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—particularly in relation to some of the other rights that you talked about, such as marches and the right to protest. Some communities clearly feel over-policed, but that is perhaps for another day.

Jillian, given your scrutiny role across the public sector, where are the good points when it comes to fostering good relations, and where do we fall short?

I want to tease that out a little bit more. I am familiar with the turnaround from using the term “hard to reach” to using the term “seldom heard”. The framing that I like is “easy to ignore”, because that makes it very clear whose responsibility it is to engage. However, even those terms can fail—that might be because of one incident or maybe decades of incidents of discrimination and prejudice by the police—because communities or individuals in communities do not want to engage with the police and might even feel threatened and intimidated by them. How do you foster good relations in those situations?

We could probably go on with this conversation—

Thank you, convener, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us and for your comments so far.

You have all said in different ways that you think that you and your colleagues have a good understanding of what is required of you under the public sector equality duty. One of the reasons why we are undertaking this piece of work is that, in the absence of the Scottish Government’s human rights bill and the opportunity to talk about rights realisation through that, it has become very clear that there is a need to ensure that local authorities and public bodies are attuned to their duties under the Equality Act 2010 and, in particular, to the PSED, especially given that inequalities are rising in certain sectors between certain groups and also within certain protected characteristics.

To what extent do you think that the PSED, as it stands, is delivering for the people of Scotland, bearing in mind that there are still many significant inequalities issues across the different protected characteristic groups, between them and in communities as a whole?

Thank you—that is useful. It is great that we have this range of witnesses today, because that is exactly the kind of variation that we must understand. One size will not fit all across Scotland, and we must ensure that we understand what will and will not work in different places.

Three MSPs on the committee cover Aberdeenshire, so we will try to not pick on you, Martin.

We know that the Scottish Government is in the process of reforming the equality duty, and you have all mentioned, in slightly different ways, crossovers, the regulatory landscape and the need to reconnect some of the pieces—I think that Nareen used the word “harmonising” when talking about the regulatory landscape earlier. Do you think that some of that work is under way as part of the Scottish Government’s proposed reforms of the PSED, or do you think that those reforms do not go far enough? Do you see that harmonising in those reforms, or is there still work to do? I will come to you, Nareen, and then go around the table.

Thanks—that is helpful. Alyia, do you want to come in on that?

That is helpful. I will take you up on that offer, minister.

The next chunk of my questions are about human rights budgeting more generally. You will remember from your time on this committee all the challenges and questions about data: who has it and where it is available. A substantial amount of data is available. We think that it informs budget decision making, but the EFSBS does not describe how it does so. Can you say more about the data—which sometimes is really good and sometimes has a lot of gaps—and how it informs your and your colleagues’ decision making?

Thank you, Matthew. That is helpful.

Minister, you mentioned the relationship between the budget planning work, national outcomes and human rights principles. What role does the equality data improvement programme have in supporting the direct read-through to national outcomes and sustainable development goals, which open up the human rights space a little bit more broadly than the national outcomes do?

Good morning to the minister and her officials. Thank you for joining us this morning and for your comments so far.

I will follow on from Marie McNair’s questions on mainstreaming and ensuring that equalities and human rights are everybody’s business. The Scottish Human Rights Commission chair was clear that they should not be only in the remit of this committee. You have described the work that you have done with Government colleagues. I am interested in exploring how we can ensure that equalities issues, perhaps specifically in relation to autism and neurodivergence, are taken seriously by portfolios across Government and public bodies that the Scottish Government funds.

We have probably all heard too many stories of autistic people being fobbed off, not listened to, misdiagnosed and given treatments that do not work and could cause further harm. We have also heard about autistic people being arrested or being made homeless. All that costs the taxpayer and departments across both central and local government much more money. That is before we even consider the life-changing impact and detriment to those individuals and their families. It is even more galling that when those harms are brought to light, public bodies close ranks and do not take the human rights and equalities agenda seriously.

Minister, how have you worked with colleagues to try to ensure that that kind of waste of resource and human potential does not happen? How can we minimise that, and how can we get away from the stress and the detriment that it causes? I have a follow-up question on the issue, but I am interested in your comments on those points first.