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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.

What would that look like?

That is okay. Obviously, there is a barrier. There is a gap between the recommendations and what we know is wrong, and overcoming that barrier or hurdle. What are we—the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and politicians—doing wrong, and how can we overcome—

It is about the systemic and ingrained racism in Scottish society.

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.

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 appreciate that. You have shown clear intent to make those connections, which was clear from last week’s evidence session. There was a question about the ability to know what a figure in a column means for people on the ground. Everything in between is important, but it is the outcome that matters.

Following on from that, you talked about meaningful and lasting change. We need to track the figure on the spreadsheet to the outcome on the ground, but we also need to make sure that everybody who needs to be involved in those decision-making processes is involved.

Rachael Hamilton mentioned siloing, and Rob Priestley talked about portfolio analysis. I understand why analysis is done in portfolios; you have to choose some way to chunk it up, tease it apart and make sense of it, but how do we ensure that we guard against the right hand not knowing what the left is doing in relation to decision making that leads to outcomes?

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.