Chamber and committees

I see that Allan Faulds is keen to come in.

For us, part of the motivation for holding this inquiry is the sense that, when proposals for individual commissioners are posed to Parliament, it is—to put it bluntly—put in a position where no individual MSP or political party wants to look unsympathetic to a particular vulnerable group. Clearly, though, we are heading into a situation where things are spiralling. I want to pick up on what Allan Faulds said about the potential for having a wide range of very specialist commissioners or a couple of more generalised ones.

My question is particularly for Adam Stachura and Rob Holland in the first instance, as they represent organisations advocating for specific commissioners. Given that the vast majority of the commissioner positions that are being or have recently been proposed relate to rights advocacy and the upholding of rights, I have to wonder whether that is not something that a strengthened Scottish Human Rights Commission could do. Most of the proposals on the table at the moment are to do with upholding rights. We already have a human rights commission, so should we not be considering why so far it has been unable to fulfil the specific needs that have been identified? I think that the commission would be interested in having its position, role and resource strengthened instead of the landscape being fragmented further.

I am not being unsympathetic, Rob, because I completely agree with that, having sat on the education committee for eight years working with children with additional needs. Unfortunately, however, there are literally dozens of other groups in Scottish society that we could point to as having incredibly poor outcomes and whose rights are not being upheld. Clearly, though, we cannot have dozens and dozens of specialist commissioners.

The Parliament, then, is presented with the challenge of having to ask whether there are certain groups whose rights are being so fundamentally compromised or whose situation is so specific that they require their own commissioner, and that puts us in the very uncomfortable position of having to say that some vulnerable groups are more vulnerable than others and so on. Could that not be addressed by having a strengthened human rights commissioner who can take that intersectional approach? There are people with autism who are also older people, and there are people with autism who are also disabled. Surely a single commissioner, with all the responsibilities and resource that they needed, would be better able to address the intersectional way in which people’s rights are often compromised.

Professor Ó Giollagáin, I want to go back to what you said previously, because I am seeking a bit of clarity on your position on the bill overall. It felt to me that, in essence, you were saying that, rather than the provisions in the bill, what is really required is significant additional resource to deal with the wider challenges that are faced by community speakers in particular.

I want to press you on that in the context that this committee has just completed an inquiry into supporting children with additional support needs in schools. Clearly, vast additional resources would do a lot of good in that regard, but, in completing our report, we recognised that such resources were unlikely to be provided. Scottish public finances are in a very difficult place, whether you blame that on inflation, the UK Government or the Scottish Government overcommitting on social security. Whatever you think the cause of that position is, it is really unlikely that significant additional resources in any area of public spending will be provided in the coming years.

I accept that additional resources would be transformational, but, if getting those resources is unlikely, is there a bill or set of legislative changes—not changes in the form of increases to resources—that would result in the kind of transformational change that is required?

That was useful. I have another question for the panel as a whole. You have touched quite a bit on the language standards and, to some extent, on education standards, but I would be interested in further comments on education standards in particular and the corresponding duties that those would place on public bodies—bearing in mind what has been said about the tension between whether the core challenge is around GME in particular or the wider societal challenges that the community faces.

That is an interesting point. I will press you a little on it. The alternative position is that the more the detail is put into the legislation, the less flexibility there is further down the line; if the context changes rapidly five or 10 years from now—whether it gets better, worse or just different—it will be much harder to change primary legislation than to change standards and guidance, even if those are underpinned by secondary legislation. Is the core point of tension for you that we simply do not know what the standards and guidance will be—and, if drafts were published alongside the bill, that might address some of those concerns—or is it that, fundamentally, you think that some of those points need to be in the primary legislation because they are very unlikely to change?

Do any of our Scots experts have a position on education standards in particular?

I want to go back to Michael Marra’s question about groups in the third sector but expand that to individual MSPs, because a lot of the momentum to create new commissioners at the moment is from members’ bills as well as Government bills. Is the SHRC able to engage? Whether it is a third sector group making a proposal or an MSP beginning to float it, can you have a conversation with them? Have you been having conservations about alternatives such as an expansion to or change in your mandate?

As you are currently constituted, can you have such conversations and, if so, what has the response been? Obviously, we are clearly now in a place where there is a lot of momentum behind creating a whole new range of commissioners, which is why we are here.

I agree that the ALLIANCE’s written evidence was really useful in demonstrating that there are folk in the third sector who want a different model, but we are still faced with a range of proposals to create new individual discrete commissioners. When you have been having those conversations—obviously you have been persuasive to some but not yet sufficiently so for others—do they ultimately need to see a shift coming from Parliament or do they need it from Government? What do they need? I understand that, fundamentally, they need the issues of rights breaches to be addressed, more effective scrutiny and so on, but what does that look like?

My fear is that, if the committee produces a report saying that what is actually needed is for Parliament to get much better at its job and that then sets out all the ways in which we can do that, our colleagues might or might not agree with that but, even if they did, that feels a step removed to me. If I have a meeting with a third sector group that is really concerned about a vulnerable group’s rights being breached, and I say, “Don’t worry—the solution is that we are going to reform the parliamentary committee system,” that just feels like it is far too many steps removed and will not be persuasive.

Thank you.