Chamber and committees

The reasons for trying to get all the commissioners into one office are not purely financial. It is an opportunity for them to meet much more regularly. In my thinking—this is only my thinking—there should be some kind of memorandum of understanding between the different commissioners. A child with a disability could walk into the office of the children’s commissioner or the office of the new commissioner for disability. It would not be both commissioners who did the work; there would be some kind of agreement that one or the other would deal with the issue.

The honest answer to your question is that there is plenty of work to go around. I have met the children’s commissioner and other commissioners. They are having to lay aside lots of work because they do not have the time to deal with it. I therefore do not think that any disability commissioner will struggle to find enough to fill their Monday to Friday calendar. I can already list enough issues that are not being picked up on but that such a commissioner could deal with.

There needs to be some kind of understanding that we do not all follow the same issues. I hope that that can be done by sensible people sitting down and discussing it.

As you say, the budget in the financial memorandum is a fair amount of money that would allow the commissioner to do some form of investigation work, but I hope that it would not exceed that budget. For example, a current issue that is clear for many disabled people, whatever their disability, is day services. Post-Covid, we have seen a lot of local authorities not reopening the day services that were there before Covid. No committee of the Parliament has looked at that, and there has been no real debate in Parliament about it. That is perhaps my fault and the fault of others, but it is the reality. Many disabled people, particularly parents, are struggling because they have to do much more hands-on care throughout the day.

That type of investigation would not take a lot of money, but it would be more likely to be picked up on by politicians and by the media if it was done by a disability commissioner than it would be if it was done simply by one charity.

They have a very strong voice, and there are people out there advocating on their behalf on social media. There are champions for women in the Parliament—people around this table have been championing women’s rights for many years. We have to look at the individuals who we are talking about and their lived experience, history and reality. That voice is not being heard in society, compared with those of people of many other protected characteristics.

First, any commissioner doing the job properly will want to engage with third sector charities. When I have been going around, talking to people, what has been made clear is that the first thing that the commissioner needs to do is to get out there and hear what the issues are, hear what people are saying and hear about who is already doing what in this area. The commissioner, whoever he or she is, can be the individual who brings groups together, gets them to work together and helps them to run and focus on their campaigns. They do not necessarily have to do all the work themselves—they can be a facilitator, too.

We have seen that with the children’s commissioner, who has been very good at bringing and binding together children’s charities. I hope that the disability commissioner will have a close working relationship with the third sector and any campaigns; they might be running those campaigns or simply facilitating them and bringing people together to run them.

Clearly, the commissioner must be independent, so we cannot tell them what to do, but they will produce an annual report that will come to the Parliament. That will provide an opportunity for, perhaps, a number of committees to scrutinise the work that the commissioner has done over the previous year.

I suppose that we would all say this, but it would be great if there was no need for a disability commissioner in 10 or 15 years’ time because disability was not seen as an issue and disabled people were getting the services, employment opportunities and everything else that people in the rest of society get. In an ideal world, the commissioner would work themselves out of a job.

We can measure the progress that is made. There are issues relating to transport, health and social care and employability, so, if nothing had changed in four years—the commissioner could be appointed for eight years, but there will be a gap at four years—there would be questions about whether that individual should be reappointed for a second term.

I would be deeply worried if that happened. We absolutely need to set some goals or criteria by which we can measure progress. One of the problems in the public sector in general is that it is very difficult to measure such things.

It is both. I think that, often, it is not being done properly—it is often a tick-box exercise. A lot of what happens in regard to policy is driven by public opinion—we have seen that. That public opinion, for many people, does not involve a disability voice. Part of the role of the commissioner would be to provide that voice, not just to Government and civic society but to address the societal issue. We need to challenge that societal issue.

We should be asking, “Can this person work?” To give a very personal example, when I went for my first job, they were only concerned about whether I could use a photocopier with my disability. That was the deciding factor in whether I got the job. Such societal issues need to be challenged—it is not about what you cannot do but about what you can do.

No, convener; I am content.

I get that. It is very interesting to see that, if you go back and read the stage 1 evidence that was taken for the creation of the children’s commissioner, exactly the same questions were being asked then: there are lots of children’s charities out there who are advocating for children to Parliament—why do you need a commissioner?

I think that there is something to be said for bringing things together. I think that you can see the effectiveness of the children’s commissioner, compared to children’s charities, over the past number of years. The questions that you are asking are absolutely legitimate. I think that they were asked and answered with the children’s commissioner. I would want to draw a line between those examples and say that they are very similar. In no way are we trying to push out or minimise what the third sector does, but there is a place for an individual or a commission to have that collective voice, which is really important. They can also look forward, consider legislation and see what issues people are facing, which charities often do not have the time to do.

Therefore, I would answer by saying that we should look at the fact that the same arguments were made with regard to the children’s commissioner. I think that we can answer in the same way with regard to a disability commissioner.

They cannot deal with every issue, but they could highlight the issue to charities that work in that local area. There will be a role for information sharing—for asking whether people know about something that is happening in Ayrshire or on Arran, for example, and whether they have responded.