Chamber and committees

Thank you, Reem. I will go to questions from Maggie first.

I call Karen Adam and apologise to her for cutting her off slightly too early when we transferred to Rachael Hamilton’s questions.

Rachael Hamilton has a brief supplementary question.

You are okay, yes.

Are you finished, Emma?

I think that we have lost Rachael. I will bring in Karen Adam.

Good evening and welcome to the 33rd meeting in 2022 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have no apologies.

We are joined by Emma Roddick MSP and expect to be joined soon by Ash Regan MSP and Tess White MSP—you are all very welcome.

The only item on our agenda is to hear from United Nations experts on the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. We will hear first from Victor Madrigal-Borloz, United Nations independent expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and then from Reem Alsalem, United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences. I refer members to paper 1.

I welcome Victor Madrigal-Borloz to the meeting and I invite him to make a short opening statement. Over to you, Victor.

Emma Roddick has the final question.

We have gone a bit over time, so I will end the session here. My huge thanks to Victor Madrigal-Borloz for making time to come along.

I suspend the meeting. We will resume in about 10 minutes.

Thank you. We will now go back to Rachael Hamilton.