Agenda item 2 concerns scrutiny of the draft budget 2012-13 and the spending review.
Douglas Thornton will keep us right on this, but did we not specifically ask for that?
My view is that we should push for more. I accept that there has been a response.
Sorry, convener, but the Scottish Government said that its target is 2 per cent across all grades, which is fairly ambitious. I am not clear what we are saying. Do we think that that is not enough?
Targets have been set, but my concern is about how we know that the Government is meeting the targets and what it is doing to ensure that it meets them.
I would like to know what the definition is, because I do not believe that the 1 per cent figure reflects ethnic minorities. I believe that it reflects those of colour, but not white ethnic minorities. The Government says that the targets will be reviewed using data from the 2011 census, which used new criteria. I think that the figure is low as a result of the Government not collecting the data correctly.
I do not have a problem with your suggestion, convener. Obviously, the census information, which Siobhan McMahon mentions, will be helpful, but we do not have it yet. Does the clerk know when the data is likely to be published?
We do not know.
I am told that it will be this summer.
Siobhan McMahon is right. That would give us a fairly concrete basis on which to look at things.
I have picked out a couple of other points, one of which is to do with the reducing reoffending change fund. I would like to know how the fund will be targeted to help women offenders and to prevent them from reoffending, given that women are viewed differently in the justice system. In a couple of weeks—on 17 April, I think—the report of Elish Angiolini’s commission on women offenders will be launched. It will be interesting to find out what actions the Government will take specifically through the change fund to target women offenders.
Is there a prospect that Elish Angiolini might have recommendations on that in her report?
That is a possibility.
Therefore, is it not worth waiting for that report? There might be a recommendation on the issue.
Yes, that is a possibility. The report is being launched on 17 April.
The Government’s response to our paragraph 16, which was on preventative spend, suggests that we co-ordinate with the Finance Committee. That is compelling because we do not want duplication of effort. Any accommodation that can be reached to acquire the information that both committees want for minimum effort would be welcome.
I think that we need to adopt and adhere to the terminology that the Government uses. We need the Government to give us its definitions so that we are all comparing apples with apples, as it were. If there are two or three different definitions, the Government might respond to only one. To provide clarity, would it be best for us to find out the Government’s definitions and use them?
It is important that we work to the same definitions. To that end, if there is a glossary of terminology, it would be handy to have it.
That will be explored.
On Elish Angiolini’s report, it would be worth while for the committee to return to the issue further down the line, once the report has been published and we have had a chance to digest it. We should not take a decision today, but wait until we are better equipped to do so.
Yes, because that is only a couple of weeks away.
Indeed. I agree whole-heartedly with the point about working with the Finance Committee. There is no point in our chasing information if the work has already been done by another committee.
On the recommendation that we write to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth to say that our approach is not moving away from the wider perspective, our paragraph 102 stated clearly what we are trying to do, so I am not sure what a letter of reassurance would add. I have read the paper twice and, to be honest, I cannot imagine why we got such a response from the Government. To me, there is no departure from anything in what we stated in our report. We simply want to scrutinise further, and the Government should welcome that approach. I am not sure that a letter of assurance is needed.
By April into May, we should be looking at them.
March has extended itself, then. Okay.
These things often happen. They are late, but they are in the process.
The Government’s final sentence in response to our paragraph 102 states:
Does the clerk have any knowledge of that?
I think that the Government’s interpretation of the committee’s paragraph 102 focuses on the words
Can we have further clarification of that, perhaps in writing?
Yes. That would be helpful.
With reference to the apprenticeships, are you looking to equate a percentage of the 25,000 with the black and ethnic minority population or hard-to-reach groups? Are you looking to say that a certain number should be guaranteed an apprenticeship through the scheme?
I do not know whether I would go that far, but I would like an assurance that support is available and that adequate consideration is given to ethnic minority groups. I would like to know how many people from such groups have been successful in getting and completing a modern apprenticeship.
Some of the hard-to-reach group when it comes to getting back into employment are people who have sensory impairments or who are deaf or hard of hearing. Quite a high percentage of working-age people in that group do not get back into the employment market.
That should not preclude them from getting into the modern apprenticeship scheme.
It is about having the infrastructure to support them through the apprenticeship scheme.
Being from a hard-to-reach group should not be a barrier to people getting into the modern apprenticeship scheme.
I think that you should go further than that in what we ask. It may be well and good for people to have an apprenticeship, but where are they doing that apprenticeship? Are they getting an apprenticeship for something that exists in their own workplace? Is it something new? Is it their first? Is it something that they can go forward with, particularly if they are female? How do we count that? It is important that we go further and ask what the apprenticeship is, rather than just ask whether they have got one.
I add a word of caution. We do not want to appear to have a hierarchy in that regard. The position either fits the criteria for a modern apprenticeship or it does not. I posed a question recently about the efforts that are made to encourage black and ethnic minority groups to access apprenticeships. Douglas Thornton will be able to access the minister’s response; it was not particularly comprehensive, but it may inform the discussion a bit.
I do not want to create a hierarchy at all. It is about what we discussed with regard to unions and females coming in, and how we create stereotypes around apprenticeships. The point is whether we are getting around that. Is more information on apprenticeships getting to the people who need it?
We have specifically raised the issues of race and gender with regard to modern apprenticeships. I think that Siobhan McMahon has made a good point: it is very easy to slot stereotypes into a modern apprenticeship and say, “That’s great. That person has got a modern apprenticeship.” Up to a point that is great, but it does not necessarily address the issues of race and gender.
That is true. Does anyone else have any comments?
I have just one. In paragraph 9 of paper 2, the final bullet point states:
Clearly, Remploy falls into that category, does it not?
It does. Yes, quite clearly Remploy sits in there.
On the specific duties with regard to the equality impact assessments, do we wish to wait to see them?
I think that it is important that we wait to see them, because the timeframe is fairly short. Seeing them would inform us as to whether we need to do anything more.
Do you mean that we should not wait?
No, I think that we should wait until we get the duties.
Some information will be forthcoming that I think would help the committee.
If the duties have been drawn up, can we not ask the Equality and Human Rights Commission about them?
Yes, so we should not wait. We will do that.
It probably would be useful to ask for that information now so that the committee has it when it is asked to scrutinise the matter. The committee will be asked to scrutinise it quite quickly—in the space of one or two meetings.
What form will the new duties take? Will they be set out in a statutory instrument?
Yes, that is right.
Okay. Will the committee have a locus in considering that?
Yes, it will be an affirmative instrument.
Right. I did not understand that.
Are we happy with the rest of the recommendations as they are set out in the paper?
Why do we have to write to the cabinet secretary to reassure him that we are not taking a different approach? Our paragraph 102 set that out clearly.
We can change the wording. We do not have to reassure the cabinet secretary. The letter can be about modern apprenticeships and nothing else.
We are here to scrutinise what the Government is doing, so we do not have to use the word “reassure”. If it would be helpful to write back to the cabinet secretary to explain what we are looking to do, that would be fine.
We do not have to do any reassuring.
It is semantics. We can just write and say that it is our job to scrutinise how the Government’s approach works in practice.
It provides greater focus to look at a specific issue rather than generalities. We will not reassure the cabinet secretary.
We should just state the fact, which, as Stuart McMillan says, is that we are here to scrutinise and that is what we are doing.
The suggestion is made that we undertake a survey of a selection of public bodies, in which we ask them the questions that are set out in paragraph 9. Paragraph 10 suggests that we ask those questions of Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland, VisitScotland and Transport Scotland. Are we happy to do that?
We should ask those questions, but with the amendment that I suggested earlier.
Yes, we will do that.
I am not trying to be difficult. I am not unhappy with that, but it struck me that the biggest employers are the NHS and local government, albeit that they are not structured on a national basis. The suggested organisations are employers, but they are not significant employers; they just happen to be in the public sector. There is no reason why we should not write to them, but I am much more interested in what goes on in the NHS, which is a massive employer. However, that is down to individual boards.
Douglas Thornton will check what information we have on NHS boards.
I am perfectly happy with the five bodies to which it is proposed that we write.
I think that the idea of hearing from the NHS is a good one. There are different boards, but we could hear from different boards about their approaches. Will we ask just about women, or about ethnic minorities as well? The suggestion in our paper only mentions women.
It relates to our inquiry on women and work.
Okay.
The response to paragraph 25 says a bit about what NHS Scotland is doing.
But that is about how the NHS deals with its patient client base. I am interested in knowing what approach it adopts to the employment of women.
Okay. We will include the NHS in the survey that we undertake.
Looking ahead to our women in work inquiry, equal pay has been an issue for some years and people have taken councils to court. Bearing in mind our inquiry, as part of the proposed process, or separately from it, could we ask all the local authorities what the current situation is as regards outstanding equal pay claims?
I do not have a problem with that. Equal pay was certainly quite an element of my constituency mailbag a year or a year and a half ago, when it was a big issue in the west of Scotland. I do not know what the current position is.
It would be useful to do that. I know that local authorities have been trying to get through equal pay claims as quickly as possible. I was a member of employment tribunals. My recollection is that, last January, there were nearly 7,000 unheard equal pay claims involving local authorities in the tribunal office.
Job evaluation is a live and a fraught issue. It has been quite difficult for the trade unions and local authority employees because of a court case in England, which I think the trade unions felt made their position on collective bargaining vulnerable, as you may be aware. I think that there is a lawyer in England who probably has the vast majority of those 7,000 cases. I mention that because I do not know what information we could get back, but there would be no harm in asking.
It would be worth asking.
Thank you very much for your attendance.
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