Good morning, and welcome to the sixth meeting of the Equality and Human Rights Committee in 2017. I can make the usual request that electronic devices are in flight mode or on silent. Moving straight into our agenda items, agenda item one is a decision to take agenda item three in private. Our committee content to take agenda item three in private. Thank you very much. Agenda item two is a bit of legacy work that we are doing on the previous work of the Equal Opportunities Committee on removing barriers, race, ethnicity and employment. We hold an evidence session this morning with three different organisations that have expertise in this area. We are really happy to have, along with us this morning, Rebecca Marek, who is policy and parliamentary officer for the Coalition of Racial Equality and Rights, who is known as CREAR. Colin Lee is the chief executive of the Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector Organisations, commonly known as SIMVO. Rami Usta, who is the chief executive of BEMIS, and Arne McInnes, who is a modern apprenticeship programme director at BEMIS. Welcome, everybody, this morning. We are really happy to have you here along at committee. You will have seen that we are taking forward a piece of work. Rebecca, you impressed on us very clearly in the morning sessions we had about looking at the committee's work programme, how important this piece of work was. We are really pleased to be covering it this morning and we are looking forward to hearing from you. On that, what I wanted to do was to give the three different organisations maybe a couple of minutes to tell us about the work that you are doing. Then we will come in with some questions and we can have a bit of a free-flowing conversation about the legacy work and where we go from here. Rebecca, would you like to kick off? Sure. First, I just want to say thanks very much for having this scoping session. As you referenced, this was a really important work that the previous committee undertook. We are excited to have the opportunity to pick it up again and move a bit forward. CRER pushed for the original inquiry because employment is such a significant issue for minority ethnic communities in Scotland. I think if you are looking at wanting to put a big crack in the barriers that communities face towards equality, tackling employment is a really important one. It will lead to improvements in community cohesion and tackling poverty in housing. It opens a lot of doors, basically. In our written response, we outlined some of the limitations of the inquiry and our written evidence. I just sort of emphasised how we think it is a really important area to continue to move forward. We were really impressed with some of the recommendations that the committee pushed forward. You can have the world's best recommendations, but not implement them or monitor them correctly. What we would hate is for a really good piece of work to turn into a piece of work that is referenced five years down the line when we are picking up this issue again because not much has changed. We really welcome the scoping session and we are hoping that it leads to some real change for communities. I am not sure if you have seen, but the McGregor-Smith review called Race in the Workplace came out earlier this week. The time for talking is over. Now is the time to act. That is definitely how CRAR feels about this issue. The report summarised a lot of great evidence. It pulled together a lot of work that had been done previously and put together some practical recommendations. We are hopeful that this committee will be able to act instead of just talking about it. We were hoping that the report was not gathered and dust on a shelf, so we dusted it down and brought it back out. That is great. We will look for the McGregor-Smith review and take that into account. Thank you very much. Rebecca Collin Hello. Thank you for inviting us to give evidence today. I am pleased to be here. I think that it will hopefully be a very worthwhile session. I am sure that you will ask a lot of questions later about progress and stuff, but it is just a very start of the journey to be honest. As an organisation, SEMBO, we at the moment are very focused on working with the Scottish Government on the race-quality framework as we are teaching it to the partner. We do a lot of work that actually covers employability in particular. One of the areas that we are looking at is that we have developed an effeminarity women's network. We have had two or three meetings, and the last meeting we had was to focus on women and employability, given the race-quality framework agenda lens in terms of some of the issues and barriers facing effeminarity women. I can share that with you a bit later on, so we have some findings here and some feedback. As an organisation, we also do a lot of social enterprise work. That fits into the Scottish Government's social enterprise strategy, which has come out in the last past year for the next 10 years. A lot of that, within the content of that, looks at very much about equality as well. Some of the work that we actually deliver, we support effeminarity young people in terms of developing social enterprise, and often for them it is actually the only route into the labour market for them. That is really one of the reasons why we actually do that. We support organisations through that in terms of developing social enterprise, and that creates, again, jobs within the sector and creativity. In terms of public appointments, that was one of the recommendations. We have been doing some work with the Scottish Government public appointments team and looking at how we actually increase effeminarity representation on public boards. Again, that fits into very much the recommendation work that has been taken forward by the Scottish Government. We have a mainstreaming race quality programme where we support public sexes to try and improve their performance in race equality, so we provide consultancy support, which is free. That is really to look at issues such as workforce development. For example, there are a lot of issues that we have come across in terms of disclosure, or non-disclosure rates anyway, and some of the barriers for effeminarity applicants in terms of applications and success rates. Finally, we have an effeminarity employability programme for women that we have just started. That is fundamentally a big lottery for the next four years. It is two strands to it. One is looking at employability, but the other strand is actually health and wellbeing, which is very much about women who support women who are actually quite far from the labour market and need confidence and self-esteem building and so forth. There is a lot of work that hopefully touches on the employability side, which I am happy to expand on at some stage. There are a lot of points in there that we would be very interested in. I visited Amina last year, and the women that I was speaking to were saying that they had multiple barriers to employment. The very nature of being women and the cultural barriers that that was created will be really keen to hear about your work and the women's network in the employability scheme. Rami, it is nice to see you. Rami, it is good to have you. Do you want to tell us a wee overview about the work that your organisation is doing, and then we can go to Janne about the specific project that she is working on? Just a generic two minutes before we comment on the day's context. As an umbrella organisation, we work within three overarching objectives, and that is all focused within the context of race equality rather than just focusing on racism and discrimination. The first area is what we call capacity building, and I know that capacity building has become more of a chewing gum. Everybody will talk about it. For us, it has a rationale and a context that enables the active participation and democratic participation of underrepresented community groups. Nobody is always away from the radar. In that context, our success rate in Scotland is second to none. The diversity of the groups we work with reflects the diversity of Scotland, and the idea for us is not to help those groups, is to empower them and enable them to function themselves by being able to serve their own communities and equally to work directly with the policy makers. There are various programmes under this umbrella overarching objective. I'm not going to bore you with that. The second area of work is to influence policy, which is we are a strategic partner to the Scottish Government as well, and we have been very active in feeding into the race equality framework and help with other stakeholders collaborating on it. We do that in a proactive way, so we don't wait for a policy to come up and we just react and shout and scream. We're always ahead of the game through research work, intelligence, and we utilise that through our established networks across Scotland from the grassroots communities and stakeholders. The third area of work of us, what we call is active citizenship and democratic participation, which enables the whole stakeholders and the minorities to view themselves in the context of their active citizens of Scotland, not active citizens of their own local communities. The biggest mistake I think we've done in Scotland in the last, let me say, 30 years or 40 years is to encourage unconsciously the minorities to view their ethnicity or their religion above their citizenship. For us, the whole programmes in that context focus on enabling the minorities to view and to be treated as active citizens of Scotland participating in all aspects of Scottish lives. Our ethnicity or diversity is respected, nobody ever stopped us from living that, and when we see there is a barrier to effect this active participation role, that's where we interfere and enable the communities to function as active citizens of Scotland. In terms of today, we really welcome the speedy response from the new committee, which we love, but we were supporting the changing of name and context of the committee. There are changes happening since the last report was issues, and we are aware of that, but from our perspective, it's important to remember the recommendations stay valid, and we need to work on it probably by adding different dimensions. One point I'm interested is to see today is rather than going back and to keep focusing on pointing fingers in the context of racism, discrimination, everything, we have to check it in relation to race equality, and that involves all stakeholders. This is a very important area where we revisit on these recommendations. One of the main areas we work is the whole modern apprenticeship context, and we heard a lot before about the underrepresentation of minorities and the role of SDS, and we've been for the last 16 months working extensively on modern apprenticeship. New facts are coming up in new areas of support that should be addressed by the committee and by the recommendation, and in our opinion, it would be a big mistake just to point a finger at Skills Development Scotland and throw the blame at them, and I think that that's it. It doesn't work like this. The areas that we're progressing with modern apprenticeship, I think, would be interested to hear about it soon. That's a very good segue into hearing from Anne, so we will tell us about the modern apprenticeship work that she's doing on. Thank you for hearing the evidence this morning. The project itself has been running for nearly two years. We've worked with nearly 3,000 young people and their families to look at—and that's across Scotland—the reasons behind and the understanding to develop some understanding on why young people from minority ethnic backgrounds are not choosing to look at MAs as a career pathway. We've done a lot of work with SDS and their marketing team, where we had focus groups of parents and young people looking at some of the promotional material, including my world of work, apprenticeship.scot websites, to look at, are they attractive? What could we do differently? What language could we use? Some of the early learning from the programme was looking at language, and there was a big focus around erin while you learn, and we discovered early on that that was a switch-off rather than a switch-on. You'll see that SDS moves much more positively towards career language, qualification language, professional language, much more in tune with higher and further education, and that's worked incredibly. We've also worked with DWP Education Scotland, local schools, who have quite high role pupil roles of minority ethnics, and we've really worked with them so that their understanding—we build their understanding of what the MA offer is now, what Scottish apprenticeships are all about, including foundation and graduate—has really worked really well, too. One of the things that we did early on was to look at the SQF framework and how widely it was used. It wasn't as wide as we would like, and conversations with young people who are planning their careers with their families is so important that they understand how the qualification framework actually works. We've worked tirelessly with young people, constantly checking with them what we can do differently, working with employers from SMEs—very, very small and independent ethnic minority employers—who hadn't really looked at any of the public funding that's available to help them to grow their business, but also large employers as well at Lloyd's Bank, to look at how we can make your offer of employment more attractive to underrepresented groups. That's really been the focus of our work. We have, to date, put in about 511 new applications. The conversion rate is not as high as we would like, but there's still a lot of work to be done with employers. We're not even two years in yet, and most definitely when you're changing a culture of options, traditionally from the minority ethnic families, we're looking at hiring further education as a positive progression into professional employment. With the changes around Scottish apprenticeships, we now know that there is a very fundamental route that's being missed, but we need to work with employers now to ensure that they understand how they can reach into the communities and advertise and attract new people and new talent into their businesses. We've also done lots of work with Police Scotland, the fire services, Scottish Ambulance, NHS, a huge amount of work, because they've got a lot of new apprenticeships coming on board, and that's working really well. The one thing that we always say is that we want to make people curious to find out more. We're not saying that modern apprenticeships should be done instead of further education or higher education. What we are saying is that families need the information to make informed choices, and they can only do that if the employers and the national training providers are getting their marketing right so that it's attractive to individuals and they can see a real career opportunity. That's a lot of work going on, and we will all come back to that, but it sounds very spot-on. I've got members who want to come in with some questions, and Alex Scott is first to present this week. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning to the panel. Thank you for the very comprehensive digest that you've given us there of your work, and I think that you should be justifiably proud of what you're doing. I read the submissions and was struck by some of the references to efforts that have been taken at a policy level before to conquer discrimination and employment and the disadvantage that people from ethnic minority communities face. I was struck by the adage that culture eats strategy for breakfast because those strategies have not singularly succeeded in necessarily breaking down some of those barriers. Obviously, in most organisations and companies and businesses, culture is held first and foremost by the governance of that organisation, the board and, indeed, the senior management. My colleagues and I are all very familiar with the disadvantage that we have in Scotland in terms of female representation in governance in organisations, but I'm less aware of the disproportionate disadvantage that we have for ethnic minority representation at governance. Can you reflect on how the picture looks, what efforts are in place to build ethnic minority representation on management boards and how we might, as policy makers, help in that regard? Colin, you made a specific reference to this in your opening remarks. Would you like to start? Yes, as I highlighted earlier, we've been doing quite a bit of work in the past year or so with the Scottish Government Public Appointments Team and the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland as well, so we've been working with both parties. The figures and statistics that have been provided by the Government and the Commissioner's Office reflect the fact that the level is not too bad at the moment, which is 4%, but that is still very reflective, obviously, of the actual census figures. But I don't think we should rest on our laurels on that. I think it's always an evolving process because, like any committee, people come and go, so that statistic will decrease, I'm sure, at some stage, or hopefully increase. We shouldn't always think about just ethnicity, I think, is obviously a lot of intersectionality, comes into that as well. You've got ethnic minority people who are women and disabled teachers. I think that diversity is something that we're very keen to actually focus on. The work we've been doing is actually really looking at supporting ethnic minority people who are seriously wanting to apply, but lacking that final hurdle. The work we've been focusing on is very much working on with people that's very interested in public employment, looking at what they explain a bit about the application process, what the actual role actually involves. We shouldn't take away the fact that I think it's a lot more involved than people think it is. We've had ethnic minority people that are currently public appointees explaining their own roles so that we can use them as mentoring, as giving an awareness of what actually some of the barriers or some of the gains would be for them personally to be on. That's been the work in looking at the competency approach of the application process because I think that's pretty difficult for a lot of ethnic minority people, particularly those that don't have English as a first language. They're not so much for people who are maybe four-fifth generation that language is an issue, but certainly they also struggle in terms of being successful. We shouldn't also forget the statistics 4%. Some of those people actually hold two or three public appointments at the same time in terms of public appointees, so they're people that are actually in the door already. What we're really looking at is new entrants, people who are really keen that never had experience of public appointments before, so we can actually increase that figure so that we actually look at 4%, which is more meaningful. The recent statistics from Scottish Government are saying that there are actually quite a few ethnic minority applicants in the past year that have got very low success rates. I think that seems to be a stumbling block, a barrier. What we're actually looking at is having dialogue with the public appointments team to look at how we actually look at people that have applied before from ethnic backgrounds but haven't been successful and given them a bit more support so that we can try and get them through that final hurdle, so things like interview skills, looking at the application form itself, and looking at how they can actually present themselves better in terms of applications at the actual interview stage. So there's a lot of work that we're looking at and I think governance is certainly, I think, what you're saying is actually very important, especially people who are basically managing public bodies. We're saying about a lot of issues from the public bodies in terms of employability, et cetera. It's very much about how we try and get ethnic minority people in particular into these governance issues and raise race equality as an issue and look at employability issues. Further more to that, we've actually had three, four meetings of a, we're trying to establish what we call an ethnic minority public appointees network where existing public appointees come together, they share experiences, look at peer support, mentoring and maybe even mentoring future people that's coming through. So we're looking at how we're actually trying to develop support structure because what we're finding, effinality public appointees when they're aboard, they feel a bit isolated, and they're the only, in a majority of cases, the only effinality representative. So I think we're looking at how we try and support that and actually retain their most, their actually sitting on board itself. So we're doing a whole lot of work that is looking at that and again that fits into, you know, that part of the work that we're doing in terms of race equality framework with the Scottish Community Quality Unit. That was really comprehensive and very illuminating. My second question, final question, if I may convener, spins out of part of what you were saying in terms of the metrics that you've got really good statistics as to what we know about governance. But in terms of data collection around employability generally, in terms of ethnic minority communities, that seems slightly sketchier, and I wondered how we can measure the kind of hidden unemployed. We know that globally there's a level of hidden unemployment, which we just find very difficult to calibrate, and I wondered if there were particular factors which make it even harder to understand the picture in terms of unemployment within ethnic minority communities. I think the Scottish Government, again, are looking at how they improve their statistics. So we've had, you know, there was a meeting about two weeks ago looking at how government can actually work, not only as the government but with public bodies, etc. Try and improve their statistics, not just on employability but whole raft of key areas on race like health, housing, etc. Across the board, not just employment, statistics are a bit of a maze in terms of where it's at and whether it's collected or not. A lot of, actually, it's very much from Westminster and it's UK-wide, and it's quite hard to disentangle within the Scottish context. We've been working, as I highlighted, before working with the public sector a lot in our race quality mainstreaming programme, and, again, we do that as a delivery partner of the Scottish Government quality unit. What we do see a lot is actually, the problem isn't that GFN minority applications. There might be some work, statistically, that needs to be looked at in terms of which communities are applying for, we're talking about public bodies here, which particular communities are applying more to public recruitment jobs and stuff, as opposed to others. There might be, for example, more Asian as opposed to Chinese, etc. I don't think those statistics are very clear so that they can actually target a bit more work and recruitment, etc. for particular communities. Some of the public bodies we've actually come across, the actual applicants are actually quite good from communities, but the success rate is very poor. I think that comes through quite clearly. Gathering those statistics, they're improving because I think it's easier for new applicants that they can actually ask about ethnicity, but I think they struggle with existing workforce. Non-disclosure rates are still very high, and I think, from my experience of working across public bodies, that seems an underlying issue about how they try to get that. I think there's a lot of suspicion that comes from existing workforce, because we can't—there's a lot of recommendations here about increasing employment, etc. But until we know what the baseline is, we don't know where we're going to make progress in the next five, ten years, so this is really, really important. We could have as many reviews like this as we want in five, ten years' time, unless we know what the baseline figure for not just public sector but private sector as well, we really wouldn't know whether we're actually making any progress with a lot of these policies and actions that we're developing. From the actual statistics in terms of hidden unemployment, we really don't know, because from research, we know that there is high unemployment rates among effeminarity communities, that's for sure. We know that there is lack of support for effeminarity communities. There's no effeminarity specialised agency that provides support to effeminarity people anymore. So there was Meridian that supported women, but that disappeared many years ago. There's none in Edinburgh, there's Skillnet. So what we're finding is a real gap in terms of specialised support for communities, and we are finding that mainstream organisations are not really having access for effeminarity communities. So I think there's a lot of work to be done, certainly. If you're northern away there. If I can just come in. CRER did some research in 2014 for our state of the nation ethnicity employment report. So we found out that proportionally non-white applicants succeed white applicants in terms of applying for public sector jobs, but 17.7% of non-white people interviewed who interviewed for local authority jobs were appointed compared to 31.9% of white interviewees. This led to a situation where 7.1% of all white applicants for public sector posts go on to be appointed, but only 4.4% of non-white applicants go on to be appointed. That was research in 2014, and I think we'll be looking to do similar work when the new information from the public sector equality duties come out in April. But I guess what we want to stress is you can't really take a body or an organisation or a company's commitment to diversity very seriously unless they're quite transparent with their data collection and their scrutiny measures. I think we really need to be a bit stricter with how we look at what kind of data is produced and monitored and more importantly how it's used. The public sector equality duties require public bodies to publish information about their workforce and shortlisting applications, but it also requires that people use that data and I guess that's where we see a lack is people are putting out information somewhat, but then not making it clear how they're using it, and I think that affects the situation across the board. I think even in public bodies where the proportion of the minority ethnic workforce is quite good that drops off the higher you go in the company in terms of leadership, which is why we were happy that the Equal Opportunities Report referenced the importance of involving leaders of public bodies and private sector groups in the government and setting the course, being active role models and making sure that they're illuminating best practice. Transparency is a really important thing to make sure that we're highlighting because if the only statistic that you're putting out is that your workforce is at this proportion, but all of those jobs are a lower entry level, it's not as equal as it could be. One of the things I think we'll drill in is it's underemployment, which is a few questions, no doubt some of my colleagues have got. Rami, you indicated, do you want to comment? I just want to comment on the last two combined questions you asked in relation to the culture held to certain bodies and the public appointments setting has been mentioned. We approached them a few years back with a structures programme of the possibility of deploying positive action to enhance participation from the minorities on setting. The culture there, while it's held historically, doesn't mean held on purpose or in a way, it's just a closed structure. That didn't work. However, what we noticed now, we talked about the culture that brought me to the point, is what we need to work is on creating a cultural shift within the minorities themselves. All this culture we keep unconsciously portraying and deploying to our young generation and the talent people about the culture of grievance, the culture of everything is controlled by discrimination, is putting people off and already creating an established attitude towards how they perceive in their lives. In terms of the public appointments, there are very talented young people who come across amazing in their age. However, they lack the confidence, they lack the knowledge in terms of how they reach to that setting, and I'm happy to say that my daughter has been appointed on a public appointment recently last week, I think. It's nothing to do with me or any of us. She took the initiative herself, went through the whole processes. There are hundreds like her. All we need just to give them the opportunity and let them believe in yourself and your abilities. But again, it's a matter of competency. We don't expect or we shouldn't expect just to make changes or allow mine to be there just for the sake of it because that could be damaging. Moving back to the context of data collection, this is still an issue and some of the recommendations given in the previous report still stands and it needs more robust approach by the committee now, but it has to happen in a collaborative setting. I believe the public bodies now there's a freeze on recruitment or unemployment for the coming period. So it will be hard to measure what is changing or how that is happening. But if I can draw your attention to one last sentence, I know you're fed up now with me. The last sentence is when we talk about ethnicity or race, it is important for us to have a clear definition. I know the experiences of different ethnicities are different as well, but it's time the committee issues a structured definition of ethnicities where we stop seeing 32 local authorities when they collect in their data using different perceptions. In our previous submissions for the previous report, I think some local authority was reporting 3.1 per cent about the ethnicity representation there while in their area was 13. something per cent. So this is an area when we talk about data collection has to be noticed, please.  Yes, and Rami and Rebecca, you've kind of answered the question that I was going to ask because it was about data collection, because one of the recommendations from the last report was that the Government continues to work with the EHRC to promote importance of quality, the collection of equality data and to encourage public bodies to share best practice, and that urgent consideration should be given to issues relating to ethnicity disclosure. The question that I wanted to ask was, is there any evidence that the data that is being collected has been increased in data collection? Has there been any increase in the quality of data collection and have you any evidence that the data collected has actually been used? Because I have a concern that lots and lots of data is out there, but nothing is done with it once it is collected. We won't change anything unless we use the data to build different recruitment and employment. We would use it to do a number of different things. That brings me back to what I was saying earlier. If we have a unified definition of ethnicity and how data is collected in that context, that would ensure all 32 local authorities, for example, to deploy the same system and we would be able to get more informed setting of what's happening, but if you get each local authority producing their own data in certain contexts, interpretation of this data, that's more important than the data itself, how you interpret it, is open to exploitation by certain groups or by certain, so that is a risky thing. That's when if we ask for the data collection to be utilized in certain legal ways, it's not a philosophy to say like ethnic minority this or that, it's a law. The law says ethnicity is this and the data should be collected in that context, and we would encourage the committee to produce something in terms of advancing the recommendation to ensure these local authorities and other stakeholders adhere to this, because as you said, the risk of misinterpreting this data or each stakeholder was interpreted the way it showed their own community. I'm not sure if you're aware again of the United, sorry you are aware, apologies, the United Kingdom effort to have a national audit on equality or race equality as well, and we were represented in London in the setting, and the way they were pushing to collect data or data is scary. Scotland should be aware of this and should be wary of this, because the way they were pushing for their data structure to be collected and analyzed could impose very, very risky situations for the whole race equality, the whole community, and the whole agency in Scotland. We submitted an outlined report to the Government, although my staff got to sign a statement of confidentiality there, which was not a normal practice, we're used to it, and I'm not relieving any confidentiality, but the way this national audit, race equality audit happening in the UK, is something contradictory to whatever we've been working in Scotland and the objective behind it regarding the data is very wise for the Government to pay attention to. Mary Hall is a minister, so will we hear from him first when he comes back? To answer your question Mary, I think that it's a good point that you raised there. In terms of data collection, as I highlighted, the Scottish Government, about a couple of weeks ago, started to look at data collection, how that could be improved, so we were in the meeting looking at what the data gaps were at, where that takes us, we don't know, so maybe in a few years' time we should monitor that, but it's not just about what Government does, as people highlighted, what public bodies, local authorities, health boards, et cetera do as well. For my experience of working, providing support to public bodies in the mainstreaming programme, data, a lot of times the quality isn't very good, there are a lot of gaps, they collect data for the sake of it, many do quite rightly as you said, and they don't use that in terms of how they plan their strategy and how that fits into say some of the quality outcomes, the quality strategies and the mainstreaming, so I think that that could be very much improved, we as an organisation try and provide guidance and support in terms of how they can actually improve collection of data and how they can actually use that data to inform future quality decisions in terms of whether they are hitting targets in terms of FNR recruitment and particularly communities and looking at success rates in terms of FNR applicants, so I think that quite rightly she said that that's a very question of what needs to be done a lot. In terms of the national audit that the UK is doing, we have been involved in that discussion as well because it was worrying because it was just a pull to anyway that they were very much talking about at that time in terms of the quality data feeding through that we can access for statistics, but a lot of it we felt wasn't really relevant for Scotland unless we can actually tease out some of those data which we can actually use in Scotland, so certainly I think data in Scotland can be improved and how it can be improved to be used for strategic development purposes in terms of quality. I can ask you another question in Colin, because when you say that the quality isn't good, is the quality of data collection not good because organisations don't think it's important, don't understand the importance of it or don't give it enough priority? Oh, three. That's a simple answer, but I think organisations pay lip service because the legislation is there, they have to do it, so there's some authorities that do it purely because it's basically a tick box exercise and I think that was your first point. The second point is when they collect data, they find it quite difficult to think through in terms of the statistics they gather what it is for them. For example, workforce data, they always struggle with that. If they had that information, it would be important for them to know what their actual starting point was in terms of their own existing workforce and how they can actually increase because a lot of the quality outcomes we see are very much all we want to increase employability within our workforce for ethnic communities, but how do you know that you can actually be successful and how do you measure that unless you know what your existing workforce is? They do have numbers in terms of ethnicity, but they don't have information about in terms of the kind of jobs that these people are at because we know that very few ethnic minority people in senior management roles, for example. I think that a lot of the data there doesn't tell you what the existing workforce in terms of grades and the kind of work they do and the level of work within the organisation they are at. More importantly, that information doesn't tell them whether they are achieving their actual outcomes in the next four or five years. I think that there is a whole layer of things that they need to look at in terms of what the data should be telling them. Rebecca? Sure. When we look at the issue of nondisclosure, it plays into what we were speaking about earlier in terms of leadership. If you are a minority ethnic person in a public sector organisation, you might already be in the minority, you might perceive your workplace as a bit hostile, be a bit nervous, so I can understand where nondisclosure rates are coming from. I think a major factor in why there is such a high rate of nondisclosures is that public bodies don't make it clear what they intend to use this data for. So, if it's made clear to employees that this is to put together a plan for improving representation, for looking at ways that they can better support the workforce, I think you would get a higher nondisclosure rates, but if the point of disclosing your ethnicity is just so it can go into a report that no one really looks at for another two and a half and then five years, I can see why it's quite a low rate. We have some council workforce profile from a council for their 2016-2017 data and their nondisclosure rate is still about 26%, which is pretty significant. It clouds a lot of data and makes it really difficult to look in and tease that out more. So, I think the duties have been around for five years. I think people know that they have to collect data now. I think what we really have to do is change the conversation to how are you going to use data and I think if we look at it that way, employees will be more willing to disclose and there will be pressure then from the employees themselves on the leaders of organisations and public bodies to make sure that all the data collected is used. Very briefly, because Rami, you may be able to answer it because it again follows on from something that both Rebecca and Colin said. It almost seems as if the data that is collected is collected in isolation of everything else. It kind of sits there. Organisations and employers collect it, but they collect it without linking it to recruitment, employment and training. Would that be fair to say? In most instances it is there, but I would like to give an example when we talk about the data. Why is this data used or why it is collected? We had an example and I am not saying it in an accusation way, but we have been approached for example by Police Scotland when they are developing the data collection in relation to stop and search settings. The structure they provided to us that they gave the authority to their police officers, they didn't give them proposing to give it to guess the ethnicity and we were shocked to hear that and said that's not acceptable. We wouldn't allow this to be guessed. There is a structure to go through it in addition to informing the people why this data is collected, building confidence with the community. When it comes to data collection, it's not only the stakeholder responsibilities, all of us to educate the setting and the communities about. Police Scotland conducted EHRC and EHRC confirmed our attitude that we wouldn't accept this kind of data collection through guessing. I can guess which person is ethnicity and produce outcome and procedures in terms of that, but in terms of the other side of the story, when we were working with the skills development Scotland, they are to be fair, they are very active, but they need help as well from groups like us and others to gather the data, analyse it and identify where the gaps are to invest in more settings. But again, you'll go back when you talk about the data collection. One example I'd like to share with you is we had a big event in Glasgow City Council for modern apprenticeship and youth and we had 400 young people coming through the doors and we chose on that day to collect data, but not by putting the boxes and inviting people to, by asking the young people to identify themselves in terms of their ethnicity. The outcome is amazing, is over 80, 84% have identified themselves as a Scottish. We know they are ethnic minorities, their names, they identified as a Scottish. So this is an area, I'm not saying in terms of the other side of employment, but this is an area we should build in our youth, we should encourage to have their identity in terms of the way they feel it rather than impose it in them and pigeonhole or boxes to take this. And going back to the context of some other public bodies, all this, yes, we agree with my colleagues, the way they collect data just for the sake of it, they don't analyse it or invest in more positive action schemes, for example, or setting. And again, this is collaborative setting, would be rather than, we come across some stakeholders present services, they are, they put their hands up and they say, can you help us? We have underrepresentation in this area, can you help us? But they get shocked sometimes when accusation towards themselves, you've been racist, you've been, that's not the right attitude in our approach. A stakeholder putting their hands up saying we're struggling in this area, this is our data, we should be able to advise and work with them and reinterpret the data, because we're discovering again and again data submitted to the Government to serve a specific aim, a specific goal, rather than have a proper interpretation of the data as a whole. This is a serious issue as well, we should be aware of. Maybe I'll bring in a bit later, Mary, if you want to come back. I've got Jerry May next and then Willie. Good morning and thank you again for coming along. Just a couple of questions. Looking back at the recommendations of the previous committee, I'm reflecting on them. Which is the one that you would say we need to push the hardest? Which is the one that would make the biggest difference in regard to that? Around that, as someone who's quite new to this, in your view, are things getting better? If you can loop back over maybe a five, ten-year period, do you think things have improved, are they about the same or have they got worse? Rebecca. Sure, it's hard to pick just one. I think one that might have wide-ranging effects is recommending that any work undertaken by the Scottish Government to raise public bodies awareness on race equality issues should promote, and then there's a variety of suggestions, like using open recruitment, using diverse interview panels, using equality-related questions during interviews, and having consistent post-interview feedback. I think when we look at rates of application and then rates of short-listing and then rates of job acceptances, there's quite a drop-off when you get to the short-listing and interview stage, and I think you studies have shown that even having a minority ethnic individual on a panel can make a big difference. Asking people to give feedback, that seems to be where we're a stop-off for barriers. I think there was some DWP research in 2009. I think it was UK-wide, but it looked at application rates to public bodies and how many more applications minority ethnic individuals had to put in before it was accepted versus I'd be happy to send that through to the committee. In terms of your question, are things getting better? I think it'll be easier to tell in April when we get the public sector equality data back, but referencing the council data that we had from 2016-2017, the overall reported black and minority ethnic workforce increased by 0.1% on from last year, which is not much, and you could argue you could easily be accounted for by just more people being in this particular area. If we're looking at migration patterns and more and more people coming into the city and young people growing into employability age, pretty soon if we're not making market progress, we're going to fall back just by virtue of changing by 0.1% every year is not great. That's going to take us quite a while to get to an equitable sum. Where there's the best will in the world, you won't really see much progress unless it's monitored and it's enforced and it's encouraged and there's leadership from the top and things actually change and we stop letting unconscious bias be unconscious. Colin. I guess looking at recommendations to particular areas, I'll answer your first question. You've got recommendations here about focus on gender-specific employment. I think that's a very big gap. I think a lot of statistics show employability programmes, etc., seems to be a lot more men involved, this is to women for whatever reason, and I came through in the epidemiology women network event that we had. A lot of women felt that basically at any time needed to be a lot more specialized in employability schemes for ethnic minority women for cultural and religious reasons. They were citing the fact that they felt they couldn't get involved in a lot of employability programmes, so that I think is a big focus and that's why we drove us to actually develop some work on supporting women in employment through big lottery funding, for example. I think that's the way in terms of how we can try and improve one particular area for women from communities. The other area recommendation is procurement, because you've got to encourage you used to public sector procurement contracts. I think that's a good way of trying to get improved jobs within communities anyway. Our experience is, we'll give you an example, we're in partnership at the moment with Keep Scotland Beautiful to encourage access to the climate challenge fund, which is a Scottish Government tender. That tender originally came out in 2008 to 2012 and only four ethnic minority organisations applied to that particular fund, and there was about £40 million that was actually distributed. We raised that issue with Government at a time when the actual tender was going out again in 2012 and 2013, and more importantly at that time the Scottish Government took note and within the tender process they actually put in a measurable target of 15 per cent applications has to come from ethnic minority organisations or other protected characteristics, particularly ethnic minority anyway, so rather than saying that applications should come they actually put in an actual measurable target, and that actually encouraged and drove a lot of bodies that were looking to tender, like Keep Scotland Beautiful, to look at development partnership with us to achieve that target in terms of providing support, supporting applications, raising awareness and giving posts support to a lot of these groups. Since then from 2012 to present, over 150 applications have been submitted from ethnic communities, 68 projects have been successful and that translates into £7.9 million for the sector, and within that that created 200 jobs for the sector and also 500 volunteers, and that, you know, when you look at the actual impact isn't just about, you know, the funding stream, you know, these organisations created jobs out of that and they engage in not in climate change policy, following that but other policies with the health and so on, and the important thing from that I think the lesson learned that could be replicated in other tender processes and funding agreements and service level agreements at local and national level. I think all it takes is for public bodies and Scottish Government to know their contracts to actually put in a measurable target, and that will actually stimulate and facilitate a lot of mainstream organisations to actually develop meaningful partnerships with effeminarity organisations to help them deliver. What normally happens is mainstream organisations are great at getting these kind of funding in a go to effeminarity organisations sector so it can help us and not give them appropriate resources to do that. If they actually have a target they will actually give the resources for effeminarity organisations to help support the creation of those targets and hopefully some of the jobs that will come out of it, and I think that's a real key thing and lesson that we learn and, you know, if we look at having those measurable targets within these tender and funding agreements, it also helps public bodies to address the public sector duty of fostering good relations, which is very important as well, so I think it's a win-win situation. In terms of improvements, the final part, sorry, is I agree with Rebecca Day. I think we'll look at April in terms of mainstream reporting, quality outcomes, see if there's been any progress anyway from some of those outcomes and see if there's any change. We would suspect, you know, to be fair and not really, you know, to be realistic, and I think that's where it's important, where the work is starting now in terms of the race, quality framework and other Scottish Government initiatives, is actually the monitoring and measurable targets that has to be looked at and I think it's really important to have the baseline statistics first because then we know in five, ten years' time where we've actually made progress in a lot of these areas. Just one thing about public bodies, I think, you know, it's not fair maybe to say that not all of them actually don't use statistics, some of them do, so maybe we're generalising, but a lot don't use statistics in terms of how to inform their future direction and strategies. I think what would be very useful, follow-up sessions like this is great, but I think, you know, in time you should be calling a lot of public bodies, you know, having, you know, a random pick-off organisation of particular sectors and asking them directly what progress have they made. I think that that's more important than looking at just stakeholders like us and Scottish Government because I think, you know, we can only do so much, Government can only do so much, but the public bodies, you know, its autonomous bodies should be accountable to themselves and I think should be put to committee to, you know, give some evidence to be fair. Ann, we're talking here about all of the statistical analysis and the outcomes and the agreements and procurement and all of that, but you're working right at the front line and in relation to Jeremy's questions about, you've been about two years in, whether you have seen any of that progress yourself? I'm seeing a massive amount of progress and the reason is we're joining up the conversation. So quite often what I've seen in the past is where you have different public services trying to fix things on their own by sharing the learning of what works out on the field, if you like. It means that people are starting to have the same conversations. So for example, Skills Development Scotland have brought in their Equalities Action Plan for all of their national training providers, so they are all being measured regularly and progress made and that's been fabulous because it means that everyone's having the same conversation. How can we do it? Who do we need to speak to? How do we work with our sector or organisations such as us to actually make this happen? But also because we've included Education Scotland in the schools, it means that conversations happening much, much earlier. So when young people are actually making their subject choices, we were finding some people, for example, wanted to move into the NHS, but no one had had the conversation that they would need science. So when they were making their choices, they were actually excluding themselves from moving in the career that they wanted to go to. And by introducing things like SCQF framework and getting teachers and pastoral staff to start talking about that, as well as the CIAG staff who have a fairly large remit in each of the schools, it makes a massive difference that that young person is starting to think about careers much, much earlier. So that's had a dramatic impact. Also when we're doing our data analysis, we can see that more young people are applying for jobs, but now we're doing the data to see what the conversion rates are for that. So year one in sort of midway through two, what we've been looking at is the barriers within the community and encouraging national training providers and public services to gather information on who applied and where they got to and feeding back to us and actually analysing which part are they falling down at. And then putting in processes where we could support young people and employability and interview skills and all of those things and then looking to see if that's made a difference. We're now working towards working with employers to see if there's things in their interview panels and procedures that are actually sort of sifting out young people for various reasons, whether it's culturally sensitive. So if they're looking for eye contact for a lot of our young people, eye contact, shaking hands and things like that are actually quite difficult. We have to teach them how to do that. But by gathering the data and actually sifting through to see where each area is falling, then we can actually provide models and solutions and then give them out to national training providers and employers and public services to say, well let's tweak some things and see if it makes a difference for young people actually gaining successful careers. One of the questions that I just wondered is that any evidence in regard to particular ethnic minorities who have a religious practice, which might then cross against their normal working pattern, if you like, a normal working pattern, about people either being discriminated because of their religious view that they may have to go and worship at a different normal time, or people being put off going into employment because they think it will affect their faith background. Is there any evidence of that, have you come across that at all? There are some young people who, for example, won't go into the sort of gaming gambling sort of areas because for their religious beliefs. So yes, there will be some areas. Is there any evidence of employers discriminating someone? No, I haven't found any. It's more that we have to work with communities as well to help them to understand where different employers can fit for them. Thank you so much, convener, and hello again. When I started listening to the beginning of the discussion, I must admit that I was a bit depressed about the progress that might have been made, but in response to your answers to Jeremy, there seems to be some good examples of progress, particularly the one that you mentioned in relation to 200 or so jobs that had been created through some initiative that you mentioned, and then Anne's example there. I wanted to reflect back on our predecessor's committee's report from last year, and all of the recommendations say that some group should work with another group. That isn't any guarantor of any success outcome. Of course, working together doesn't necessarily make the kind of changes or step changes that you hope to see, and convener, then the discussion moved into gathering data and collection and baseline and so on. What kind of mixture do we need? The committee report is quite good. It takes us so far, but how do we know in the five years down the road that Rebecca mentioned in her opening remarks that we are genuinely making the progress across the board that we hope to achieve? Is it a mixture of statistics and data collection? Is it working with a culture within ethnic groups to change the culture, as Rami said? Is it both of those really, and should there be an emphasis of one on more than the other, do you think? That's a very, very good point. I'm glad you picked up on that. In terms of going back to reflect on what Jeremy was saying in terms of the recommendation from last time, there is one area that we always seem to neglect in terms of the recommendation that the Scottish Government reflects on the links between disability, poverty and ethnicity, and this is an area that seems to be high when the discussion happens, and later it seems to dwindle. The other area is the recruitment side and where are the public bodies or how ethnic minority employers participate in that or take part in that, and how it's open to the mind. This is an area that needs further focus. In terms of the modern apprenticeship, that's exactly what relates to your question. The modern apprenticeship, historically, we thrived on the idea that ethnic minority are underrepresented in modern apprenticeship because there is this, there is discrimination, there is that. Haven't worked for the last 18 months and we always understood that the ethnic minorities are not interested or the parents, they don't care about this. Through the project we have witnessed a dramatic increase in ethnic minority parents pushing for their children to pursue a career option through modern apprenticeship. The young themselves have moved beyond the concept of viewing MA as a lower scale of their aspirations or the way we call it expectations, and these are details that have to be acknowledged. But how did this happen? Did this really happen just by imposing policy and stuff on SDS? No, it happened through the collaboration that we have been working with them, not only with SDS as SDS, the training providers. The training providers have a responsibility and a duty themselves, but they don't have the knowledge, they don't have the expertise. The minorities equally, they don't have the confidence to link to them equally in that context. So by linking the training providers, the employers, the communities and stakeholders like us, and as you see the impact is filtering now. So if you say we're going to judge this a year on from last year to now, we will be doing this MA program injustice because now we have established the infrastructure, the setting that enables us to understand once those minorities are aware of the impact or understand the parents are pushing. On that day we have 400 ethnic minority young people coming to pursue any aspects of the modern apprenticeship at a level of their expectations. But how did this happen by creating a cultural shift? I am, and I'm sorry, it's not personal. When I say I am, it's not personal. Our all organization, our all communities we work with, they're fed up with the whole culture of being viewed as just the disadvantage, the poor soul, the culture of grievances against them. This is, and against equally, we can say that responsibility of the progress risk equality is the responsibility of BEMIS or CREAR or SEMVO or the equality unit or SDF. It's all of us collectively, that's when the cooperation collaboration happens. And I agree with you, it doesn't happen so smoothly all the time and there are lots of differences, lots of further strategic thinking, but now it's a responsibility and us for Scotland. This is not about our organizations or us as individuals, it's about what we can change for Scotland. But the sector or the communities, and I'm talking about the diverse, please let us move beyond the perception of ethnicity one or two groups. The diversity of the ethnic minorities, the positive approach we have in them and that was evident in the multicultural programme we deliver every year where those groups are participating in all national events in Scotland. We created a cultural shift to them to enable them to understand your part of Scotland, these celebrations for you and we see them leading on things themselves. If I attract a bit and say about how we create cultural shift, we had a project in the past about addressing LGBT ethnic minority needs within the equality framework. And when we initiated that because the LGBT people would look at them and say race, nothing to do with us. And the race people would look at the more ethnic minority, sorry LGBT, wow nobody talks about it. We were brave to initiate a project with the equality network. Trust me when we started it, we got abused left, right and centre by various stakeholders. One year down the line, the same stakeholder have signed with us, part of the infrastructure networks to provide equality supports for everybody. Now we have more and more ethnic minority, LGBT are open, reaching out for their rights, participating in all aspects. Similarly, the other stakeholders are equally open to providing the equality supports of these. That's what we mean by cultural shift. We're not changing the world. We're creating cultural shift with the minority, equality is not only for race, it's for everybody. And the same way applies here, you should understand it applies there. The employment setting, what we're witnessing with the youth and the training provider approach and SDS and the parents is something we have to develop a report. We're happy to share it with you because it's not fair from the government just to assign target on a public body, get this target. During the process of getting this target, we're finding out gaps and opportunities that nobody addressed before. So rather than just judge by that, we need to reflect on this finding to develop more strategic recommendation later. Thanks. Wow. And I think Colin's got something to add to this. It's so important. So impressive. I think it's a good question really about how do we know progress and I think that's something we keep asking ourselves. We've been in the sector for a long time and many strategies come and go. The key to it always is data, I think. Because unless we know what the baseline is, we don't know what progress we make. Unless we improve that, not just with government but public bodies and so forth, then we never know whether we make progress or not. I think that's the simple answer. So we have a different view in terms of blame game. We can't see the ethnic communities as a whole to say they all feel victimised and the culture is the blame in terms of poor communities. We don't share that at all. That won't come if they don't experience institutional racism and racism. We would love to shift culture among communities but it's not about that. Yes, some of it has to be working positively to them to engage a bit better but certainly I think there's a lot of discrimination that goes on to actually create that climate and I think the work is actually very much about how we try and address the lack of progress among public bodies and so forth in terms of, in this instance, employment. Obviously there are a lot of experiences out there in terms of how they experience discrimination and racism at all levels. It would be great to capture some of those case studies because we know our public body where there was 60 applicants for the FNM communities and none of them were successful purely because of their selection criteria because of the typing test. But certainly I think the culture itself, some work has to be done in communities but I think the driver here is working with the public bodies and improving the game. The Scottish Government should take more leadership. They have obviously in the past year through the recommendations of the committee have taken on a lot of the initiatives like Fair Work Convention and Race Quality Framework, Scottish Labour, market strategy and social enterprise strategy etc, which is all great. I think it's the start of a journey. It's the next phase of where we're going to be in the next 10, 15, 20 years but I think the key to that is how do we actually know we're going to be successful in 5, 10, 20 years until we know what our starting point today is here today. I think statistics and data is very much the key to that and that's always the answer that the question is what is our starting point. Unless we know then we can come back here in 5, 10 years time having the same conversation to be honest and nothing's really progressed and that's what's happened in the last 15, 20, 30 years being great strategies but nothing really concrete has come from that. I definitely echo a lot of what Colin had been saying. I definitely think better robust data collection needs to come first and if we're talking public bodies it needs to be compiled in a central place where the public can view it easily and not have to sift through 150 reports to find out what the situation is. I think we can get better with that but as I was speaking about before data collection is the first step but then you have to talk about how you're going to use the data and I think we need to build in better enforcement practices, better accountability measures, better raise awareness with public bodies and private sector employers. There needs to be adequate pressure from this committee, from the Scottish Government, from the public to make sure that that data is getting used and is being interpreted in the right way and is being practices that have been put and have been examined. I think the Commission on Parliamentary Reform was talking towards the end of last year about how you shift a culture and an institution to make it more diverse and more inclusive and something that really stuck with me from the session is that sometimes the culture doesn't change first, sometimes the practices have to change and the cultural change to fit that and I think that's a sentiment we definitely echo. I definitely agree with what Colin was saying about you can't turn an eye to the effects of institutional racism and what that has done for under an unemployment. I think if you get to the heart of that and talk about how to address that in public bodies and change cultures in the ways that we've talked about a bit with more diverse interview panels with speaking about equality during interviews with monitoring and analyzing every step of the way and putting in practices that stopped bias. Then I think the culture goes from that way down. I think it's important that we can talk about supply side issues and sort of measures that we need to put in especially to help new or migrant communities, but we also need to talk about how that works on the other side and where you know people have been educated and born and raised in Scotland but are still having difficulty getting jobs despite having better than normal qualifications. Why is that and I think we would argue that you have to look at kind of racism and employment practices to speak about that a bit better so monitoring using the data and holding bodies to account I think is how we'll tell if we're making any progress. To come back in. There may be clarification a bit. I mean maybe if I start saying how everything is racist and discriminatory I'll get more applause guys here okay but I'm not interested in that. The whole idea is we acknowledge there is racism and there's nobody's disputing that. What is the difference from our perspective the strategic and operational is how do we deal with this? Do we continue just to point there is get us data we saw the discrimination nothing happened for the last 20 years a lot happened for us there Scotland has advanced beyond anybody who could say and we work in Europe all over Europe we come back to say the ethnic minority and equality setting in general and race equality in Scotland is well advanced compared to Europe. What does that mean it doesn't mean perfect is ideal is what it means is we're ready now to start questioning other areas of advancing equality and when we talk about the concept of us as minorities having to play a role in that yes let's face it it's not about public bodies have to do this the government have to do this this has to do what has the government done to us for the last 20 we're fed up with these questions let's see what have we done with the government and what we have done for our communities when we talk about institutional discrimination and I think you'll see it in my submission in the previous committee nothing has changed we do not take it as if there is recorded or noted institutional racism there are incidents here and there but it would be unfair for our public body I say it again to classify them as institutionally racist we meet with various public bodies with other stakeholders they put their hands up to say can you work with us on these areas they get slapped back your racist this is a culture we have to move beyond that context and again if you get a an area public bodies if you get 60 you can get 120 ethnic minority applying if the competencies and the thing is there doesn't have to be what we should be thinking those 60 people we should be working with them to build their competencies their skill get them out of this culture if something didn't work it has to be discrimination and racism we have to take a responsibility last time I spoke about institutional uh rejected institutional what do you call it discrimination uh colleagues said uh I'm apologetic okay maybe I am okay apologetic but not to the government or to the stakeholders I'm apologetic to my communities to the communities we have allowing them to live without support just as the victims the grievance the mourn rather than empowering them enabling them show them the way how to build their skill their knowledge bringing them closer to the stakeholders that is the way forward that's what we call active citizenship so is the the image of racism and discrimination exist yes we know we don't disagree with anybody there are areas how we tackle it how we move it and how we progress it and that brings me to the whole cultural shift the majority of the people case studies of some minorities advancing their communities beyond expectation are there as well so it's time we created a culture shift our minorities stop viewing us within the terms of our ethnicity only okay but view ourselves within our role in Scotland the opportunity there from Scotland and our sector responsibility to invest in these communities and get them out of the fear of just grievance if I want to bring my daughter up to say to her don't try you won't get it there's discrimination there of course you will be there but let them thrive let them finish and some people say I'm speaking like this not because I've never experienced racism my house was attacked to in the morning smashed our car smashed to pieces but when the police got the person I would never go and hide say no it's okay let it go yes go to court we go this person will never do it again that's what we need to teach our community is the culture of citizenship when I hear a lot of people sit and there the NHS is this and this the NHS is rubbish the NHS is however it's time to allow those people to say when the NHS has a consultation please come and have a say say what's concerning you be active participate in the setting what we call democratic participation when you have an appointment with your doctor go to the doctor don't skip your appointment when you have an appointment there go to this appointment that's the culture we have to start building our communities to address some of the issues we're almost up against the the time clock and as I see Colin Colin's quite keen to commend the just very quick point you know I think I just have to come back on that point those some of those points to be honest because I I I don't think okay well we're actually talking about communities when we actually we're not saying it's a blame game in terms of all the situations of racism it's nothing to do about it you know further years communities have wanted to get involved okay you can't you know you can't plant the seeds okay without watering them and make nurturing that you know they can't flourish and grow unless you look at the structures that exist you know further years communities have engaged you know and there's been non-meaningful conversation what we're saying is it's not a blame game you know it's not it's not you being active citizens alone yes they have to be involved okay but there is apathy out there purely because the structures that have been in place they've actually haven't been able to break that barrier okay and what we're saying is we all know that problems exist so it has to be working with these structures to make sure that communities can meaningful engage and get involved in employment and all aspects and not saying you know it's your fault because you're ethnic and and that's it you know and stop and stop moaning you know that's what we're really saying here it's not about them moaning it's about saying well we're not making progress so there has to be some work done okay with institutions we're not saying well it's your fault what we're saying is you need to do better so that communities can have that confidence to get engaged to show that there's progress in employment that you know the barriers have been changed so I think it's a totally perspective from you know from what you know it's been highlighted here I think it's a different approach to race equality to be honest it's the reason why we wanted you all at the table because we all know you have different experiences and all of those experiences are valid and and very important to the work that we are doing now and we thank you for that. We're right up against the time clock so unless any of my colleagues have got anything really Willie, very quickly. Since I opened the discussion there with the question I just want to put in record convener how thankful I am to have these witnesses here with us I'm really impressed with the commitment the dedication and the passion that you're showing in these issues and I think we're in good hands so thank you so much for saying what you've said. Okay, any other colleagues? No thank you so much for coming along because you have given us we've got pages and pages of notes and lots of action points I think where you've pointed us in the right direction from all of your respective corners and we're very very grateful for that but I think Willie summed it up in his words and we will be continuing this conversation and if you go away and you think all should have said this or come back to us please we're very keen to hear from you and we'll come back to you on some of the information that we would be looking for some of the report and work that you're doing the the maybe your understanding of the data when it's released in April 2017 which is just a few weeks away it would be quite good to get your thoughts on even just a paragraph or a page on your thoughts on where that's gone because that'll give us a bang up to date position where we are now calling baseline so that would help us if you could do that that would be we gratefully received so thank you so much and we are moving on to agenda item 3 which we'll take in private so suspend the committee to go into private


LCAT deficiency is a rare genetic disorder characterized by abnormal accumulation of lipids in various organs, including the kidneys. It can lead to progressive chronic kidney disease and eventually end-stage renal failure if left untreated. Symptoms include promnuria, dyslipidemia, and corneal opacities. Diagnosis is confirmed through a renal biopsy which reveals characteristic histopathologic changes. Treatment includes A.C.E. inhibitor and lipid-lowering medications, along with steroids. Gene replacement and recombinant LCAT replacement are also being studied with promising preliminary results. This article was authored by Muhammad Mahdi Altaf, Hadeel Almeina, Ahmed Abdel Fadiol, and others.


When I walked through the Nexus or Global Entry lane, Pitcher was taken on my face and I walked through the security very, very quickly because it was all facial recognition. And we seem to be okay as a population with trusting on national security on facial recognition. So if there is still a concern that an algorithm cannot help doctors in our day-to-day practice, or that we shouldn't be embracing others already, well, again, we're all detrusting it with our day-to-day travel going across the border. So the same kind of technology that is behind facial recognition is being used and studied and evidenced in picking up, as you say, cancers early.