Seòmar agus comataidhean

The importance of ensuring that we can do better in that area was flagged up in discussions with the Scottish Green Party. The development of the equality and human rights budget process will build on the 10 key emerging risks in the next equality and fairer Scotland budget statement. We want to ensure that, as far as possible, people’s lived experience can be integrated into the budget process. The budget process is not simple and it is not easy to take things forward in it, but we have made a commitment to consider what more we can do in that regard.

One theme of the recommendations from the equality budget advisory group is that we should improve knowledge and understanding in this area. Suffice it to say that we are working on that. We do not have all the answers, but we could come back to the committee with more detail on that if it would be helpful.

In answer to the previous question, I will write to the committee in relation to the gaps. We have published research to improve our understanding of the collection and use of equality data and data on socioeconomic disadvantage by Scottish public sector bodies, and that will help us to understand where the gaps are and how we can fill them.

I am happy to do that.

Thank you, convener, and good morning to the committee. I am delighted to take on my new portfolio and I welcome new and returning colleagues on the committee. I acknowledge the strong position on equality and human rights on which, thanks to the leadership of current and past ministers, we are able to build. I am sorry that, for understandable reasons, my colleague Christina McKelvie cannot be with us today.

I will take a moment to focus briefly on the on-going situation in Afghanistan. Scotland has a long history of welcoming people of all nationalities and faiths, including those seeking refuge and asylum. Work is under way to ensure that people have the support and services that they need on arrival and as they settle into communities. We are working with the Home Office, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, local authorities, the Scottish Refugee Council and other partners to provide people with the safety and security that they need to rebuild their lives.

Events in Afghanistan remind us how important it is that we support human rights around the world, and I look forward to welcoming the latest participants in the Scottish human rights defender fellowship, who will be arriving from Brazil and Columbia later this month.

Our experience during the past 18 months has also reminded us that equality, inclusion and human rights are our collective responsibility. Throughout the pandemic, inequality and human rights issues have been exacerbated, particularly for women, minority ethnic communities, disabled people and older people. We have taken significant steps to mitigate those impacts, with well over £1 billion committed to efforts to support communities and individuals at risk during the pandemic. We have seen admirable examples of people coming together to support their communities and develop new ways of working.

However, the situation has also exposed where we can do better, and we must continue to ensure that equality, inclusion and human rights are embedded throughout our work as we enter the next stage of renewal and recovery. We have invested an additional £5 million in front-line services tackling gendered violence, and we have started development of a new five-year plan to tackle social isolation and loneliness, with £1 million in funding for organisations this year.

Later this month, we will set out our immediate priorities to tackle racial inequality, building on our learning from the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on our minority ethnic communities. Furthermore, during this year, we will consult on a strategy to mainstream and embed equality, inclusion and human rights better across Government and wider society.

A human rights bill will be introduced in this parliamentary session. That will demonstrate global human rights leadership, placing Scotland at the forefront of human rights legislation and, most important, practice.

We will reform the Gender Recognition Act 2004 with a bill introduced in this parliamentary year, and ensure that LGBT people are protected from the deeply damaging practice of conversion therapy.

We will review our equally safe strategy with COSLA to ensure that we are doing all that we can to tackle the pernicious issue of violence against women and girls. We will also implement our strategy with COSLA to end destitution for those at risk due to immigration restrictions, doing all that we can within devolved powers to protect communities and support people.

Later this year, we will set out progress on tackling hate crime, before working with stakeholders to develop a new hate crime strategy. That will include implementation of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021.

That is just a brief outline of the work to come. I welcome the opportunity to give evidence and take your questions.

You make a good point that the ability of agencies to respond to and tackle rough sleeping during the pandemic and ensure that people were kept safe is referred to quite a lot. That was very important, particularly at the height of the pandemic.

The action plan commits to placing greater emphasis on preventing homelessness, accelerating the shift to rapid rehousing and ending the use of night shelters and dormitory-style provision. We pledged to provide an extra £50 million to end homelessness and rough sleeping. As you referred to, we will also introduce legislation to strengthen people’s housing rights and to place a duty on public bodies to prevent homelessness.

It is worth mentioning the issue of temporary accommodation, because I know that Miles Briggs and the committee have an interest in that area. Temporary accommodation was used a lot during the pandemic to keep people safe, and there has been a bit of a lag in landlords being able to move people from temporary accommodation to settled accommodation because of the delay in turning houses around. We are working very closely with local authorities and are supporting them individually to ensure that temporary accommodation is always suitable when it is used. For some local authorities, that is quite a challenge, but we are working with them to ensure that the issue is tackled. I am happy to write to the committee with more detail on that, if that would be helpful.

First, I absolutely agree that the pandemic has impacted on everyone, but not on everyone equally. We know that those who were most impacted by poverty before the pandemic have been the hardest hit and, as you point out, a gendered analysis of the pandemic reveals a lot of evidence that there has been an impact in that regard. We need to take all that into account in the Covid recovery plan.

We see local government as a key part of the economic recovery. We provided it with an additional £1.5 billion in direct support through the local government finance settlement, over and above the regular resource accounting and budgeting payments, for Covid recovery. It is important that we deliver a bold and ambitious recovery plan, and in Government our priority is to work collectively to ensure that that is the case. The Deputy First Minister is leading the engagement to strengthen our partnership with local government in order to support that recovery and maximise the benefit for our citizens.

In discussions with local government and partners, we have stressed the importance of learning from, and encouraging on-going participation from, local communities and of listening to people. I have been struck most of all by the local community resilience that we have seen, with people really supporting one another. We want to harness that as we move forward.

Working with partners in COSLA and with local government more widely will be an important focus of our work with communities as part of the Covid recovery plan. I am sure that the Deputy First Minister will keep the committee furnished with the detail of that as we go forward.

You are absolutely right. Community wealth building has become a very strong concept. It has been tried in other countries and we are very committed to doing it in Scotland. The spending power of local government is huge and that is important for local communities and local jobs and services.

We have pushed ourselves in the agreement. As the committee will be well aware, we have gone a bit further on procurement than we previously did, which is quite right, and on conditionality in particular. We want to ensure that procurement brings as much local benefit as possible, for example by placing conditions around the fair work agenda in contracts that are let. All that will help to ensure that wealth is kept in communities, where possible. As cabinet secretary with responsibility for social justice, I am keen to work with my Government colleagues to make that happen.

That is an important question. There is a danger that we will all go back into silos, which would be really negative. We have to work hard to make sure that we do not do that, including in Government, where we must lead by example; we must work across Government as much as possible. I talked about the way in which we are working across Government to tackle child poverty. It is not just my job but everybody’s job to do that. Leading by example is important.

We want to build on the recommendations of the social renewal advisory board and ensure that the lessons of the pandemic are not lost and that they inform our approach. I met the board last week and we talked about how many of its recommendations have found their way into Government policy and ambition. That is good, because the recommendations are challenging—and rightly so.

In our work with local government, we want to focus on a community-based approach to Covid recovery and to sustain many of the good initiatives that arose during the pandemic, which support individuals in our communities. Such an approach is what we envisaged when we passed the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. We wanted to enable much more community participation and engagement. The approach will be central to the Government’s response in supporting organisations to make a meaningful impact on their communities.

We have the opportunity to make that happen, but it will not happen on its own; we need to work at it. I know from my discussions with COSLA that COSLA feels the same. We must maintain that can-do mentality, whereby things that previously seemed to take a long time to achieve were achieved and barriers were swept away. That can-do attitude was very much to the fore and we want to maintain it so that we can make progress in the recovery phase.

I would like to look at that in a bit more detail. If you write to me with some of the detail, I would be happy to look specifically at whether we can do more in relation to supporting EDAS.

Local government has always had a key economic development role. That role will be even more important during the Covid recovery, so if we can do more to support capacity and those on the front line who have that expertise in local government, I am certainly happy to consider that, along with my Cabinet colleagues. Perhaps you could drop me an email about that and I can look at it in more detail.

I think that it is about challenging silos, bureaucracy and barriers if they begin to emerge again. It is about challenging ourselves, too, because it is easy to fall back into old ways of working. We need to be open about the issue. The committee has a role in that regard, as does Government and local government; we need to act as checks on ourselves in that regard.

I think that communities want to lead and do stuff for themselves, and there is a lot of legislation and policy in place to help make that happen. Sometimes, letting go of power can be quite difficult, for all of us. However, when you look at what communities have achieved when they have taken over, for example, assets or buildings, you can see that they have managed to turn around things that statutory agencies were, with the best will in the world, sometimes not able to. There is something very special and inspiring about the community ownership model. We need to see more of that. Where communities desire that—they should not be forced—they should be empowered to do that and we should support them.

I am happy to do that. The rented sector strategy will build on what I hope you agree is significant progress in improving standards and tenants’ rights over the years, which has been a collective endeavour by Parliament over some time. We are committed to a public consultation early next year, which will include plans for a new housing regulator for the private rented sector for new and strengthened tenants’ rights, greater restrictions on evictions over winter and additional penalties for illegal evictions. We want to make sure that we can deliver enhanced tenants’ rights, but we want to consult stakeholders on the detail of that. Any legislative issues that emerge from the rented sector strategy can be picked up by a housing bill in the second year of this parliamentary session. It seemed a logical way to do it, so we will consult on the strategy, publish the final strategy later in 2022 and thereafter look at any legislative changes that are required through a housing bill.

I do not know whether you want me to say something on rent controls. Clearly, rent controls are an issue that is part of the agreement with the Scottish Green Party. We want to consult on what a system of rent controls would look like and ensure that there is sufficient local flexibility in taking that forward. That is a big piece of work that we will take forward, which I know that your colleagues have been interested in as well.