Chamber and committees

That is not the case. We have heard—[Interruption.]

We have heard people in the chamber, in committee debates and elsewhere make exactly that conflation. The Disclosure Scotland PVG system is about giving employers assurances about those they employ to work with vulnerable groups. Applying for a gender recognition certificate has nothing to do with applying for jobs working with vulnerable groups. We should not be using those mechanisms in that way. I urge colleagues from parties across the chamber to vote against the amendments.

Thank you, Victor—that is really helpful. I could come back on a couple of points, but I know that the convener is keen to allow everybody to speak, so I will leave it there for now.

Thank you for that. I asked specifically about the impact of the culture wars, which trans people are bearing the brunt of and experiencing. You talked about freedom of expression. We have heard elsewhere in evidence to the committee that freedom exists up to a point where it does not impinge on the freedom of other people to exist. That is an important statement to make.

In the letter that you wrote last month, you spoke about the need to “listen”, and to take account of and evaluate the responses that have been received in the consultation and scrutiny processes that the Scottish Government and the committee have undertaken. In that letter, you said that,

“consultations”

were perhaps not

“sufficiently inclusive of other groups of women”

nor of organisations that represent them.

Given that we have heard from Scottish Women’s Aid; Rape Crisis Scotland and some of its network members; Engender and the Scottish Women’s Rights Centre, all of which support the reforms in the bill, I am interested in which other women’s organisations in Scotland, in the domestic Scottish setting, you have approached, or which have approached you. Where does your evidence come from for calling for the bill to have, as you called it, a comprehensive refresh?

Thank you. I will follow up quickly on two points. The reference to “culture wars” comes from the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe; that is clearly her statement. Whether or not I agree with this—to be clear, I happen to agree with it—she says that,

“government officials and certain parliamentarians have actively contributed to an intolerant and stigmatising discourse”

within the context of “culture wars”. That is a direct quote from her report.

On the organisations that have been in touch with you, you wrote in your letter about listening clearly to organisations and survivors of violence. It is worth restating that the Scottish Women’s Rights Centre, Rape Crisis Scotland and Scottish Women’s Aid, which all directly support victims and survivors of gender-based violence, all support the reforms.

I appreciate that time is short so I will leave it there, convener.

Good evening, and thank you for joining us this evening. In your opening remarks, you mentioned the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatovic, and her report, in which she talks clearly about the stigmatising discourse that Government officials and certain parliamentarians have contributed to, which has contributed to the culture wars around trans rights and the distortion of human rights that has pitted trans rights against women’s rights as a zero-sum game. Could you comment on that and give us a bit more of an explanation about why you have come to your view?

Good evening, Reem. Thank you very much for joining us—I appreciate your making the time to be with us.

I have two questions for you. I would like to explore your reflections on the report by Dunja Mijatovic, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, in which she said,

“Both government officials and certain parliamentarians have actively contributed to an intolerant and stigmatising discourse.”

After that, she critiques the “culture wars” surrounding trans rights in Scotland. She also says in the report that

“trans persons in the UK face increasingly hostile and toxic political and public discourse.”

What your thoughts on her report in general, but also on those two points specifically, given the context in which we are discussing and debating this bill?

Together with my Scottish Green colleagues, and as a trade unionist, I whole-heartedly welcome the Unison campaign of the year of disabled workers. I am proud that the campaign originated in Scotland and that my committee colleague, Pam Duncan-Glancy, has played such a leading role in making it a powerful reality—thank you for bringing this debate to the chamber. I also pay tribute to the work of Unison Scotland disabled members, and thank them for the engaging and informative question-and-answer session that they organised a few weeks ago.

The campaign is of course primarily about improving the working lives of disabled people. In view of the yawning education, employment, and especially pay gaps that the campaign highlights, nothing could be more important. Unison rightly calls upon employers and Governments to do much more, particularly with regard to the collection and publication of data. Without accurate measurement, it is all too easy to be complacent and imagine that we are doing much better than we really are.

Another vital strand of the campaign is about education: educating us all about the realities of disability, of experience, and of policy.

As Jeremy Balfour knows, I have discussed with him previously how it would be best to take that forward. I look forward to further discussions and pledge to engage with him on that over the coming weeks.

We need to focus on education in order to educate us all about the realities of disability, experience, policy and how we can be better colleagues, neighbours and allies. Central to that understanding is an appreciation of the social model of disability. We need to recognise, and remind ourselves and others, that disability does not reside in any impairment itself, but in negative social responses to it: in embedded barriers, in discrimination and prejudice, and in ableist attitudes and structural exclusions. Individualised, medical and welfare models of disability still predominate in many contexts and still represent—as uncomfortable as it may be to admit it—a social oppression as real as any other.

Along with the social model comes the concept of independent living: the recognition that, with the removal of barriers and appropriate personal support, both of which are eminently achievable, disabled people can exercise their full and equal rights to live and work and love and play. Those two understandings—of the social model of disability and of independent living—are, I believe, transformative for not only disabled people but all of us. Inclusion is good for everyone. Those two things also have significant implications for how we see the past, the present and the future.

Crucially, those revolutionary realisations came not from mainstream organisations for disabled people but from groups of disabled people and from grass-roots initiatives that came about in circumstances of great suffering, of extreme oppression and of extraordinary, yet normalised, exclusion. We must not forget that incremental change to a fundamentally cruel status quo brings neither liberation nor justice.

Those insights, which paternalistic agencies were quite unable to achieve, have had a groundbreaking effect on how the rights of disabled people are protected, not least in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which we look forward to seeing incorporated into Scottish law.

That has, or can have, similar effects on how other forms of discrimination and marginalisation are identified and challenged. None of us, however privileged, is entirely independent or able to exercise our rights and freedoms without the support of others. In the intersection between disability and feminist activism, we can recognise and celebrate our universal interdependence, our shared vulnerability and the new spaces that we can fill with hope and creativity.

That knowledge should—and must—inform how we in this Parliament develop policy, enact legislation and do implementation. Educated by the past and present, we need, for our shared future, participation that is wide, deep and serious. We need to acknowledge, with humility and sorrow, the ways in which people who know most about the issue are excluded from decision making. People know about their own lives. We need co-operation, integrity and solidarity in shared struggles, and I thank Pam Duncan-Glancy and Unison once again for the opportunity to remember that.

I understand that. Professor Chadha, there is something interesting about not necessarily the social security system, but the labour market being a barrier by not enabling flexible work, part-time work or shorter working weeks, for example. What are your comments on that? We often talk about employment and the labour market separately from all the other support mechanisms, but I am trying to make the connections.

I have a last question on a different tack. Emma Congreve, I will come back to you for it.

The Fraser of Allander Institute published an article about the economic context for businesses in Scotland. Something that struck me in that was the difference between the impact of the broader economic situation on small and medium-sized enterprises and its impact on larger businesses. Turnover has fallen much more for SMEs than for larger businesses, relatively speaking.

What is your analysis of the long-term consequences for local and regional economies, of which SMEs are often the bedrock? How do we ensure that the disproportionate negative impact on SMEs does not continue to drag? If it carries on in the same direction, the situation of our local economies will just get worse and worse.