Equal Opportunities Committee, 30 Oct 2001

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 30, 2001

Official Report 156KB pdf

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Reporters

Agenda item 4 is the appointment of reporters on sexual orientation issues and disability issues. Changes to committee membership mean that those positions have not been filled officially for some time. We asked members to e-mail the clerks if they were interested and Cathy Peattie expressed interest in being the reporter for sexual orientation issues. Does the committee agree to that appointment?

Members indicated agreement.

The other reporter is to be on disability issues. I nominate Gil Paterson to be the reporter. Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

The next agenda item is reports from reporters. Elaine Smith was ill when the previous meeting was held, so we held her report over until today's meeting.

The report is of a meeting that I had with the Zero Tolerance Trust—I raised an issue that I discussed with the minister today. At the meeting with the trust, we talked about the respect initiative pilot.

The Zero Tolerance Trust works to raise public awareness of violence against women and to make it unacceptable. Each member should have received a copy of its respect initiative briefing. The trust has lately moved into targeting younger people and is seeking to influence their attitudes to violence against women and respect within relationships. That is the basis for the respect initiative.

At the end of my paper, I note that the Zero Tolerance Trust would like the resources and interventions for the initiative to be part of the core five-to-14 education curriculum. I understand that Learning and Teaching Scotland and two education authorities are enthusiastic about the materials involved and I was heartened to hear the minister's answer to my question about the education department.

I recommend that we note the report, congratulate the Zero Tolerance Trust on its work, agree to support its aims to roll out the respect campaign, and send a copy of the gender reporter's paper and the accompanying brief to the convener of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee and the Minister for Education, Europe and External Affairs, Jack McConnell. We should also write to the Deputy Minister for Social Justice, Margaret Curran—given the evidence that we have just received—to let her know what we are doing and give her copies of the report and the brief.

Does anyone have any questions for Elaine Smith on that report? If not, Elaine has outlined the recommendations. Are those agreed to?

Members indicated agreement.

I previously submitted a private report to the committee, as part of the private consideration of the work programme. I would like to clarify whether that report could be included in the bound volume that will be produced of the gender issues report. The volume is in draft at the moment, and is therefore a private paper. However, once it is published, could that report be included in it?

I do not think that any committee member would have a problem with that.

Members indicated agreement.

Does the committee's race reporter have anything to report?

I am continuing to set up a series of meetings to address religious discrimination. As two bills might be published on the subject—one a member's bill and another from the Executive—I shall try to pull that work together to provide information on the background to some of the issues that may arise. That might help the committee when it comes to consider those bills, if they come before us. I am trying to build up a portfolio of information on those issues, but nothing substantial will come out of that until the series of meetings has been undertaken.

Does anybody have any questions on that?

No.

The conveners liaison group has agreed that conveners should report back to the committees on events that they have attended in their capacity as conveners. If events involve a lot of expense, the committees have to give permission for the conveners to attend them anyway. In future, therefore, conferences that I have been asked to speak at and meetings to which I have been invited in my capacity as the convener will be reported to the committee for its information. I do not know where on the agenda they will be reported, but they will be included somewhere.