City of Edinburgh LGBT Community Safety Forum
I welcome Andrew O'Donnell, Martin Henry and Derek Wheldon to speak to the committee. Andrew will give a short talk and then committee members can ask questions.
Andrew O’Donnell (City of Edinburgh Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Safety Forum):
I am chair of the forum.
Martin Henry (City of Edinburgh Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Safety Forum):
I represent the City of Edinburgh social work department on the forum.
Derek Wheldon (City of Edinburgh Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Safety Forum):
I am a superintendent with Lothian and Borders police. I represent the police on the forum.
The forum is in partnership with a number of public and private organisations, including the community safety unit, Lothian Health, the City of Edinburgh Council and Lothian and Borders fire brigade. The LGBT sub-group of the partnership has representatives from the council social work, housing and education departments; from the health service and Lothian and Borders police; from many LGBT voluntary and statutory organisations; and from businesses.
I am grateful to have the opportunity today to present research commissioned by the community safety unit, "Experiences and Perceptions of Violence and Intimidation of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Communities in Edinburgh". It is dated October 1999 and was paid for by Lothian and Borders police and the City of Edinburgh Council and was carried out by Moira Plant PhD, Martin Plant PhD, Bill Mason MBA and Christine Thornton CQSW. I would like to read out a few of the main points from the summary of the research.
"This report describes the results of a survey of the perceptions and experiences of violence and intimidation against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender/transsexual people in Edinburgh. For the purposes of this report, these individuals are referred to as ‘LGBT people'. Information was obtained by a survey of a study group of 301 people. This was conducted between February and July 1999. The subjects of the study were contacted through a non-random method called ‘snowballing' or networking. This method is particularly suited to eliciting information from minority groups of ‘hidden populations'. Each respondent was interviewed in private using a standardised interview schedule.
Interviews were conducted with 133 gay men, 105 lesbians, 27 bisexual men, 18 bisexual women and 18 transgender/transsexual people. The study group was diverse in both age and occupational status.
National and international evidence makes it clear that LGBT people experience high levels of ‘hate crimes' and discrimination.
Most of those interviewed were to some degree fearful about some form of victimisation. Respondents reported being fearful of verbal abuse, victimisation or assault at home, school, work and a wide variety of other locations. Most reported that their lives were to some degree affected by the fear of being victimised. Transgender people were significantly more likely than others to report that their lives were affected by fear of victimisation.
Eighty one per cent of respondents had experienced verbal abuse at some time and 63.1% had done so in the past year. Three quarters of the latter attributed such abuse as being motivated by prejudice against their sexual sub group identities.
The majority, 52.5% of the study group had at some time been victims of physical assault. A total of 35.9% had been subjected to such assaults in the past year. This is a massively high level of such experience: (The 1996 Scottish Crime Survey had found that in the general adult population, ‘only' one person in 40 had been the victim of assault, robbery or ‘snatch theft' in the previous year).
Nearly a third of those interviewed had been sexually assaulted. Roughly a fifth of these assaults were classified as having been serious, more that a quarter involved rape or attempted rape. The largest group of sexual assault victims (47.9%) had informed nobody about their experiences. Only 12.5% of those who had been subjected to sexual assault had reported the fact to the police.
Many of those who had been assaulted or otherwise victimised had told a friend about the experience but had not informed the police.
Respondents were asked whether they had been the victims of discrimination in a number of contexts. Bullying while at school/college was the commonly cited experience. This had been experienced by 37.5% of the study group. A substantial proportion of respondents had experienced discrimination in other settings. These included work, housing, bars and restaurants and in relation to mortgages and insurance.
Many respondents reported having been subject to ill treatment from a variety of people. Those mentioned most often were professionals in the health service and the police. Others cited in relation to ill treatment were people at school, insurance company staff, swimming pool and sauna staff. Others mentioned in this context included nurses, dentists, librarians and housing association officials.
Over a third of those who had been assaulted reported that their self esteem had been adversely affected.
These results present the City of Edinburgh Council, the health and social services, Lothian and Borders Police, schools, insurance companies, building societies and many other organisations with a serious challenge. It is clear from this study that LGBT people suffer completely unacceptable levels of abuse and assault in Edinburgh. The scale of this degrading treatment clearly infringes the fundamental human rights of some of the people in Edinburgh and seriously impairs their quality of life. These findings gain considerable strength because they are fully consistent with a large body of international evidence.
A group of Edinburgh citizens are in the position of living in fear and of being victimised in almost every possible type of setting. A substantial proportion of those in this study who had been seriously victimised had not reported this to the police. In many cases this failure to report was motivated by fear and suspicion of the police, by whom some people had previously been mistreated."
If the committee will bear with me for a few minutes, I will read some of the recommendations. I stress that these are the recommendations of the researchers, not of any of the partners on the forum.
"It is recommended that the City of Edinburgh, in partnership with the LGBT Community Safety Forum (CSF), should speedily adopt a wide-ranging programme to protect LGBT people from victimisation.
The City of Edinburgh in association with the CSF should press both the Scottish Parliament and the UK Parliament to strengthen legislation to prohibit homophobic discrimination in important sectors such as law enforcement, housing, employment, social and medical care, education, insurance and the full range of public and privately owned services.
It is recommended that the Lothian and Borders Police should routinely collect and publish information on the number and types of crimes which are ‘hate/bias' crimes related to sexual orientation, as well as to race or religion. It is, however, acknowledged that this is a contentious issue. Some people would argue that civil liberties might be at risk if the sexual orientations of assault victims were recorded on any ‘official' database.
It is recommended that the City of Edinburgh Housing Department should either evict or move tenants who commit hate crimes against their neighbours or should give a high priority to re-housing the victims of hate crimes committed by neighbours or local residents. The effectiveness of current policies should be reviewed. Such a review could be conducted by the City of Edinburgh Council and the CSF.
It is recommended that the City of Edinburgh Council, in association with the CSF, should ensure that all departments operate a policy of non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This is particularly important with respect to employment, education and housing.
It is recommended that the City of Edinburgh Council, in association with the CSF, should actively encourage all local institutions to adopt policies of non-discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. It should be considered whether agencies that do not comply should be penalised, for example, by the non-renewal of contracts, licences or other civic benefits.
It is recommended that the serious problem of ill treatment of LGBT people by health professionals should be given urgent attention. In particular, there is a clear need for much better education and training on matters of sexuality and gender for all those in the health services. Moreover, such professionals have very clear obligations to respect patients' right to fair treatment. Action should be taken to improve the education of students in the health care professions on issues related to LGBT people.
It is recommended that future research should be conducted to monitor the continuing seriousness of victimisation of LGBT people. In addition, research could usefully explore the extent of homophobic prejudice and discrimination in key sectors of employment, such as the health and social services, education, insurance and building societies. Such research could usefully be carried out on a national, as well as on a local, basis.
It is recommended that the City of Edinburgh Council and the CSF should actively liaise with key professional groups such as the nursing, medical and teaching professions and the police to foster better education and awareness in relation to the needs and rights of LGBT people."
Thank you very much. Would Derek Wheldon or Martin Henry like to add any comments?
That encapsulates the recommendations from the report.
I make it clear that my interest in the issue is twofold—first, in relation to the social work service and what it can do to improve the quality of life for LGBT communities in the city and, secondly, in relation to the sexual assault and sexual abuse of men who have either survived childhood sexual abuse or been sexually assaulted as adults.
Andrew said that the recommendations that he read out were the researchers' recommendations. When will the partnership propose its recommendations?
The CSF is in the process of examining the recommendations and sifting out any unrealistic ones. The result of that process will be presented to the community safety partnership at the earliest possible date. There have been time-scale problems in the CSF—we have dropped behind schedule.
The committee would want to see the recommendations once they are produced.
One of the most significant findings is the mention of serious problems of ill treatment in the health service. Will you say more about that? Do health professionals accept that there is a problem, and are they willing to address it? Has anything been done to examine the problem?
The study examined violence and intimidation; there was a question about service provision by the police and council services because they were funding it. The health service is part of the partnership, so it was natural to ask about health service provision. One of the most surprising results of the study was that people experienced more ill treatment from health service professionals than from the police. That is not directly a community safety issue, and it has been fairly difficult to get the health service to address it.
Lothian and Borders police recognised that there have been problems with policing LGBT communities. They have been listening to people for five or six years and have developed a strategy for policing the LGBT communities.
To be fair to the health service, this question has never been asked in research before; there has never been a statistic that has shown what the level of ill treatment is. Another problem is that we do not know exactly what the ill treatment involved, because the research did not go into that in detail. We have anecdotal evidence about what sort of ill treatment took place.
Lothian Health listened to us and put LGBT issues into the health improvement plan. However, at the moment Lothian Health's involvement in examining those issues of discrimination in the health service is to attend the community safety partnership. That will not change service delivery.
LGBT issues are also in trust implementation plans, which complement health improvement plans. However, no action has been taken. The document is out for consultation; we hope that people in the trusts will act on issues such as training.
One of the most important points that I want to make to the committee is that, from our point of view, we can do little to change things. What must be changed is the training of student nurses and student doctors. I come from a nursing background and know that 15 or 20 years ago there was no training on sexual orientation, gender or race issues. I mentored a student nurse recently and asked about what was taught in college or university about sexual orientation; their response was that nothing was taught. I want the Equal Opportunities Committee to take that issue on board and find out whether there is a way of getting those issues on to the curriculum.
The report is on Edinburgh, but would it be reasonable—from anecdotal evidence—to assume that it might reflect the experience of the LGBT communities throughout Scotland, or can you identify specific issues that make this a particular problem in Edinburgh? If it encapsulates a general problem for the community, we could address that issue.
Another issue is sensitivity about the police recording those crimes. What is the police's strategy in relation to reporting or recording violence that is clearly against a particular community? What training is available in the police force on that issue?
The LGBT forum has been considering recording those crimes as hate crimes but, as Andrew O'Donnell said, it is a contentious issue. Most of the work in relation to the LGBT community has been in the B division Gayfield Square subdivision. That is where most of the gay community meet, socialise and live. It is under consideration that when a crime is reported, a code word could be used to identify a sex-related crime.
Training is carried out at the police college for one day. There is also a local course for the officers at Gayfield Square, with input from the LGBT Community Safety Forum, which lasts about an hour and covers sexual orientation and gender. That is the only training at the moment. It is not done anywhere else in the force—it is done only in that subdivision.
I will answer the first part of the question. Lothian has particular problems. Research shows that the violence takes place where there is visibility. It takes place near gay venues in the city centre and it happens to people making their the way home from gay venues. There is a connection between a visible LGBT community and an increase in violence.
The statistics for the levels of reporting to the police and ill treatment in the health service show that Lothian and Borders police and Lothian Health, in general, have a very good record. I fear that in other parts of Scotland, such as Strathclyde, the Highlands and Fife, service delivery is poorer and the statistics might be worse.
I shall put in context the issue about levels of discrimination in the police and in the health service. Time and again, research has shown that people choose not to report crime. They choose not to report the assault for their own reasons, which are documented in the research. However, people cannot choose not to use the health service; if they do not use it, they might be putting their life at risk. That might be a factor in why the level of ill treatment is higher in the health service, because it must be used, while it is not mandatory to go to the police.
Where does the contention lie in relation to recording those crimes? Is it in the police force or in the forum?
It is within the partnership in general. As I said, there are civil liberties issues in regard to recording someone's sexuality on a database. People are not happy about that.
The other problem is who will say that it is a homophobic or hate-motivated crime. Is it the victim or is it the officer to whom the victim reports? Some victims will be in denial about the crime being motivated by hate, yet the officer could believe that it was motivated by hate.
The perpetrator of the crime might make their view clear.
It is likely that we will never get a true record of hate crime. The research is probably the nearest that we have to showing the level of hate crime on the streets. There will always be under-reporting—some people will say that the crime was hate-motivated, but others will choose to say that it was committed for another reason, such as robbery. We will never get true statistics through the recording of hate crime.
There is a plan informally to record levels of hate crime reported, to monitor whether there is an increase in reporting.
Contention might not be the right word. The recording of hate crimes is perhaps a complex issue. If we asked an adult man who had been robbed in a street in the city centre, "Do you think that this has anything to do with the area that you were in?" many heterosexual men would be terribly offended by the assumption that the crime might have been motivated by the fact that somebody assumed that they were gay.
Some gay men do not self-identify as gay—they have issues about not admitting that that might have been a component in the crime being committed. There are all sorts of complexities that are difficult to get at, such as the assumption of the officer who takes the report of the incident that it must have had something to do with sexual orientation, when it was really only a random crime committed against a random passer-by.
As well as being difficult, the issue is complex. Perhaps the community safety forum's difficulty has been teasing out those difficulties in a way that makes sense, in terms of data collection, and which allows the police to do their job properly.
Johann Lamont has covered some of my points, but I still have three questions.
I find the report deeply shocking, particularly as I am an Edinburgh MSP and represent Gayfield Square and the surrounding area. My first question relates to other reports. Your report was published first, but a week later it was followed by another high-profile report on attacks on gay men in Edinburgh. How do your findings relate to the findings of that report? Have there been other similar reports undertaken anywhere else in Scotland, or are these the only two reports that we have to go on?
It is important to state clearly that our report is not the same as that commissioned by the Executive from the Training, Advice, Support and Consultancy Agency. The TASC Agency's study was undertaken earlier than our report, but we managed to release ours before the Executive released that study. The reports complement each other, but the TASC report particularly dealt with violence against gay men, whereas our report is about violence against lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender people and showed that there is no significant difference between the levels of violence aimed at gay men and women and those aimed at transgender people. There were slight differences—nuances—between the levels of fear, for example, but on the whole, men and women suffer the same levels of violence in that particular sub-group.
The TASC Agency's report found that gay men are four times more likely to be assaulted in the streets of Edinburgh, whereas our report found that statistic to be more along the lines of 14 times more likely. I am aware that most of the TASC Agency's interviews were with respondents around the gay scene and gay organisations. With our report, we tried to reach those who are more difficult to reach, such as those who are not obviously out in the scene. We tried to reach people in workplaces and to contact the friends of people who were not necessarily out. Our respondents were of a broader age range than those in the TASC Agency's report.
On the whole, the two reports show quite striking similarities, in terms of the levels of violence. In comparison with our report, the TASC Agency's report went into much more detail on the workings of the police service, the community safety forum and many other organisations in Edinburgh. I have not yet read the TASC Agency's report, but I am looking forward to getting hold of it when I can.
My second question is about policing. Superintendent Wheldon referred to Gayfield Square, but can he say more about the good practice that is being developed? Is the initiative confined only to Gayfield Square, or is it Lothian-wide?
While the initiative is confined to Gayfield Square, we are considering several other steps, such as sending letters to licensees in the Greenside and Broughton Street area, highlighting the reasons for increased police attention and producing literature on domestic violence and crime reporting for distribution with those letters. We are making inquiries with the council about Calton Hill and about public toilets, with regard to making improvements to lighting and other environmental matters. We are considering sending crime prevention officers to visit licensed premises, to give advice. We are also considering encompassing LGBT work within the duties of the community officers and sending them to accompany the crime prevention officers on their visits, as well as establishing a police surgery in the Broughton Street area, with anonymous reporting facilities and external training inputs for relevant officers. Finally, we are considering advertising extensively in LGBT publications.
My third question is on the recommendations, a large number of which relate to the council. Apart from the recommendation on the health service, the recommendation that is specifically directed at the Parliament is on strengthening legislation to prohibit homophobic discrimination in a number of sectors. Do you have any particular suggestions for legislation?
The community safety partnership has not considered the minute detail of the recommendations and it would be unfair of me to comment. However, in the current climate, one could make up one's own mind about which particular piece of legislation to examine, to assist the process of improving tolerance in Scotland.
Before I come to my main question, I want to tease out what you said about the pool of people who were interviewed in your research, a number of whom were not out. You also observed that violence increased where the community was visible. How do you reconcile those two factors with the fact that your research seems to have shown a higher proportion of violence towards LGBT people, if some of those people were not widely known to be LGBT? I am trying to get my head round what the statistics show.
The detail of the report shows the amount of violence against people who have shown affection in public places—holding hands, for example. As that group is much more vulnerable, people tend to self-censor their behaviour in public and choose not to show affection. As Martin Henry said, violence can be directed towards people who are not necessarily LGBT people, because of the area that they are in, the places that they are near, the clothes that they wear or the friends they are with. While sexuality is important if one is gay and has been gay-bashed, it is quite irrelevant from a service delivery point of view. The fact is that people are beaten up because of how their sexuality is perceived, in the same way as pupils who are not LGBT young people are bullied in schools—abusive language and bullying are used generally in the school setting.
The report also touched on people's perceptions and their fear of crime and intimidation. Often, people do not self-identify because they think that, if they become more obviously or discernibly gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender in our communities, they run a far greater risk of being the subject of violence and harassment.
I am particularly interested in another hidden figure—on domestic violence—in our report. Andrew O'Donnell touched on physical assaults, particularly in the city centre, but I have an on-going concern about people who are lesbian or gay and who live with their partners in communities outside the city centre, as they may well be subjected to domestic violence. How do we record that as an issue, given that, more often than not, domestic violence is perceived as an issue that affects only heterosexual couples?
On strengthening legislation, do you accept that, while legislation is in place, the application or interpretation of that legislation and meeting related training needs is lacking?
I am not quite sure what you mean. What legislation?
Our equal opportunities legislation says that people should not be discriminated against on a variety of grounds, including sexual orientation. Therefore, it is illegal to discriminate against anyone on those grounds. Therefore, it is not that legislation is required; rather, the application of existing legislation is lacking. Do you think that the legislation needs to be more specific?
I am not sure that it is illegal to discriminate on the ground of sexual orientation—while that might be the case in terms of employment policy, it is not the case across the board. The difficulty is that the philosophy of non-discrimination—or anti-discrimination—is taken on board by a large number of public sector organisations, but it is not backed up with a serious infrastructure of training, policy commitment and, indeed, disciplinary action, when there is bullying or discrimination in the workplace. Although there is an appearance of non-discrimination, we have much work to do to try to reinforce that.
That is my point—it is not that the legislation is not in place; the application, monitoring and evaluation of the legislation are not in place.
There is always room for improvement.
I am sorry—I misunderstood you. To my knowledge, there is no legislation that protects people from discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation.
The Scotland Act 1998 incorporates the European convention on human rights and means that we must comply with the Amsterdam treaty. Therefore, such provisions are written into Scottish law. The point has been rightly made that people have not caught up with that yet.
Does only one police subdivision receive the one-day training at the Scottish Police College at Tulliallan, or do all police officers receive it?
No—all members of the force receive that training at the police college. Extra training is given at Gayfield Square.
I will put on another hat and say something about training from the Equality Network's point of view. Following the publication of the Macpherson report, the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, through the Scottish Police College in Tulliallan, asked for input and a report has been sent through the Equality Network to input into the training at Tulliallan, which should be implemented by the end of the year. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.
We are greatly encouraged by the response of Lothian and Borders police. I might be basing this view on little information, but my perception is that we are lucky in Lothian and Borders to have one of the most progressive police forces in Scotland, in regard to this issue. Certainly, in the Gayfield Square subdivision, the police have taken the idea of policing these communities seriously, by promoting a much better informed community policing response, better training and surgeries within the community; there are all kinds of progressive developments to try to improve the situation.
While that is the case in that part of the city, we have a long way to go to spread that out across the whole force area—that work remains to be done. Someone made the point earlier that there is a hell of a lot more work to be done in police forces throughout Scotland, outside Lothian and Borders, where there is best practice. We hope that people will learn from that best practice.
I do not think that that point was addressed. Malcolm Chisholm asked about whether you knew of other research outwith Edinburgh along the lines of your report.
No research on violence and intimidation has been done, to my knowledge. Glasgow Women's Library undertook some research, but did not focus on violence.
I should add that I am aware of other initiatives that are happening at a different pace throughout Scotland. In Glasgow, there is communication, but, as I understand it, that communication is not particularly fruitful. Liaison work has begun in Fife, but while the policy is being formed—which is a welcome development—it is still in the early stages.
Sometimes, it feels the same way as it did 20 years ago. In the Highlands, after a disabled gay man was murdered recently, a police car was parked outside a voluntary organisation to watch the organisation's clients coming and going—virtually every gay man in the area around Inverness was asked to come forward to give evidence to the police and people were asked to report gay neighbours. We have a long way to go in some parts of the country, but I think that we are getting there in Lothian and Borders.
The national advisory group in England and Wales combines officers and activists. Last month, the community safety unit hosted a meeting for the group in Edinburgh, which was even attended by Home Office representatives. We have no similar organisation in Scotland, because we just do not have the volunteers at grass-roots level to organise such a group. While people are involved with the police in Lothian and Borders, Strathclyde, Fife and the Highlands, the geography means that it is almost impossible to get around without funding. I hope that the Equal Opportunities Committee will take on board the establishment of a formal communication device between the communities and ACPOS, as that would help a great deal.
That is useful.
I would like some qualitative information, based on the evidence for sexual assaults. The report states:
"Lesbians reported a higher incidence of attempted rape, but a lower incidence of rape."
That suggests that gay men are subjected to rape more often than lesbians. Is that evidence of inter-community assaults, or are victims being raped by people from outwith the gay community? How do we qualify or quantify that?
Sexual assault is sexual assault, no matter who commits it.
I was wondering how you establish the sexuality of those who commit the rape.
This report was not about the sexuality of those committing the rape. A rapist is a rapist—their sexuality is not important.
I agree.
The report concentrated on the sexuality of the victims and on whether they felt that their sexual orientation had contributed to the incident.
However, the statement to which I have referred indicates that more information is required.
Mr McMahon is absolutely right and raises an important issue for me professionally. There is a tacit assumption that sexual assaults on men that are committed by other men must, of necessity, be a homosexual crime. There is no evidence in any of the research to support that notion—quite the contrary, in fact. There is every indication that the majority of men who perpetrate sexual crime against other men are self-identified heterosexual men. That is what the research shows, although it is possible that such men might be lying about their sexual orientation.
Rape and sexual assault that is committed by men against other men is very similar to sexual assault and rape that is committed by men against women. As a crime, it is essentially about the abuse of power. The sexual aspect of it is important and devastating, but it takes a back seat. Rape is about how people express rage and abuse the power that they have over other people. Interestingly, the literature suggests that in cases where men who are gay or thought to be gay are the subject of sexual assault or rape by men who are heterosexual, the perpetrators might be expressing homophobic anger or rage against their victims.
Most members of the committee will appreciate that one of the most humiliating and demeaning ways in which one person can assault another is to assault them sexually. Mr McMahon might be right—the statistic to which he referred might be indicative of how angry some perpetrators are.
I would like to make a further plea in terms of equal opportunities. I have a strong feeling—which, I think, would be backed up by my colleagues in the rest of Scotland—that there is very little service provision available from the social work service, the health service or the voluntary sector to men who have been the subject of sexual assaults. In the case of services that are tailored specifically for men who have survived sexual assault, the best practice and the most resourcing come from gay service delivery organisations. That is a terrible pity, given that many men who are assaulted sexually are heterosexual and will not, therefore, access the services. Perhaps the committee should investigate what services are available to men across Scotland who are the subject of sexual offences, whether as children or as adults.
I thank Andrew O'Donnell for outlining the report's recommendations. A number of those recommendations relate to City of Edinburgh Council. In your opinion, Andrew, does the existence of section 28 or 2A in any way prohibit City of Edinburgh Council from taking forward those recommendations?
As a forum, we have not discussed section 28 or 2A or made recommendations to the partnership. I would not like to comment politically, as the partnership is not a politically motivated organisation. However, in my experience, section 28 has never stopped a bold local authority doing what it wanted to do. Both City of Edinburgh Council and Glasgow City Council support Pride Scotland—not necessarily financially, but in many other ways. A council will go against its lawyers if they say that it cannot do something because of section 28. It is up to the elected representatives to say that they are going to do it anyway. Section 28 is an inhibiting force, but it has never been used locally. I am unsure whether, because of its presence on the statute book, City of Edinburgh Council would not go in a direction in which we wanted it to go. We have no way of knowing.
I am dying for a ding-dong on section 28, but I will resist the opportunity to use this debate for that. As somebody who is engaged professionally in the protection of children, I would argue that information makes children and young people less vulnerable. Wherever young people—who are already in a very vulnerable group if they are gay or lesbian—are cut off from information, the chances are that the risk of abuse and exploitation will increase. These young people need information and support, to improve their self-esteem. Without wanting to have a ding-dong, I would say that the section 28 debate definitely has implications for that.
Under item 5 on our agenda, we will discuss taking evidence on the ethical standards in public life bill. We can discuss then how best to take evidence on section 28.
There are no further questions for our witnesses. Thank you for attending. All members of the committee will be interested in seeing your final recommendations and whether there is any way in which we can assist in taking them forward.
The Commission for Racial Equality has submitted a paper to be considered under our next item. Before we move on, I suggest that we take a 10-minute comfort break.
Meeting adjourned.
On resuming—