The next item is an evidence session on the Scottish Human Rights Commission. I welcome Professor Alan Miller, who is chair of the commission. We will be asking Professor Miller about Scotland’s national action plan for human rights two-year report, which was published in December.
As members know, Professor Miller demits office in March, so we also intend to spend some time asking for Professor Miller’s observations on his time as chair of the commission—or, at least, what he can put on the record. What he may say to us privately is another matter and we look forward to that. We will start with a question from Christian Allard.
I have just one question that you may want to expand on, Professor Miller. It is about your relationships with the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Government, local authorities and other public bodies in Scotland. How well did those relationships work and what about the challenge that a lot of legislation is either reserved or, even in devolved areas, partly reserved? There is the Immigration Bill, for example. How much of that is challenging and are there any positive remarks that you can make on how your successor could move forward?
That is a lot of questions—just pick your answers, please, Professor Miller.
Two for the price of one. First, I would like to thank you and the other members of the committee and your predecessors for your interest in and support for the work of the SHRC and me as chair over the years. I just wanted to put that on the record.
You can stop right there—that is fine.
I am looking forward to this ultimate session with you.
In direct answer to the question, relationships are critical to the work of the commission—indeed, to the work of any body or organisation. On the specific relationships with the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament, public bodies and so on, one of the accomplishments of the commission over the past eight years is that, starting from nowhere, it has developed constructive and honest relationships with all those bodies. That is probably best represented in the development of Scotland’s national action plan for human rights, which set out to be collaborative and built on that shared confidence and trust. From my point of view, those are good relationships, but you and those in Government and public authorities may have a different point of view.
On the reserved or devolved issue, I think that we all sometimes have difficulties with the grey areas and we want to ensure that nothing falls between what is reserved and devolved. Sometimes it is a bit complex. On that particular issue, another key relationship is with the Equality and Human Rights Commission. In Scotland, we co-operate closely with it to ensure that nobody falls between those gaps, and by and large that approach has worked well. That is not to say that there are not frustrations that come up from time to time when matters that are reserved are regressive and clearly have an adverse impact on the rights of people in Scotland—you just need to look at the Trade Union Bill just now—but we all live in this world.
How does the commission balance its international interests and its focus on domestic work?
From day 1, when I was first elected by the Parliament, it was crystal clear to me that if, as chair, I was to build a national human rights institution in Scotland, I had to learn from the experience of others who had done something similar in different contexts around the world. From the beginning, I was very open to learning all the lessons that could be learned about establishing the commission.
For example, Scotland’s national action plan for human rights—SNAP—is something that comes from the international community. There is international best practice and experience that the commission in Scotland has benefited from and indeed enriched. It is now recognised internationally that SNAP has set the bar for how a plan should be put together and how its potential should be realised.
Over the years, that interest in and interaction with the international community has continued because the Paris principles from the United Nations require national human rights institutions to be a bridge between their own countries and the international human rights system. We will monitor the extent to which international human rights laws and obligations are realised in Scotland, and we will contribute Scotland’s good experience in certain areas to benefit the international community. For example, I know that the committee has been closely involved with the area of survivors of historical abuse. The way in which Scotland has finally tackled that problem effectively is of considerable interest to many other countries around the world. Our international work is a two-way street. It is a necessary dialogue that takes place.
11:30
I want to ask about some of the specific challenges that you mentioned in the 2015 SNAP report—in particular, the need for a step change in the public sector and the need for SNAP to be embedded in Scotland’s institutional fabric.
A lot of the earlier work of the commission had to be about increasing awareness and understanding of how to apply human rights on a day-to-day basis in schools, hospitals, care settings, workplaces and communities. We spent a lot of time working with the bodies that have responsibility for delivering public services. We assisted them in understanding what they need to do to respect the rights of those to whom they are providing services.
We are getting to a stage where those bodies have to be increasingly held to account—where they actually need to do it. That is the point that we have reached in SNAP. The capacity has been built, and the tools and the know-how have been shared, and now we have to see them being put into practice. That is particularly important in times of austerity, because using a human rights-based approach is much more cost effective and targeted than not using one.
So there is really no excuse now.
There is really no excuse.
You talked about the elderly. One often has concerns that the human rights of the elderly are not respected. I know that there are other sectors of society whose rights are also not respected, particularly if they do not like to speak out, so they can be quite vulnerable. What is the relationship of the commission to the Care Inspectorate, for example, which looks not just at the quality of physical care but at the way in which older people are treated and respected as individuals?
There is a very close relationship with the Care Inspectorate. The commission is helping it to shape the new national care standards and ensuring that human rights and the dignity of people who are in care are front and centre in those standards and in how the Care Inspectorate goes about its work. It is a long-standing relationship that came into being several years ago when the commission took the initiative to develop a capacity-building training package for the sector called care about rights, which dealt with how to provide services to older people in a way that respects their dignity and is person centred. From that day until now, we have continued to enjoy a very close relationship.
How does that filter down to the front line—to the carers in our various care homes and residential homes, and to people with learning difficulties and so on? We hear some dreadful stories, and we see dreadful images captured by secret filming, of how people are treated when they are at their most vulnerable. How do we get that approach down to that level so that care services are delivered properly?
It goes back to Margaret Mitchell’s earlier question. It is now time for the bodies that have been provided with a lot of know-how to apply it on a day-to-day basis and to be held accountable for doing so. Training through the care about rights project was given to about 1,000 care providers. It was then independently evaluated and was regarded as having been extremely successful. Through SNAP, that training now has to be scaled up, so that all care homes take advantage of that capacity building. The Care Inspectorate also comes in to ensure that that is front and centre.
What do you believe have been the commission’s main achievements during your term of office?
I think that the main achievement is that the commission is relevant today. Parliament established it back in 2007 with a fair degree of hesitation. There were questions about whether Scotland needed a human rights commission and what value or relevance would it have. I do not hear those questions anywhere any longer. I hear other questions such as “Why did the commission not do this?” and “Why is it concentrating on that?”, but its relevance and credibility are now beyond question.
Scotland’s national action plan for human rights has also made human rights relevant more broadly in health, social care and other aspects of real life whereas, when the commission was established, human rights were seen as something that belonged in criminal justice only, and were seen by some as problematic. They were in a bit of a silo, and they were also in a silo in the Government, but now they have broadened out and their relevance is recognised. SNAP is the embodiment of that. Recognition of the relevance of the commission and recognition of the relevance of human rights to everyday life have been two of the accomplishments.
Where has the work that you have done added most value?
One of the things that I personally am proudest of is the challenging work that we did with survivors of historical child abuse. That was a tough area that had not been effectively addressed by Scotland at all, no matter who was in government or who was trying to tackle it. By using a human rights-based approach of putting survivors at the centre and ensuring that their experience was understood, and by discussing that around the same table where cabinet secretaries were sitting with survivors and representatives of religious institutions and local authorities, all of whom needed to understand one another and place themselves in the shoes of the survivors, the commission provided a human rights framework in which we could discuss what needed to be done to give survivors access to justice. Then an action plan was consensually adopted, and now we are seeing the early stages of its implementation and, through SNAP, the Government and others will be held to account for that implementation. The power of a human rights-based approach in that tough policy area is probably one of our best accomplishments.
That is good. I want to follow on from what Margaret Mitchell said about the international perspective. Do you have any concerns about the forthcoming referendum on Europe and how it may impact on human rights?
Yes, the commission will be publishing a paper prior to the EU referendum on the human rights implications of an exit or of staying in the EU, and on how human rights could be improved. From the point of view of progressing human rights, the commission will produce a briefing paper on the implications of an in vote or an out vote, in the same way that we did for the independence referendum, not taking a position for or against but just setting out the human rights implications that everyone should be aware of, so that people can vote as they think they should.
You have talked about how you got care providers and the Care Inspectorate involved in the care about rights project. You have also had buy-in from patient support groups and friends of care homes and the like, who can see a clear link—for example, the hydration of residents is a fundamental human right. Are there examples in other walks of life? I know that you want to have a rights-based approach to everything. I know that it may not be so easily transferable to other spheres, but are there any other examples like that?
When the commission was first established, we went around the country and asked people, “What do you think your human rights commission should prioritise?” and the answer was dignity and care, not only for older persons but, as we have seen with survivors of historical child abuse, with children’s welfare when they are in care.
Over my period in office, there has been a shift to seeing the relevance of human rights in health and social care and not only in criminal justice. For example, yesterday afternoon, I was at a housing project in Leith where we are working with residents in very inadequate housing conditions. I know that you have had problems with this building not being wind and watertight today, but that pales in comparison with the structural problems in that apartment building, where we are working with people to make them aware of the right to adequate housing that they have under international human rights law.
Those residents are armed with and empowered by the knowledge that they do not have to ask for things but have a right to decent housing. They are going round all the residents with a survey of the most critical things that need to be improved to allow them to live with dignity in their housing. With that information, they will develop indicators of progress. It is not an overnight panacea. The city council should work with the residents over the next few years to progressively realise their right to adequate housing. The residents will then be able to participate in decisions about how money can best be targeted to make the biggest improvement to living conditions in a very deprived area that are simply unacceptable in the 21st century.
A human rights-based approach has unlimited potential across all kinds of areas, and that is one area that will be shared with you next year in the SNAP 3 report.
You mentioned criminal justice a couple of times. You have commented on a couple of issues involving my former colleagues in the police service: stop and search and arming the police. I like the comment of John Scott QC that the police should be front-line defenders of human rights—have both those issues tested that assertion? Would you like to comment?
As part of the SNAP process, Police Scotland has committed to being accountable for providing human rights training and for shifting the culture in the police. It has also committed to being accountable for stop and search. Over the past year or 18 months, the commission and I have personally engaged with Police Scotland on the issues of both armed policing and stop and search. We have raised the issue of stop and search internationally. We took it to the UN Human Rights Committee, which called on the United Kingdom and Scotland to fix the problem. I think that progress has been made, not least due to the Parliament’s efforts to hold Police Scotland—and the whole governance framework for policing in Scotland—to account. One of the areas where I think that we have seen the best co-operation between the commission and the Parliament has been in identifying that non-statutory stop and search has no place under the rule of law and should be stopped. Over the next year, we will scrutinise the code of practice and the statutory basis that the Government has committed to introduce.
Police Scotland is an active participant in your leadership.
Yes. I think that Police Scotland attended twice to provide an account of what it is doing on training and stop and search. A delegation from the justice and safety action group, which was established by SNAP, went out to Tulliallan to gain an understanding of the human rights training that police officers are given and how it can be improved.
Finally, I understand that the commission has A status; why is A status important? I think that it is important, but can you articulate what it means?
There are now human rights institutions in over 100 countries. Under the UN Paris principles that govern national human rights institutions, those institutions are graded by their peers and by the UN on their independence from their Governments, on their effectiveness, and on other criteria. They are reviewed every five years, and the Scottish Human Rights Commission has been given A status twice.
If you are given the top billing of A status, it means that you have speaking rights at the UN, including the UN Human Rights Council and the treaty bodies. That matters in a whole range of ways. It means that you can hold your state to account, provide shadow reports and enable the UN to dig a bit deeper than the official state report might suggest is necessary. I spoke to the UN Human Rights Council on a whole range of areas, not least the bedroom tax and the right to adequate housing. I spoke to the Human Rights Council straight after the UK ambassador and the special rapporteur. You might remember that the special rapporteur came to Scotland and the UK and had some very robust things to say about the bedroom tax. She got rather short shrift from the UK Government, but we were able to speak before the UN Human Rights Council and support her criticisms. That led to increased public debate in Scotland about the need, from a human rights point of view, to get rid of the bedroom tax.
I have a final final question.
A final final. I am waiting for a final final final.
We like to think that we have very high standards in Scotland. Does the position of the Gypsy Traveller community give concern to the commission?
It causes great frustration that more progress in real terms has not been made in that regard despite the best intentions of the Equal Opportunities Committee and other bodies. The need for progress to be made in that context is critical.
Many thanks.
11:45
Professor Miller, in responding to Margaret Mitchell you said quite rightly that relationships and collaboration are important, but I hope that you will agree that critical analysis is, too. It would be interesting to hear a little bit more about how you have used the commission’s powers, particularly to conduct inquiries into public authorities’ policies and practices.
To date, we have not done that, but I cannot speak on behalf of my successor about what will happen after I leave. There are two reasons why we have not used the inquiry power. One is that when doors are open to you and there are open minds who are prepared to listen to what you say and to take seriously your suggestions about what needs to be done, going to the lengths of having an inquiry does not really add anything or take you somewhere that you would not get to through collaboration. We have not yet come across a situation in which an institution has said that it is not interested in having a dialogue with us. In such a case, we would look to use our powers. It might be that, because institutions know what powers we have, they feel that it is better to co-operate with us than to have us use those powers.
The other reason is pragmatic: we have a very limited budget and limited resources. We all know that inquiries can develop arms and legs and can be a big drain on capacity and resources, so we would have to think very seriously before undertaking one. However, we would certainly undertake an inquiry if there was no alternative for making progress in a given area.
There have been some fairly major policy shortcomings. John Finnie touched on stop and search in that regard, and there were also the policies on armed police officers, the use of segregation in prisons and the treatment of women offenders. With the benefit of hindsight, do you think that it would have been of benefit to have held a more formal, investigative inquiry into any of those issues?
I do not think so. On stop and search, we commissioned a legal opinion from the highest-level place where we could get one, which we had if we needed to use it. If the John Scott-led inquiry had not happened, and if the Cabinet Secretary for Justice had not accepted its report and recommendations, we would certainly have published that legal opinion, and we would have been a lot more assertive if that had been necessary. Fortunately, that was not necessary, because the process came to the right conclusion, but we were poised to do it if it had been necessary.
We are nearing the end of the first month of year 3 of SNAP. Can you give us a bit more information about what the various action groups’ priorities are likely to be this year or is that work still being developed?
The action groups themselves will develop that. I do not know whether you have the report, but I refer you to page 41, where it lays out in broad terms the areas that are likely to be reported on at the end of SNAP 3, which are quite wide ranging.
I am looking at the report.
The area that is particularly interesting is developing human rights budgeting, which is about people being able to participate in how resources are allocated in local communities or the country as a whole. That is something whose day is coming very soon, and we would like some more progress to be made on it.
We will be reporting on what effect the housing work in Leith has had and how it might be rolled out to other communities around the country.
In the past year we have done an interesting piece of work in Perth and Kinross, where service providers and the elected representatives were brought together with community representatives to explore what a human rights culture would look like in the area and to consider who needs to do what to improve the reality of human rights across a range of public services. This year, we will see what comes out of that work and the extent to which it can be replicated in other parts of the country.
In your report you talk about
“developing pilot initiatives around human rights budgeting.”
It might be helpful to explore a wee bit what is involved in that.
I can talk about that at a macro level and a micro level. The micro level is what we are doing with residents in a housing estate in Leith. If funds are available to improve the housing stock, decisions are not made without the participation of the residents, who know best what would make the biggest difference and be most cost effective, Such approaches need to be progressed, so that people at that level can participate from the outset in decisions about how resources can be most effectively allocated to enable them to live lives of dignity.
If a country says that it embraces human rights values, but it does not make human rights part of the budget process, which prioritises what will be done with the national resources, and it does not decide its priorities on the basis of a desire to realise rights to the highest attainable standard of health, adequate housing and an adequate standard of living, it is not walking the walk. The best way of getting the most informed priorities for spending money is by asking people to bring their lived experience to the table and be part of the process.
Human rights budgeting is quite a new area that is being explored in different parts of the world and has great potential. Just now, there can be no discussion about what is in the UK budget until it is revealed on budget day. Human rights budgeting tries to turn that on its head so that there is a much more participatory process that ensures that rights are on the table. To some extent, that is beginning to happen in Scotland. There are a number of pilots and projects on participatory budgeting, and we want to contribute to that development.
You talked about participatory budgeting in relation to housing. It seems to me that some local authorities are trying to take such an approach by asking the people in their areas what their priorities are, within the limits of the budget. Is that a good place to start?
Yes, and it is happening in different parts of the country. We want to build up that approach.
One of my colleagues—sorry, I mean Gil Paterson—
He was one of your colleagues the last time I looked.
Yes. Gil mentioned the European Union referendum. We are also waiting with bated breath for the UK Government’s proposals for a British bill of rights. How does the SHRC plan to participate in dialogue when proposals are released in that regard?
The commission has published a paper that sets out the test that should be applied to any proposal to replace the Human Rights Act 1998 with a British bill of rights. Basically, the test is whether the proposals are progressive or regressive, and we set out a number of criteria that should be the objective bases of assessment. When the consultation paper emerges, the commission will apply those objective tests to measure whether the approach is progressive or regressive in nature. Everything indicates that it will be a question of how regressive it is, rather than whether it is regressive, but the objective tests will be applied.
I thank you for your work during your time in office and wish you well after you step down.
I want to reflect on a slightly broader issue. Although progress has obviously been made on taking a human rights approach in things such as budgeting and service delivery, it seems to me that we still have not won the war of ideas in relation to the general public, and that that is why human rights are still vulnerable; it is why the UK Government thinks that repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 will be popular and why reductions in human rights are dressed up as ways to fight terrorism and all the rest of it. It is a fairly intractable problem. With hindsight, and having been in office for a period, do you have any reflections on how we can get the person on the number 35 bus to understand what human rights are about and to realise that they are not about offenders getting better treatment—
Colour tellies and carpets.
How do we get the public to understand that human rights affect us all?
I completely agree about public awareness and understanding of the relevance of human rights. If we took away human rights from the fabric of our life, we would all feel the difference very quickly; we can take a lot for granted. A toxic debate has been running for several years now at Westminster and it is reflected in a lot of the press and media, including in Scotland. There is a challenge, and it is unrealistic to expect a small body such as the Scottish Human Rights Commission to develop a mass public education programme of the scale that is needed. However, something needs to be done to address the situation.
There are a couple of things to say. Starting where we have to start, which is with the Scottish Parliament and Government, public bodies that deliver services, civil society and non-governmental organisations, we have seen an increased awareness of human rights in the political world, or what we might call the “formal” world. I completely agree that, out there in the “informal” world, that is still to happen with the same degree of success.
On the other hand, the confusion or mistrust about human rights is quite superficial. In my experience, whenever you have a serious conversation with anyone from any walk of life and you strip away some of the illusions and look at the facts and evidence and their life experience, it does not take very long before that person changes their views. Therefore, I do not feel weighed down by the issue, although it needs to be addressed and I hope that, progressively, that will take place.
A big debate is going to happen on the British bill of rights, the Human Rights Act 1998 and SNAP. That will be about which way we go and whether we are going to be progressive or regressive. The public are going to be caught up in that debate, so it is a big opportunity for us in Scotland and for people around the UK to present a much more progressive alternative, with understanding and vision about the need for human rights to be at the front and centre of any country’s way of governing itself.
I realise that it does not fall to the Scottish Human Rights Commission to do all that work for the whole of Scotland, but is preliminary work being done, not just by the commission but by others, to prepare the ground for the debate? Obviously, significant forces will be making the opposite arguments when the time comes, and people will not necessarily listen to politicians, because we are not everybody’s favourite people.
I do not know about that.
The debate will be an opportunity and I am sure that the commission will do its utmost to try to influence it.
On the broader issue, leaving aside the debate on the British bill of rights and the Human Rights Act 1998, in the coming third year of SNAP, we will explore what kind of education in schools provides the most effective promotion. We really want to focus on that being part of education and preparation for life. Children have very open minds: in my experience of going into schools, they ask the most honest, straightforward and challenging questions, because their minds are free from a lot of stuff that people pick up as they go through life. Children are keen to understand and to look around the world, and they have information technology that none of us had when we were at that stage. Schools are ripe for making progress over the next period.
12:00
I would never have thought that, as a human rights commissioner, you would go to a housing project in Leith. One thinks that you might speak to the UN and various big organisations. I am curious about how you got involved in that, because it is important that people see human rights as pragmatic and practical and not just philosophical—although it is that as well. How did the commission become involved with that project? Did someone from Leith write to you to ask for help?
It is a good story, actually, so I thank you for the question.
When I was elected by Parliament to become the first chair of the commission, I was contacted right away by Mary Robinson, whom I had worked with for a number of years and with whom I have a close relationship. She said, “Congratulations, Alan. What are you going to do?” I said, “I’m going to be coming round asking people like you what I should be doing.” She said, “Well, go to Belfast.” My immediate reply was, “But, Mary, I’ve just been elected by the Scottish Parliament and I’m using Scottish taxpayers’ money, so the first thing I do can’t be to go out of the country.” She told me to do it as soon as possible and to go to the Seven Towers housing estate in north Belfast, which she had just visited the week before and where some interesting work was being done to make human rights a reality in everyday life. She suggested that I go there to understand what was happening and that I think about doing the same thing in Scotland.
So, I went and I learned. It maybe took me longer than I would have liked, but last year we held an event in Govan on the first anniversary of SNAP and I invited the people who have been doing that effective work in Belfast. I introduced them to the Edinburgh Tenants Federation, and things have just taken off. The commission and the Edinburgh Tenants Federation are working with that Belfast NGO to learn the lessons about what has worked elsewhere and to adapt it to see whether it can benefit people in Scotland.
That is a good place to stop. I was curious, because I would never have pictured you being down in Leith. That is a very good example to show people that human rights are not for others, but are for everyday life.
Thank you very much. We wish you well. If you have anything that you do not want to say in public about your job, we will all be happy to hear it, and mum’s the word.
Thanks very much.
12:02 Meeting suspended.