Chamber and committees

Thanks, Jan. Your point about the work that the Finance and Public Administration Committee is doing is well made. We will look with interest at the additional material that you send it—if you could also share it with us, that would be great.

Thank you. We have not been able to get Marie McNair back online. Are there any final points or comments that you want us to we hear before you leave?

Good morning, and welcome to the 14th meeting in 2024 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have apologies this morning from our convener, Karen Adam, and from Annie Wells.

Our first agenda item is an evidence-taking session on the Disability Commissioner (Scotland) Bill, and I refer members to papers 1 and 2. I am very pleased to welcome to our meeting Dr Arun Chopra, executive medical director, Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland; Stephanie Griffin, Scotland policy manager, Equality and Human Rights Commission; Nick Hobbs, head of advice and investigations, Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland; and Jan Savage, executive director, Scottish Human Rights Commission. Thank you for your time and attendance.

I invite each of you to provide a brief opening statement before we move to questions. We will start with Dr Chopra.

Stephanie Griffin, in your opening remarks, you talked about the extent of the EHRC’s powers. Where do you see problems with implementation and accountability? Has the EHRC had any thoughts about examining that area in detail?

Is there anything else from Paul O’Kane? I see that he is happy with that. We had Marie McNair online to ask a couple of questions, but she dropped off. Have we been able to get her back? I see that we have not. If we can get her on in the next couple of minutes, we will. In the meantime, I will carry on.

In our conversations so far, there have been a couple of questions specifically on participation and engagement with different groups of disabled people and members of the diverse and varied disability community across Scotland. Where do you think that the challenges lie in having a commissioner in this area?

I suppose that that follows on from what Meghan Gallacher was talking about, with regard to how we understand disability in the round. Rather than having a disability commissioner, how would you see us tackle some of the potential tensions, and perhaps even conflicts, within the whole context for disabled people in Scotland?

Thanks. Stephanie, is there anything that you would like to add?

Your point about sharing information is interesting. We have not really touched on the barriers to sharing information across existing organisations, never mind an additional one, so that is something for us to consider as well.

Given what you said about participation, as the committee progresses through its gathering of evidence at stage 1, are there people, groups or organisations that you think we absolutely must talk to and that we must ensure are on our list over the coming weeks? Do you have any suggestions or ideas?

My colleagues will pick up on potential overlaps and duplications, but, if we do agree about having a disability commissioner, is the SHRC concerned that certain commissions or commissioners will potentially have powers that the national human rights institution does not have? Does that cause the SHRC concern?

Yes, I accept that point. We need to recognise and acknowledge that, and we then need to think about how we go beyond that and address issues, such as the failure to improve the physical wellbeing of children who sit just above the poverty line, that have not been dealt with in the past 20 or 30 years.

Our vision for the Scottish child payment has to be ambitious, generous and transformative. We need to fulfil the statutory principles laid down in the 2018 act, but we must also go much further by making social security a means of co-production, liberation and real redistribution.

Danny Dorling told the committee that the UK’s

“economic inequality between families did not alter one iota in the years from 1997 to 2010.”—[Official Report, Social Justice and Social Security Committee, 23 May 2024; c 8.]

We have to do better than that, by addressing the causes of poverty and inequality, as well as their consequences. It is a question of justice, of human rights and of humanity, but it is also foundational for everything else that we aspire to do in this place—in this Parliament and beyond, as Carol Mochan has described. Whether it involves climate and environmental action, peace building, equality for the oppressed, growing a thriving economy that prioritises people over profit, achieving reductions in crime, especially violent crime, or reaching the sustainable development goals in Scotland and throughout the world, the success of all that work depends on today’s children growing up in good health and in good housing, happy, well educated and confident—children who are free from the trauma of poverty and all that follows in its wake. The bill starts us on that journey, and we have more to do.

I have been encouraged this afternoon by the range of important issues that have been discussed. I am particularly reassured to hear that our concerns about the audit provisions are shared and to hear about what steps might be taken to address those concerns. John Mason outlined those very clearly in his speech.

Westminster’s punitive sanctions culture has embedded a well-grounded fear of investigation, and we need not only to take a different path here but to actively resist and transform that culture. I am grateful to Bob Doris and Marie McNair for their comments about the importance of getting the redetermination process right. It must meet the needs of those who will rely on it to work for them.

I look forward to working with members across the Parliament on amendments to strengthen the bill to ensure that it meets the real needs of the people of Scotland. As I outlined in my opening speech, we are particularly keen for the Scottish child payment to be expanded in terms of eligibility and level, and we support the calls by the End Child Poverty coalition for an increase to £40 per week. We recognise that, as Dr Juliet Stone testified, the current level is not enough to mitigate the “devastating effect” of the two-child cap—a savage policy that, it seems, a substitution of Westminster Government will not be enough to change.

We have heard this afternoon, and in evidence brought to the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, that there are gaps in the data about the Scottish child payment, and we would be interested to know whether amendments to the bill might help to address some of those problems. Although uptake is generally very good, there are rural areas where that could be improved, including Aberdeenshire in the North East Scotland region.

Our vision for the Scottish child payment and for the wellbeing of families across Scotland has to be ambitious, generous and transformative. As the committee heard from Danny Dorling and others, it is not enough just to nudge children over an arbitrary poverty line. We need to improve the lives of families existing just above that line, too. Crucially, we must take families out of deep poverty.