Public Petitions Committee,

Meeting date: Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Official Report 276KB pdf

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Equalities Report

Agenda item 4 is consideration of our draft annual equalities report. Having seen the draft report, do members have any issues that they wish to raise? Do members agree to adopt the report?

I agree that we should adopt the report, but I am concerned about the Edinburgh-centric nature of the petitions that arrive here. If we were to plot them on a map, we would find that, at a radius of 50 miles or 100 miles from Edinburgh, the application rate falls off. The committee needs to address that huge issue. It might well mean that we need to take the mountain to Mohammed by going out and about more as a committee. What are other members' views?

We have tried to do that in our tour of the country.

I think that we are right to have done that, but we may need to go out even more.

We identified that as a problem—hence our taking the committee to different places. We will meet in Jedburgh in an effort to raise awareness in that part of the country. We need to make such visits on an on-going basis, so John Scott is right to highlight that difficulty. We will need to monitor the situation.

We also need to ensure that we receive petitions from minority groups and various other groups that have not taken advantage of the existence of the Public Petitions Committee. I am sure that such groups will have issues that we would like to consider.

When I attended last night's briefing on the worldwide event that Civicus is to host in Glasgow in June, I was pleased to see Jim Johnston's name. He will address various workshops at that event. It is good to have our clerking team going out as ambassadors to ensure that we reach different voluntary organisations, which are among the best means of accessing the many people out there who need access to our committee. We need to provide access to equality groups, groups for ethnic minorities and other groups to do with gender, disability, race and so on. I am pleased to see that happening.

However, John Scott is right—we have worked hard as a committee. We have been to Ayr, Inverness, Dundee and Dunfermline and we are off to Jedburgh later this month and will go to Glasgow in November. It is good that we are doing that. It is a constant struggle for us to ensure that people know about the work of the committee and the difference that it can make to their lives.

I have a couple of questions and a comment. The Equal Opportunities Commission, the Disability Rights Commission and the Commission for Racial Equality made specific recommendations about anonymising data and sending survey forms in advance. Did we incorporate all those?

We incorporated some of the recommendations, and we are continuing to look at others. The proposition in the paper is that we continue dialogue with those organisations.

Some of the suggestions are fairly straightforward, such as that we should capture age and gender details. We should, as a matter of course, be gathering much of the information the organisations suggest we gather.

I have one question on language. By my reckoning, English accounts for 65 per cent of the responses. What did other people say was their first or preferred language?

The figure of 65 per cent is the percentage of people who filled the form in. Some respondents did not answer that question. Interestingly, it is the only question for which we did not provide a category. We changed the question on race or ethnic group in response to advice from the Commission for Racial Equality, and the number of responses to that question increased considerably.

Okay. I am specifically supportive of the recommendation that we go to Glasgow. However, we should not try to do two things in the one visit; that is, go to Glasgow and tackle our problem in respect of black and ethnic minority groups. I think that we should do both, but that may necessitate a return to Glasgow or a visit to some other location.

I agree with Jackie Baillie. I also draw attention to the male to female gender identity ratio in petitioners, which is 3:2 in favour of males. I do not know quite how we can address that.

Women complain less.

Others might think differently. There is no basis in fact for that.

Yes there is.

Is there any way in which we can address that imbalance sympathetically? Is Jim Johnston always the first point of contact? I am not suggesting that that is anything other than entirely appropriate, but I do not know whether it would have any bearing on it if Eileen Martin or someone else was the first point of contact for petitioners.

I would like to think that it would not make a difference.

I trust that it would not. However, we must seek a solution to the problem.

One of the suggestions is that we send the report to the Equal Opportunities Commission. We will continue our dialogue on how we should address the issues.

If the EOC could make suggestions as to how we could address the problems, I am sure that we would listen to it.

Some of the workshops that we have held around the country have been quite well attended by women. Maybe the figure will start to increase. There are four women on the committee; perhaps we should be reaching out in a sisterly fashion.

Many of the women who have come here have contacted me at my surgery—other MSPs may have had the same experience—because they have been nervous and have felt quite intimidated. We need to put the message out that we are actually quite friendly and cuddly folk. I wonder whether women are aware that crèche facilities are available at Parliament. We could maybe push a bit in that direction. I am sure that Jim Johnston is not frightening the women away.

We have commissioned research into all the petitions that we have received—where they have come from, what their outcome has been and who has lodged them. It will be interesting to see whether lessons can be learned from that. I am not sure when we expect the research to be completed.

We expect the research in September. It is being done by the University of Glasgow.

That will give us an opportunity to examine the issues and to consider how we can take things forward. We are always trying to develop the committee's processes so that we can be more accessible. The more we learn, the more we can change and adapt. I am always open to such suggestions and dialogue.

Are members happy that the report is a factual statement of the committee's position?

Members indicated agreement.