Equalities and Human Rights Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, December 8, 2016

Official Report 566KB pdf

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International Human Rights Day 2016

Good morning, and welcome back to the Equalities and Human Rights Committee. Our next panel is an exciting panel that the committee has been working with over the past few weeks to highlight international human rights day, which is this Saturday, 10 December. The committee wanted to mark the occasion by speaking to some of the people who matter in the process—the young people of Scotland.

We have two groups of pupils, accompanied by their teachers, from two primary schools: Thornlie primary school in Wishaw and Westfield primary school. Deborah Kirkland and Liz Wells are the teachers, but our focus today is the kids. We are really pleased that you have come along, and some committee members were pleased to come to your school to talk about what matters to you. As you can see, some of your ideas are displayed behind me on red, amber and green cards. The things that you think we are doing well are on the green cards; the things that you think that we could do better are on the amber cards; and the things that we really need to make a difference on are on the red cards. We are pleased to have those ideas and to have heard your views. I was inspired for the committee’s future work by hearing what you said earlier.

We are pleased to have you at the committee meeting this morning and delighted that you feel able to give us your views. We are keen to hear from you about what you think the Scottish Parliament should be doing to maintain your rights and the things that really matter to you. We are keen to hear about not only the things that you like but the things that you think we should fix. If you want to speak, do the same as you do in class—stick your hand up and tell me your name, and you can then give me your thoughts and feelings. Who is first?

My name is Kai.

It is nice to meet you, Kai.

I think that the rights of children and everyone in the world are very important. If everyone did what they liked, it would not end very well. We need to work on the wars, because there are a lot of them. That is really important. In Syria, people’s houses are getting blown up while they are inside them.

We also need to drive cars that do not use fuel, because it is polluting the world.

Those are two very good points, Kai. The first is about peace for children around the world, and the other is about the importance of the environment that we live in.

My name is Hannah. I think that we can help with gender equality, especially across schools. As a girl, I like to take part in many sports including swimming and football, but in my school—or in other schools—I can get treated differently because I want to play a sport that is played mainly by boys or that is known to be played by boys. I can be treated differently because of my gender.

I know that Motherwell has a good women’s team.

It is better than the men’s team, anyway. [Laughter.]

Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for coming to see us. Thank you also for your amazing presentations, which were really inspiring. Some of you told me that this is your first time in this building. If there was something about our country that you wanted to change, would you guys know how to go about doing that? Who would you want to speak to? What have you learned about how our democracy works and how you can influence it and ask for change?

I like the fact that, around the world, not everybody is being treated well but everybody is trying to fix things, including MSPs. I like the fact that they are helping. If I could change one thing about the world, it would be to have no wars.

It is really noble to want to change that. You guys are the future. We are sitting here just now but, in 15 or 20 years, it could be you—in fact, it may well be you in some cases. It is important that you know how this place works and that your voices are as important as everybody else’s.

I would like to talk about gender stereotyping, which is all over the media and newspapers. I do not like the fact that people gender stereotype. Stereotypically, blue and green are a boy’s colours, but I love those colours. A lot of people stereotype by gender, because they think that girls are weak and do not care while boys are strong. I do not think that that is right.

That is an excellent point.

11:15  

Hannah spoke about playing football—I played football as well when I was wee. I liked to play football and tennis, and I was told that I was better than the boys at both of them. However, I was called a tomboy; that did not really bother me, because I enjoyed playing football and things like that. However, Hannah is right—we do not make it that boys and girls can play together. Girls play in one team and boys in the other.

Amanda talked about gender stereotyping. If I do not like wearing dresses and high heels, some people might say that I am not as much of a girl. However, I am a girl, because that is who I am. It does not matter whether I want to look glamorous or if I do not want to be a princess, or whether I want to be a football player. That should not make any difference to who I am and how people treat me.

A lot of people do not notice when they are doing those things. If we do not notice those things, we will not be able to change them. At schools, we should maybe have another lesson on this, to let people know that they are doing things like that. Before we learned about this in class, if I said “I do not want to play football, I like being a girlie”, I would not have known what I meant by that. It did not mean anything. If we look at it now, once we have learned about it, those kinds of things could offend.

That is an excellent point.

Do you think that it is easy to explain that point to your mum, dad, granny or older people? Sometimes older people take longer to understand those things, because we are a bit slow—or maybe that is just me. How would you explain that to your mum or your dad or granny?

I would probably just tell them. I would sit down and say, “I do not want to be a girlie girl as such, I do not want to dress in dresses all the time”, or I might say that I do not want to play football, or something like that. I suppose that I would just tell them and explain it to them and they would probably understand.

Do you think that we listen?

Yes.

Good.

Do the other two boys who have not contributed yet have something to say? Would you tell us your names?

I am Ryan. Thinking about opinions: it is not just about your opinion, it is about others’ opinions as well. Someone might say that your opinion does not matter, but it has already happened and your opinion can still exist; it is not just taken away.

It is about freedom of speech; I hope that we have given you the opportunity this morning to come to Parliament and have your freedom of speech. We are listening.

What about you, young man?

I am Toby. When we were doing the cards, I only did green. Green was for stuff that was good about the Parliament; yellow was for stuff that was in the middle; red was for stuff that we thought you need to change. I only did green because I think that the Parliament is really good as it is.

What kind of things do you think that we do really well?

I like the rights.

Excellent; that is super. Do members have any other questions?

Hello, everybody. It was lovely to meet you at the school when I came to see you. If there is one thing more that you think we should do better, what would it be?

Boy footballers earn more than girls; I think they should earn the same amount instead of one earning £1 million a week and girl footballers earning £500,000.

I agree.

Equal pay. [Laughter.]

What else should we do better?

I think you should change about our votes. We should be able to vote for president or things to do with this country or other countries, because we have our own opinions. It would be better for us to have a say.

That is a very good point. Recently this Parliament acted to make sure that more young people can vote than ever before. That is because you are affected by everything that happens in this country, so you deserve a stake in how we make the decisions. We have very different ages for when people are able to make decisions right now, so we need to do a bit of work to make sure that those ages are better aligned.

I think that the voices of the children are the most important voices that we, as politicians, should be listening to. As was said before, you are the future. We are making decisions now that will impact on the way that you live your lives long after we are gone.

Is there any one thing that each of you would want us to change that would make a difference?

Probably speech, because speech is in everything you do. You can have your opinion on anything you want. It could be in your class and you give your teacher an idea. In some schools, you would not be allowed to talk or give your teacher ideas, while in other schools, you would. I think that we should have the right to do that.

That is a very good point. What about you, Amanda? If we could do something here that would help you, what would it be—apart from lowering the voting age?

Gender stereotyping goes on a lot. It means a lot to some people, because if someone tells them that they are weak, it upsets them. The country would be a nicer place if there were no more gender stereotyping.

What about you, Ryan?

I do not know.

You talked about freedom of speech—what about just having the right to say what you want to say?

Yes.

What about you, Kai?

I would like you to look at housing, because not everybody has a home. I would like everybody to have shelter.

That is an excellent point. That issue was written on all of the cards in our event—it was mentioned as something that we do well, something that we need to work on and something that, in some cases, we do not do well. We heard loud and clear where we need to go on housing and making sure that it works.

The Scottish Human Rights Commission is working with some tenants associations to make sure that tenants use their right to get an adequate house and decent shelter. You are on the money with your idea, Kai, because work is being done on that already. You are also absolutely right that more work needs to be done.

I also think that you are trying to do it and it is getting better—you are improving on it. You are building more houses now—you are extending our village to more than 700 houses—but it will take a lot of time.

Can you see the difference locally?

Yes.

Excellent. Toby, if there was one more thing that this Parliament could do to help you, what would it be?

We might need some better hospitals, because my great-gran died. But there is not really anything that you can do about that.

Yes, but we are sad with you. Because grannies are important, aren’t they? Having people who care for you when you are having a difficult time, either in school or at home, is really important.

Yes.

I agree. If committee members have nothing more to say, I will say thank you so much for coming. This has been a brilliant experience for us. When we go into the chamber or are in other committees making decisions, we will always be mindful of the information and the ideas that you have given us this morning.

We make laws now, but they will still be laws a couple of years down the road. By then, you might be at high school, starting your first job, getting your own house or going off to university or college. We need to make sure that that world is ready for you with a very good, human rights-based attitude.

Well done to your teachers, because they have done a superb job with you all. You should be grateful for the work that they do. We certainly are.

Thank you for coming to the committee this morning, because you have really helped us. I think that we have a few surprises for you during the rest of the day, but we will come to that when it happens.

I close the meeting now, on the very high note of the important work that you think we should do. Seán Wixted has taken lots of notes so that we can take on some of that work. Thank you so much.

Meeting closed at 11:25.