a cost 11 crisis, and we have also, in terms of policy development, been in a period that coincided with a period of transition, obviously changing over parliaments, and that reflected also the change over in the race quality action plans, which are distilled from the race equality framework, which is a framework set from 2016 to 2030. Each parliamentary cycle has a distillation of what that looks like in this particular moment. The next race equality action plan is going to need to be cognisant of the pandemic cost 11 crisis in Scotland leaving the European Union. Multiple things, black lives matter of course as well, which highlighted the global issue of colour-based institutional discrimination, and also all of these other myriad of issues which affect different ethnic minority communities in different ways across different policy areas. So we're delighted to be here. We'll provide as much information to committee as we can from our experience over the last number of years, and also try and help to provide a pathway forward to ensure that the InQualty and Human Rights Committee is able to engage directly with the citizens and community organisations you need to hear from. Brian, thanks very much, Dye. And Jatyn Haria, please. Yeah, thanks for the invitation. So yeah, I'm Jatyn Haria. I'm the director at the Coalition for Social Equity and Rights, CRER. We're a Scotland-wide strategic anti-racism social policy charity. We're largely funded, partly funded by Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council, and we work quite heavily with these two organisations and the wider public sector in Scotland. Always trying to take an evidence-based and strategic approach to tackling the deep-rooted causes or deep-rooted issues of racism and racial inequality that exist in Scotland. I mean, Robert Duffer, we had two minutes for the opening statement, so I'll try and stick to that. I think the having sight of the proposed lines of questioning was really useful. I hope that's adopted much more frequently. This is not a test for the three people here. So, and just one thing I will close on saying. I mean, I think as far as I was saying, there's a lot of activity on the race equality front in Scotland. I think arising from Covid and the Black Lives Matter movement. A lot of activity. I'm not sure there's enough action and there's certainly not enough action. There's not enough change in people's lives, which is really what the end product has to be, and we'll come on to that, I'm sure. So, don't be fooled by all the activity that's happening. It's good it's happening, but it's not quite hitting the right spots. Okay, thanks very much. Jattie Nank, you're probably touching on a number of the areas that we're about to just kick off with. So, we're going to move to questions, and as you say, this isn't about getting on, it's about trying to help the committee's shape, it's work going forward. And I think one of the things that we're very keen to be mindful of is that we're not starting this afresh, and that there's been a lot of work already carried out. The last committee in particular took forward an inquiry into race equality, and they particularly focused within that on employment and skills, which they felt was really, really important to tackling some of the wider issues. So, it'd be good to hear from the panel, and there's Dave here, so we'll just go to all three, I think, for most of the questions. Here, whether you think that from that inquiry that the Scottish Government's anti-racist employment strategy, what your views are of that, has it had the impact in terms of the actions and the outcomes of making a difference to people's lives that we would hope for, and I know that the last committee and the Scottish Government would hope for. But also, just to hear your views on what we should focus on, as I said, that we're not starting from scratch, so we're keen, we know there's a problem, as Farrah said, so we're not trying to say, is there a race issue in Scotland? We know there is, so, just like the last committee focused on employment and skills, is there an area that we should focus on? Farrah, do you want to kick off with two areas? Yes, that's absolutely fine. On the back of the previous committee's report and its conclusion and recommendations that were made, the recommendations were quite good in the sense that there was a sense of being able to see what needs to happen to go forward. Now, if we were to compare that to actually what's been happening on the ground in realistic and practical terms, like I mentioned earlier, we will come to change in terminology and language across—well, not across the Scottish Government, but in certain directorates of the Scottish Government. I think that what really needs to happen in that sense is to be across all directorates of the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament. That's one of the first things that, as an ethnic minority born and brought up in Scotland, is one of the things that we're quite keen to hear out for, to see where the terminology and language is being used. Using the correct terminology and language, especially when we're discussing about racism, shows commitment and it shows understanding. Unfortunately, that can't be replicated across all directorates, so that's definitely something that I've noticed again. However, after Black Lives Matter, there has definitely been a shift. I'm one of the race quality mainstreaming officers for Central Scotland. I should have said that at the beginning. It's really interesting to see the shift in attitudes towards people after Black Lives Matter. I think that a bit of a concern is that it's only something horrific had to happen for things to progress, so that really evidences that we have a wider societal issue. It's a one teeny baby step towards the right direction of anti-racism. The strategy that was published in December was the anti-racist employment strategy. It was one that Senville also participated in helping to draft, so we're quite, you know, really happy to be a part of that. I think that it is definitely in the right direction, the way that we want to see, the way that is being laid out, the way that things have been explained, et cetera. We've been working quite closely with Catherine Ross and Mandy Watts from the Fearing Inclusive Workplaces Unit to make that happen. For example, one of the things that we did was a data improvement workshop last year. However, the biggest thing, I think, to take away to say is what we've noticed with Senville. I think that this isn't new either. It was touched upon in the last committee report as well. It was the lack of leadership from chief executives of public sector and third sector organisations. Although there was the summit event, I think that it was in early 2021, and again, we had this data improvement workshop, for example, and it was about aimed at empowering leadership, senior leadership, when it comes to the reality and practicality aspects of it, they are not there. That is a huge concern. The fact that that is not coming down from the top-down approach is that they are not making themselves visible, because we know from a front-line staff, for example, that that is really, really important, and especially if we look at the term street-level bureaucrats, those ones that have got the decisions of making, who have got those policy-making decisions at a ground level, how much are they being influenced by leadership, how much are they being directed by leadership towards the anti-racist approach, and that seems to be a consistent pushback that we've been getting through, for example, training sessions, or you'll have one or two, perhaps, who are within HR who are wanting to take this approach, but then the consensus isn't there, so, therefore, we're not hoping to make that progress as much as we'd like, so that's what I've got in terms of employment and skills, part of it. I'll let somebody else on some of these. The strategy has only just been launched just before Christmas, so it's a bit early to really talk about how effective it might be. It has a lot of future commitments, which I suppose you'd expect in a strategy, but the test will be whether any of those are achieved. Having said that, I suppose our problem with the strategy in as much as it, it says a lot of good things about what good employers should do, and things we already know, training diverse interview panels, blah, blah, blah. We've known all this for years and years. There's a lack of measurement in the strategy. There's a lack of, you know, when do we expect things to be achieved by, and some of the measures, like an increased number of employers having better data, I mean, it would have been better if they put some numbers to that if they've known how many currently have data collection and how many they want in two years' time, in five years' time. So, yeah, and then leadership is another key part of it, but what does that mean? I mean, they talk about having senior leaders networks. I'm not sure what that's going to achieve and who's going to turn up, because senior leaders are busy people. So, we need to find a way around this, but I suppose the real frustration is given all that we know and all that has been said and done, especially in the last three years, are much more radical changes needed. You know, we're going to get the census data. It's going to show a higher number of BME people in the country. The diversity and teaching target is still about four or five percent only, whereas Glasgow City Council, the BME pupil population, is over 20 percent already. So, yeah, it's just a frustration about whether we're being radical enough and whether we're looking at things in a fast and a more urgent way that is needed, rather than just saying, we know if we'll just be good employers and just do what is right, get more training, have fewer diverse interview panels, and there's no assessment of employer racism, I don't think. And then linked to that, there's no, what I think what is needed is an effective means of people complaining if they do feel they've been discriminated in an interview or in an employment situation. You know, we get very few tribunal cases on race employment in Scotland. We know how difficult it is to raise a tribunal case. There has to be other means of complaining, I suppose, and trying to achieve something. I'll stop there. Okay, thanks. And Danny? Thanks very much. I just maybe make a couple of general points. This particular report in the parliamentary committee inquiry, which preceded it, obviously the parliamentary committee inquiry, which preceded it, took place during the height of the pandemic, and I remember it being one of those things on my list to consult people on and respond to it, and it just got swamped by everything we were doing at that particular time. And then the report from the short-term working group has obviously been published on the 9th of December, which coincided with my own time off. I would just make a very generic point. I had a chance to read the executive summary and some of the footnotes on the train and the way through this morning, and the committee this morning has addressed or started to put on the table how do we start to discuss what we're talking about when we're talking about race, equality and human rights, because there's certainly an emerging differentiation in that use of language and what that means to different people, and that was actually touched upon by the UN Special Rapporteur, Ms Tendaya Cymru, when she gave her state report to the UK in 2019, and colleagues from CRED had very helpfully and kindly set up a consultation event for ethnic minority communities in Scotland in a hotel in Edinburgh to discuss it, and we were talking about some of the issues around about terminology then and what she had put in her final report, and this is just to quote, racial and ethnic terminology varies even among state institutions, and different terms are sometimes used interchangeably and potentially confusing ways. And that continues to be our experience when it comes to assessing benchmarking and recognising progress or lack of with regards to race equality in Scotland. So as I said in our beginning opening statement, we miss our Equalities and Human Rights organisation, that means we recognise communities on the basis of the article 1 definition in the international treaty on the prohibition of racial discrimination, which covers colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, and what we want to see Scottish Government do via the race equality strategy or our anti-racist strategy in increasing ethnic minority employment for Scotland or whatever strategy it's doing is to embed that article 1 definition from the outset so that the data which is collected with regards to analysing differentiations between different ethnic groups is there as part of the evidence base and there as part of our strategy as we move through the process of analysing where there may be gaps in employment representation. And it was just within reading the document this morning which covers the Fairer Scotland for all, so the Fairer Scotland for all duty linked to section 10 of the Equalities Act in terms of assessing social and economic disadvantage in the intersection here we race. And the part and it begins knowing your workforce data, it says Scotland's minority ethnic population is a relatively small group and 2021 minority ethnic groups accounted for around 5% of Scotland's population. So that figure is inaccurate by the 2011 census Scotland's ethnic minority population is 8.4%. And as Jack Andes said and we agree with that that has increased considerably over the intervening period between 2011 and 2021. So while there'll be lots of useful information in this report and there's obviously a lot of good work went into it from our perspective it's not a universal human rights based approach to assessing workforce inequality in Scotland because if you were to do that you'd have to start from the outset by analysing across those protective provisions and disaggregating data rather than aggregating data up into racial classifications and just one final point generally on employment which may be beneficial for the committee moving forward. Census data tells us a retrospective problem so the problem has already occurred and been embedded and we can see that across a number of sectors which are again identifying this report and my colleagues have alluded to these are ongoing systemic issues. The report from what I could see or may be incorrect primarily focuses on public sector which is absolutely right to do so and using terminology around structural discrimination in order for those institutions to self-review and make progress and that's incredibly important but in terms of a comprehensive race equality strategy for increasing employment embedded in anti-racism and embedded in the positive duties of human rights the Scottish government has to go significantly further than that the reality is we're in a public sector recruitment freeze we will be for some time and actually redundancies are most likely to be coming down the line so will it it's correct to focus on public sector to ensure progress is made if you actually want to make substantive progress and race equality from an equality in human rights perspective you have to have a much more positive and strategic vision on where are our employment opportunities occurring where is our capital spending where are our major national infrastructure projects and are these procurement processes which have been significantly opened up since the UK left the European Union and obviously Scotland's included and that allows us to be much more race equality specific and strategic and ensuring that those contracts have embedded within them race equality opportunities to ensure that young people coming up have direct access to apprenticeships or whatever it may be so an example of we're all agreeing on the fact that we've been calling for some of these issues for a significant period of time the SNP government's previous parliamentary manifesto commitment was to build 50,000 new houses over the duration of the parliament and we are good in 2011 that there should have been within the procurement process race equality targets embedded within all procurement aspects of that to ensure that young people and particularly the intersection between class and race equality we're having access to opportunities for jobs around about building significant infrastructure and projects in Scotland because that's where the job opportunities were so there has to be a multi-layered approach to assessing employment and race equality and anti-racism in Scotland which takes account of the entire economy.  Yeah thanks I'm not going to get into a discussion on terminology because I don't think somewhere very productive but Danny and I have this disagreement all the time. I think if we accept that we're taking an anti-racist approach to what we're trying to do the terminology will follow but the one thing I wanted to pick up on which I forgot earlier was in terms of some of the original question was about the previous inquiry and the recommendations from it and I know it was a predecessor committee I know most of you went on it but I think that's part of the problem that people move around and they forget the commitments that have been made on these issues so there's quite a few commitments where the committee itself said it would write to public sector organisations in fact the first commitment was to write to each public authority and ask for a minimum of three new actions to address the organization specific issues along with time scales and reasons for those time scales. I'm not aware if that was ever done or what the response to that was so you know there are things that you should that need following up from the committee itself you know it's very easy to blame public sector bodies individually. We'll definitely pick that up and check whether those actions were taken and if I remember rightly I think the letter may have gone out but I don't like whether it was followed up. That's a helpful prompt I think. Thank you chair and good morning panel and thank you for your opening statements and your information on this question. The minority ethnic employment gap is growing and it's particularly high for minority ethnic women. What do you think the problem is here and do you think that the Scottish Government's anti-racist employment strategy goes far enough to tackle that issue? I absolutely think that minority women in particular face additional barriers. One of the roles that I'm in within Senbo is for the Scottish minority ethnic women's network as well so I'll do all the admin stuff and all that but it's been really interesting to try and reach out to ethnic minority women and what we tend to find is that if there's usual barriers that women face when going back into employment for example if they've had family if it's had children there's still that element of cultural issues where it's not necessarily like the permission needed to work but do they have the support of family to be able to fulfil their roles for example so there are those issues there as well a lot of people think there's a skills deficit but you know when you actually get into the nitty gritty and you speak to these like amazing women you realise that there's a lot of transferable skills that are there so the fact that you know women are automatically especially ethnic minority women who probably like growing up have always been put down most of their life they're coming into this place where they're immediately seen through a deficit so they're needing to work that extra bit harder to improve their skills or you know to have that work-life balance and it causes burnout and fatigue because those structures aren't there and there's a need for flexibility a lot as well because we know typically speaking ethnic minority women tend to be the main carers not just for children but for other family members whether that be their parents or grandparents so it's a matter of looking at what sort of flexibility is available within roles and I know that something after Covid that's more talked about now but you know won't hold if it had been talked about about 10 years ago or implemented 10 years ago then we probably wouldn't be having such an issue so for the amongst again like I said we're aware already of barriers that women face but particularly with ethnic minority women there is that level of racism stereotyping gas lighting particularly not being believed which leads to anxiety a lot of women that we speak to they do have really like unbelievable levels of anxiety when it is talking about coming into the workplace and that will be due to past racial trauma that they probably don't even realise that that is racial trauma and then because the workplace don't acknowledge the fact that there is such thing as racial trauma that employees bring with them it just goes like it's hidden it's not talked about it's not addressed so that doesn't really quite help either and that affects confidence in itself so again one of the aspirations of the women's network is to for example have a mentoring programme because that's what women are asking for is to be able to have that confidence to sit at the table like I'm sitting here today I'm very blessed and honored to be at this position today and if only you know there'll be other women as well that will be sitting here speaking and making their voices heard there is a huge issue in terms of encouraging specific ethnic minority women to come forward and sit at the table like I said because they believe that they won't be believed in a lot of the things that they say or they put forward no thank you for that can I just ask a question on what you've just said there I mean obviously you just and talked about there's not enough implementation and just talking about implementation you've just spoken about one of the actions that could be getting done is mentoring is that something that's being done by the government or by even or third sector organisations or is it something that you're asking for that we need that mentoring for those females to be in jobs and obviously be understood and flexible not as far as I'm aware okay if there is it will be something very small I know the john smith centre did a leadership programme and that I think that was a cohort of 50 50 people and I know Sam E have done a mentoring programme leadership sort of programme for educators within that field through the through the work that they're doing on the anti-racism and education programme but in terms of the Scottish government particularly there's nothing that has like jumped out or nothing that has been substantially enough to make an impact thank you jythen is there anything of Danny you would like to add just just to agree but I think far I covered everything there succinctly and in detail and that's exactly the type of expertise you need around the table to discuss this specific issue and then on that point we would be happy to help the committee engage directly with female led organisations from ethnic minority communities who have a significant amount of expertise in this area to have these direct discussions. I'll tell you why firstly we need to differentiate issues affecting new or migrant BME women to people who've been born up in school in Scotland so we need to separate the issues because there are only two different issues there. If you've been born in Scotland and been through school in Scotland we know from the facts from the data that all BME groups or most BME groups have better education qualifications than their white counterparts so it's not an educational deficit in any way. If what Farron is saying if some BME women are coming out of school with less confidence than their white female counterparts that's a problem of the school that we need to deal with we need to stop that happening at that level not trying to deal with it afterwards so I think we don't know enough of some of the issues Farron has touched on some I mean appropriate childcare has been flagged up as an issue and that's probably definitely an issue for some women but we shouldn't paint all BME women in the same light with any of these things and then we go back to if we move away from the deficit model what are employers doing and why are they not recruiting and you know some of the wider issues and we don't have we don't have good breakdowns of gender in a lot of the employment stats so it's very hard you know like when we have application stats for for BME people for public sector jobs it's hardly ever broken down by gender or by sex I don't want to get into that discussion today but you know so until we get better data I mean but we know BME applications are fairly high compared to you know it's all comparable to their size and population the problem is that interview now back to the same problem are BME people failing at interview because they're not good enough then that's a problem of education and other things or is there discrimination happening even if it's behind discrimination of people not fitting you know you're not fitting so I'll not give you the job or things like that we know from the anonymous surveys just your name impacts on whether you get the same opportunity so we need to start talking more about discrimination I think so I know you said chatting that you were probably disagreeing but there was lots of nodding across and I think you're just indicating how complex the issue is and make sure that we look at it in multi chat farra you want to come back in very quickly there and then I'm going to go into Maggie but farra yeah it was just the kind to go what what you were just saying there chatting is that yeah if you're born and brought up here it's a little bit different than if you're a migrant coming into the into the country but the bottom line is is the fact that say whether it's a schooling issue but the fact is is that if I'm if an ethnic minority woman is in the workplace and she has an issue she takes it to her manager the fact is either she's not aware of the full processes of what is available she's not believed or she's not assigned posted to the get the right support and that in effect has its like knock on effect on a person's mental health on their ability to actually progress in their career and that's why ethnic minority women they very rarely get any career progression because they're not given that support system in place so just to further ado Rachel was your question on employment on employment yeah yeah so it is quite interesting Danny's just popped up the room but he said that there was an issue with the pandemic affecting race inequality and I'm trying to tease out whether you believe that the pandemic has set that back because we know at the time that we're talking about unemployment people from ethnic communities were twice as likely to be unemployed they were twice as likely to be living in poverty and there were four times likely to be living in overcrowded conditions now the first question is do you believe that the pandemic has set any progress if there was progress before the pandemic and my second question is do you believe that there should be a cross-sectional approach to all these issues of housing, unemployment, poverty? Rachel, in due respect we're on to the questions that Maggie was about to ask so I'm going to let Maggie come in first I think I did ask if it was on the same topic and I don't think it was so Maggie and then you can answer I think the both questions I'll blend in but Maggie okay thanks thanks Joe and good morning everybody thank you for coming in today and thank you for what you've said so far and I find some of the the disagreements to use your voice acting quite interesting because actually I think what it does as Joe says it teases out the complexity within this but also some of the the structural and systemic problems that that that we face and that no one government department can solve you know education can't solve this all we're dealing with deeply deeply ingrained cultural racism in in in in across all different sectors I think Jackie you made the distinction between a lot of the activity that's going on and the need for actual implementation and action and Farry you mentioned this as well cautioning us also against treating minority ethnic communities as homogenous for a whole range of different reasons not only whether people are are born and brought up in Scotland or or or not I suppose so my question is around how we if given what we know about the employment gaps the inequality and employment that we've talked about that that Rachel and Pam have have a question on given that we know about the unequal impact of the pandemic of the cost of living crisis and given also that we know that actually very little changed until something like back lives matter you know there was a lot of talk at Farry said if we'd implemented some of these policies 10 years ago then we'd been in a different position what do you think is the barrier that either the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliament is coming across and what are the things rather than always relying on you and your organisations to fix the problem because that's not not where we should be um how do we overcome that that barrier that deeply ingrained systemic racism if I do you want to kick off and jatton i'll come to you next in short simple sweet answer acknowledging white privilege and white fragility within these systems thank you jatton holding people to account and not just the individual but the whole organisation what would what would what would that look like well so as I said earlier I think we have great commitments on paper okay they've not followed through by a large yeah so who is responsible uh or who is held to account for for that and then we've sort of forget it for a couple of years let me go back and make the same commitment uh we did a study for Scottish Government on 20 years of anti leases policy making that's a certain sense of devolution because things haven't moved on enough and we'd still talk about the same things we were talking about 20 years ago um so who's held to account um I saw from a parliamentary question answer the other day last week that some health board chairs now have key performance indicators on race equality that's as much as I know because it was a very short thank you answer you know parliamentary answer but that would be interesting to follow up and how how is that board chair going to be held to account if they don't achieve assuming the indicator was the right indicator in the first place and that's always a problem um but sorry I'm losing your question so yeah I think as as has been said I think Farah said we know what the issues are and we sort of know what some of the solutions are it's how do we hold people to account and not let them off the hook okay thanks Justin Danny sorry I think I sort of missed the the the thrust of your question going in and out apologies no no that's okay I suppose that there's something that that that there's obviously a barrier there's a gap between the action the fine the the sort of recommendations what we know is wrong and actually overcoming that barrier that hurdle what is it that that we uh Scottish government Scottish parliament us as politicians what what are we what are we doing wrong and how do we overcome because very specifically in relation to the employment report into in relation to the systemic ingrained racism in Scottish society so I think you know essentially there's not there's not a uniformed acceptance that that's a reality and then there's not a uniformed acceptance that we need to utilise our legislative processes and international human rights law and general recommendations and all of the things that are arsenal to make progress about what they actually mean in practice across those protective provisions okay I'm struck by what you said about that that recognition I think we've seen recently quite a lot of information around racial profiling in the police for instance and how there's work going work on going to improve this but but that the reports keep coming back that that our our police service for instance makes use of of of racial profiling and I'm just wondering what would for you what would that kind of accountability look like for either either the police service specifically or any other public agency not we had any particular examples of good practice with regards to accountability with within police scotland but the broader issue not only about the use of racial profiling within police scotland and how that impacts with on within scotland's demographics is you'll find that thread of inconsistency and inequality and not just running straight within an institution like police scotland and any issues which may occur within there but throughout the criminal justice system so both myself and Farrah represent a respective organisations on the tackling hate crime and prejudice group and basically what what's happened in scotland for the last you know almost every year since the evolution and it's quite inexplicable is that we were just given a block number of racially aggravated hate crimes so we're just told there was 5000 this year and 4000 that year and 6000 this year and there was actually no disaggregated data on the nature of the hate crime and who was targeted and who was facing it and one of the arguments we've been putting forward consistently is that we need that an annual disaggregation of racially aggravated hate crime in order to implement you know the sort of informed policy responses which are required to deal with these ingrained in institutional issues because if it's happening in the street the likelihood is the same attitude exists within workplaces and exists within the structures which have been developed to provide public services so all of this you know scotland is in its relative infancy and actually taking an appropriate international human rights based approach to actually tackle in some of the consistent and relentless issues which affect communities in scotland and while there's an issue with disaggregation there's also an issue with how we recognise and actually collate those crimes so again what we find when we've just went through a full consultation period we communities on developing a hate crime strategy for scotland which will again be coming in the coming period and will be relevant potentially to the committee's inquiry we find that individual community members from different ethnic groups when they report crimes to police scotland in some circumstances police officers are not sure what type of crime it is or how to collate it or how to describe it so you know the issues you're identifying run throughout the criminal justice system be it racial profiling or the lack of understanding about how we collate and disaggregate around about racism racism in scotland told them people accountable there's now a legal duty on Scottish ministers when we actually progress with the hate crime in public order act scotland to provide an annual disaggregation of data between the police in the crown office and the Scottish ministers as I said and that came from a direct recommendation of the international committee in the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination. Similarly in the 2016 review of scotland because we can look at the bold issues now via the UN rather than just a basic UK generic report also made the recommendation around about that the scotland's curriculum for excellence has to give a balanced account of grave human rights violations transatlantic slavery and other issues which is now developed into the the race equality and education report and the very strategic interventions which are being made there so there are efforts and you don't see them immediately they do take time you know we have the same frustrations of everybody else that they don't manifest as quickly as possible but if you want you know a proper race equality accountability body for police scotland or any institution you would need to you know have a a discussion and look at examples of best practice in order to do so and this potential inquiry might provide you the opportunity to set out in that process. Thanks Annie that that's helpful just one final point maybe this comes back touches on on some of the supplementaries Rachel was was asking around a cross-sectoral approach we've talked obviously we we can say more about what we can ask of public agency or or what we can demand of public agencies but i think there's there's a key role and farry you talked about your organisations and others who may be doing quite small local support you know whether it's mentoring or or that kind of thing i'm wondering whether there are whether there is enough support given to that that kind of both within this third sector um from organisations such as yours but also into other other bits of the third sector who will be providing services for ethnic minority communities and individuals is there enough information flowing within the third sector and between public and third sector bodies around cultural sensitivities around broadening our our understanding collectively as as a society um so one of the things again i should have mentioned this in the introduction when i was introducing myself as part of the race for human rights programme is that we do consultation with public and third sector organisations um so for example at the moment we're sitting with 21 clients and that is across public and like mainstream organisations specifically so it allows us to give a good understanding get receive a good understanding of where people are what what sort of direction of travel organisations are going when it is about race equality or you're not implementing anti-racism etc so um that has been really like insightful in terms of you know coming coming here today um i think what the the question is about being cross-sectional absolutely um just the same way that we would talk about intersectionality you know because lives life is complex where everybody has complex needs and they cross over and i think that is definitely something that again Covid has has brought to the forefront um as well and just sort of like going back what you're mentioning about race and race inequalities in scotland and i had just basically said white privilege and white fragility what the the reason why i said that and i should have expanded on that is again through the work that we do within Sembo so we're national based so we have clients that are in highlands and south of scotland and you know everywhere so it's a really good full picture that we get from different areas and the specifically the barriers they face and when we when we talk about these things there is still denial that there is racism within society or within that local area there's a lot of gas the racial gas lighting that goes on and even in our meetings that we have the number of times i've lost the number of times that i've been racially gas lighted as well as well as my colleagues for example in any meetings that we go we still come across attitudes again go through from front line members of staff and managers particularly of all lives matter and you know that's we know that that is problematic and the whole fact that yes we treat everybody equally these are the type of things that is the realistic the reality and these are people who i meant the term i brought in was street level bureaucrats those people who actually have the influence in their organizations this is an attitude that they have so you know training can only do so much so the accountability exactly what jatin was saying where is the accountability the public sector equality duty has been in place for like since you know at least 2010 you know we've had the legislation in there but what has been what has happened in practical terms is there a possibility of you know asking not asking but demanding for leaders within you know civil service or within you know the public sector to actually have targets in place that they must achieve these you know outcomes for example within this specific period because we know this can happen like if we look at gender representation for example and we if we look at the the recent movement towards LGBT communities as well so we know it can happen and it can happen to other communities and why can't it happen to implement anti-racism and that's when i go back to saying white privilege and white fragility is the biggest issue within scotland because we don't see it i'm still being welcomed into this country and i've been born and brought up here so that in itself is a disgrace and you know when we're talking about organizations that's organizational culture and i think that in itself it is a really hard job to change because it's policies can only take on so much it's down to the human capital within the organization that is what essentially fundamentally needs to change and then that's when we talk about proportional representation as a bare minimum so then you'll get those people with those experiences and then that goes back to what jatin was saying about you know the work that they've done that they've published on the 20 years since devolution what has been done and again through it there it's lack of implementation and accountability and there has been a number of opportunities that both parliament and government have had and then the question is we still don't see enough progress so therefore how would you expect ethnic minorities then to have trust in their local governments and their national governments in times of going forward why would an ethnic minority want to work for the Scottish parliament or the Scottish government or any other public sector organization if they can actually see that outward visible narrative that says that you know what we're taking a zero tolerance approach now to racism just like we're going to implement 50 50 in gender and we're taking zero tolerance approach towards lgbt communities as well okay thanks okay thanks Rachel did you want to come back in on any further points uh yeah Danny uh you you said that uh the pandemic had um affected a lot of the targets and outcomes if you like you didn't use those words but in 2016 the figures showed that people from ethnic communities were twice as likely to be unemployed twice as likely to live in poverty and four times as likely to live in overcrowded conditions prior to the pandemic was there any progress made by the interventions in terms of the race inequality action from the Scottish government did you believe that there was progress before the pandemic i think there was progress in terms of acknowledging there was issues but not enough progress in terms of outcomes okay that would be and do you now believe that the pandemic has set that if there was um in terms of the commitment to setting an agenda that was there but do you believe that that has also been set back or it's given um the pandemic has has really focused these issues again okay so it's going to be trying to make this as useful and answer as possible the pandemic is exacerbated significantly the pre-existing issues it was useful and so far as it became such a blatant and obvious issue around about you know the social and economic impacts on ethnic minority communities in scotland it became an issue which couldn't be ignored simultaneously obviously with the increase in recognition of institutional racism and other factors which fed those inequalities via the black lives matter movement has continued to to raise that focus however the reality is that our society and the way we operate our society our economy and uh and different levers is not set up to be to be at present to be able to substantially respond to those issues which have increased and exacerbated um and i think that's linked again i was thinking that of an answer i was going to give to Maggie when she was asking about what's the links between the third sector and our organizations and other organizations on the ground and links into our 32 local authorities and hundreds of public bodies and what national government is doing and and there's an incredible amount of hard hard work goes on within our organizations and other organizations working on the ground incredible amount of hard work goes on within individual local authorities particular staff focused on this work and within the scotland government's race equality unit but in reality our numbers as a collective are tiny in comparison to the different levels of policy focus which exist within different areas and that's also reflected in budget allocation both to all of our organizations and our compatriot organizations funded through the equalities and human rights fund and also communities at a local level working at local authority level the reality of you know while race and race equality has increased significantly is a conscious issue and we're having the same conversations again about the same issues the race equality budget within national government has been stagnant for you know over a decade it's maybe increased by i think it was one or two million pounds for the general broader equality budget but you know it's it's pretty massive real terms cuts over the same over the period of 2011 to to the present day or the financial crisis to the present day so all of our organizations are are operating in quite extreme circumstances and you're right to to look at and acknowledge prayer, bimus, sembol all of the other compatriot organizations the ones in your constituencies is not our responsibility to provide the silver bullet solution to race equality issues in scotland for local authorities or government or whoever it may be and i've certainly observed in my time over the years because of the really extreme budgetary constraints which have affected all of our organizations and the different perspectives which are taken to race equality via a critical race theory approach or an equalities and human rights based approach is that rather than government and other duty bearers taking a step back and going right we have a you know a legal responsibility to all of these issues which are being raised and we need to respond to them all what i've seen occur is that communities and organizations and individuals are left to compete against each other for for their rights to be respected and for those rights to be respected protected and fulfilled and i think that's a big basic indicator within that is that while we have significant political proclamations about black lives matter and about race equality in scotland being anti-racist and embedding anti-racism here there and everywhere an actual fact that's not replicated within any budgetary allocations which affect organizations capacity to develop or duty bearers capacity to respond to these issues in a much more strategic fashion the scottish government's race equality unit i think has four members of staff we talked earlier about race equality and anti-racism having to be embedded across every single directorate and you know what i alluded to this morning in terms of the anti-racism in the workforce directorate saying the national population of scot ethnic minority population is is by percent shows that they're already taking a differentiated path to the minister's stated position that it's an equality's and human rights based approach in terms of that comprehensive recognition and within the protected characteristic of colour you can unpick these issues around about white privilege or white fragility or whatever it may be but government's response legal responsibility and the rights enshrined within citizens in scotland from ethnic minority communities are broader than that and so we should be you know we should be cognisant of that when we're discussing these these issues to be extremely wary of pitting ethnic minority communities against each other in a competitive environment with extremely finite resources and actually look to bring them together to advocate on shared experiences absolutely and where there's differentiations within colour nationality ethnic or national origin that those are attended to and responded to and sadly our experience has been that that's not been the case presently and that will have been exacerbated sorry from 2016 to the pandemic to now sorry we're going to have to watch our time because we're we're only we're not even halfway through the lines of questions so can I move to parm Duncan Glancy? Thank you, convener, and thank you very much for the evidence that you've given us this morning and also for the work that you guys have been doing I think the point that's just been made about the the reality for organisations working in this field is really difficult right now and I know this committee and others have heard how hard it is for the third sector so I hope that I hope that something can be done about that and that government are cognising of it particularly within budgets and my my question a couple of my questions have been answered particularly around the employment gap growing and in particular for women but I wonder the minister said of the race equality employment and skills framework that we must have a strong understanding of what this racism is and how understanding can be applied to dismantle the barriers that create race inequality in the workplace so can I ask just briefly do we have that and do we do we think institutional racism is recognised and named in Scotland's public authorities as part of it? The answer is no to your first question, what was the second? Do you think that institutional racism is recognised and named in public authorities? I mean on the last inquiry you'll have seen what some big public sector organisations said when they were asked that question I think it's full to my greater than asked that question about do you recognise institutional racism in your organisation and that was at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement as well and so many still said no not us that's why a lot of focus on the strategy and all that has been a greater understanding but how do we I don't think your real question is how do we enable that can we enable that or is that something senior leaders need to learn themselves somehow so I think the answer is we definitely know because if we did we wouldn't be doing some of the things we're still doing and slightly going off a tangent hopefully not at the height of Black Lives Matter a number of organisations made statements you know condemning racism and recognising institutional racism that sort of thing we've actually followed up on the 70 statements that we saw published and we asked them well what have you done since then and the answer is again we are back to what I said at the beginning a lot of activity they've set up working groups etc but hardly any action and as Danny says has anybody actually put any more resources into this we can't see any great evidence of that and also with some of this working group you know a lot of people have now set up BME staff networks or anti-racist staff networks uh we did a survey of some of the work it's not a scientific survey it's a very small sample but some of the BME workers have replied to us really felt they were being exploited actually they were feeling pressured burdened and unsupported in having to participate almost in these networks that they some of them didn't want to but they felt they had to because they're off you know uh of of different ethnicity to to the majority so I mean I think that is the $2 million question how do we get people to understand what is race racism what is institutions of racism and there's no it's not an easy answer I don't think but we should not let them off the hook when they do the wrong thing or pretend they're doing it which is what a lot of them are doing thank you Danny or Farrow do you want to add to anything to that I think you're talking about the staff networks and all this sort of the rapid responses it's very much looks like a replication of what I talked about in my previous answer and so far as you know we'll give we'll give a few quid to the ethnic minority organisations and communities and you know that that's perfect and everything's okay and hopefully they'll come up with a few wins and solutions it's it's not a sustainable model and as I say people eventually actually has the counter outcome of making people exhausted and isolated and the retrospective you know HR compliance in terms of institutional organisations and employment in relation to employment law has to be robust and there is supposed to be a prohibition and discrimination what I'm trying to reiterate consistently the within internally within organisations or as government or society more broadly that yes the recognition of recognising racial discrimination and that being prohibited is incredibly important but it's not a panacea it's merely the most basic foundation for what has to come next and what has to come next is as much more proactive policies and proactive policy measures and proactive investment and proactive analysis of you know when we're spending money or doing something to make sure that all the people who need to benefit from it who we know are disproportionately not benefiting from it are central to our thinking moving forward and what we see that as being a critical problem is there is a huge human rights deficit in Scotland in terms of understanding what proactive and positive human rights aspirations are and how that plays out in policy we are understanding that human rights is pretty much connected to the european convention which are you know negative rights things we shouldn't ever experience and that's incredibly important but moving forward and certainly around about the incorporation of new international treaties and those rights being legally justiciable we have to be much more strategically focused on how we use you know that type of policy development legislation which parallel to that comes with significant and substantive investment for these issues to be responded to at the heights of the pandemic we provided so the ethnic minority national resilience network which is a network of over 100 organisations responding to these issues across scotland we you know again came up with these recommendations and what we called for and this is still on the table was the creation of a race equality transformational investment scheme we had seen it before with rural communities in other policy areas and that wouldn't be for bms or semfo or car whatever you know to make a picture and and take money it'd be about local authorities and national institutions recognising where their major gaps are and working directly with rights holder community organisations to make progress over the cycle of the parliament and when we see that progress made benchmarking it and moving forward with the next bit and unless there's that substantive investment the sort of default position of we'll set up a you know a safe place group which is around about hr compliance is not is not going to cut the mustard just to say there's nothing new in your question or in the answer because these things i just have been there for almost ever so the in a sense the answer was equality impact assessments if they were done properly your question would be answered but hardly any of them are done with any understanding of what you know what you want what an equality impact assessment is it's not sending me any much and can i do this for you please which is what happens all too often i remember half of your question i'm sorry i hope i remember the other half but when when you're talking about understanding across public and third sector i would agree wholeheartedly with what jatin has said in terms of equality impact assessments i remember when i first came into this role and then i had thought everything's there why are you not doing it because that is the purpose of the equality impact assessment you know is to be able to identify these things and then mainstream it all so again it's i think it just goes back down to a white privilege accountability lack of implementation lack of following up structures are there but again there's just not no follow through so my writing and saying that really what we should be looking at then if we're progressing that to progress the work we should be looking at what actions have been taken following money where it's gone to try and see if there's been a differential impact is that yeah that okay thank you i'm going to go to fullton next thanks good morning panel good to see you all again actually um danny your answer there leads me on quite nicely to my question because i'm going to ask about um your thoughts on the incorporation of the four international human rights treaties that the Scottish Government are going to consult on and of course that includes the convention the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination i suppose i just really want your broad thoughts on this and maybe picking up on some of the points that each of you have raised earlier how do you think you know if the bill is to progress which seems likely this this can benefit racial equality in scotland and maybe you know what we could talk about do you think it's an opportunity danny from your last answer to aim to see bigger investment in the area and i'll maybe start with yourself since you raised it in the last aim the last answer yep thanks fullton i also represent be miss on the incorporation advisory board which is a advisory board made up of third sector organisations across different characteristics we're obviously providing guidance and advice and advocating for the creation of a human rights bill for scotland which incorporates these treaties and the chr and others i mean essentially the basic point is if all of the issues we're talking about here move off of a soft law eq ia process and become judiciable then all of a sudden you have a significantly stronger legal threshold to see the the progression he'd made ideally litigation is a remedy of last resort but it's it's often necessary to set standards and progress things i talked earlier about a deficit in terms of understanding human rights and understanding the international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination and the provisions that covers the general recommendations which we've used previously we've already used the international human rights law system in terms of racial inequality to to get the commitment on the disaggregation of data to make progress on the curriculum for excellence responding to transatlantic slavery and BLM and other grave human rights violations so there are already examples where policy has integrated the provisions of that particular act where we fall short as and gave you know points around about the economy is that making that significant social and economic progress in the intersection between class and race to tackle poverty to tackle lack of representative employment and employment opportunities to tackle the fact that the first budget cuts which fall for when national government passes passes down budgetary constraints from cuts to local government the first to be axed almost exclusively from our experiences as as ethnic minority groups and some ethnic minority groups who are providing entirely unique services and it's unfortunate you won't hear from Trishna from Sikh Sanjog this morning because a very specific organisation providing an extremely entirely unique service in Scotland having 100% budget cuts if the international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination was applied within Scotland at that particular time and that budgetary decision is made then I think you absolutely be looking for litigation on that to say it's not been compliant and that is in fact a form of institutional racism because the first thrown under a bus is you know in this particular example a group of Sikh women who have no other culturally specific service provision and you know that was an appalling example and that's occurred in other areas you know so when we talk about these institutional things and the application of soft law like the EQIA process which haven't worked as well as it possibly could having more robust litigation opportunities to set standards to make sure that's not replicated in other areas could be incredibly beneficial to Scotland the challenge is now is around about the technicalities of the bill we've seen recently by the incorporation of the UNCRC that has been pushed back from the UK government around about where we tread into what are considered reserve powers or create a higher threshold of rights protection which is not applied across across the UK which is difficult territory to navigate but I think certainly within the third sector and race quality organisations and broader characteristics we've engaged with there is a huge appetite for the creation of a human rights bill for Scotland to enable some of these additional strategic powers to ensure that substantive progress is made for rights holders in Scotland. Thanks for that Danny. In terms of yourself you know that you and I have spoken loads about bits of pieces of work being done and you know it's becoming well it's useful for what we're doing a bit for talking shop. Do you have any thoughts on how the incorporation bills could help us to move away from that because I think we're all conscious of that and I think they cannot air conscious of that as we are all conscious of it in cross-party groups. Do you have any thoughts and hope that incorporation if his laws can you know can help navigate this particular area? Not present because we haven't seen the actual wording of the bill. If it's more about just incorporating the treaties we're not as positive as Danny on that because as Danny said the equality law is reserved almost in its entirety on this issue and the British law on racial equality is pretty good so we're not going to add anything by incorporating the third treaty and we don't think. They've talked about a general equality clause as well in the bill but we haven't seen the detail of it that might be of some use but the key thing is about if you're going to have rights is how do you enforce your rights so we need more advocacy we need more people we need more organisations to go to the challenge when you think you've been discriminated and that is going to cost a bit of money so I think we need to wait till we see the actual detail of the wording of the bill before we can be too positive about it. Thanks Janet, in fact I'm sorry I'm just trying to focus in the wee bit definitely because obviously incorporation of the bills is a massive issue and I'm aware that the convener has already mentioned time so I was wondering for yourself how important it is that the BME women's voices are heard as we take forward that bill and try and make some changes there which, as you have articulated earlier, is in real need of change. The incorporation of the four international human rights treaties into Scott's law is quite welcomed because the treaties themselves have been designed for domestic law to be incorporated into and it supports the need for accountability as well which is what we said and this is a good opportunity as well to have that maximum impact to improve the lives of those who are most marginalized people in Scotland but it's obviously got to be done in the best possible manner so how they become implemented and how they become incorporated is equally important. I know there's a lot of consultation going on around that but what we really need is meaningful participation so going into communities directly and doing that capacity building so that they can have that educated meaning for response and that includes obviously ethnic minority women as well because when we often you hear the words human rights then people go ah because it's unknown territory so I think there is a lot of education that is needed around what it means rather than just saying okay these are what it is and implementing it has been a steep learning curve for myself within the organisation I don't just focus on human rights myself particularly I usually focus on race equality so majority of my learning has been done by my colleague Claire Gallacher who is our human rights mainstream officer so she does quite a lot of the human rights aspect of things but one of the things for example she has raised is you know the experts by experience panel for example how is that panel actually representative of the people it's supposed to serve and you know taking that human rights based approach to implement these trees is really important as well to make sure that you've got the voices of everybody as well as of ethnic minority women but yeah so it is a matter of making sure that the representation is there at the design stage okay thanks very much and can laren please thank you thank you for so much education that I've had for this morning and what's clearly coming across is that there is a lot of activity a huge amount of work that is going on but perhaps there seems to be some kind of filtration that there's maybe not the opportunities there to be able to have that work actually exercised in action and it's perhaps maybe a system that's not that's maybe in contrary work in contrary to the work and the the expertise that you're telling us about you know and I think one of the important things that I'm realising now is that there's a certain lack of visibility for sure and perhaps that's with the frustration of opportunities. My question really is based around do you think there has been enough work done at the Scottish Parliament in regards to race in the last 20 years and really focusing in on not just the work that's being done but do you really feel that the opportunities have been there and if not what's really frustrated that can I start with Farah please? I think the Scottish Parliament has always got the opportunity whenever we're talking about equalities is to take an intersectional approach. The question is if the Parliament does that, that's down to yourselves to look into in terms of using that. There is a lot more that could have been done in the past as well that is within the remit of the Scottish Parliament that we can learn from. The role within the Parliament again is to hold accountability so again going back to one of the main themes that we've had during this session is about accountability so there's definitely that. Even chamber debates for example as parliamentarians, as representatives of your constituencies, how often or how many MSPs go and engage directly with their ethnic minority communities, for example, because there is that historic mistrust. A lot of actions can be misconstrued or are then tokenistic. The intention may be there but to embed race equality or talk about things but then you've got to understand that tokenism is there and then that is again really quite off-putting. Why is this approach being taken? We're living the day and the age of the internet, it's not too hard to do research, it's not hard to get data and information now, so it is within the remit of staff members, again parliamentarians, your office staff as well. When dealing with constituents for example, it is your office staff that is going to be dealing with people day in and day out more so than your selfs user there to represent them. What attitudes is it that they hold and that they give and what stereotype and bias they give out, for example? Those are things that are very tangible aspects that you can do within the Parliament. I know that there is a network within the Scottish Parliament as well. I can't remember what it is but it is one of the BME networks. To what degree is that going to be tokenistic? I think that there is a lot of need to understand when we talk about white allyship and fragility and privilege is to verbally acknowledge that, because if you start verbally acknowledging those things, recognising them and calling them out, if there is racial gaslighting going on, it's very obvious when we see things happening down in the UK Parliament, but how often do we reflect on ourselves nationally and if there is a piece of legislation that has gone through, for example, is an intersectional approach taken to it? When we talk about education, for example, does anti-racism come into it until now, until Black Lives Matter? It hasn't, whereas we know that it is an area that has been researched for the past 20 years, at least anyway. With the work of the committee, we will focus more on the implementation and accountability. As Dratton had said, a lot of actions are there, the activities are there and the Parliament and the committee are using its remit and its powers to hold people to account specifically and not being scared of being specific. We need to empower ourselves to take forward race equality, because it can be done. When I talked about a chamber debate, we did a survey a few years ago on how many chamber debates on race had been held. There was a period of almost four years where there was nothing on race in the chamber. That's somewhat changed after the Black Lives Matter and Covid issues, but I'd be particularly interested in knowing what other committees have done in terms of talking about, even just talking about race equality, no idea anything substantial. That might be a piece of what we take on soon to do that research. I'm pretty sure what we're going to find. But maybe because I've never run out of time, so I want to just abuse my position slightly. So here's some of the things that Scottish Government is doing that I don't think Parliament has got round to addressing ever. So we've got the race employment strategy that you've talked about. We've got the anti-racism in education programme that Farah mentioned. We've got a cross-justice working group on race. We've got the hate crime strategy that Danny mentioned. We've got positive action, sorry, public security duty review that the last committee in the report mentioned. It's been a long time reviewing. I know the consultation analysis has just been published, but when are we going to get to actually looking at what needs to change? We've got the Sheco Bio Inquiry. We've got the mainstream strategy happening. There's the hate crime act that we've mentioned. There's Empire Slavery and Scotland's museum's work that is going on. That's just a very quick... That's not the full list either, but I don't think Parliament has. Even now, half of this is going on. I wonder if I may come back. Just ask a story, not to pick on you, Danny. We'll ask a slightly different question. It's just because something occurred to me because you brought up about infrastructure projects. What would you do here in Parliament? The last couple of committee sessions we've been talking about human rights budgeting and how that actually works. It just got me thinking that even in terms of our just transition fund, it's £500 million that the Scottish Government is giving to the north-east region in Moray. Our transition away in the oil and gas industry, traditionally, is a white male-dominated industry. I've been trying to ensure that we've got a gender balance when that money is being dished out in that area. I want to make sure that women are getting that fair share. The intersectionality of that and our protected characteristics. Where is that coming into that? What can we do here as parliamentarians to ensure that those kinds of projects are equalities driven? That's a brilliant question. I'm glad to see that that sort of thinking is starting to enter into your thoughts. I'd encourage all parliamentarians and their constituencies and local authorities to be thinking precisely along those lines. Our current recognition of the problems with regards to employment and race equality are still falling down the lines of retrospective justice being served, which is important, and that should continue. It's largely focused on the public sector, as I said. Our economy has fundamentally changed within the intervening period and the 2022 census is going to show us that. I spoke previously about the housing and we've missed an opportunity. What you've talked about, £500 million. Absolutely, 100 per cent there should be scoping exercises going on within the implementation of any contracts attached to that. What's the ethnic diversity of the communities? What's their age group? What's their profile? And how do I use positive action measures to strategically go out and target these groups of young people from ethnic minority communities to ensure that they're availing of the same opportunities as people significantly more embedded into that system? Because their dad, their cousin, their uncle works in a rig and is able to get them into a job? Because we know that that's what traditionally happens. In terms of the development of housing, it was plumbers, joiners, all of these trades are really well qualified, really well paid trades, which there's always a need for. And we really don't have any understanding whatsoever. I think there's a signal and almost overwhelmingly disproportionate lack of representation of ethnic minority communities within that. It does make one extremely quick point about both this committee and the Parliament more broadly in terms of being able to interrogate race equality issues across directorates in the Scottish Government, which are linked to specific committees within this place. And your role as parliamentarians in the Parliament more broadly. What we find with broad parliamentary debates around about race or racism or race equality is that routinely, even the Black Lives Matter debate, it touches upon some difficult issues, but then it's very much a back slapping exercise. We are Scotland, we are against all forms of racism, and nothing really happens, apart from maybe a story in the newspaper the next day about it. So, while they're important, symbolically important for people to see, the nitty-gritty of these decisions which have been made, which affect people's lives, are made within local authorities, within the Scottish Government, and the oversight of that is within committees such as this and others. And it's really what we get from that is what's reflective of the capacity of MSPs to deal with and interrogate all of the issues which have heard here from panel members this morning, particularly in line with what the Scottish Government and other duty-bearers' legal obligations are. And I've spoke continuously about those obligations being embedded within the definition of race, within the Equality Act and Article 1 of the International Convention covering colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin. Within the dynamic of colour, absolutely it's incredibly important to consider what my colleague Farr has identified as white privilege and white fragility. In terms of Scottish Government's legal obligations and the obligation of duty-bearers, that terminology, while important for specific circumstances, is unable to reconcile the experiences of the Irish community or the Polish community or some of the Roma community or other communities who don't fall naturally within a black white binary assessment. So, it's really important to have this full spectrum of understanding of the issues which you're seeking to interrogate and realise that they're all of equal importance in terms of ensuring accountability and really creating a step change and oversight that everything's not to be retrospective around a prohibition of discrimination. It's really important, it's not a panacea. We need to move forward into much more proactive strategic vision about how we use everything in our assets and at our disposal to make the substantive change required for everybody who needs it. I've got a small number of people who've previously indicated that they still want to ask questions. If the panel are okay, I'm going to just keep a little bit more time, but if we can make really sharp, concise questions and, if possible, sharp, concise answers, it's difficult because I know we could actually spend a whole day here on these questions. Rachel, are you looking to come in just now? No, because the original question I had was really for Farr about running for office here and I think she's kind of made that point. That's good. I think that might be the case because we've crossed over on a number of points, but I'm just going to check to make sure that folk are comfortable with their points that have been answered. Pam, have you got a question yet? Thank you, chair. We've obviously today invited a variety of witnesses representing different minority ethnic groups. Would you say that the policy development distinguishes between different minority ethnic groups? I'll give you an example. For example, what works for a Sikh woman is likely to be different to what works for a Gypsy traveler woman. I'm just curious about that, if that distinction has been made enough and that do you think one-size-fits-all approach is something that when creating policies should be taken? Also, Danny, I heard you when you talked about the Sikh Sanjog funding disappearing. I was very disappointed because I certainly did get notified of that last week. Talking about Sikh women, it's very different what Sikh women need from a Muslim woman, from a Gypsy traveler woman, from a Chinese woman, from a Jewish woman. They're all different. That is what I see coming from, obviously a background in representing many women here. How do you feel about that, Danny, should policy development actually distinguish between different ethnic minorities? Yes, 100 per cent. I can only give the example of how beam is run as an organisation, so we don't speak on anybody's behalf. How can I possibly speak on behalf of a Sikh woman, or a Jewish woman, or an Irish woman, or an African man? Completely impossible. What we can do is raise awareness of the situations that affect these different groups in coming from our colleagues and human rights perspective. If you want to hear about how a particular policy area, education, health, anything funding, whatever it may be, how it affects a Sikh woman, or anybody else, any other specific ethnic group, then you have to speak to them directly. Within this quite substantial field of race equality and all of these different policy levers that are happening, some are collectively more important to all of these different groups, but some are really, really intrinsically focused on these specific ethnic groups and specific circumstances and specific intersectionalities. There has been a significant lack of engagement around the intersection between class and ethnicity and class and race, particularly given that we know the disproportionate number of people who live in poverty in Scotland and work in low-paid and precarious employment from ethnic minority communities. If you want to understand those experiences, then you really need to speak directly to those communities, and that's her offer to the committee. The final point is the next Scottish Government's race equality action plan, which is 2023 onwards, should be beginning in what's called a panel process, a human rights-based approach at the moment, participation, accountability, non-discrimination, equality, legality. That means that across these different policy areas, they need to be now direct and engaging directly with all of these myriad of very specific ethnic groups, because otherwise they get lost and otherwise their voices aren't heard within policy development, and that's as applicable to the Scottish Government as it is to local authorities and anybody else. Thank you. Actually, my original question has been answered, but I have a very brief follow-up from what's just been said. That's okay, convener. Are you aware of the panel process having already started, or is that something that you've not been involved in? We're not aware that the panel process has started with regards to the next iteration of the race equality action plan. We have been offering to play our part in it for about two years now, but we've not had any positive response to that. We are hoping that it will happen extremely soon. And it's due this year? It's due this year. Far is looking to come in on that as well. Yeah, it was more towards Pam's question there about policy development distinguishes between different groups of people. Definitely, absolutely. One of the things that I do again with InSembo is offer training, and one of the training that we often get asked for is cultural awareness. So the way that we usually talk about these things is taking an anti-racist approach and being able to use the likes of the panel principles to be able to understand better the needs of the community that you're there to serve, like for service providers. And again, this kind of goes back to my point that I'm making about white privilege and white fragility is that I think there's an expectation that there should maybe be a script on how to speak to a Muslim woman or how to speak to a Chinese man, et cetera. And I think that's absolutely ridiculous because, you know, we get these sort of feedback through training and that has got to be like one of the main things, not those specific instances of asking for a script, but I think the fact that there's still a need for this cultural awareness training, what do we mean by cultural awareness? Because the reality is that Scotland has got so many different cultures. If you choose one, you'll always leave another one out. So that's why taking the human rights-based approach is ideal because it encompasses everybody and it takes an individualistic approach and it kind of goes against all one-size-fits-all in that and it's not about treating everybody equally, it's like treating everybody equitably. Okay, I think that's a brilliant point to finish. I think that's something that we might think about how we can focus on that very final point about treating everyone equitably. So thanks so much for all your time, panel. We could have probably gone on all day. I think that you've certainly, as well as answering lots of questions and helping the educators, I think that to some extent you've raised more questions in our minds as well about how we take this work forward. So thanks very much. We'll suspend briefly to change panels. Okay, thank you. Welcome back. So we're now here from our second panel of organisations in a rim-table format this time. So we're going to hear from Perveyn Amid, the strategic development manager, Celia, and Pinar Aksu, human rights and advocacy co-ordinator, Maryhill integration network. Mariam Amid, chief executive officer, Amina, Muslim Women's Resource Centre, and Graham O'Neill, policy manager at the Scottish Refugee Council. You're all very welcome and as I said this is a rim-table event, so a bit more conversational to hear issues and concerns to help guide us in the work that we're hoping to take forward in this inquiry. So we'll just go around and ask the folk to introduce themselves. So, Perveyn. I'm Perveyn Amid. I, as you said, am a strategic manager at Celia. We're a mental wellbeing organisation that's been working since 1992. So this is our 30 years now. We support around 1,300 women a year. The majority are living with or recovering from complex trauma. They have multiple barriers to mainstream services and face multiple challenges both within accessing mainstream services and within marginalised communities and their families as well. They have very little support networks, so the needs are very complex for the group that we work with. Hi everyone. My name is Pinar Aksu. As you said, I'm a human rights and advocacy co-ordinator at Maryhill integration network. We've been set since 2001 in Maryhill, hence the name. And we primarily work with people seeking asylum and refuge and with the local community. We do this via using community development approaches, a lot of group activities from women's group to men's group to advocacy group to creative methods as well. And we do a lot of outreach work as well, engaging with schools and different events to talk about anti-racism, human rights and migration and how that looks. Hello everyone. My name is Mary Mamed and I am the chief executive of AMENA, BME and Muslim Women's Resource Centre. We are a national women's rights organisation supporting Muslim and BME women primarily through our help plan. This is a national help plan. We have the remit around equalities in human rights for women. We work a lot with employability, poverty, financial inclusion, violence against women and creative wellbeing. A lot of the women that we support experience racial inequality alongside gender inequality as well as religious inequalities as well as a lot of Islamophobia. The women that we are supporting experience multiple forms of discrimination and they are still represented in all areas of public life such as health, justice, employment, housing. The work that we do is intersectional and the work that we do is always very complex because we have women with multiple barriers that we are supporting. Thank you and Graham. Thank you very much everyone on behalf of the Scottish Refugee Council. We are really delighted to be here. My name is Graham O'Neill on policy manager at the Scottish Refugee Council. We work with people seeking granted and refused refugee protection in the UK. We also work with people who have been relocated or resettled to the UK. We work with multiple protection populations. We have teams in community engagement work. We have teams in services, teams in policy as well as other areas. We are trying to develop much more our work with people with lived experience in a more organised and coherent manner, drawing upon some of the really good practice that Maryhill integration network, among others, takes forward. We are really keen to talk today about issues, particularly in terms of asylum. We think that there is a pretty profound and hideous contortion by successive UK Governments of the right to asylum and particularly the current UK Government in terms of essentially breaking the UK away from the UN Refugee Convention, which, in our view and our experience, is one of the most effective anti-racist legal protections, which has saved tens of millions of people's lives over its 70-plus years' existence. We are now threatened with the legislation that we hear within the next few weeks at the UK level, which will effectively bury the right to seek asylum in the UK for people who arrive through irregular means, which, of course, is the vast majority of people because there is no such thing as a pre-entry asylum visa, which is, among other things, why we feel tragically that people are resorting to, among other things, taking small boat crossings as well as very dangerous other means of access to the territory. We think that there is a structurally racist problem within the Home Office around this, which is one of the reasons that we are glad to be here today and to talk in these terms. One says that we would rather not be, but asylum has been brought into that structurally racist area in a very naked and visceral way, which is cost in people's lives. As I said, as we go through, if folk members and our visitors indicate that you are wanting to come in, Maggie, I wonder if you want to pick up from Graham, obviously, and introduce that significant topic there. Do you want to kick off with that, maybe? Welcome everybody and thank you for joining us. We heard in this morning's first panel that that mismatch quite often between fine words and between policies and strategies and actually delivering the action and having the accountable actions on the ground around changing Scotland's approach to racism and challenging the underlying systemic racist society that we live in. Graham, you picked up very specific issues with the UK Government and the Home Office and how it is in your profoundly racist. From a Scottish perspective, what are the avenues for us as a Parliament to be working on to support not only the people that you work with, but I will bring you in as well, Pinar. That is okay after this. We feel that it makes clear that, in terms of social attitudes, we do not discern a huge difference between different parts of the UK in relation to those issues. Social attitudes consistently show that. In terms of talking from evidence, we differentiate the public views from, we think, very vocal and powerful minorities at the UK governance level, especially around parts of Westminster, which really take forward a very, in our view, dangerous narrative around asylum. We feel that, in Scotland, we have more of a political consensus around issues of welcome to people from different parts of the world, be that through protection routes in relation to traffic to exploitation, asylum or people that have come for other reasons, but we also think that there are serious issues that need to be recognised around racism in Scotland as well. In terms of what Scotland can do, Scotland needs to, as a matter of practice, approach all policies that impact on people in the asylum system, as well as other persons with insecure immigration status through the lens of what they can do as opposed to what they can't do. We think that that takes it into quite practical places. It can make a real difference to people's lives. Pinnar, from Maryhill integration network and others, have led the work around how to address the social justice issue of access to bus transport and other forms of transport. That is for us, and we agree very much with the campaign that Pinnar and others have led. That is an example of a uniquely straightforward way to protect people and enhance their lives in Scotland if they involve competence. There are many other areas that we outlined in our evidence to the Social Justice and Social Security Committee late last year in a 10-point plan for improving the lives of people with insecure immigration status and people seeking asylum who are in Scotland through devolved competence interventions. For example, another thing that we could very practically do in Scotland is to institute and complete our own end-to-end anti-trafficking exploitation protection system, which would not only protect some of the most acutely vulnerable people in the country—exploitation survivors—but also protect many people who are seeking refugee protection, because there is a huge overlap unsurprisingly between those two populations in Scotland. Some 75 per cent over the past six years of traffic-to-exploitation survivors in Scotland are also in the asylum system. There are challenges there for Scotland. We could use our regulation powers under section 9, subsection 8 of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Scotland Act 2015, and institute a human rights-based identification and decision-making system to wrap around the excellent survivor rights to support and assistance that we have in that same 2015 legislation. That is a political choice that we have urged the Scottish Government to take for a considerable period, and we are accelerating that now this year, because we can see a systemic penalisation and criminalisation agenda that is washing over people who come here seeking safety from countries like Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, Iran and others. I mentioned those countries because they are all high refugee recognition countries, generally between high 70s to 99 per cent refugee recognition rate. The problem is that the UK asylum system is chronically slow and cruel. It gives people, for example, in Scotland as well as across the UK. If you are in ex hotels, which is basically experienced as institutional forms of accommodation, then an individual within those environments gets £1.30 per day, £9.10 per week. That is it. You are not allowed to work through UK rules, so you are suffering some of the most severe forms of poverty. That is affecting many children as well, and then it does not get much better if you are in what the Home Office calls dispersal accommodation, generally accommodation communities. It is around £6 per day per person that an individual gets within that accommodation. What we need to do in Scotland is to see the extent, the depth and the worsening trends in relation to dehumanising treatment of people from all over the world that have come to Scotland seeking refugee protection, and to see it for what it actually is. The Nationality and Borders Act is cruel enough. We are now going to further legislation, which is basically saying that it is going to bury the right to asylum at all. Where does that take you in terms of the treatment of people from countries that are refugee producing countries, where people are fleeing regimes like the Taliban and others? What does that say about us, as a country, if we are prepared to condone and tolerate that type of treatment? In Scotland, if we are serious about not condoning and tolerating that treatment, we need to practically, across all our policy levers, including some legislation, some of which I flagged up earlier, take action. It cannot just be words. If it is words, then unintentionally we can do in the problem. Just to highlight on some of the campaigns that Graham had mentioned, we have been campaigning together with the Voices Network on free bus travel, concessionary travel for people seeking asylum in Scotland. Unfortunately, it has been over a year now that we have been trying to have a dialogue with the Scottish Government in terms of how to make this a possibility. This is something that could be done concretely in Scotland. It was set as such a great example of things that we could be doing differently in Scotland. There was some evidence at the CPG on migration meeting last year in October that provided evidence of how it worked well in Wales by the Welsh refugee council. Those are some of the practical steps that could be taken in Scotland. In relation to education, when people are seeking asylum, they cannot study full-time college courses. When they apply to university, they would be treated as an international student, meaning that they would be expected to pay the international fee. From the recent case led by Just Right Scotland, there is a consultation that is taking place by the Scottish Government. This is, again, another area that could be developed and furthered to show how Scotland could do things differently. Ultimately, the immigration system is divisive and discriminative, as Graham has mentioned. I want to touch on some of the things that our members have been sharing with us and some of the recent experiences that we had. On Sunday, as Graham mentioned, the dispersal process of people seeking asylum is now being placed in hotel accommodations across the country. There has been a new hotel being used in airskin. I am not sure if you have seen what happened. Unfortunately, the local community in airskin, together with a racist group who called for a protest to say that people in airskin who placed in hotels are not welcome here. Unfortunately, on Sunday, I was present there.  My question would be, why is this happening and what can we do to prevent this? What is the Scottish Government doing to prevent this? There is a lot of misinformation being shared in the local communities. When you place a group of vulnerable people in those areas where there are already on-going issues such as austerity and poverty, that is happening. However, it is easier to blame, as we all know, when there is an outsider, let us call it, somebody who gets moved into the area. The hostility that was experienced there and the hatred, I literally felt it. That was something that made me really uncomfortable in Scotland, where I have been here for 21 years. I was questioning how we welcome people, how we integrate people when they are met with hostility rather than hospitality. We are worried about the safety and wellbeing of the people who are now placed in airskin hotels. It is not just airskin hotels, but other hotels across the country in Scotland and across the UK. How are we ensuring that people in the local communities know the facts about why people are being placed in hotel accommodations? As Graham mentioned, that is a practice that we are hugely concerned about, because it is not welcoming people when people are not placed in normal accommodations in our communities. That is creating the notion of us and them. Ultimately, it will lead to a lot of racism and hatred incidents in our communities. The pictures on the telly were absolutely horrific. If anybody ever pretends that racism is not a problem in Scotland, then we saw it on our TV screens. It was absolutely horrific, so I think you are absolutely right to raise that as a question for us to think how we can tackle that to make sure that people feel as welcome. I think that all politicians want people to feel welcome, but there was the experience that we saw on the telly. I was just going to agree with Pinar and say that it goes beyond just the hotel accommodation. There has been accommodation where young women have been put in, where there have then been perpetrators, using the fact that there is a particular type of accommodation that they can access, and horrific gender-based abuse is happening. The accommodation is a big problem. I would not say that it is any better for mothers, but there is a slight better chance if you have a child, but if you do not have a child, you have no chance of getting accommodation and accommodation in housing. We have repeatedly had cases where women have been turned away, whether they are refugees or migrants or whatever their status is, but if they are fleeing gender-based abuse or coming in as refugees, the accommodation situation is really bad. We are experiencing that in our client group as well, and it is regular. It is happening a lot. I want to mention the impacts of the racist policies from the Home Office. I would say that the issue is always going to be for Scotland that immigration is not a devolved matter. I would say that Scotland does want to show a bit more compassion to refugees. However, we are a bit restricted when it comes to supporting, especially when we are looking at gender-based violence. COSLA has brought out guidance with the Scottish Government on how to support women experiencing gender-based violence and no recourse to public funds. It really put the onus on local authorities. However, local authorities need to find the money from somewhere to house women. We know that Glasgow City Council has a temporary two-week hotel where it will pay for your accommodation, but two weeks and when women are about to leave, you are more likely to be harmed or murdered when you are thinking of leaving or when you have left. What we find is that there is a two-tier approach even for women who are experiencing gender-based violence, not only dealing with the racial discrimination of those racist policies. We are finding time and time again, and it is very unfortunate because I would say that my first no recourse to public funds case was 15 years ago, and I really thought that that would create change in 15 years. Here we are. In fact, things have got worse rather than better. However, that is how you have those multiple barriers. Not only have you got the bus travel, you have issues with the hotel. I have had my fair share or seen every single hotel in Glasgow, and some of the accommodation that we have got mums experiencing domestic abuse or staying with children is just absolutely unacceptable. However, when you have the most marginalised communities, they do not know how to speak up for their rights. You have that one-path approach. You are just worried about your safety and your status. It falls on organisations such as ourselves, but when we are dealing with complex cases, and this is where the issue comes in, those experiences are just not logged anywhere. You have got it from a self-perving panel. We can speak about them and ourselves, but we never have the chance to come together and say what are those experiences for people who are experiencing, for example, domestic abuse and immigration issues. The impact is everywhere. It was just a follow-up to points that Penon and Graham made. In terms of Ukrainian refugees who have come to Scotland to settle, I wondered why they found it hard to access social and rented housing, particularly healthcare as well, and what experience, particularly Scottish Refugee Council, had in supporting those individuals. I think that the experience of people who have come from Ukraine fleeing the illegal invasion of their country in Scotland, is two parts to my answer. The first part will be a bit more about what we have done, and the first bit will be more about what we have done. That was Scotland from our views, first real effort in a devolved context to institute its own reception arrangements, through the homes for Ukraine scheme, which is a UK Government scheme. There is a strand within it, which is often called super sponsorship, which the Scottish and Welsh Governments initiated and got the agreement from the UK Government to take forward. In terms of numbers, that has been quite an effective scheme. There are a lot of people that have came proportionately to Scotland, and what they have walked into has been touched upon just in the past few minutes. Scotland, like other parts of the UK, has a profound and pervasive housing emergency. We find it really frustrating, and I am not just talking about us at Scottish Refugee Council, but about the refugee sector. When we look at the issues that are dreadful in asylum accommodation, which are huge companies' private interests that make billions of pounds of money from the UK asylum accommodation system, to put people who have complex psychological trauma in many cases, are completely new to the environment that they are in, and placing them into essentially ex hotels or military barracks or quasi detention centres or facilities. The opposite of a trauma-informed environment is where people have been placed. It is an industrial scale now that we are talking about across the UK from two and a half thousand people in such institutional accommodation in March 2020. It is now 45,000 people. It is about a 1,400 per cent increase in that period. The procurement increases in dispersed accommodation, the accommodation communities in that same time period. It is about 42,000 up to about 55,000. It is pretty much flat lined. We do not think that that is an accident. We think that there are commercial reasons as well as political reasons that have happened. The amount of money that has been pumped out from the ex-checker through the Home Office to the free asylum accommodation contractors and the hotels that they contract with is around £3 billion per year at the moment. That would make what was postulated as a 10-year contract worth about £4 billion in 2019 to 2029. It is in course at the moment to be a £30 billion contract. Underpinning that, you have got a super slow and very damaging poverty ridden asylum system, including particularly in decisions. When we see all of that malaise and mess in the asylum system and then we see what happened with people coming from Ukraine as well, what we found is that there was an industrial use of temporary accommodation for long periods, including in Scotland. What we think that showed was a underlying fragility in terms of the UK's ability to provide accommodation for people who are in that spectrum of socioeconomic and insecure legal status. It includes very much people at the harshest end of the very harsh new records to public fund regime, but it also includes people who are originally from Scotland and the UK, who were placed with the homelessness figures out in Scotland last year, and who were placed into some of the accommodation that my colleague Maryam was talking about in terms of temporary accommodation in different parts of Scotland, you know families, you know children. The deeper problem here is, for us, Scottish Refugee Council, not to do with Ukraine, not to do with asylum, is to do with why we are in the UK not prioritising housing as a top priority, because for us it is perverse that the most vulnerable people in terms of poverty and legal status are the ones that are put into the most inappropriate accommodation, whereas you have all these other people who are in comfortable accommodation and things are going okay, and then you've got this wider group of people who are in much more precarious circumstances due to the cost of living crisis and cost of living social emergency, and then you've got the people who are at the bottom for wanting a better way of putting it in terms of poverty and legal status. I think there needs to be proper resources, I mean it gets a bit wider now in terms of like, you know, maybe my remit at Scottish Refugee Council, but I think what we do need to do is we've seen at Scottish Refugee Council working with people at the harshest end of the asylum system and insecure immigration status. People have came from Ukraine, I've saw some of that, but not to the same extent as people in the asylum system in places like Glasgow, for example, and because of that what we need to do and what this is why I'm sharing this now is to say there's a wider issue in terms of housing and the lack, so basically there's a housing emergency, we agree with Sherwood Scotland, there's a housing emergency in Scotland and across the UK and it needs to get ratcheted right up the top of the political agenda and when it's getting, if it gets ratcheted up the agenda it needs to be the people who are in the most vulnerable circumstances are at the top of the agenda in terms of that housing, that's the way it should be and we need to make sure it goes towards that. I've got everybody wanting to come in, so Fulton, you were next. Yeah, well really I just, I hope I'm not going to be taking up the time here, convener, I just wanted to raise a point while we're on this issue. I'm actually sitting with an email that came into my inbox at 10.41 this morning from a minister and he is writing on behalf of somebody else who's also contacted my office, but I won't mention their name, but we're talking about immigration status and such like and I just wanted to highlight one quote in it that his eviction was dealt with in an inhumane manner and I just wanted to, I mean I think it's incumbent on us as parliamentarians to represent constituents, we all do that, but the fact that we are talking about this issue and I'm sitting with an email at 10.41 this morning on something like this I think it was worth raising and that was all we needed to do. Okay, good, I think, is it, I think we should move on to another topic, I think that's, we've given that a bit of it, hearing which is, which is good. Pam, are you going to take us something slightly differently, is that? It's near enough but it's slightly different, yeah, thank you chair. Pinar, first of all obviously I am going to go back to the fact I've seen it on television and I wasn't even there and it was absolutely terrifying to watch some of the words out of people's mouths and that's in Scotland it's happening, right? I was born here and if that was to happen to me or anybody else that I see around, I think it's absolutely disgusting, so my question is a bit around hate crime, so basically looking at the recent hate crime statistics, the reveal that racism is the most commonly reported as hate crime and yet there's a lack of data collection on race, particularly in criminal justice, why do you think that is and what effect, if any, do you think it is having on the ability to tackle racism related to hate crime? I think this has been an issue for a long time and I remember when there was a consultation done a few years ago regarding why there's a law taken reporting any sort of hate crime, I think there's a lack of trust in the system that when people make any form of reporting for hate crime what happens? Does it get followed up? When I report something does that mean it's going to be solved? So these are some of the things that we hear from the community. We try to also raise awareness about how to report a hate crime, I think that's another thing that needs to be addressed. A lot of people don't know unless it's a place of third place reporting centre or some people report it on behalf of you, unless people know that there's a huge unfortunately data gap in there. Also another thing which Graham would agree is a lot of the people when they're fleeing from persecution to seek asylum and refuge, they're fleeing from some form of authority, so to trust authority, I think that's an area that needs to be discussed as well to say that whether we would get the help from the police if we make any sort of hate crime. I think that this is some of the biggest issues and we did have one incident where we were during the Zoom in the pandemic where we literally had a person having a stone thrown to his window while we were having our meeting and we tried to help this person to make a report to say that this shouldn't be happening and then nothing had took place and there was no action to follow this. That person said, you know, I don't want to follow this up anymore, this is already stressing me, I'm already in the asylum process, the impact on my wellbeing, on my mental health is huge and to deal with such a thing without any advocacy and without any sport is a huge concern for people. So these are some of the areas that maybe I have to add but I don't know if anyone else wants to add anything yet. When it comes to the justice system in general there's always been a very low uptake of BME people using the justice system. If I was to go back to gender-based violence there's a lot of under reporting within ethnic minority communities and I think coupled with the hostile home office policies it's amazing about the amount of women that we are supporting that will see things on TV that think it's actually already became policy and I could go back to an example that we were supporting some women who had experienced a crime and they were refugees and we were supporting them we said look you know this is a hate crime we can help you report it however some of them were undocumented so they felt like if they were to report a hate crime and I think that's going to be a real issue when we're looking at hate crime from now on if there are going to be a lot of refugees asylum seekers or people who are undocumented who are going to be experiencing the hate crime they're going to be experiencing it and they're going to walk away because they don't want to be speaking to authorities and we also know that there might also be an obligation within police to actually let home office know who is undocumented who is documented so I think that's definitely going to create a bigger impact on the hate crime figures and like I said as much as I've tried my best to support those women they were just like absolutely not we're not interested. To worry that it's it's not only refugees I think even people who are born and brought up and raised in this country will often not raise an issue of racism a recent example was my niece who as I say is born brought working adult working in a pharmacy who experienced racism and her boss was telling her to report it and she was like there's just no point I think for so many years so many of us and I'm going to talk about myself in that as well experienced racism on an every day and it's not even a daily basis it can be an hourly basis so everywhere and anywhere you go there is racism there I think we have very much learned how to block it out and walk past it and it's become a learned behaviour that you just ignore it and you carry on and that is the reality so it's not even about refugees or migrants who are it's it's British citizens born here raised here who are experiencing this and it's it's as I say we're just blocking out so much every day and I think very often it is about people thinking and like like my niece's instance she was thinking I thought I'm so busy at work I've got so much on it I don't have the time to go and report this or the energy to go and report this because if I'm reporting it I'll have the place here every single day I think people don't understand the extent of racism really don't understand the extent of racism it's it's in our lives it's in our faces every day and I don't see how that changes quickly I think it's it's a long long process but um yeah it's not even go back to that previewing what you've just said I mean having racism right every single hour I mean I know I've spoken to people I come from an Asian background it's there and sometimes people do ignore it but what can we do we're parliamentarians here and obviously this is a committee and obviously the Scottish Government will be listening as well you know what can we do more to stop this and how can we build that trust that you that people whether from refugees or you know seeking asylum or whether they're people that are born here that the trust is built with a criminal justice system and with the Scottish Government so that people can come to us and speak to us about this because certainly it's not acceptable in the 21st century it should be I think it's about it's about the situation Penard raised where she felt uncomfortable but there must have been other people around about that felt uncomfortable and it's about it doesn't have to be the blackface that reports it you as as the mainstream you know the mainstream can be white people can be reporting and I think the more we see that happening and the only reason my niece actually did end up reporting it was her white boss was like no you need to report this you need to report this and he kept going and he messaged her and phoned her and said have you done it have you done it and then she did report it but I think we have been so kind of suppressed in a sense that we do need the white community stands to start standing up and saying hey that's not right you know and calling colleagues out because it's happening in professional environments and it's about calling colleagues out and saying hang on a minute and everybody start to take a stance against it and I think that then gives us the confidence to say yeah actually you're right because at the moment I think a lot of people a lot of the time feel they are a problem if they're raising it so if I had an incident against me it's like I'm just going to be another problem for someone so we need we need to be raising it as as a whole nation rather than asking the black people to raise it. That's good. Fulton when we were talking about having us in cryo one obviously you're on the justice committee as well and you kind of mentioned that maybe there was some issues around the intersection between racism and the justice do you want to just take us? Yeah I suppose it's the other side almost of Pam Goswell's line of questioning there but when we were out at the Glasgow Sheriff Court recently with the justice committee we've seen roughly I think it was 13 hearings that day it was about it's about the bailing every man will but what did strike me and other members of the committee was the disproportionate number of BME individuals BME males it was young males who were up and that did strike me as an issue and we've often heard about that in the disproportion there so something is certainly something appears to be wrong there at a societal level that disproportionate number have to say just for clarity convener that we won't only seen one session that day of 13 people whether that's reflective overall or not we will find out more as we take evidence during committee. Before I throw this area out I think in the previous session Maggie raised the issue of racial profiling by the police which then gets a result and I guess the other area which might be useful to hear folks thoughts on is what support folk have when they find themselves in that situation in the chronologist system is the support there to help folk through that. The women's perspective cases that we've had is where a woman was domestic abuse case the police have come in and the male is reporting it because she's lashed out and I don't know if she'd cut him but the officers didn't understand that she she had been so beaten so many times but she couldn't show her bruises because it was a male officer and she had to just be quiet and be up with it. There is still continues to be that lack of understanding there's that police officer coming in with what is seen as authority and power and she feels she's not able to say anything and she's taken in and she's kept in overnight and she had a young baby who was being breastfed who had to be separated from her and she's now you know she's been abused now she's separated from her child the kind of she's already having problems with connecting with her child as it was but there was no consideration given into that and she wasn't taken aside and spoken to and she was spoken to with the male perpetrator in the room and she said yeah I hit him and so they took her and kept her in overnight so these things are still happening and happening quite regularly and you know it's just unacceptable. I think the issue we find is the issue of corroborations so if you've got police Scotland coming out to these kind of incidents and you've got a woman who is experiencing abuse and she's staying with extended family they've got corroborations she doesn't you know so a lot of the times I think even if police officers are sympathetic by law they will still need to arrest those women but at the same time I do think that there are a lot of laws out there that do disproportionately impact BME women or just BME people and I think there's definitely something to look at you know if you've got you know are there more men that are being arrested are there more women I would say that are being arrested are being for example arrested when they are the ones that are experiencing domestic abuse what we also find then is on the other hand is is we have a lot of BME women who are in the childcare system having the children separated from them because they might smack the children or whatever but not understanding that smacking is actually illegal within Scotland because when the smacking ban was brought in there was absolutely zero consultation done with a lot of BME women's groups or refugee women's groups to explain to them about laws so there's still a lot of laws and legislations that we have within Scotland that would actually disproportionately impact BME women or just BME people in general and I think there's still so even with our existing laws there's a lot more work to be done. I mean one of the things that we've noted over what over each year is is that in 20 years of the evolution there hasn't been an inquiry an inspection by any of the constaburys in the criminal justice system you know the inspectors in the criminal justice system of the relationship between the home office and the operation of the criminal justice system in Scotland so you know from the police police Scotland now and through to the crown office in Procurator Fiscal Service through to the Scottish Prison Service and through to the courts themselves so we find that's a gap that needs to be filled we've raised that a number of times as has the justice subcommittee and policing that John Finnie chaired before I think the truth is it was ignored in practice but not in terms of we did get a response not not ignored by the justice subcommittee but I think it was the inspector of constabulary in Scotland we did get a response but the response to me wasn't substantive because the response spoke about nobody's really raised this with us before and we're saying well this is why we're raising it because the 20 years of devolution Scotland's becoming an increasingly diverse population but even if it wasn't we'd still be looking at how the operation of the criminal justice system affects communities especially but not only migrant communities because what we could see is pin I talked about is it people are quite distrustful of authority especially people have come from a refugee background but also we can also see as I touched on earlier on that the stakes for people seeking refugee protection and having insecure immigration status in the UK including in Scotland have just got so much higher over the last three or four years such that now it's a criminal offence to arrive in the territory being a beach or being a lorry drop in the UK you're immediately liable to a criminal offence of unlawful arrival via the national emborders act 2022 so you know it's for us incumbent upon the criminal justice institutions in Scotland to say okay how can we get a grip of this now we've pushed this through the Scottish national action plan leadership panel they've agreed to it to the credit which is good that there should be such a review but we understand it's now with Scottish Government to consider and one of the reasons I'm raising it now is that we really hope they make the right decision on that and actually take forward that review about the interaction between the Home Office and