Equal Opportunities Committee, 04 Nov 2008
Meeting date: Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Official Report
165KB pdf
Reporter
Item 4 is a report from Bill Wilson, our sexual orientation reporter. He will give us an update on his recent meeting with LGBT groups.
I will be fairly brief.
The first issue that was raised was the census. The groups are keen to see a non-obligatory question in the census. They felt that it would be inappropriate for the state to be able to demand to know a person's sexual orientation, but that a voluntary question would be useful. They noted that the question on religion was voluntary: unfortunately, the original act of Parliament to make that a voluntary question does not seem to allow for adding other voluntary questions, so a new bill is therefore required. They noticed that that had previously been done quite quickly for religion and were keen to see such legislation for sexual orientation.
As members would probably expect, LGBT groups are fully supportive of the Offences (Aggravation by Prejudice) (Scotland) Bill, which we have just discussed. They mentioned one addition that they would like to be made to the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Bill—they would like there to be a specific offence of object rape. I believe that they took that issue to the Justice Committee.
Concern was expressed that the United Kingdom Government's proposed equality bill might not level up as was anticipated—it might not afford a higher level of protection to all equality strands. The groups wanted the bill to consider harassment in respect of goods, facilities and services for LGBT people. They noticed that, when the meeting took place, the Scottish Government had not responded to the hearts and minds agenda group report, on which the committee took oral evidence last year.
That is it, unless members have any questions.
I want to ask—
I knew you would have a question.
With regard to rape by an object, my understanding is that the matter is not addressed in the bill that is before the Justice Committee. Have the groups and others suggested to the Justice Committee that it should consider the issue or amend the bill?
They told me that they were going to submit amendments to the Justice Committee. I contacted some groups that deal with torture in this country—there are some 40,000 victims of torture. I suggested that as object rape is a common method of torture, they might also want to make a submission. Those groups generally thought that that was a good idea, but I do not know whether they made a submission.
Thanks very much. That was helpful.
As agreed on 7 October, we will now move into private session to consider the draft report to the Finance Committee on the Scottish Government's draft budget for 2009-10.
Meeting continued in private until 12:16.