Chamber and committees

The 2008-11 Race Equality Statement is still largely relevant and continues to inform the work we do today. The updated statement will be a refresh providing more detail on how we intend to take forward our plans in practice. The Scottish Government does not have strategies for individual protected equality characteristics.

In April, we published our current thinking on how race equality should develop over the next three years. We will shortly begin work to develop the Scottish Government approach to race equality with communities and stakeholders with a view to publishing the statement in Spring 2014. This will allow us to take into consideration information provided by the 2011 Census which will be available later this month.

We are committed to promoting equality across Scotland and working with others to do so. To help achieve that aim, we are providing significant funding (nearly £21 million) during 2012-15 to core organisations to help tackle inequality and discrimination. £5.3 million of this will support specific projects and initiatives in combating racist and religious bigotry and hatred.

There are a range of laws that may be applicable in dealing with the issue of revenge porn, including both criminal laws and civil laws, depending on the specific circumstance of each incident.

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service officials met with representatives from Scottish Women’s Aid, Rape Crisis Scotland, White Ribbon Scotland, Victim Support Scotland and Police Scotland on 5 September 2013 to discuss the issue of ‘revenge porn’ and how best it could dealt with. The Scottish Government  will consider any issues or specific proposals arising from the event”

There are a number of offences which may, depending on the facts and circumstances of each specific case, be used to prosecute a person who publishes, or threatens to publish, pornographic images of another person without their consent. These include the common law offences of breach of the peace or blackmail, statutory offences of “threatening or abusive behaviour” and “stalking” at sections 38 and 39 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 and the offence at section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 of “improper use of a public electronic communications network”. Where the images are of a child under the age of 18, the offences at sections 52 and 52A of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 will be relevant. It is not possible to separately identify convictions for these offences which relate to the publication of ‘revenge porn’ as opposed to other conduct which is criminal but not falling with the definition of “revenge porn”.

In addition, it may also be open to victim to seek remedies under civil law. The availability of civil remedies will turn on the facts and context of each case, including who is being sued and for what reason. Anyone who considers they have been the subject of “revenge porn” should consider seeking legal advice as to the legal options available to them.

Under the Equality Act 2010, NHS boards and local authorities are required to achieve equality for people including those from black and minority ethnic communities. This is primarily done through Equality Impact Assessments, an approach which NHSScotland has operated since 2005. Specific “Fair for All” guidance on responding to the needs of black and minority ethnic communities has been in place since 2002.

NHSScotland is supported by the equality team within NHS Health Scotland, who are working to strengthen equality access for all through their Health Inequalities Impact Assessment. Support has included training for staff in equality and diversity, improving equality monitoring particularly for ethnicity and delivering interpreting and translation services.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of increasing employment rates for specific groups who are disadvantaged in the labour market, including people from some ethnic minority backgrounds. Working for Growth, the refreshed Employability Framework published in 2012, recognises this and sets out its expectation that where appropriate, local employability partnerships will develop specific interventions to support unemployed people from an ethnic minority background.

Between 2008 and 2015, direct Scottish Government Equality Programme funding for employability services for this group will total £5.756 million across 24 organisations.

In addition, between January 2008 and March 2011, the Scottish Government provided funding of £107k to support a range of actions in Glasgow which included an Ethnic Minority Employment Policy Manager post and the development of a toolkit of resources which can be used to support people from an ethnic minority background into work. This is available to all employability partnerships and other service providers through the employability in Scotland website:

http://www.employabilityinscotland.com/workingwithethnicminorityclientsatoolkitfo.aspx

Although published data are not considered statistically robust, we know that employment rates for ethnic minority women are much lower than for males. Since the Women’s Employment Summit in September last year, work has been underway to establish an understanding of what works to support this group and discussions have been held with a number of service providers to consider what more can be done at both a national and local level to help increase employment rates among ethnic minority women. Angela Constance will update the Scottish Parliament on this work later this year.

Scottish Government Ministerial visits overseas are published on the Scottish Government’s website and you can access those by using the following link: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/About/People/14944/travel/visitsoverseas

No meetings took place during these visits with groups that exclusively represent LGBT people. However, during a visit to Malawi in 2010 Fiona Hyslop, the then Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, raised human rights issues and met with charities working on raising HIV awareness, especially among the gay community.

You will be aware of the Charter of the Commonwealth and that there was some disappointment at the lack of specific reference to discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation in the charter. I wrote to the Secretaries of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Culture, Media and Sport in April 2013 to make this point, whilst also recognising my hope that the charter will prove a useful tool to reduce all forms of discrimination across the Commonwealth, including LGBT discrimination.

We are fully committed to equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Scotland and across the world. The Scottish Government works very closely with a wide range of partners to promote equality of opportunity and inclusion, including the four national LGBT organisations: Equality Network, LGBT Youth Scotland, the Scottish Transgender Alliance and Stonewall Scotland. The Scottish Government has provided funding of over £2.3 million between 2012-15 to LGBT organisations to take forward LGBT equality work.

Ministers have always sought to promote the values that underpin public life in Scotland when travelling overseas. Commonwealth countries will be in no doubt about those values when we welcome them to Scotland next year for the Commonwealth Games.

The Scottish Government publishes information on ministerial engagements which can be found at the following link:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/About/People/14944/Events-Engagements/MinisterialEngagements

The International Framework was indeed updated in October 2012 to include our commitment to raising human rights where appropriate. In meetings which ministers have had with representatives of commonwealth partners since, we have always sought to promote the values that underpin public life in Scotland. Commonwealth countries will be in no doubt about these values when we welcome them to Scotland next year for the Commonwealth Games.

You will also be aware of the Charter of the Commonwealth and that there was some disappointment at the lack of specific reference to discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation in the charter. I wrote to the Secretaries of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Culture, Media and Sport in April to make this point, whilst also recognising my hope that the charter will prove a useful tool to reduce all forms of discrimination across the Commonwealth, including LGBT discrimination.