Official Report 124KB pdf
Care Homes (PE522)
Item 2 is consideration of two petitions, the first of which is petition PE522. Members will recall that, following our initial consideration of the petition, we have written twice to the Executive requesting updates on progress on research into the care needs of disabled young people. In May, the Deputy Minister for Health and Community Care told the committee that the working group that had been set up to look into the aims and focus of research in the area had disbanded. There is an update on that in the committee's papers.
I am concerned about the lack of information, which raises many questions. It is wrong that, in 2004, we still have inadequate information about the needs of and provision for younger disabled people. The Executive should be addressing the issue more quickly than it appears to be doing. I want our consideration of the issue to proceed as quickly as possible and in the most efficient and effective manner.
I, too, am concerned about the issue. I have been dealing with a case in which a badly disabled young person has been put into an old folk's home because there was nowhere else for them to go. It is sad that the Executive has taken so long to get even to this stage.
I agree that we should cover this crucial issue in our inquiry. I also agree on the need to write to the Executive about the remit of the scoping study. We should do both things, so that we can consider the short-term issue as well as the medium to long-term issues.
Obviously, given that our inquiry is into the barriers that people with disabilities face, we will require to engage with the petitioner on the issue. As Marilyn Livingstone said, there is also a need for the Executive's scoping study. We have neither the opportunity nor the time to look into the issue of care homes, for example. Sandra White is right to say that it has taken far too long to do any work to move the matter forward. I am sure that we have all heard horrific stories of young people not being able to access appropriate respite care.
I apologise for being a few minutes late, convener. I agree with what I have heard since I arrived. The issue affects young people throughout the country and we should examine it carefully.
I agree with what has been said about the correspondence and about including the issue in the remit for our disability inquiry. I am concerned by the fact that the letter from the Deputy Minister for Health and Community Care states that one of the research advisory group's aims was a review of the available literature on the needs of adults under 65. I was not aware that that was what we were focusing on and, although I am interested in adults under 65, I thought that the petition was concerned with younger people.
You are absolutely right.
That is what I was going to say. The petition is about younger people and it is important to focus on them. The witnesses from whom we have already heard have shown us what a big contribution young people can make and it is important to focus on that.
It is worth engaging the petitioner in our inquiry, but we also need to push for work to be done for young people who are in need of respite care. Committee members are right to point out that the petition is not about adults under 65, but about appropriate care for young people who need respite or long-term care. We should go back to the minister for an update on provision and on whether there have been discussions about taking the work forward.
Pornography (PE752)
Petition PE752 proposes that the Scottish Parliament should define pornographic material as incitement to sexual hatred and make such incitement an offence similar to incitement to racial hatred. The committee considered many of the issues that are raised in the petition under the gender reporter's report in March 2004, about which we wrote to the Executive. I invite members to comment. I will take Elaine Smith first, as she was the gender reporter.
I have taken evidence from Scottish Women Against Pornography and others over the years and have written various papers on the wider issues around violence against women and children, including on pornography. For some reason, I thought that the petitioners might be here for us to question, but that is not the case and we are obviously deciding only how to deal with the petition.
I concur with much of what Elaine Smith said. I am convener of the cross-party group on survivors of childhood sexual abuse, which is looking at working with a ministerial team on a preventive strategy. We have considered the issue of internet grooming and there are links between such activities and pornography. The cross-party group wants more work to be done on that. Pornography is a big issue and, as Elaine Smith said, the Equal Opportunities Committee should address it.
I concur with other members' views. I found the Executive's response unsatisfactory on a number of counts, including its statement that for every piece of research that proves one thing, another piece proves the opposite. That is an unsatisfactory, numerical way of viewing research. The point is the kind of research that has been done and how wide its remit was. We would do well to look at the research that the Executive considered. Alternatively, we could ask the Executive for a more detailed report of how it reached its conclusions. I do not mean that the work should be repeated, but I think that the Executive's response to us was unsatisfactory.
I support what Elaine Smith has said. It is important that the Equal Opportunities Committee should carry out an investigation. The mere fact that we have not been able to receive through the post some of the evidence that was submitted with the petition—it will be shown to us privately—indicates the type of material that we are talking about. Pornography is very much an equality issue.
I agree with all the members who have spoken—we should hold an inquiry on pornography. I, too, congratulate Scottish Women Against Pornography for having brought the issue to the committee's attention in such an innovative way.
I had printed off the gender reports that I have produced over the years, but I do not have in front of me a copy of the one that I want. A few years ago, the Equal Opportunities Committee agreed to look into the subject further and, I believe, to take evidence on it, but that was never actioned. I thought that it might be helpful to mention that there is such an agreement lying somewhere in the system.
There are two issues to do with women and pornography—the general debate and legislation. If members cast their minds back to the debate on domestic violence that took place more than 20 years ago, the argument that we came up against and had to overcome was that domestic violence was a private matter for the individuals concerned. However, in the past 20 years, a whole analysis has been done that shows that domestic violence is abuse of women and that it is a societal issue. Like many other bodies, the Scottish Executive has now taken that view of the analysis about domestic violence. Once the issue was debated and explained, we moved towards legislation.
I have no difficulty about inquiring into this important subject, but the issues surrounding pornography can be like those surrounding domestic abuse. Obviously, I totally oppose domestic abuse of any kind. I know that the vast majority of acts of domestic abuse are perpetrated by men against women, but the situation can sometimes be the other way round, as I have highlighted before. Similarly with pornography, although I suspect that the material that we are talking about involves largely the abuse of women, I presume that there is also pornography that involves the exploitation of men. If we are to consider the issues surrounding pornography, we should consider all the issues, including that one. I accept that most pornography affects women, but I simply flag up that issue.
Is there an opportunity to receive comments from the petitioners?
We must stick by our agenda and discuss what we will do with the petition. Our discussion seems to have gone wider than that, as members have talked about conducting an inquiry in the longer term to consider how to deal with the issues. The committee could decide to do that and, if it so decided, we would of course hear further evidence from the petitioners and others. However, it is not fair to ask the petitioners to come and speak to us now. That is not on our agenda and we need to adhere to protocol. Committee members must decide how we take the matter forward. It is understandable and it is probably right that our discussion has gone much wider than the petition, but we need to decide what we do next with the petition and whether we want to take it forward.
I was a wee bit concerned when you spoke about a long-term inquiry. I have been on the committee since 1999 and became the gender reporter shortly thereafter. From where I am sitting, it seems that such inquiries have been going on for some time. I accept that a big inquiry might stretch into the longer term but, bearing in mind what Shiona Baird said, I would like SWAP to appear before the committee sooner rather than later to explore some of the issues. Then we could see how we wanted to make progress in the longer term.
I agree with that—many good suggestions are coming from the committee. Perhaps because of my role as convener of the cross-party group on survivors of childhood sexual abuse, I believe that we need to think through what we would be taking on and how wide our remit should be—whether it should cover children, too, for example. We need to have a debate about that. We need to keep in mind that the issue affects men, women and children in our society.
We need to find out what the justice committees have done so far in their consideration of the area. We probably need an update from the Executive. If we gather any evidence, we will have to decide whether we want to do an inquiry. If so, we will have to decide the scope of the inquiry—are we talking about women and pornography or about pornography in general, given the issue of child pornography? We need first to decide what we want to do; we then need to consider a work programme and decide how to proceed. In a sense, that is what I meant when I spoke about the longer term. I do not suggest that we just talk about the matter and then lose it—the committee would not allow that to happen.
We should specifically ask the Executive for more information on the review of research because, if it has looked at the matter, it will have more detailed information that we could use.
We need that from the Executive because we need to sit down and discuss how to proceed.
We should also remind the Executive that the working group that it set up recommended that it should review that area of criminal law and continue to investigate the link between the undermining of women in society and crimes of violence. We have to remind the Executive of that, because it seems to have dropped that work.
That is right. We need an update on what has happened to the hate crimes report. Given the input from organisations from across the board in Scotland, it would be awful if that report were written up and no action were taken as a result. We want to include that in our information gathering.
Although I agree with everything that you have said so far, convener, I would like to make a request—that is not something that I do often in the committee—that we agree today to find an hour somewhere in our schedule in which we can make a start by asking SWAP questions. I feel strongly that we should invite the group to appear before us.
We could do that. However, as I was about to suggest, we could pool the information together, ask the justice committees about it, get an update from the Executive about the research and get an update about what is happening with the hate crimes report. I was going to suggest that you, as gender reporter, could do some work or speak to representatives of SWAP with a view to bringing information to us. Before we get involved in any inquiry, we have to agree its scope, as we did with the disability inquiry. We did not just sit down and say, "Right, we're going to do an inquiry on disability." We took evidence on the scope of our inquiry and I suggest that in this case we ask SWAP to assist us in that regard.
I am perfectly happy to do that kind of work, but I have done background work with SWAP in the past. It is all there—it is in the archives. I really wanted the committee to hear from SWAP during a public meeting, rather than just getting the issues second hand, as it were, through my reports.
I was not suggesting that we just get the information through your reports; I was suggesting that you speak to SWAP with a view to our considering evidence. If we are to take evidence, we need to have a wide range of witnesses. SWAP might be the first organisation from which we would take evidence, but we would also want to hear from other organisations that support what SWAP is saying. A report might already exist, but it was not written by the committee in this session. I am not suggesting that you go back to the archives.
I am sorry that we are having to have this debate, but it is important. SWAP could name a host of people from whom we should hear evidence. However, before we even get to the stage of considering the scope of the inquiry and so on, it would be incredibly helpful if the committee could have a question session with SWAP. After that, I could do the sort of work that you suggest, convener, and we could proceed on that basis.
I am not sure whether this offers a helpful way forward but, before our previous disability inquiry, the convener and the committee asked me to hold informal sessions with groups around the country. I went to the Highlands and Islands and I spoke to various groups in Fife, for example. We asked people in each geographical area about the issue. I was able to come back to the committee with a report before we reached the stage of taking evidence and before we decided on the groups to call before us. Before the inquiry took shape, I had spoken to representatives of about a dozen groups. That was not as many as I would have liked—unfortunately, I had to go into hospital. However, I was able to produce a report to say what I had found and to describe the wider agenda that was out there. I do not know whether it would be a good idea for us to ask Elaine Smith to do a similar piece of work. She could speak to representatives of SWAP and other organisations from around the country. As we found during the previous inquiry, there were a number of issues of which we were unaware. I wonder whether a similar approach could be taken this time.
I did not want to consider only the evidence that SWAP provided, important as that is. I wanted to bring in wider evidence, with a view to actually doing something. We could have a talking session and we could all agree that things are terrible—Elaine Smith and I have been there and done that with other committees. I suggest that we do something tangible, so that we can change things.
I suppose that I am a wee bit frustrated about this, because of the previous work that I have done over the years. However, what Marilyn Livingstone is suggesting is probably what you are suggesting, convener.
Yes.
Consideration of my member's bill should be finished by the end of the month and I am happy to do the work that has been suggested. We must ensure that we have a timescale for the work and that, after that work is done, SWAP and other organisations come before the committee. It is perfectly acceptable to me to do that work, if that is what the committee wants.
I should add that I had support from the committee clerks when I attended the meetings that I held. The clerks took a note of each of the meetings, which was helpful. If the clerks could do the same for Elaine Smith, that would be very helpful to her.
That is a good starting point. I was certainly not suggesting that we do some sort of long-term piece of work that could just end up getting lost. In fact, I feel absolutely the opposite: I do not see the point of our doing anything unless we can produce a report with recommendations that could change things.
Meeting continued in private until 11:20.
Previous
Items in Private