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Please do. I would be happy to receive that correspondence.

There is no simple answer—if there was one, we would have solved the issue—so I am in the position of extracting the different threads, some of which concern competency, some of which concern capability and some of which concern cultural change. I heard from some of the contributors to your committee last week that they felt that there was often resistance, too. The other side of that, which I referred to in response to the first question, is that there are often different ways of seeing things and different perspectives.

My focus, which I think I share with you, is on the actual impact at the end of the day. We need to ensure that, although we have bureaucracy, duties and expectations, the processes are outcomes driven and impact driven, as opposed to being mechanistic and bureaucratic. I am trying to avoid using the term “tick box”, but I want to get away from that tick-box approach, and we recognise that, traditionally, there has been a danger of that.

If we are trying to embed a human rights approach in the delivery of all our public services, it is incumbent on us to make that our starting point as opposed to that consideration coming in later, when it is almost too late and we are then looking at mitigation. We want to be strategic, which is why we are taking a phased approach to reform. In that way, we can learn from each phase what is working and what is not working and then ensure that we distil that down into concentrating on the specific actions that will lead to change. I referred to that as scaffolding, but I can go a bit further into what that looks like, namely providing the training and the toolkits and ensuring consistency of delivery.

That is where the visible leadership bit comes in: people see that I am on this, that I am rolling my sleeves up and that I am engaging extensively with more than 100 different duty bearers. I am going to continue with that work. There is a relentless drive to improve consistency.

It is a complex trajectory and the value that I can add is to make it clear that I expect this way of working to be embedded and not seen as additionality. I understand what people are saying; I worked in the public sector for decades, and I know that there can be a fear of additional expectations being put on already hard-working people who are trying incredibly hard to work on equalities. Often, the reaction to this sort of thing is, “Oh, here is another thing we have to do,” but I want to shift the narrative to, “This is about how we as public authorities approach and do our work.” It is not about the amount of work to be done; it is about improving how we do the work. That is not additional work.

That is where the committee can add value, if that is one of its recommendations. A lot of public authorities already have anti-racism action plans. For instance, in the teaching sector, a lot of excellent work has been done over a number of years. I have seen the trend of moving from multiculturalism to being positively anti-racist in order to prevent those harms, as opposed to just having policies to deal with matters once the harms have come about.

It is only right that there is a phased approach. Every local authority or public body will be at a different stage of developing a plan, but my expectation is very clear that it is good practice to have that plan as part of the body’s supportive policies.

I gave the bit about fostering good relations some thought and I listened to the views that were presented to the committee by other witnesses. I have a two-fold approach to fostering good relations. We want to make sure that we maintain and advance cohesive communities. That is essential. We also have to make sure that we always deal with conversations with communities in a compassionate way. The two-fold bit is that communities can come together and public organisations and bodies have a role to play there. Moving on from that, it is also about increasing understanding between different communities, and education is needed to make sure that we do that in a compassionate way that shows that building strong, cohesive communities is important.

There was an example of that during the summer when there were the unfortunate situations in Southport. As a minister, my approach when tensions were heightened—it was led by the First Minister; there was leadership right from the top—was to bring together people with different views and experiences in order to communicate, to aid understanding and to provide clear expectations and leadership. You are right, in as much as the fostering of good relations does not get the profile that it deserves. It is quite hard to do that bit. Nick Bland may have more to say.

I will have a go at answering it and I will try to unpick some of the elements. Yes, the police were recognised as being institutionally racist. There is a clear distinction, however: that does not mean to say that the people working in the police force are all racist. We know how institutions and structures can reinforce and compound discriminatory practices.

Once we have that acknowledgement, my pragmatic piece is to move on. Our focus is on improving outcomes; that is what we need to do. The police take a community-first approach and they invest in community police officers to build those relationships within the communities and to be embedded within them. I know that they do amazing work in community centres, on the street, in our schools and so on. However, it is incumbent on us all to reach out and build that mutual trust and confidence, although I understand that there will be challenges when people are operating in a deficit model.

Nick Bland mentioned our work on new Scots, and we are also doing a lot of work around hate crime. The police play a crucial role in making Scotland a safe and cohesive place. I refer again to the events of the summer, when the police were involved in extensive briefings and their response was largely well received by the communities. I think that, by and large, they struck that balance between providing a supportive presence and not being oppressive or taking a disproportionate approach. Of course, we have to remember that the police are completely independent, and what they do in that regard is up to them, in that sense.

Nick, do you want to come in briefly?

I cannot comment on anything specific, as the member will be well aware. However, I point out that there are also the regulations on health and safety in the workplace. There are lots of regulations in place.

This is certainly a role for the EHRC, which is the enforcer, as it were, with jurisdiction over this area. I will be meeting the commission very soon, possibly even next week. We have always had a close working relationship, and I am looking forward to meeting it to explore these issues of interpretation and enforcement. I am sure that those issues will come up.

I am not sure. I will bring in Nick Bland, because I need to check the technical aspect to your question.

I heard previous witnesses say that what we were proposing was nothing new, because public authorities already have a duty to make reasonable adjustments. I listened very carefully to those comments and I thought that they were interesting.

However, there are limits with the reasonable adjustments approach. Equality law sets out that reasonable adjustments are applicable only to disabled people. The existing regulations on accessible communications and publications are important, but we want to help public authorities to address multiple communication barriers, as far as that is possible within devolved powers.

Part of my thinking was that the reasonable adjustments approach is not enough because that approach concerns only one protected characteristic, whereas taking the revised approach encompasses everybody.

I recognise that evidence. That is exactly why—as I shared with the committee—Communication Inclusion People and Disability Equality Scotland are going to lead on this work. I hope that they will provide the work that a lot of local authorities are probably trying to do at their own level. This work will provide consistency, and I hope that it will be an extensive resource bank that can provide good practice and will be there for people to pick up and use. There will be a bit of an economy of scale, but it will also help with providing consistency so that, from one end of Scotland to the other, everybody gets the same service.