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Thank you—that is helpful.

My final question perhaps touches on some of the supplementary questions that Rachael Hamilton asked about a cross-sectoral approach. Obviously, we can say more about what we can ask or demand of public agencies, but there is another key role here.

Farah Farzana, you talked about your organisations and others that might be providing quite small-scale, local support, whether that is mentoring or something else. Is enough support given to that kind of work within the third sector by organisations such as yours, but also to other bits of the third sector that provide services for ethnic minority communities and individuals? Is there enough information flowing within the third sector and between public and third sector bodies around cultural sensitivities and broadening our collective understanding as a society?

I have a quick supplementary on that point. I acknowledge what Mariam Ahmed said about the lack of BME counsellors. We do not train a diverse range and community of counsellors in Scotland—we just do not do that.

I am interested in hearing from those of you who provide direct support. Pervin Ahmad spoke about complex cases requiring much more support. From the point of view of your staff and volunteers, what more needs to be put in place to ensure that we minimise vicarious trauma? I can imagine that some of the stories that your workers hear, and the things that they have to deal with, can be pretty extreme.

What would that look like?

I thank everyone for coming in today and for what they have said so far. To use Jatin Haria’s word, I find some of the “disagreements” quite interesting, because I think that those tease out the complexity, as well as some of the structural and systemic problems that we face. No single Government department can solve those problems. Education cannot solve this. We are dealing with deeply ingrained cultural racism across all sectors.

Jatin made a distinction between a lot of the activity that is going on and the need for implementation and action. Farah Farzana also mentioned that. You have cautioned us against treating minority ethnic communities as homogeneous, for a whole range of reasons, including whether people were born or brought up in Scotland.

We know about inequality in employment, which we have talked about and which Rachael Hamilton and Pam Duncan-Glancy have asked questions about. We know about the unequal impacts of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis. We also know that very little changed before Black Lives Matter. Farah said that there was a lot of talk, and that if we had implemented some of those policies 10 years ago, we would be in a different position.

What is the barrier that the Scottish Government or Scottish Parliament is coming up against? We should not always rely on you and your organisations to fix the problem—that is not where we should be—so how do we overcome that barrier of deeply ingrained, systemic racism?

I am struck by what you have said about recognition. Recently, we have seen quite a lot of information relating to racial profiling in the police, for instance, and on-going work to improve that, but reports keep coming back that our police service uses racial profiling. What would such accountability look like for the police specifically or any other public agency?

Pinar, did you want to come in?

Welcome, everybody, and thank you for joining us. In our first panel this morning, we heard about the mismatch between fine words, policies and strategies and actually delivering accountable actions on the ground to change Scotland’s approach to racism and to challenge the underlying systemic racist society in which we live.

Graham, you picked up on some specific issues with the UK Government and Home Office, and how they are, in your words, profoundly racist. From a Scottish perspective, what avenues should the Scottish Parliament be working on to support the people with whom you work? I ask Pinar to come in after your response.

Thank you for what you have said so far, minister. I am interested in exploring a couple of issues of accountability and in making connections between how decisions are made and the evidence that is used to make those decisions. I would like to know how those decisions are both linked to projected outcomes and tracked to ensure that those outcomes are delivered. I am interested in both equalities objectives and rights realisation.

Last week, Angela O’Hagan spoke about the need for greater clarity about the relationships between allocation, spending and outcomes and for greater clarity about the relationship between equalities objectives and rights realisation. Alison Hosie spoke about the need for evidence in that decision-making process.

Can you give us more detail about both the pre-budget phase and during the budget? I know that budgeting is a constant process, although there are points in the year when we publish certain papers and documents. How do you ensure that we get consistency and acknowledgement across the different areas? Where, in your view, are we not doing as well as we should be?

That is just a little question for you. Sorry.

It is a communication issue; we need to ensure that people are aware of what is out there. Thank you.

Thanks—that is helpful. You will be aware of conversations that we have had in this committee around the need to identify the minimum core obligations and what we actually mean by the universal rights that we want to enshrine in Scots law. That is a question with regard to the work that you and your officials are doing. As we do some of the work around the minimum core obligations, what points will it be necessary or important to bear in mind, particularly as we think about how that work can link to budget scrutiny, ensuring that we get that accountability connection with the minimum basic level of rights, whether those rights are being delivered and whether the resources exist to deliver those?