Equal Opportunities Committee, 20 Jun 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 20, 2000

Official Report 261KB pdf

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Reporters

The first report is from Irene McGugan.

Members should have, in the papers that were on their desks this morning, a document that I will refer to. Members may remember that the Disabled Persons Housing Service gave evidence to the committee on 29 February. Our sub-group examined that evidence and put together a list of questions that it would be useful to ask the appropriate ministers. We sent that provisional list back to the DPHS for its comments; the DPHS thought that the list comprehensively covered the material that it had submitted. It made only one amendment, which is contained in its letter, which can be found on the top sheet of members' papers. The other two pages are the same as the original document that the disability sub-group put together.

Members will notice that the inquiry is directed at three ministers, because there are overlaps in this area. There are questions for the Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning, the Minister for Communities and the Minister for Transport and the Environment. The aim was to give committee members an opportunity to consider those questions and to comment on how representative they feel they are of the issues that were raised by the DPHS. If the document is approved as it stands, or with additions, letters including the questions will be sent to the three ministers for a response.

Do members have any questions about that? When we come to consider the housing bill, would it be appropriate for us to review all the evidence that we have taken so far, decide whether there are other organisations from which we want to take evidence, and invite ministers before the committee to deal with the issues that are raised?

Yes.

Although we are not dealing with the bill at the moment, we will do so at the appropriate time. We may be able to come back with a timetable for that before the recess, although it will depend on the Executive's timetable. It is unlikely that we will consider the bill until after the recess. Do members agree with those suggestions?

Members indicated agreement.

I have two other small points to raise. I draw members' attention to the appointment of Shona Simon as the Parliament's new equal opportunities development adviser. I am sure that she will have e-mailed all members. It is her job to ensure that MSPs are aware of their responsibilities under the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. For some time it has been on our agenda to find a means of making MSPs, both on this committee and more widely, aware of those responsibilities, particularly under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Initially Shona Simon was minded to hold two briefing sessions for MSPs. You will not be surprised to hear that she has since found out that it is difficult to get a large number of MSPs together for a briefing on anything. I wrote to her about that and she has agreed to put together written guidance on equal opportunities issues and the law. That may be available at some point in August. I suggest that that information be disseminated widely.

It was very rude of me not to mention Shona Simon's appointment, as she has been present throughout the meeting. I should have introduced her to the committee at the start. I apologise for that.

Was that a fair summary of what has been decided, Shona?

That was absolutely accurate.

I also want to draw attention to the fact that Railtrack has sent all MSPs its disability strategy, which may or may not be of interest.

The gender issues sub-group met last Tuesday and a written report will be circulated at a later stage. If I miss any of the points, we may be able to pick them up later.

The key issues that we discussed were those relating to stalking and vulnerable witnesses. Members will be aware that two weeks ago I attended a meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, which was considering a report on stalking and taking evidence on the cross-examination of witnesses in cases involving sexual crimes. I mentioned the fact that the Equal Opportunities Committee had been doing work on this issue for a long period and had taken some evidence, because members of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee were saying that they did not have enough time to do all the work.

It struck me that, first, we should be used as a resource more often, and secondly, when the work is being done, there should be a way of communicating that to other committees. It is possible that a great deal of work will have been done and evidence will have been taken on an issue, but at the next stage the wheel will have to be reinvented when another committee decides that it wants to investigate that issue. Organisations that are under financial stress and do not have enough staff then have to come back to give evidence, as the evidence that has already been provided is not being used. Some streamlining work must be done on that, but we should also acknowledge that there is a place for hearing evidence other than in subject committees. The Equal Opportunities Committee would be an ideal resource for that.

Those were the main issues that were discussed, but others who attended may wish to comment. We felt that we would probably want to comment on the consultation document on stalking, but it might be necessary to do that at our next meeting. That would mean submitting our evidence late, but that would still be worth while. We discussed how to track all the consultation documents and agreed that it might be useful if the committee were at least notified about them when they are issued so that, if we wished to deal with any of them, we would be able to timetable in responses. Otherwise, we end up playing catch-up and letting things pass without making the impact that we should be making.

Are there any questions or comments?

We will consider the stalking document at our next meeting. Perhaps we could timetable a report to the committee on 4 July. We should tell the Scottish Executive justice department that we will put in a late submission.

It will be difficult to fit in an item on 4 July, as we are asking Scottish Homes to give evidence to us then. We have only a two-hour slot for the meeting, and Jim Wallace will also give evidence—there will be a lot of questions for him.

Is not Jim Wallace coming on Monday?

Sorry—I meant that Jackie Baillie would come to the committee on 4 July. As I said, we just agreed to try to get Scottish Homes to come along on 4 July. Unless we are disciplined and focused—which we would also have to ask the witnesses to be—we will not have time to add to the agenda. The purpose of the meeting is to take evidence from Jackie Baillie.

The alternative is that the sub-group comes up with something and does the usual business of e-mailing it round so that people can add comments. We could then formally approve it at the 4 July meeting.

We could do that and use only 10 or 15 minutes of the meeting. That would be better, as people would have had a chance to consider the paper and to make amendments to it. If necessary, we could use 10 minutes at the 4 July meeting to discuss the response. Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

We have a lot of items to squeeze in before the recess, and I suspect that people will not want to meet during the recess—although that would not particularly bother me. Perhaps we should discuss that as well at a future meeting.

The next report is from Michael McMahon.

As agreed at the previous meeting, I tried to hold a meeting last week to consider the issue that we debated with Positive Action in Housing. However, it was impossible to pull everyone together, which was probably no bad thing because, when I started to look at the Scottish Homes document, I realised how wide the consultation on it would have to be. Therefore, there would not have been much of a discussion last week, given the lack of information at that time.

I rescheduled the meeting for next Tuesday, by which time I will, I hope, have received responses. I invited a number of organisations to comment on the observations that I made and I hope that, by next Tuesday, I will have a report to put to the sub-group. I intend to produce that report before next Tuesday, so that I can e-mail all members with a draft. Therefore, those who come to the meeting on Tuesday morning—

What time is the meeting?

It will be at 10 o'clock. We should be able to discuss the draft document in order to bring points back to the committee meeting on 4 July. The deadline for responses is 7 July, so we are still within the time scale. Given that Scottish Homes will be at the 4 July meeting, it should be possible to pull things together at that meeting.

We will also have a chance to pull together some of the information from our consultation with the Scottish Gypsy Travellers Association, which will be a longer-term piece of work. However, if we can start to pull together the information that we received, we can consider how to develop and progress that work.

Those are the two main items on next week's agenda on which I hope to be able to report on 4 July.

We will consider our forward work programme next week; we might want to consider whether the work on the Scottish Gypsy Travellers Association should be one of the committee's major pieces of work. Perhaps we should commission some research or appoint an adviser.

Our final report is from Nora Radcliffe.

I e-mailed members with a note of the previous meeting. Our next meeting will be next Wednesday lunch time. The group has depended heavily on the Equality Network and Outright Scotland, but we hope to draw in more groups. We will vary the time of the meeting in order to attract more people. Next Wednesday, we will be bribing people with lunch, and we would be delighted to see any or all of the members of the committee.