Good morning and welcome to this, the 19th meeting of the Quality and Human Rights Committee of 2018. I'm going to make the usual requested electronic devices that are on airplane mode and mobile phones are off the tables, please. Agenda item 1 is continuation of our human rights and the Scottish Parliament inquiry. The first item this morning is an oral evidence session with Gianni Magazzini, the chief of the UPR branch office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations. RóGer, who is the manager of the human rights programme inter-parliamentary union, and we are linking up via video conference from Geneva. Before I begin, can I just check that Gianni and RóGer can hear us okay? Yes, you can hear us okay. Wonderful. I believe that you both have an opening statement to make. So Gianni, do you want to go first? Thank you very much, convener, and the distinguished members of this committee. We are very pleased to provide evidence to you this morning. Of course, our remarks will be very much of a general nature, highlighting how the Secretary General, the I Commissioner and the Human Rights Council see the relationship between parliaments and human rights. And I would like to start by referring to a report which the Secretary General issued last year to the General Assembly, where he actually stated, and I quote, At the national level, parliaments play a crucial role in the promotion and protection of human rights as legislators and as overseers. They laid the foundation for the rule of law and the respect for and protection of human rights. He also went on in the same report stating, and I quote, Parliaments can ensure transparency and accountability for states human rights obligation in following up and ensuring the implementation of recommendations by both regional and international human rights mechanism. And he pointed out that, and I quote, while human rights are a cross cutting issue that should be taken into account by all parliamentary committees. The establishment of a parliamentary committee with an exclusive human rights mandate sends a strong political message and should be encouraged. The Secretary General, that same report also recommended the development by the international community of international principle that could guide even more the strengthening of this engagement between parliaments and the human rights mechanism. Now I would like to say very briefly that over the past years, the Office of the I Commission for Human Rights and the IPU have worked very closely in connection with a number of human rights council endeavour that had to do with strengthening the engagement of parliaments with human rights. The most recent of which, of course, was resolution of the council of last year, 35 slash 29, which basically called for, among other things, a study on strengthening engagement of parliaments with the human rights council and its universal periodic review mechanism. We have shared the report with you. The report was issued just a few days ago, and it will be considered during the current session of the human rights council 38. I would like just to emphasise at this very beginning that why is this so relevant, this connection of parliaments with the human rights council and especially the UPR? Because, of course, when we consider the universal periodic review, it is entering the third cycle, which started actually on 1 May 2017. This third cycle is focused on implementation of recommendation, and in this effort to ensure greater implementation by all stakeholders, the role of parliaments is critical. The report I already mentioned of the Secretary General of last year refers to the fact that over 50% of recommendations from the universal periodic review in order to be implemented require some kind of action by parliaments, and so it is critically important that they are involved in all phases of the universal periodic review. Both the preparation of the national report, the review in Geneva in the human rights council, and more importantly follow-up action at country level in connection with the implementation of recommendations. Now, one thing I would like also to flag at the beginning is that the report presented to the human rights council contains draft principles on parliaments and human rights. Those principles clearly encourage the establishment of human rights committees within parliaments, and also provide elements for the terms of reference, the transparency, the composition, the work emittance of those committees, which we hope will be an encouragement for parliaments that do not yet have a dedicated committee that deals with the oversight function with respect to the Government's responsibility for the promotion and protection of human rights in line with the legal obligations resulting from the ratification of international human rights treaties or the political commitments that they make when they interact with international human rights mechanisms, especially the universal periodic review. I think that this is the first time a parliamentary committee of this Parliament has engaged so directly with the UN, so we are really grateful to have you with us this morning and to hear some of the details on the draft principles. Roger, have you got anything to add to Gianni's opening statement? Yes. First of all, thank you as well very much for inviting the IPU to be part of this exercise. We are very pleased as well to engage with your committee because we know that your committee has shown it has been at the forefront of promoting human rights. Actually, we are aware of several good practices that your committee has shown and I think we think is what can inspire other committees around the world to better promote and protect human rights. I just wanted to mention very briefly eight points around the work of parliamentary committees in relation to the work that the IPU has been doing in the hope as well that this is particularly relevant to your committee. First of all, the parliamentary human rights committee model. I understand it two years ago your committee decided or it was decided that your committee included human rights within its remit and there is both equality and human rights as part of your general remit now. The IPU has always been a strong advocate of having dedicated parliamentary human rights committees but at the same time we have also highlighted the importance of making sure that these committees do not work in isolation from other committees but really closely co-ordinate and co-operate with these other committees because also in some cases we have seen. I am saying that this is not at all saying that this is the case in Scotland quite the contrary but in some cases we have seen that these committees have been set up just to pay late service to human rights and if there is no real willingness and commitment within parliament as a whole then that body will not be terribly effective. So that is the first point. Second point, the importance of setting out clear objectives for each of these parliamentary human rights committees and to establish a work plan for the four parliamentary term. Third, the importance of strong committee involvement in UN monitoring mechanisms. As Johnny has just said, I think there is a real favourable disposition and momentum in the UN right now to engage with parliament and I think it is important that parliament sees that opportunity. When it comes to the universal periodic review but also the work of the UN treaty bodies by making sure that they are aware that they put it on the agenda, that they are aware that the national report is going to be prepared, that they discuss that report with the relevant ministry's officials, that they see whether it is possible that they can be included in national delegations to these UN mechanisms and maybe most importantly that they are aware of the recommendations and concluding observations that come out of these mechanisms and that they also question the relevant authorities about implementation. Fourth point, the importance of working as much as possible and drawing on the expertise of your National Human Rights Commission. We did a survey not so long ago which looked at the implementation of the Belgrade principles on the relationship between parliament and national human rights institutions and what came out very clearly is that national human rights institutions do present reports regularly to parliament but when it comes to the feedback and the follow up that comes out of those presentations there is a lot to be desired to give you just one figure only in 25% of the cases do parliaments take follow up actions when NHRI reports are presented and most of these actions are then also subsequently not conveyed or communicated to the national human rights institution. Point number five, make effective oversight of government action a priority by addressing challenges to such oversight and this is maybe relevant not just to your committee but to all parliamentary communities. And maybe this is a suggestion from the IPU to also see if you can draw on best practices that are listed in the IPU UNDP global parliamentary report which was launched last year. It's a report which deals exclusively with the issue of parliamentary oversight and it has produced quite a number of recommendations that are useful across the board in parliament. Point number six, the importance of not only reviewing compliance of draft legislation with human rights before that legislation is adopted but also do an exposed human rights impact assessment of implementation of that legislation. And make it very clear that this is included when bills are adopted to make sure that within two, three or five years there's an automatic review of the respect for human rights. Obviously, not just the European Convention of Human Rights, we're aware that this is how the Human Rights Act is formulated but ideally as well with regard to the UN monitoring bodies. Point number seven, the importance of parliaments taking the lead in promoting national debate around human rights issues. I think this is something that the IPU has seen time and time again that it's important to not leave human rights to experts alone. Human rights often require tough political choices that need to be made and it's important that parliament sees on the opportunity to offer the platform, offer this public national platform to initiate this debate together with the audience at large, with the National Human Rights Commission, civil society organisations and academia, and also to go to citizens and to be on the move as much as possible. And last point, the importance of monitoring the impact of your committee's work both in terms of processes and substantive results. Where has your committee been able to make a difference? Obviously, this is not only useful for your own citizens but also for us because we are trying to collect as much as possible as well examples globally of where we can show very clearly that parliaments were not on their involvement, was not only important from a purely procedural perspective but also because at the end of the day they were able to deliver better on human rights as a whole. Excellent points and we're already working on a number of them so we feel as if we're on the right track. I'm going to go to opening questions this morning from my committee colleagues opening with the first question, Gail Ross. Thank you, convener. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. It really is a great honour to be able to speak to you. Also to get feedback on our committee and what we're doing well and what we could do better and also as a Scottish Parliament, you spoke about the national debate that we have to have now including members of society as well as members of Parliament. How can we as a Scottish Parliament empower our society to make people more aware of their rights both under domestic and international human rights law and to help to build a strong culture of human rights here in Scotland? What we have seen in several situations is that Parliament, as I mentioned, they try to be on the move as much as possible, be as close as citizens as much as possible so not just in the capital so to speak, but also to meet with citizens because obviously their concerns can be different depending on the region that they live in, the part of town that they live in so that the Parliament is also seen to be reaching out as much as possible. I think that's already a very important symbolic step also because with that you may get other kind of feedback than you would normally get by sitting where you normally sit. Secondly, what we see is very important is that the audience, that the public sees that this is done in a bipartisan spirit. I think it's important for the public to see that all Parliament can rally around human rights issues. I think thirdly what we have also seen parliamentarians do is also to use their work as an opportunity to have not just hearings again in the capital, but also in the country around specific human rights themes by being this catalyzer for bringing people together and also with the mandate to do so. I think that in itself around specific human rights topics that are very urgent within your given context, I think that is very useful. Lastly, some parliaments as well, members of parliament, they work a lot with schools including themselves and they actually go to schools and talk about human rights as much as possible because this is something that is incredibly appreciated by schools and of course subsequently as well this is shown in the media as well as being a particular step that parliamentarians seem to be taking and I think it's important for the public as large as well to see this happening, but I think also practically speaking it gives a very strong signal that MPs individually and as a committee as a whore are engaged. OK, thank you. OK, thanks very much. Mary Fee. Thank you, convener, and good morning. My question follows on from the question that is being posed by my colleague Gail Ross. How can we as parliamentarians ensure that the duty bearers, those responsible for human rights, absolutely and fundamentally know what those rights and duties are and how they should be carried out? Well, let me say that I mentioned earlier that this third cycle of the UPR is focused on implementation and as part of this stronger focus on implementation on the part of the entire UN system, not just the office of the EU Commission for Human Rights, we encourage a number of steps to be considered at national level. One of them is the creation of national mechanism for coordination and follow up of all the requirements under international human rights treaties, which includes treaty bodies recommendations and as well the recommendations from the universal periodic review. I have to say that worldwide we have seen progress on this issue in at least 50 countries and we are certainly engaged to support the strengthening or the reinforcing of such mechanism of coordination. They are led by the executive clearly, very often is the minister of justice and or foreign affairs, but one of the point I would like to emphasize here, we have always reiterated among the good practices, the involvement of parliaments in these bodies, both because as we said earlier, they play a key role in implementation with respect to more than 50% of recommendations from the universal periodic review. Action that may require a legislative reform or other form of steps that require the parliament to be directly involved, but also because of the oversight function vis-à-vis government's responsibility on policies and action. Now the recommendations from the UPR and I said the third cycle is focused on implementation is not ending here. Countries that have gone through the third cycle already will come back in 2021 or 2022 and again the focus will be what has been done vis-à-vis recommendation that the country has received, especially those that have been accepted. And I think that the importance for the mechanism and this universal periodic review of parliamentary awareness of this recommendation and the position taken by the concerned member states is fundamental for any plan of action from today to the next four and a half years and for being part of the implementation. So I think again, as the Secretary General was saying in his report, the role of parliament is crucial. And if we see more of this efforts at implementation, we will see tremendous benefit on other two fronts. The prevention agenda, addressing root causes, reducing also what produce and cause IDPs, max residences, refugees. And let me just say that yesterday was refugee day and we have heard from our colleagues in UNHCR that we are at 68.5 million today, which is the highest number since World War II. And second point, the more we focus on the implementation of recommendations from the human rights mechanism, the more we will contribute to the success and sustainability of the agenda 2030 and the SDGs. Thank you for that. In our evidence sessions, one of the people that gave us evidence suggested that the introduction of human rights officers in public bodies would be an important step forward. Would you agree with that? Well, I think that I'm not sure I'm in a position to answer that question. I would say that what we are here emphasizing is for all parliaments to have a strong focus on human rights and have a parliamentary committee that deals with that. Not just the foreign policy aspect, not only the situation in other countries, which is tremendously important, especially for ODA and development assistance, but also because of their role of oversight vis-à-vis the legal obligations and the political commitments made by the state concern. I would say that that, in my view, is already a very important step ahead in many jurisdictions. Thank you. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. A lot of the people that have given us evidence have raised concerns about Brexit and that it might weaken Scotland and indeed the UK's human rights protections. Have you any thoughts on that and how this Parliament can possibly seek to protect that going forward through the Brexit process? Well, I'm not sure I'm in a position to comment on that. I would say that this goes beyond my responsibilities and I reiterate that, for us, one of the most important objective of this hearing is to encourage greater action and knowledge of the international human rights obligation and recommendations made to member states so that follow-up action can be taken. And that, in our view, can only contribute to advancing in the promotion and protection of human rights, strengthening resilience of society, and, as I mentioned earlier, have an important contribution also to development and peace and security. And if I may, maybe also to add that of course there's Brexit and that there is the relationship as well with the European Convention on Human Rights, but I think this is also an important opportunity to highlight precisely the importance of the UN human rights treaties and the UN human rights mechanisms. Because the focus, I think, has been very much on the European Convention on Human Rights in the UK context, which is of course understandable and welcome. But I think in this time of uncertainty as to where things will go with the Human Rights Act, I think it's also all the wise to make sure that the work of these UN human rights treaties and monitoring bodies is fully included as a reference in your work. Oliver. Thank you, convener. Can I just start with a brief follow-up to that question? I just wondered if you were able to comment on the fact that there are a large number of countries that exist outside the EU that do have good human rights practice? Well, I think that we encourage not only good practices, but also we try to share those good models so that countries that are undertaking their obligation, that are following up on recommendations, especially those that they've accepted, and that strengthen the national protection system, which for us means a variety of things, including a strong and independent judiciary, a parliament with a human rights committee, national institutions in line with the Paris principle, space for civil society, human rights defenders to do their investigative work. I think that certainly there are good examples in the European context, and we encourage those good examples as well as those in other contexts. Again, for us, the most important thing is to make this cycle of the UPR, this third cycle, focus on an implementation agenda, and we're looking very much forward to greater engagement on the part of parliament at national level, because in our view, especially those that have already a human rights committee, and that already play an oversight role vis-à-vis those international obligations with respect to human rights action and policies, that those examples are well known and potentially followed by other countries. So we certainly encourage those good practices, and we will be having actually a discussion at the IPU and in the Human Rights Council a week from today in order exactly to share a few of those good practices, so that the Member States, representative of the governments, but as well as other important stakeholders, can take stock of those positive developments, learn from them, and hopefully see from our part more and more of an engagement on the part of parliament at the national level, at the regional level and at the international level. I just wondered round when you talk about the national and regional level, thinking within the UK context. Obviously the United Kingdom is the member state, and most of the treaty obligations are certainly the treaty signing process at a UK level. How do you see the interaction between devolved parliaments like ours and national parliaments like the UK parliaments in this context? Well, I'm not sure I'm in a position to comment on that. Again, those are internal distribution and devolution of powers and responsibilities. But again, for us, the critical issue is to have and see more engagement on the parliaments, especially if we want to see progress on this implementation agenda as part of the third cycle. If we want to see more results that improves the human rights situation at country level, especially for vulnerable groups and other affected minorities, I think that we need to see greater knowledge, greater involvement and greater oversight role on the parliaments. And this is what we hope very much to contribute with this endeavour here today and with others that we hope will follow this year. Maybe if I can just add that what we see as well when it comes to good practices is that in some ways Europe is in the lead, and that's maybe not a surprise, but in other ways it isn't necessarily. What we have seen with a number of parliaments in Western Europe is that, first of all, they don't have a dedicated Parliamentary Human Rights Committee. And sometimes the argument is simply that human rights is not an issue here in our country. Sometimes we're told this quite straightforwardly. Human rights is a concern outside of our borders. So there is no real need to talk about human rights within our country. And this has sometimes also allowed other countries and other regions to be much more advanced in dealing with human rights issues. To give you one example, that of Mexico. The Mexico has two chambers, the upper chamber and the lower chamber both have a human rights committee and the Senate has a Parliamentary Human Rights Committee. And this committee has been involved from start to finish in several of the universal periodic reviews of Mexico's human rights record by the UN Human Rights Council. The President of that committee was in the lead in preparing part of the report that was submitted to the Human Rights Council. The President of the committee was also part of the official delegation of Mexico that came to Geneva and actually spoke and addressed the UN Human Rights Council to give the Parliament's perspective on the human rights situation in Mexico. And then also took the recommendations forward by questioning the ministers on their return to Mexico about how they were going to implement these recommendations. So I think there are quite a number of very good examples, including outside of Europe, of where Parliaments have been taking these steps to make sure that they are fully in the picture, but also fully in the lead as much as possible in helping ensure implementation of human rights. My final question was just around local delivery. Obviously, this Parliament has quite a proud record of debating human rights issues, talking about them. We've established this committee and we're already actioning many of the points that you've identified. How do we move that forward into local delivery, particularly at local authority level, at municipal level, where many of the services are actually being delivered? How do we as a Parliament ensure that human rights focus when services are actually being delivered? A difficult question. I mean, I think it's in a way related to the question that was asked previously before about having human rights officers in public bodies. I think the importance here is to make sure that all state structures are sensitive to human rights. Now, I don't know if having a dedicated public officer within each of these bodies specifically on human rights is the answer, but I think some of the recommendations and observations that I started off with, which I hoped would somehow be relevant and I understand them to be for your committee, I think they're also relevant in maybe different ways for other bodies in Scotland. Making sure that you reach out as much as possible to committees, establishing clear objectives and a work plan, be as close to citizens as possible. I think all of these are valid points, not just for your work, but also for other entities within the Scottish context that work on human rights. And I think it's up to them and you to define what this means in practice. Thank you for having me. Sorry, I was going to ask, are there any good international examples of where that's already taking place? Well, I mean, I think the examples, I gave examples of parliamentarians reaching out to citizens by holding public meetings in town halls together with civil society organizations going to schools, carrying out bipartisan visits to regions where there are particular tensions. There are a number of suggestions that we have seen parliament's take on. Thank you, convener, and good morning and thank you very much for joining us today. My questions around the balance of human rights and how do we, as a parliament, achieve the correct balance of human rights, especially when there's lots of competing human rights and interests, especially when it comes to new legislation. So how do we achieve that? I think it's a critical question and I think that's also where it's very important that, and I think with that I also want to come back to my first observation, which is about making sure that your work is fully connected to the work of the other committees. Because if at the end of the day everyone sees that human rights is just your responsibility, then it can be easily presented as, well, once you have been heard of or have been somehow involved in the discussion, that's the end of it. But I think it's important for your committee to make sure that human rights at the end of the day is a responsibility for the whole parliament, even though you take the lead. I think it starts with that. Now, of course, at the end of the day, there's only so much you can do. Yes, there's the Human Rights Act. Yes, there are the clear obligations that the UK has when it comes to human rights. And you have the procedures and mechanisms in place to make sure that the state as a whole can be held to account. And I think that's at the end of the day your role now. And these obligations remain regardless of whether ministers come and go and whether they focus more on trade or other issues. I think at the end of the day, these obligations have to be always put up front and make sure that in the back of everyone's minds, these obligations will not go away. These recommendations will not go away, regardless of a stronger focus on trade or other issues. And I think it's ultimately the duty of parliament to make sure that these obligations are respected. Thank you. Elec Cole-Hamilton. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning to our guests by video conference. Apologies for my late arrival. I'd like to address Roger in your reflections. You talked about our inquiry into making rights real in the parliament and made several suggestions and observations that was very helpful. I think one of the things we've been focused on is how we ensure that our focus on human rights in this inquiry continues into the long term. We're all very excited, very committed to human rights and drawing that thread through all the work of this parliament. But we are all politicians and we have, sadly, limited job security in this and we may not all be here in the next parliamentary session. In that vein, in thinking about institutional memory, we've been talking about the need perhaps to have staff within the parliament who can be the guarantors of that institutional memory, legal advisers even. What are your reflections on that and how important do you think that is to continue that work? I think it's an absolutely critical point and we see this in many parliaments around the world. As you say, parliamentarians come and go and most often it's parliamentary staff that has much more, I don't know if it's necessarily job security, but it's much more likely that parliamentary staff will stay around for much longer and that they have this institutional memory, which is also why as an organisation, as the Interparliamentary Union, we work both with parliamentarians, with parliaments, MPs, but also with parliamentary staff precisely for that reason. We think it's absolutely critical to engage with them because they are the institutional memory quite often of the organisation. It also means that they need to have the requisite training to be helpful to the committees that they serve. Yes, it's absolutely critical that you can rely on expertise, that you have expert legal advice that you can draw on for your enquiries. It's also absolutely critical that you can rely on research facilities to be able to put your questions together that you want to ask from the relevant authorities, but also in organising your enquiries. So yes, both expert legal staff is indispensable and this is something that we've been pushing for everywhere around the world and also the availability of research facilities. Helpful and it certainly chimes with our shared view that's emerging across the committee. Can I also touch on something that you raised in your points and I think a number of members have touched on this as well? It's around the idea of a specific human rights committee. This isn't just a human rights committee, this is a human rights and equalities committee. For example, we spent much of this last year looking at a gender representation on public boards bill, which is not a human rights issue, but it is an equalities issue. So can I just ask whether you think we need to disaggregate those two functions so that we have a specific committee within the Scottish Parliament solely focused on human rights guarantee? I think ultimately it's obviously it's your call to make. We have always been strong advocates of having a dedicated parliamentary human rights committee. We know that in reality many committees around the world in Parliament have both human rights and something else in their remit. We see a variety of situations. You have equality and human rights. Others may have national minorities depending a little bit on the context and often the history. As I understand, your committee started as an equal opportunities committee. I think at the end of the day you will have to draw your own conclusions as to whether you are sufficiently effective or not in promoting a human rights agenda. If you think that the other issues are taking too much of focus away and not allowing you to come out with a coherent message on human rights, then maybe it is useful to separate the two. Then still it being understood that a human rights committee with just exclusively a human rights mandate is powerful and effective enough to also relay its message internally within Parliament. Thank you. One more question if I may, Comedian. On that in terms of where we sort of put the focus of the work of this committee, when we first grappled with the human rights remit that we had taken on at the start of this session, we looked, I think, with fresh eyes really at the fact that there are some 900 concluding observations of points where the United Kingdom and indeed Scotland are still out of step or adrift of our international human rights treaties obligations. That is quite a daunting exercise in terms of establishing where do you start and how do you eat a whale one bite at a time. How would you advise us, this committee and our successor committees, as an approach to addressing those outstanding areas of Scottish life where we are still adrift of international treaty obligations and still manage that as a workable work programme? Well, if I may say there are, of course, many contexts in which the numbers of recommendations is daunting and has quite a frightening result on those who have act upon in terms of implementation and follow up. And so one thing that we encourage Member States to do, especially in the context of their action vis-à-vis the plan of implementation in the next four and half years, the one I referred before, where we see also an important role for parliament, other national institutions, civil society organisation, the judiciary as well, is to try to cluster, to, of course, prioritise, in a sense. And in that efforts, of course, we are also facilitating in a database that we have created country by country, the clustering of all recommendation, not only of this current cycle of the UPR and not only the universal periodic review, but all the other mechanism, SDG by SDG. In order to facilitate the task for our development colleagues worldwide to see to what extent certain recommendation may advance an SDG, certain target and certain implementation action that can be considered in that context. I flag that aligning the development and the human rights requirements seems to us to be important. And as an additional step that the ICommissioner has done consistently starting with the third cycle of the UPR is to send letters to the Foreign Affairs Minister in order to indicate what in its views are areas that determine particular attention looking at the next four and half years. We think that that is also a useful tool, a tool that can be helpful not only to the governments but other stakeholders as well because this communication is available on our website and is an open document. Thank you for that. That's very helpful. And final question, I promise. We have been discussing throughout the inquiry the possibility that incorporation of certain human rights treaties into Scott's law might be one of the most effective ways of guaranteeing their observance. Obviously, if people have access to justice when their rights are infringed, then decision makers when making public policy have to concentrate their minds a little bit further to making rights real. In your experience of working with other countries, how effective is it when countries incorporate treaties, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child? Of course, when it comes to the United Nations and the Office of the ICommissioner, ratification and encouragement ratification is the first step that we make to member states. The next important issue is the fact of implementation and follow up in addition to the regular reporting to the treaty bodies when it comes to the international human rights treaties. I'm not sure I'm in a position to say much vis-à-vis the internal division of labour, devolution and modus operandi. Thank you very much. Just on the point of how we do things better in this place, one of the emerging themes from the inquiry that we have had have been around impact assessments and we've all got our own challenges with impact assessments because they're only as good as how well they have been done. One of the emerging themes is the each piece of legislation that comes here, especially when it comes to looking at incorporation, that there should be a human rights impact assessment with it. Roger Ennie's open remarks had said that that would be good practice to have that human rights impact assessment with any pieces of legislation that comes through this Parliament. If you've got any thoughts or international examples of where human rights impact assessments have been used in pieces of legislation but also the other theme that's emerged on this is about the opportunities for further incorporation of treaties into legislation. At the earliest point of policy making, we're looking at opportunities in order to incorporate so the human rights impact assessment should include the opportunities available too. If you've got any examples that we could use in order to inform our work or if you've got any thoughts on whether that's a good idea. When it comes to reviewing draft legislation to see if it's compatible with human rights, I think many Parliaments in the Westminster system in the Commonwealth have actually been taking the lead on this and making sure that there is a rights-based review of legislation that comes before Parliament. It's in the UK but also Uganda, Kenya if I'm not mistaken, Australia and New Zealand. This has become standard practice. I'm not saying that it's always been very successful because as you say as well, it depends on the assessment, on the seriousness with which the minister involved and the ministry involved is presenting this memorandum on compatibility. But of course it then also depends on the committees, the parliamentary committees to make sure that this memorandum is very carefully reviewed, critically reviewed. Now we don't know of concrete examples when it comes to human rights specifically of where Parliaments have reviewed the implementation of human rights three, four, five years afterwards to see if this compatibility with human rights has been respected in reality. We do know however of examples in other areas where this has become standard practice. So for us the logic is as well here that as Parliaments are doing this more and more in other areas it also makes a lot of sense to make sure that when it comes to human rights to make sure that legislation and its implementation is properly and systematically reviewed after a number of years. That's incredibly helpful. Thank you for that. I think we'll pursue that idea with a figure in this committee. Mary, you've got a quick supplementary. I just wanted to ask a very brief question of both of you. One of the other themes that has come out while we've been taking evidence is that it may be an idea to consider suggesting that every single committee has a human rights rapporteur. I wonder if you thought that would be a sensible way forward and if you have any evidence of that in any other jurisdictions. I think it's a very interesting idea. Obviously on the understanding that that person is the person in the other committees who is open to human rights, committed to human rights, has also sufficient leverage within the committee to make sure that human rights are then taken on. On that understanding I think it's a very interesting idea. I'm not aware that this is being followed anywhere else, but I think it can be an interesting way of helping ensure that human rights are mainstreamed and that your committee's work is conveyed to all other committees. It's on the understanding that this rapporteur, this person, is the ideal person within that committee to take this forward. Any other committee questions? Roshie and Gianni, have you got any final thoughts for the committee that you've been very patient with this morning and given us lots of great information? Have you got any final comments to make? If I may, just to thank you for the opportunity. We think that your own experience is way ahead of where we are in other jurisdictions and conflicts. I would only emphasize one point that has been made by Roger already, which is the importance of strengthening the relationship with the national human rights institutions and I think also ensuring follow up action. One thing that we have noted in context in which there is a parliamentary human rights committee, a national human rights institution, that partnership can really enhance the level of implementation in law and practice vis-à-vis the recommendations that emerge from the human rights system, from the human rights council, from the treaty bodies, from the special procedures mandate order. We would encourage you to see the possibility there as well. Thank you for those kind remarks. Following this session with you, we are having a follow up session on the work that we did last year on prejudice-based school bullying. We are very much taking up the role of ensuring that we come back and look at things that have been done previously and whether there has been any progress and if there isn't any progress, why there isn't any. And if there is progress, where can we use that good practice in order to push forward the agendas that we want to do? Can I give a grateful thanks on behalf of the committee this morning for your participation all the way from Geneva? We hope that this is going to be a long and mutually beneficial relationship between our committee and the work that you do in Geneva and in the UN. As I say, we are very grateful for your attendance and your participation this morning. Thank you. I will suspend the committee for a quick 10 minute comfort break to set up the room for the next session. Good morning and welcome back to the equality and human rights committee. Before we go into agenda item 2, I would like to welcome the speaker of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly, Ms Joy Burch MLA and the clerk of the Assembly Tom Duncan, who have been observing the meeting from the public gallery. Agenda item 2 this morning is a follow-up round-table discussion on our bullying, harassment of children and young people in schools. The piece of work that we did last year is not cool to be cruel, looking at prejudice-based bullying in schools. We have undertook work in co-ordination with the Education and Skills Committee and we have carried out some inquiries on this. We have carried out an inquiry on personal and social education because all the things all work together. I understand the Education and Skills Committee is keeping a watching brief on the Scottish Government's review of personal and social education that the Deputy First Minister has written to that committee last month to update them on the timetable of the review, which I think will be of interest to the work that we are doing. This morning, we have many of the organisations around the table that we have spoken to in the course of our inquiry. I just want to go round the table with a quick who you are and move on quickly, please, and if we can start with you, Bill. Bill Ramsey, vice-president of the EIS and just finished 10 years as a quality convener. Fulton MacGregor, MSP for Co-Pregion Crescent. Carol Young, senior policy officer for the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights. The broadcaster will switch on your microphone. You do not need to press the button so that you are not all pressing your buttons all the way round. Mary Fee, MSP with Scotland. Kate Butterill, lecturer in human geography from Edinburgh and AP University. Daniel Assame, lecturer at the University of Strathclyde in education and social justice. Annie Wells, MSP for Glasgow. Carolyn Fox-McKy, communications manager, girl guiding Scotland. Oliver Mundell, member of the Scottish Parliament for Dumfriesshire. Ian Smith, policy and public affairs officer at Inclusion Scotland, the national disabled pupils organisation. Cara Spence, from LWT Scotland. I am a title senior programmes and influencing manager. Katie Ferguson, service director at respect me, Scotland's national anti-bullying service. Gail Ross, member of the Scottish Parliament for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross. Good morning. I am Mary Burrell. I am HM Inspector and Senior Education Officer for Inclusion and Equality Education Scotland. Hello everyone, I am Alex Cole-Hamilton, Lib Dem, MSP for Edinburgh Western, vice-conviner of the Human Rights and Equality Committee. Christine McKelvie, convener of the Equality and Human Rights Committee. Thank you to all of you who have come back to see us. It's good to see you back. Can I just welcome Catherine and Daniela, who are first time at our committee, but they have been working towards looking at prejudice based bullying of minorities and other aspects that would be of interest to the committee. We are going to go quickly into opening questions because we do have some limited time this morning. I want to get the best out of everyone and many of you have taken part in the round table before, so just catch my eye, I'll put you on the list and I'll call you. If it's a supplementary, you can make the wee sign of a supplementary, which means that you want in on the back of that. If you can let me know and we can make the conversation as free-flowing as possible. I'm going to kick up this morning with Gail Ross. Good morning, everyone. On the back of the committee's anti-bullying report, which fed into the Scottish Government's anti-bullying strategy, what improvements have you seen in your particular sectors? I think that one of the main advances that has happened so far has been within the national policy context. Obviously, from the launch of the report, the enquiries report, we've seen respect for all being published and that has a very strong commitment to addressing prejudice-based bullying. Obviously, a very clear expectation that that commitment will be translated into practice for children and young people through school policies and through community organisation policies as well. Since then, we've also had recording and monitoring guidance, supplementary guidance being published as well, which again contains clear guidance that we need to ensure better recording around prejudice-based incidents as well. For me, there's been a real strengthening of the national policy framework and it's about translating that into practice for children and young people. I think that it's a bit early to make any judgment as to what changes have been made because we have just received the national guidance going out. We'd like to see how that plays down into the local education authorities guidance and school guidance and how that develops. One of the areas that I do agree with what has just been said is the emphasis on prejudice-based bullying within the guidance, which I think is very helpful. Again, we've to see how that plays forward. We've seen some good practice in some areas such as LGBT in schools, but I'm not sure whether that is playing out in some of the other prejudice areas, for example in disability, which is the area of particular concern to inclusion in Scotland. It'd be interesting to know how the inspectorate and others will examine this, how you judge what success actually means. For example, the guidance on recording and monitoring, which I think means that they've proved monitoring will come in a bit later this year. Does that mean that if you see an increase in the recording of some bullying against prejudice-based bullying, is that a success or a failure? For example, we've seen on the hate crime statistics that have come out this week that there's been a significant increase in the number of recorded incidents of hate crime against disabled people, but does that mean that there's more hate crime against disabled people or just more being reported and dealt with? I think that we need to be clear that there's no distant centres put into the system where people actually think that by recording these things and having an increase, you're actually showing that things are getting worse, but you might actually just be picking up a problem that's been there all along and starting to address it. Orshad moment for you then? I just wanted to follow up on the points that have just been made by Ian and Katie on recording, because one of the things that we were very clear about in this report was that there should be mandatory recording of all incidents of bullying. When we were taking evidence, it was clear when schools and teachers were coming to us and telling us how they monitored and recorded. There was a significant degree of unease about recording incidents because of the knock-on impact of how they felt their school would be regarded. We were absolutely clear that every single incident should be recorded to ensure that the proper steps are taken. I just wanted to pick up, because you've both used words like better recording and improved recording. Does the improved and updated guidance say that you should record more or that every single incident, because we are quite clear that every single incident must be recorded? My understanding from the guidance is that it should be every single incident, but whether how that plays out when it actually comes to schools, there may be a tendency to just deal with an incident and not record it. That probably happens in most classrooms, in most days. Small things happen that are dealt with but not recorded. One of the big concerns that we had and the evidence that we put forward to the original inquiry was that particularly prejudice-based bullying against disabled people is not being recorded and not being picked up. What we would like to see is to ensure that that sort of thing is picked up so that if there is a pattern of that happening in schools, in any particular school or across schools, then that can be addressed as systemic behaviour rather than individual incidents. I think that the status quo at the moment is that we are not seeing enough reporting and that the consistency around reporting is not good enough either. I think that there was a real consensus that that status quo was not good enough and that that needed to change, which is why the guidance has been really valuable. I think that the guidance will go some way to addressing those issues in terms of more recording, so it is clear that we need to be reporting all bullying incidents and we need to make clear investigations into all reports of bullying incidents as well. It will also help us to improve the consistency, which is going to touch on what Ian has just mentioned in terms of what are we recording, making sure that we are recording if prejudice attitudes or views have played a role and what the nature of those have been. You touched on culture shift and that is a hugely important part of that as well. There is a lot of softer work that needs to happen alongside that guidance in terms of training, having discussions with schools and teachers about how to go about implementing that guidance and creating that consistency and approach. We also need to recognise that there is an issue of culture shift among children and young people too, where they will come forward and talk about bullying incidents that are affecting them so that we can therefore address those issues too. We need to make sure that young people feel safe to disclose when bullying is happening, although we recognise that professionals will often pick up and notice issues and be able to proactively address those as well. It is important to acknowledge that the data collection that will happen is going to inform preventative strategies around bullying and prejudice bullying as well as the reactive nature of responding to incidents. Mary, can I bring Carol and then Cara in and we can come back to the substantive question? CRER was involved in the working group that helped to develop the new guidance on recording and monitoring of bullying. We welcomed the opportunity to input to that and the result of that process is a much more concise and straightforward monitoring form. There are still things that need to be addressed there, for instance. There is no way for people to record racist incidents that are not bullying on that system. We have a concern that that will end up getting lost from practice entirely as a result. That is something that is still to be tackled, but I think that overall our feeling on it was that we are pretty disappointed that the committee's recommendation for mandatory recording was not taken up by the Scottish Government. We have seen over the years that there has been fairly consistent advice from the Scottish Government and loads of good work done by respect to me to try and convince the education authorities and schools of the importance of recording, and it has thus far been unsuccessful. We are actually about to launch some research that we did as a sort of baseline before the launch of respect for all, which was looking at the statistics that we could get through freedom of information requests on the levels of racist incidents and prejudice-based bullying incidents in schools in Scotland. To be frank, the data that is in there is not worth the paper that it has written on. It is at very, very low levels, so we would expect to see if that is a successful dramatic rise in incident recording, which would be reflective of better practice and make sense for schools to be aware of what is actually going on so that they can deal with it appropriately. For us, an increased number of incidents would be a good thing, but we would like to see further down the line this approach being robustly evaluated by the Scottish Government. If it is found that those voluntary approaches still are not working, I do believe that there has to be some move towards mandatory recording of bullying. I agree with Katie that the major thing that we can comment on right now is the changes in the policy context, so we were really pleased to have the national approach launched. We were also pleased that, I think, robustly included prejudice-based bullying, so that was really good. For us, it was also good to see that the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people were taken into account within this, and we worked quite closely with the Scottish Government on this. However, we also felt that more detail was needed for teachers in terms of how they practically respond to incidents, so what we did is we produced guidance alongside the national approach to anti-bullying, which was supported by the learning directorate, and this was distributed to every school in Scotland. We have started to see that play out in terms of impact in terms of school policies, so through our LGBT charter work and work with schools, we review school policies. I am starting to see a trickle-down effect through the national approach and through our guidance. I can say that there certainly has been some impact, but it is difficult to comment on how it has affected a whole school environment and culture at this stage. In terms of monitoring and recording, the system will always be slightly flawed unless it comes directly from children and young people, because teachers will be the conduit to recording that, and there will be fears. However, in the meanwhile, what is important is that we get messages right for teachers and schools that having high numbers is a good thing. I would imagine that initially numbers will be low, so it will take time for us to encourage teachers and encourage schools to report incidents. I would also advocate for moving forward how we might find anonymous ways for young people to report incidents. Not all young people have strong relationships with their teachers or feel able to come forward. If there were ways to be electronic or find ways for young people to report incidents as they occur, I think that we will get much more accurate statistics. The evidence that we heard from young people at the last committee meeting was incredibly powerful, and a lot of it focused on their ability to speak up about those incidents. The fact that they did not feel that teachers understood what it meant, whether that was an incident of bullying or not, and without robust training to ensure that they were able to come forward. I think that teachers are aware of what counts and what does not. No amount of recording will make any difference in that, and I do not think that we have seen that yet. I think that that is what the young people that we brought forward were saying, was that they really need to feel that they are being listened to in those incidents and at the time. I was not at the first meeting, so I think that it is perhaps a good moment to bring in some new evidence. We carried out research with over 1,000 young people who are born in Central East and Europe, living in Scotland and the rest of the UK. What they said in the surveys is that 77% of them have experienced racism and xenophobia, xenophobic attacks, and the vast majority of these incidents happened in school. Over 1,100 who completed the survey, we had 565 of them who described incidents of, so half of them described incidents of racist xenophobia and bullying that happened predominantly. In schools, these incidents range from verbal attacks, being called terrorist illegal, arrived on the boat prostitute, to being mocked about the accent, the way they look, the way they speak, to very serious physical attacks to themselves and their property and their family. To echo points that were made before, a lot of them said that they did not report and do not report because these incidents happen on an everyday basis, so 20% of them said that this happens on an everyday basis. It's normalized. Teachers hear these incidents. Sometimes teachers were accused, teachers were perpetrators of some of these attacks, and half of them said they've seen an increase in racism and xenophobia since Brexit. For this particular group, and that's extended to other groups, they said, for this particular group the incidents have gone up since the Brexit referendum. The issue of teachers not being able to manage the incidents or deal with the incidents was raised by several of them, and quite a lot of them said that this wasn't taken seriously because they were white, so 97% of them identified as white, and this wouldn't be taken seriously. The issue of teachers being prepared or knowledgeable in dealing with the incidents was mentioned by many. We were quite interesting if Scotland isn't, in a sense, different from the rest of the UK, and we had no statistically significant difference in data to suggest that there's a difference. The fact that we're talking about these issues is encouraging, but there's definitely a gap in teacher training and policy and practice at school levels as well. Catherine, you've got complementary work that you have an up-to-date research on this, too. It's not that up-to-date, so I can't comment on the progress made, but I'm just linking to a point that Daniela made. My research is a qualitative study throughout Scotland with young people from different ethnic and religious minority backgrounds, so we engage with 382 people across urban, suburban and rural Scotland, but this was in around 2014-15. Some of the themes that I'm hearing from people around the table are very much resonate with what we found then, so it was really just a point to back up what Daniela was saying around what the perception of prejudice-based bullying is, and that can be very complex in terms of identifying it potentially as teachers, but also for young people themselves. So there's often cases in which we found in the research people would talk about racism as just banter, for example, so whether that's recognised as an issue by young people themselves and how that plays out in relationships is really complex. The other point that I want to make is about misrecognition. With young, central and eastern European young people, often people are misrecognised as being a different nationality or potentially within religious minorities as well, so lots of young Sikh, Hindu, South Asian young people would talk about being misrecognised as Muslim and therefore experiencing Islamophobia, but there's quite a lot of complexity in that. It would still be a religious-based bullying, but in terms of being misrecognised, there's just lots of complexity that I think should be put into some of the training materials and CPD around how we might perceive racist and religious bullying. Also, I think that this might be another question, but related to the protected characteristics, I know that that was in the report saying that the protected characteristics are going to be something within the CPD training. Nationality is not within the protected characteristics, however, there are lots of central and eastern European young people, their nationality and also their migrant status is potentially a source of stigmatisation. That's an additional factor that should be talked about within that training context around protected, because otherwise we might have people being put into boxes and if it doesn't quite fit into that box, it doesn't get perceived as bullying. I think that that provided that the resources are developed properly, covering the protected characteristics would include nationality, because ethnic and national origin is part of the protected characteristics of race, but it's definitely true to say that I think the vast majority of people working in the education sector won't recognise that and there's significant support needed to make sure that people can understand and tackle these issues on the ground. Thank you very much, Daniela. Just briefly on the impact of this on young people, we also asked them how they deal with this incident and what they do. All sorts of things that young people do in the situations from sometimes giving a different nationality because they think that that would protect them and also hide their nationality, hide their ethnic identity. So particular groups who are vulnerable, the Roma migrant groups, so there are several characteristics that would put people in more vulnerable situations, so migrant, Roma and from a poorer background making people more vulnerable and quite often they would say they would try and hide that. Again, since the Brexit referendum, young people talked about trying to hide their identity in public spaces, so not using their home language in schools or public transport for fears of attacks. Some of them have suffered this incident and this has had direct impact on things like their mental health. We have 16 per cent of them in the Sampa reported mental ill health, a higher rate than the overall population. Their attainment is suffering, so Polish young people are doing less well in schools than white Scottish young people on all the other ethnic minority groups. There are higher rates of school abandonment that were reported to me by schools from young people who suffer racism and xenophobia in school. We have lower rates of service use reported by them and so on, so a spiralling effect on their ability to participate in social activities. Going back to the idea of how they cope with this in schools, the idea that they try and blend in as much as possible and don't want to stand out and how that's affecting their attainment, so direct impact on their attainment as well as their mental health and wellbeing. Three things I want to focus on, if I may, because they went around. First of all, training. Teachers need time to train and there are two challenges there. Firstly, what their perceptions of what will, in relation to their professional development, employers need to signpost that this training is valuable in their professional development, because if employers say that training is more valuable than this training culturally, then we don't unpack the result of that. Secondly, in terms of recording, and I think the point that was made by Cara, I think it was earlier on, and Ian about recording. I mean, we did our headteachers network last week and I was talking to some of your headteachers explaining I was going to be giving evidence this morning. And one of the headteachers said to me, the point that Ian was making, we were putting in a lot of effort recording and then got a long story short, sometime later they were in the front page of a tabloid, because they'd actually done their job well. You know, what they'd done, they'd done a really good job and they ended up in the front page of a tabloid with a majority of story. And that is a huge problem, which leads us into the media thing. For instance, I mean a good example. Daniela mentioned predominant in schools, that's a fair point. But what a journalist will do, pick that up and run another narrative, and that's the sort of challenges that we face, training and how it's filtered by the media, I think that's really important. But I think that the work and the discourse that's going on, we're really welcome, because it has to be done and as we've seen in the last week, it's not going to get any better. Just on the topic of research, LGBT Scotland published research in February 2018 with a sample of almost 700 LGBT young people, and it showed that 71 per cent of LGBT young people experienced bullying in schools on the grounds of being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. It talked about the impact on them, it was a significant impact on their mental health, but for the first time we have really strong evidence that is an impact on their attainment, and also their ability to actually attend schools, so 20 per cent of LGBT young people left school as a direct result of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying. I'm not going to go into lots of details because I know we've looked at a lot of research in the past. I think that there is something about research and the long-term approach to it though, and how the Scottish Government might take that forward. I would suggest perhaps looking at the behaviour of the Scottish Schools Survey and ensuring that it has specific information on prejudice-based bullying, but also unpicking some of the protected characteristics and aspects of that so we can dig a little bit deeper there. There is one thing about individual organisations carrying out research, but there needs to be a long-term approach, and also looking at trends over time would be really useful to see. Mary, sorry, Katie, I'm going to bring Mary in right now, but Mary, I think that we've heard a few indications this morning about data collection, how you collect data, how that shows in inspections, the impact on attainment, I'm sure that's something of interest to you and the work that you do. One of the recommendations from our inquiry last year was to really look at how inspections are done, the data that's collected from that, and looking at the health and wellbeing aspect of that and an inspection regime. Can you give us an update? Well, as you mentioned at the start, it's obviously the work in terms of the PSE thematic inspection. That work is just nearing the end of phase 2, and the report is in a draft form, it's not yet been quality assured. That was certainly 55 schools across Scotland, including early-year centres and special schools. I think that the information that that will produce will be fruitful in terms of discussion going forward, bringing in mind that in primary schools the focus is health and wellbeing rather than PSE. Certainly, there have been previous discussions on that. Fortunately, I'm not at the stage, I can share any more information at the moment, but I certainly feel that that may be of interest to this group going forward. Certainly, Education Scotland has, since the work with this committee and the publication of respect for all, Education Scotland has done a lot of work. I thought simply because inspection from Ian was one of the first aspects mentioned, just to say that we have updated our guidance to all inspectors in terms of our safeguarding. We previously spoke that safeguarding is one of the quality indicators that's come into all inspection, and we take that extremely important. We updated this in December 2017. We have also shared with all inspectors respect to me in terms of that information, so they are fully equipped when they are going out to do this. Because consistency of approach is so important here, and we've heard that from many people. With your indulgence, I just read a few sentences out. Wider safeguarding issues such as bullying will also be evaluated. This will involve, for example, looking at the overall number of incidents, trends or patterns over time, social media related incidents and effectiveness of approaches. The guidance, respect for all and it's quoted down as a hyperlink, provides useful information as to how schools should prevent bullying and record and monitor incidents. It goes on also to talk about the information from included and engaged part 2, which was also updated just before Christmas, so there is more text here. Certainly, this is the guidance that is issued to inspectors, and this came out in December 2017. Therefore, this is progress in terms. Clearly, there are other aspects of the work that we are doing. We are supporting a number of the work streams and committees related to this. We work very closely with most people in this room now. We have called on these different agencies to help us to update the information that we have on our national improvement hub. The information is fresh, it's been updated. We track to ensure that we have all the different protective characteristics covered to ensure that there are no gaps. We know that there are areas that we need to improve. We are looking at gathering more information, but we want this to be a quality destination for teachers, where they can very easily access. Building on what Katie said is the cultural shift that is so important here, and there will not be one single resolution to that. It will be all of us working together. We also support the monitoring and tracking in the recording working group, and also the LGBT education and inclusion working group. We are involved in many different aspects of that, supporting the work of this group. Alex Cole-Hamilton Thank you very much, convener. I'd like to pick up on a number of things that particularly Cara has said. We've heard a number of our panellists mention as well. That's around homophobic abuse in schools. I've been particularly struck through the conduct of our inquiry, through my association and that of others with the TIE campaign, at just how much we still have to do in this area. Not least, there was a very vicious attack in a local school in my constituency very recently on a homophobic basis. The anniversary—well, it was 30 years ago this year that Section 28, or Clause 2A, was put into the Local Government and Communities Act prohibiting any discussion of homosexuality in the school environment. Thankfully, that was repealed some 11 years later, but the shadow of that looms very large over our education establishment. I think that it's true to say that some teachers still have anxiety about what they're allowed to talk about in respect of homosexuality, particularly in faith schools. I want to know what the panellists believe that we can do to foster a better, more confident environment for our teachers to first of all talk about homosexuality and bisexuality and transgender issues as a normal part of the human condition in the school environment. But also how to support young people who are thinking about their own identity and address the bullying that's still very much at large in our schools. Cara, I think that maybe that's directed at you. Well, there's lots that can be done. If you're talking about building the confidence of teachers, it needs to be training. One thing we also need to recognise, I think that a lot of teachers get a lot of negative feedback, and one thing I'm very clear about that I think we need to recognise and celebrate success. There is some great work happening in schools and finding ways to showcase that. It allows teachers to realise that it is possible, it's something they cannot do. Regardless though, there will still be teachers that are resistant to this area of work, and part of that is a legacy of section 28. One of the things that we're really strong about is that we need to find a way to create that consistency and say that this is something that you must do. Without that, I think that progress will be slow, and that's because of legislation that's happened in the past. I'm really pleased that Mary talked about the inspection frameworks. I think that's one way you can create consistency and say to schools that you have to do this. We may want to look at legislation as well, and where we're going through a process of education reform with the Education Act. I wonder if the committee has thought about how prejudice-based bullying could be embedded into that act and whether they're connecting with the Education Committee. If we want this to happen and we're taking this seriously, my question is do we need to legislate for it? We legislated for section 28, that's all I'm saying. All of it, quick supplementary on this year? That was exactly my question. Do people here today feel that legislation is required to move this forward? We're sat here a year on from this committee's report, and I think it would be fair to say that progress has been slow. I'm not allocating blame to anyone for that, but do you think that legislation would focus people's minds on moving some of these issues forward? Bill, I wonder if you wanted to come in for a teacher's perspective. First of all, the institute doesn't have a position on that specific question, but as the discussion has shown, you need actions after the words, you need training. To some extent I have to repeat what I've said, you need that training. I think we're seeing a change in culture. I think as the historical example section 28 becomes further in the past, that lessons its effect. A good example, for instance, Tom Divine has said about sectarianism, that historically it's starting to wither to some extent. I'm not trying to say that it's exactly the same, but there is a generational change, shall we say, within the demographic of the profession. That's moving on, so that will have an impact and that will be a positive impact. In that regard, I think that that's important. As far as the legislation is concerned, we do not have a position on that, but we do know that an act is one thing, resources training at the end of the day is what changes culture. A piece of legislation is crucial, words are really, really important, but training, time to train, that's what will change the culture. Katie, do you want to talk about some of the work that you're actually doing in schools to address some of these points? Sure, and I just had a quick point off the back of that as well. I think that when we consider this point around legislation, I think it's really important to look at what legislation we already have in place and how well that's actually been implemented. So the Equality Act, GTCS regulations, UNCRC, what are these policies and legislative frameworks? How are they actually making a difference on the ground for young people? And what are the other levers that we can be using to create real change? That's around the curriculum inspection and training to create that attitude and no shift as well. So I think that it's a complex area that we really need to look at all of those issues. In terms of our work, I can give you an update in terms of local authorities. Clearly, within respect for all, there's a very clear expectation that local authorities will have a policy, an anti-bullying policy, which is in line with respect for all. That is then translated into consistent anti-bullying policies among schools and other community-based organisations that support young people as well. So I think that it's safe to say that respect for all has certainly placed fresh impetus on this. We're working with a number of local authorities, we're working with eight local authorities who are all carrying out review into their anti-bullying policies. I have to pretext all of this by saying that it's always a very fluid area in terms of where authorities are at with this work, but certainly there are 14 authorities who currently have anti-bullying policies that are in date in step with some of the newer shifts within respect for all. There are 10 authorities that we've identified who need to review their policies, who are due to review those policies. We'll be working with them. We've written to those authorities to put forward our offer of support in terms of policy development and training and resources that we can offer. Respect for me has been around for 10 years now. We were set up 10 years ago, and we've worked with all 32 authorities within that period. However, our focus now is to make sure that some of the newer shifts in the current guidance respect for all in terms of a focus on prevention, that explicit commitment to prejudice-based bullying and some of the other things that we've done. The other nuances and shifts within that guidance are fully reflected and embedded into those policies. That work is continuing. We're going to find it really important to work in partnership with Education Scotland and with other organisations around the table to see that change in shift across Scotland. I want to pick up on what Katie was saying about embedding in the curriculum. I'm not an expert in curriculum design, so perhaps this is already taking place. It seems that embedding ideas about difference within the curriculum as accepting difference within the curriculum, rather than in the report that there was an emphasis on commonality, which I welcome, as in not to pit people against each other. However, if we do too much of that, we have to be cautious about flattening out difference. Talking about different identities doesn't have to be—people don't have to be scared or it doesn't have to be a problem. There must be a way to do that by embedding those type of histories, like you were saying, around the history of our country in terms of different identities and things like decolonising the curriculum, for example, would be how you would talk about it in terms of race. Some of the young people that we interviewed felt that they were worried or apprehensive about race, because they would get put in a particular box, so maybe making space for that is also important. I think that the time for inclusion working group within Government has been doing a lot of work on that, Ian. You wanted back in. I think that embedding that approach into the curriculum shouldn't be about levelling out. It should be about celebrating difference. It's about developing equalities and human rights-based approaches throughout the curriculum. Some of the best practices in schools are ones that are being led by people from a rights-based approach. Some of the LGBTI straight aligns in schools and some of the peer support groups in schools address some of the bullying issues. One of the issues for people who are subject to prejudice-based bullying is that they may not want to report it to an adult or to anyone else because they don't want their difference to be known. You need to look at ways of providing them support through peer support organisations and anonymous reporting and things are ways of doing that. I think that there is a lot of good practice out there. The issue of legislation, I think that we have to be careful that we don't accidentally do perverse things with legislation. Bill mentioned earlier about the impact of, if you actually record properly the amount of bullying, you end up with more bullying on your school stats and that might lead to bad newspaper stories. Part of that might be that, if you start devolving more responsibilities to headteachers in legislation and they become more responsible for what happens in their school, they might find us perverse ways that they don't want to report the bullying because it reflects on them and their school in a negative way in the media and in the recording. We have to ensure that, when we do changes to legislation, we don't accidentally do something that has a negative effect. Also, if you have a more devolved responsibility for schools, how do you ensure that there is a consistent approach across all levels, all schools, all levels? One on the curriculum. I think that we definitely need to engage with the education committee and encourage a refresher and a look at the curriculum because what young people say, many of them, is that they do not recognise themselves in the curriculum or in the curriculum materials. So, if you are LGBT, if you have a disability, if you are from a migrant background, you just do not see yourself in some of the materials that are covered in the curriculum. So, definitely looking at how we said about celebrating diversity but also the fact that young people have multiple identities that they rely on different points in their lives. So, you're not just a migrant, you're not just disabled, you are probably a migrant disabled, LGBT, a certain age and so on. How do we capture that intersectional dimension of people's lives in the curriculum and how we don't just talk about one dimension at a time and how we get teachers to think about that? I think it's really important. I've been told not to lean on. The second point on teacher training. As somebody who's been involved in initial teacher training for the last 15 years, I can definitely see a shift in the type of teacher training that would do these issues. We're definitely now in the initial teacher training programmes. We do talk a lot more about how new teachers should think about these issues in a different way and tackle these issues, but I will say that we do have a very limited amount of time with students on the course. So, this needs to be a CPD issue that local authorities buy into.  So, it's a very short period of time for them to get conversant with issues of equality and children's rights and human rights. And so, once we really need local authorities to make this a priority for CPD training. Myrion. Thank you. Just to talk a bit about the curriculum. I certainly agree that in terms of the formalised curriculum, the curriculum where there's very much a transfer of knowledge and the development of new skills very much within the classroom setting, high quality resources are very important for teachers and teachers, always value high quality resources. Certainly, we're working with Carer and Bemis to look at the resources that are available in terms of race, trying to quality assure what's there, but also to look at some of the gaps. I think that that's very important. Teachers are very busy. They just want to be able to access high quality resources. That's a way of ensuring that there's a consistency of message. In terms of equality and diversity, in terms of teaching that, I think that in the more important context of the curriculum is about the ethos, the culture and relationships that exist within a school. Because very much about feeling valued and equality and feeling valued certainly coexist. That comes from the school recognising all, valuing all, having a culture where they celebrate success and it pulls it all together. It's also where the policies and staff model strong, positive relationships and there's development of the key adult, the caring role. That to me is a very important context of the curriculum for this type of work. To teaching it maybe a couple of periods a week would always be less important than actually experiencing it. The culture is really important. I had a discussion earlier with Mary. One of the features is when you go into a school in the first 10, 15 minutes, you pick up this intangible culture of a place and I'm not being very specific to your colleagues, but that is absolutely vital. Where you have that, when this is we're trying to deal with the marriage, then the sort of jar with that culture and it gets picked up. So where you have a welcoming culture, where the ways feel safe basically. When something unsafe happens then it's notable and that is very important. I'm sorry that this contribution in the last few seconds has been somewhat intangible, but that cultural aspect is really important. I think about the point about the teacher education institutions. The picture is somewhat mixed by the nature of life I suppose, but really I think there are some where the practice is better than others and some of the TIs could learn from other TIs or not name names. I went into a school last week in my constituency, St John Ogilvie. One of the pupils is in the gallery today with Katie last week where they launched their new anti-bullying strategy, where they'd worked very closely since working here in the work of the committee last year. When I walked in there was a pupil-led presentation going on, Equally Safe. Now being the chair of the cross-party group Men's Vance Against Women, to walk in and hear teenagers leading a session on Equally Safe and aspects like that was very good, but I got that feeling the minute I walked in the door. If you do get that you can see a culture change. That's a school who realised they did have a problem and have worked very closely with the organisations in order to change that. You're absolutely right on that aspect, but it's where you see that tangible change and how can we bottle that and then give it to all the other schools. I want to bring in Fulton first and then I'm going to come back to some of the other members. I want to touch quickly on the issue of young people and mental health. It's talked about quite regularly in this Parliament and various forums, particularly perhaps where people are at a stage where they maybe don't need support from CAMHS but do need some support. I obviously want to bring it into the context of bullying. It's already been touched on today that there might be mental health issues for victims of bullying at school. There may also be mental health issues for children who are bullying and I suppose that there could also be questions around are people bullied because of perhaps having a mental health problem in line with the prejudice-based bullying. I suppose that what I'm asking the panel is what do you think schools can do to identify those issues in the context of bullying early and to offer support to young people who may be experiencing it? The work that you did with LGBTQI Scotland on the survey that you did on mental health was a very clear recurring theme in that and I know that inclusion has done some work on that as well but, Cara, would you be in a position to... Yes, I would say that the majority of the work that we do with LGBT young people is around their mental health and confidence. At the moment, their experience of CAMHS and there's a lot of knowledge of this already is particularly difficult. There's often very long waiting lists and when they do get an appointment, they may not have the best experience. For example, if a transgender young person gets a referral, they may not have the understanding, the confidence and skills to give them the correct support so they often report having a worse experience and they come back to us. But there's also something about that CAMHS is viewed as this, it will fix you if you go to CAMHS. But there's a lot of young people who are in that middle ground who actually don't necessarily need a diagnosis as such, they just need someone to talk to and support. So what we need to think about is how we can create and resource ways in which young people can talk to somebody. That is the thing that makes a difference where they can talk about how they feel and there's a range of ways to do that. I mean, one of the ways that we've had, I was in a conversation with a colleague yesterday around counsellors in schools and whether that was a way to go so that might be a way forward. If we invest in it though, I think we need to invest in it properly. It wouldn't be about one counsellor for an entire school or for a geographical area. I think we need to think about from early years upwards as well how can children and young people, if someone to talk to from early years onwards. And there's also for us something about how you invest in youth services. A lot of children and young people don't necessarily want to talk to their teachers. I would much rather go to an external service and don't necessarily want to have those moments in classroom where you have to come out and go and speak to a counsellor, actually going somewhere else is sometimes the best option for them. I think that I'm going to talk about some of the examples that I've heard of where people peer support networks, which can be very helpful. The safe spaces that people can go to when they feel under threat or having a mental health issue, low level concerns. One of the things that you've got to be wary of though is creating places where people are excluded from the rest of the school rather than included as part of it. You've got to be very careful how that is done in a way that is inclusive of people. I agree that school counselling services are probably a vital part of providing a solution on mental health, but early access to mental health services can be quite important when required. I just wanted to pick up on the aspect of your question around children who display bullying behaviour and what's going on for those children. I think that that's really important that we do that. I think that that's one of the ways in which your national approach in Scotland is quite progressive in that it's talking about children who display bullying behaviour and experience bullying behaviour. We've really stepped away from labelling children as bullies, suggesting that there's something inherent in their identity or character that is leading to this behaviour. Focusing on the behaviour and thinking about behaviour as a communication of what is going on for a child or young person and encouraging practitioners to engage with that and to try to help that child or young person understand. What is maybe leading to this behaviour in terms of feelings, needs or attitudes in addressing that? I think that that is a really important approach in terms of changing and reducing bullying behaviour, which will then have a huge impact on improving mental health outcomes for children and young people. I'm just thinking about what we were talking about, what happens in schools, but there's also other aspects of what spells outside of schools and into other organisations. Giroguiding gave us some very compelling evidence last year, and I know that you're doing on-going work in the Citizen Giro project, which was highlighted very successfully in this Parliament a few weeks ago. It's a great example of that. I wonder if you give us some insights into where you've seen any progress? Absolutely. I just want to touch on the peer-to-peer support very quickly first of all. Peer-to-peer support is something that we see is really important for gender-based bullying especially. A lot of that comes around the fact that girls have a single gender space to discuss issues, and one of those issues is obviously mental health. It's hugely important when it comes to gender-based bullying that mental health is hugely connected. We see impact on confidence, ability to speak out, attainment, all of those areas. We offer peer-to-peer support within a girl-guiding context, but that's often not modelled in schools in a single gender way, which is where we feel we get the most out of that. I think that we've heard a lot about progress about reporting, and we're very happy to see that. In terms of other progress, we can see across a whole of society that, with Me Too and other campaigns, sexism is an endemic problem that we have in Scotland and beyond. Until it is tackled at more of a society level, I think that we won't see that fully filtering down into schools. We have done some research, which I'll be delighted to share with the committee once released, but it echoes the problem that we highlighted last year, and in fact sees it getting worse. There is still a lot to do, and I'm sorry I can't come with a more positive message, but I think that there hasn't been a lot of progress in the last year. We need to hear that, but we do need to hear that. Daniela? There is a point about the stigma around mental health in schools, and despite the kind of on-going efforts to address and enable teachers to talk about mental health in schools, there is still a huge stigma around mental health. That can lead to some of the bullying that you were mentioning, children were bullied because of their mental ill health. This comes in a range of issues that teachers are too worried to talk about because they might say the wrong thing or not address it in the wrong way. Mental health is one of them. I was mentioned before sexual orientation, sexual education in general. In our research was Brexit and politics, they don't want to talk about it because they think it's too political and they might say the wrong thing or upset children rather than said. So this goes back to creating that culture where teachers have support from each other to if they don't know how to address it, well how do I do this as a newly qualified teacher. So having the culture in which mental health is not stigmatised by the school or by the pupils or by staff sometimes in the way, sometimes can be very subtle non-verbal messages that are given to children who are excluded by teachers and they pick up on that and say oh it's probably because of my mental health issues or behaviour and so on. Something that was mentioned before in relation to culture, I think leadership was mentioned in the report, how important that is to have a head teacher who makes these issues priority. And they say we're going to talk about this in an open way and they find a language together to talk about the sensitive issues that young people are grappling with. Again, as mentioned earlier, because the PSE thematic inspection has just finished, the mental health counselling was one of the areas that we looked at, but also we looked at the more universal entitlements in terms of mental health. I have to say that my own personal experience of inspecting is that mental health is an area that increasingly schools are much more aware of and much more focused and I certainly acknowledge Daniela's comment that it comes very much from the leadership identifier. I saw without pre-empting the report obviously but there are a number of effective interventions, resilience training, restorative attachment, and this is a new lexicon for a lot of teachers. These are popular and people are using them in the classrooms to help children to develop strategies which will be lifelong for them. The children will talk to you about the learning pit when you fall into that pit where you can't do it and the children will tell you, I can do it, I've just got to keep going, I've got to climb out of the pit. This is all the emotional intelligence of language and emotional literacy that children are developing in many schools. The targeted interventions for those with mental health are much more enduring. Obviously that will also link in terms of additional support needs, the ASL legislation. That also goes on. Certainly a number of the schools on mental health counselling, community link workers, family link workers, all of these play a very important role. I've got a couple of colleagues who want to come in. Oliver, did you want to come in on this? Then I've got Annie, then I've got Mary. It's back a little bit, convener, but it's sort of linked to this. It was just round the point on culture. I understand the point round intangible culture walking into school, but it's more of a comment than a question. I feel linking in to Danielle's point that for a lot of teachers where time is set out within the curriculum, where there are formal sessions, it does make it much easier for people to talk about difficult issues. It creates a space where they feel that they're not overstepping the mark by dedicating time to them. I think for pupils themselves, pupil-led initiatives are really important, but there's also something in seeing someone who's in a position of relative authority standing up and saying it's okay to feel that way. It's okay to talk about these issues in a public place, and I think that that is really important. Annie? On the back of Fulton's question and the discussions on mental health, we've spoken a lot about teacher training for inclusiveness and all the rest of it. Obviously, if there are mental health issues there, teachers are not always able to identify it or deal with the issues that are there. I think that it's really important that it is very much, if you go into a school and the head teacher is committed to delivering inclusiveness, if they're committed to delivering mental health for their pupils on a school in Glasgow, they have the peer-to-peer work. They all wore hoodies, purple hoodies, the teachers wore purple lanyards so that you could go and speak to them about anything, but the teacher made it at her point to get mental health first aid training for her teachers and the pupils. Now, if we can see it happening in some of the schools, in the school that you said you walked into and you felt it, why are we still talking about this and why are some schools out there still not where they should be? Good question, Bill.  We all get that. One wonders what status is given to a conversation around health and wellbeing, to actually sit down and have a discourse around health and wellbeing, and that having as much professional value is a conversation about attainment. In that sense, the language of a society at large and its expectations are really important. When people say something about attainment, that's fine, but health and wellbeing, the health and wellbeing part of the curriculum for excellence has been there for some time and it's still to be fully developed. And I think there needs to be some sort of, I'm not necessarily talking about in a monetary sense, but a professional reward for leaders who sit and talk about the health and wellbeing of everybody in the school. Exactly, and that needs to be unpacked. When you take the four capacities of the curriculum for excellence, it's applied to everybody in the school for the journey, the staff, the wanes, everybody. Cara. I said, including teachers, because there's higher rates of mental health, mental ill health among teachers reported recently with added pressures on teachers to cope with their work with less resources and austerity. We haven't mentioned about austerities impacted on teachers workload, but also on access to mental health support for pupils, but also mental health support for staff. My healthy school, Cara. What we don't work is not necessarily one thing, so a whole school approach has to be around policies, teacher training, pupil engagement, but also leadership with that. People engagement without leadership, I think, doesn't work, but I completely agree with your point that, realistically, if we want teachers to be able to support young people effectively, we need to think about their wellbeing. And it's one of the things that's come to my conclusion more recently. I talk a lot about the way in which LGBT young people experience poor mental health and the expectations I have of teachers, but I continually meet teachers who are under a lot of pressure. In order to address the issue, we need to think about how we're supporting teachers effectively as well. Holistic approach, Ian. To that, one of the concerns that Crescent Scotland has is that the pressures on education authority budgets and school budgets means that there is less support for children with additional support needs. They may be getting the basic needs that they require in the classroom, but the other needs to be fully part of the school may not be getting supported because of cuts that have been made to the additional support services. One other thing that I just want to touch on, because I appreciate what we're running out of time, is that it goes back to the culture thing, but it's the importance of language and how people talk about issues is very important. We would like to see more effective disability qualities and disability awareness training in schools so that people are aware of the right language to use when referring to people with disability. We're starting not referring to people with disability because they are disabled people. They're disabled by what society barriers there are, physical, emotional or social. It's important that those things are recognised by teachers but also by pupils and that many people are not visibly disabled. Their disability is not necessarily visible but they may still have a condition that requires to be taken into account. We would like to see, working with disabled people themselves, how developing better disability quality and awareness training in schools. I had a brief, direct question for Kara. I'm grateful for the written submission that you've provided us with this morning. In your paper, you talk about the supporting transgender young people in education, which you launched in November. You go on to say that the guidance was endorsed by the Children's Commissioner and 17 local authorities. Is that the up-to-date figure? If it is 17, why are the other 15 not signing up to this? First of all, to give them their dues, we did ask them quite last minute whether they would like to sign up. Because we had existing relationships with 17 local authorities, they did it very quickly for us. Our second stage is in November to then do a call out to the rest of the local authorities in Scotland. I mean, I would suspect that there will be more that come forward but I doubt all of them will. We're not a statutory body and we can't make local authorities do things, unfortunately. We shall certainly try our very hardest, so I suspect more will come forward. Again, it comes back to the question of consistency. I suspect that there are certain local authorities that do lots of work in terms of improving young people's health and wellbeing. There are other local authorities that aren't consistently and that is perhaps something that we need to look at. Thank you very much for that. Any other final points from colleagues? Alex. We've been talking a lot and rightly so about victims of bullying in school. I've been reflecting about bullying themselves because bullying behaviour can sometimes be a response to trauma within an individual themselves. It might be attachment disorder, trauma or loss that a young person is not knowing how to process these really toxic, powerful emotions and it comes out in this need to lash out. Does the panel agree that we need to instill in our teaching staff an understanding of trauma so that they can work with perpetrators of bullying from a trauma informed perspective? Bill. I think that trauma is a good way where we don't have the time to unpack that. What is traumatic is often that the young person is often struck dumb by the trauma and it takes time to identify. People think of trauma as something loud, as something visible. There is an aspect that is very subterranean, deep sea, whatever, and that creates real challenges. It takes time to identify that and training to identify that. I'm sure that's what you're referring to, Alex, in its various manifestations. Again, that comes back to being able to identify to pick up the signs because the signs of that trauma can sometimes be extraordinarily subtle and it takes sensitivity and training to actually pick up on that. Daniela. I don't know if there's enough research on what bullies behaviour and if they've been affected by trauma, some have, some haven't. In the case of the young people who are perpetrators using the case of xenophobia, a lot of the language of the hostile environment and immigration that they hear in the news and in the tabloid press. Language day here is sometimes a home anti-immigration. Immigrants go home. That, to me, is the fact that this group of young people I'm working with, the EU nationals who are at risk just now and might become illegal if their status is not confirmed, will increase that. In a sense, the perpetrators of bullying in these situations are not always victims of trauma but replicate some of the hostile language that they hear commonly used in the environment. I think we need to think about different, almost taken on a case-by-case basis and maybe there is scope for some of them to look at the research on ACEs and adverse circumstances and how that might affect some of the bullies. In other cases, they could come from very well-established families, communities and so on and have very wrong views on people's status or disability or LGBT status and so on. I want you to have a wee think about, an idea to give us, something that you would want us to focus on and the work that we do on going. If I give you a wee chance to think about that, Katie, if you want to come in in response to that. It was just in response to that. Again, I think that this is a really important area that we absolutely need to be focusing on. If we are really about changing behaviour and reducing bullying behaviour, we need to be addressing and supporting children who display that bullying behaviour. I do agree that it is a case-by-case basis, taking that really strong child-centred approach and looking at what is going on for that child. There may be a number of reasons why that child is displaying this particular behaviour and one of them may be culture where they feel that actually within the culture of the setting that they are in that they need to act in this way so that actually they aren't bullied. There can be a number of different reasons but I do think that there has been a number of advances in our understanding and in our knowledge about how adverse childhood experiences trauma, how all of these things can impact on children and I think that if we can be acknowledging and recognising and utilising that information as best we can, I think that there is absolutely a place for that. We know through inspection and through resources that Education Scotland has shown that there are effective ways or approaches to addressing bullying behaviour through nurturing approaches, through restorative solutions, solutions-oriented approaches as well. I think that there is a lot to draw on and to learn from that. I think that, as well, we need to remember that a lot of these areas are complex. They take a lot of time. Teachers often don't feel that they do have that time to give that quality of support that is required. We need to think about the other types of support and professionals and practitioners that could be feeding into that to create that whole-school approach and really have those positive outcomes. Just very, very finely because we are almost out of time. Bill, if you had one thing to tell us to take away to focus on, what would it be? Continue what you are doing. The discourse is the sort of thing that we do with our equality reps. Literally, the quality of the discourse and the range of the discourse is what we try and replicate with our equality reps. It's as literal as that. Thanks, Carol. I think that, for me, I definitely would agree with Bill that it would be really valuable if the committee continued to look at this issue, perhaps revisit it in future and see after a slightly longer period where the progress has gone. I think that you'll have seen from the written submission that we put in that we are aware of progress in some areas, but I think that the reflections around the table today and our own experience certainly suggest that there's a lot of work to be done in improving the capacity of schools and teachers to take preventative and reactive measures against bullying, particularly against specific forms of prejudice-based bullying, and having an understanding of that. There are real resource implications for that that won't be easy to get around. I think that continuing to study and try to understand what the barriers are and to gather that good practice and find out how it can be rolled out is going to be really important. Our main concern at the end of the day is the experience of children in schools. While we have some really great stuff happening, it's not good enough that that's not the experience for all of the children. I thank you for inviting me because this is my first committee. It's been a really positive experience just to see how much passion there is for these issues. There is seemingly a lot more work to be done, but I think that what I've taken away is that the ethos of the school, the wider focus in terms of not only the whole-school approach but also involving communities is a really good way forward. Some of the work that I do is looking at how geopolitics affects people's everyday lives and encounters with others. Building healthy relationships from a really early age and how people relate, how we value each other is so important. Also, not losing sight of the wider political context and how the narrative around migration and otherness affects and validates people's everyday verbal language that young people use. We have to be really careful about that. I'm glad that you've enjoyed your first visit to the committee. Let's hope that it's not your last. Daniela. I echo its comments around being part of the group and I found it an enjoyable experience, so thank you for that. Two things for me. One is around young people's voice and I think we need to do more of that. What surprised me in my research is how many of them spend time to share their experiences, which are deeply personal. Most of them we haven't met face to face and they spend so much time to explain and outline the experiences of racism and xenophobia. I think we need to find ways of bringing young people into the debates that are going on and the work, the great work that this committee and others and the government is doing on this. The second dimension of that is about continuing to work with teachers and find better ways of supporting teachers who are doing a lot of good work in very difficult circumstances. All the vast majority of teachers want to do the best they can for their schools and their children, but they don't find the language or have the skills and we really need to support them in that difficult job. It's becoming more difficult in recent times. I hope that you'll come back to committee to, Daniela Carlin. The first is that we can take gender, could we please take gender, forward and truly embed it in all aspects of policy, particularly around bullying. I think that gender is often forgotten, but we are 51 per cent of the population and we are still hearing from girls who say that they find corridors in schools that they are unable to go down. That is still completely unacceptable. Young people are really involved in creating policies, echoing what you have said. There are young people here who are shouting out to be listened to, to be part of those policymaking, particularly around PSHE. They have strong views and they want to be in that. They want to tell you what's right and I don't feel that they are being listened to at the moment. There was one strange bit within the guidance on respect for all on page 18 about quality impact assessments where it says, policies that address bullying based on protected characteristics will, where appropriate, require completion of an impact assessment. I would have thought that all the policies can have an impact on the qualities and therefore should all be subject to quality impact assessments. I am a bit weird and strange about that, but the key thing about that is how we get this national policy to ensure that it trickles down to all schools and how we monitor that and how it is implanted into schools. I think that that is the key thing next, as to how we actually see how this works in terms of improving practice within schools and the impact that it has on addressing prejudice-based bullying. You may be interested in the other piece of work that this committee is doing on human rights in this Parliament becoming that human rights current or, and that includes human rights impact assessments on policies. You may be interested in that other joint piece of work that we are doing now. Cara. On human rights, I have got an ask which is around incorporating the UNCRC into Scots law. I believe that if we can get children's rights right in Scotland, this would make a massive difference in terms of prejudice-based bullying. In the areas where we have to intervene or advocate on behalf of LGBT young people, it is because their rights have not been realised, they have been ignored. So young people are, their privacy is ignored, they are outed to people when they shouldn't be, but, importantly, they are not listened to. A lot of the time I spend engaging with teachers I ask them to think about, have they asked the young person what they want to happen, and that is when they get it right. That would be my biggest ask. Katie. I would echo all those suggestions that have already been made, but I suppose that in terms of the work of your committee it would just be a plea to really consider children and young people across all of your business. I think that sometimes we silo adults issues and children and young people's issues and we forget that there are huge opportunities for early intervention and learning when we actually think about how those issues like sexual, wider sexual harassment, hate crime more widely, human rights more widely, and how we should be ensuring that those messages are filtering down to children and young people as well. Thank you. Mary. Certainly it is commendable that this committee puts such a clear focus on such an important issue. My plea is also that you provide the overview of all the protected characteristics. My plea probably is, although it legally isn't one, could we include poverty? There is nothing in legislation that stops us adding extras, because I feel that that would help to close the circle, partly listening to Bill and all the work that goes on in promoting health and wellbeing sits in the Scottish attainment challenge. I feel that that might be an interesting aspect of work. Thank you very much.  You will be interested to know that we will have a Cabinet Secretary in front of us, probably in autumn, in order to get a fuller update from Government on where we are at with this. This is an on-going piece of work. The committee committed to doing any of its work over the next three years, but over the whole five years' peace, where we would build in report-back mechanisms, so we will be doing this on a regular basis in order to track some of that progress, in order to learn from you and in order to make that change that we all want to see. Thank you so much for your written evidence, your oral evidence, and if you go away, my usual plea, if you forgot to tell us something, please let us know and we're really keen to hear from you in any ideas or resolutions that you have, so thank you so much. I'm going to suspend now to go into private.