Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you for repeating that.

Eradicating child poverty in Scotland is a national mission and the First Minister’s top priority for the Government. The Scottish Government has implemented a broad range of actions to achieve its interim and final child poverty targets, which are detailed through annual progress reports published for the periods 2018-19 and 2023-24. Over that time, the Scottish Government has introduced and delivered new social security payments, including five family payments to directly tackle child poverty. Those are the Scottish child payment, the best start foods payment and the three best start grants that are paid at key stages of a child’s life.

The Scottish Government has also taken action on the drivers of poverty reduction, including by nearly doubling the funding for the 1,140 hours of early learning and childcare for all three and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds. We have established devolved employability services, which supported almost 28,000 parents between April 2021 and September 2024. That included help for more than 19,000 parents through our targeted parental employability support, which was delivered under the no one left behind approach, and more than 8,500 parents through the fair start Scotland service.

The equality, inclusion and human rights directorate has responsibility for overseeing the reporting on, and implementation of, the ICESCR, including cross-governmental co-ordination on that. A human rights treaty reporting, monitoring and implementation group provides co-ordination for all Scottish Government human rights treaty reporting activity, including a consistent and cross-cutting approach to the implementation of the treaty body recommendations.

An internal group of human rights bodies leads has also been co-ordinated to develop a consistent Scottish Government approach to treaty body recommendations. Alexandra Devoy can give you a more specific view of the timeline.

Absolutely. It is really useful that we are doing this. I would also open it up to other committees, because it covers a wide range of portfolios.

We are continuing to explore with stakeholders how the Scottish Government will respond publicly to the ICESCR recommendations; those conversations are taking place right now. However, I do not want to be sitting here saying that this is the most effective method of communication from our point of view. It is really important to hear from the people to whom we are accountable what the most effective way of achieving accountability is. Those conversations are taking place.

More widely, we are engaging with Scottish Parliament officials as well as stakeholder experts. We have talked about the digital tracker and we hope that it will drive implementation and improvement, scrutiny and accountability.

I would welcome more regular engagement with the committee on international human rights treaty reporting, monitoring and implementation. That can be done in many ways. I can come and speak directly to the committee, and the committee is welcome to write to me regularly for interim updates on such matters. I will welcome any other suggestions that the committee might wish to make. I would happily consider those.

We know that the committee’s role in monitoring is important. It takes a lead role, as the Parliament does, in supporting and overseeing the implementation of human rights. That has been formally recognised. Indeed, “Getting rights right: human rights and the Scottish Parliament”, which the committee published in 2018, sets out the role of the Parliament and its committee as a guarantor of human rights. I have the utmost respect for that.

The CESCR also noted the crucial role that the Parliament plays in advancing the concluding observations. I re-emphasise that I see the Scottish Parliament’s committees as playing a central role in monitoring and scrutinising the implementation of ICESCR, the concluding observations and other treaty body recommendations more widely.

Yes, I can give an overview, and then perhaps the convener will be minded to allow Alexandra Devoy to come in on that, as she has been working on the tool quite closely.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, a design group has been convened that consists of stakeholders with expertise in human rights monitoring and implementation. In recognition of the crucial role that the Parliament plays in implementation and scrutiny, Scottish Parliament officials are members of the design group. The Scottish Government and delivery partners are working with a view to launching an initial product by March 2026, following engagement with stakeholders, but that is subject to the technical and functional specifications being deliverable.

One of the intended outcomes of the human rights tracker is to improve transparency by creating a tool that is open and publicly accessible. In turn, it will support civil society and the Scottish Parliament to monitor and interrogate processes and hold the Government to account in order to drive improvement and policy resilience.

Undoubtedly, that is a complex area, and we continue to work through it. For instance, the UK Supreme Court’s 2021 judgment on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill highlighted the complexities of human rights incorporation in a devolved context. We want to work with the UK Government to explore those complexities in relation to the scope of the duties that we propose in the human rights bill.

In March, the centre for public policy at the University of Glasgow hosted an event that brought together academics, officials and other interested actors from Scotland and across the UK to discuss issues that have arisen from the 2021 Supreme Court judgment, including the incorporation of human rights. We will continue to work with the UK Government and provide further updates in due course.

It remains our intention to introduce the human rights bill in the next parliamentary session—subject to the outcome of the 2026 election, of course. In the meantime, before the summer recess, in order to facilitate further extensive engagement with stakeholders, we will publish a discussion paper that sets out our proposed approach to the bill.

I understand your frustration. The enforcement lies with the EHRC. You are right to point out that there was an interim update but that guidance has not been issued. The EHRC is working at pace and I believe that it will issue its guidance towards the end of June. In the meantime, the Scottish Government is reviewing a wide range of areas—I think that Cat McMeeken specified all of them. That will enable us to be in a state of readiness so that, when the EHRC issues its guidance, we will be able to move forward at pace.

We are identifying the six priority groups that are at the highest risk: lone parents, minority ethnic families, families with disabled adults and children, families with young mothers who are under 25, families with children under one and larger families such as those with three children or more. We are focused on supporting those groups because we know that 90 per cent of all children in poverty live within those six priority family types. We are building our knowledge and understanding of the barriers to moving out of poverty that those families face.

Of course, there is also intersectionality across those groups. For instance, an ethnic minority family might have three or more children and one of those children might also be disabled.

Thank you for that. There is a wider point about women’s political representation as well. We want to be—well, we are—committed to achieving that fairer and more equal political representation so that everybody’s voices can be heard.

We recognise that we need to do better in representing the diversity across Scotland. We are doing other work alongside that. We are, of course, engaging with the EHRC on its forthcoming guidance. As I said in my earlier answer, we will be in a state of readiness for when we get that. In the meantime, it is the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice who is having that dialogue with the EHRC, and she welcomes working with it.

We are taking action to have more diverse representation in the Parliament and in local government. For instance, we have called on the UK Government to introduce gender quotas for elections across the UK, or for us to have the power to do that. We also fund organisations such as Elect Her, and I know that the member has appeared at promotion events that it has held. We provide funding to Engender to make sure that it progresses its equal representation project. We also provide funding to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to support the work of the cross-party barriers to elected office special interest group and the young women lead project.

A wide variety of work is going on to make sure that women are included and to maximise their participation in political life.

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?