Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, and thank you for being with us today.

I will pick up on a couple of points. Professor Napier, you spoke in your opening remarks about the Deaf Links pilot in Dundee, and your report is clear in identifying the lack of deaf-specific services as a barrier to safety and support. What would a deaf-led domestic abuse service look like? Is the Deaf Links pilot it, or is it the start of what such a service should look like?

:The committee will reflect on your point about what we can do about families, whether it is the mother or the child, not trusting somebody else enough to tell them because they are worried that the child might be taken away or that they might be thought to be a bad parent. We will have to tease out how we deal with that by providing the whole-family support that is required.

:You have talked about a victim/survivor perhaps being reticent about trusting or relying on a service because of past experience, and about the value of having people who understand deaf culture as advocates. The question, I suppose, is how we ensure that there are enough people who have not only BSL skills and language capabilities but the sort of direct experience that Jemina Napier was talking about, of being victims/survivors themselves, or at least an awareness of that. After all, that sort of thing will be very variable in different parts of the country. In your view, how do we ensure that people do not get a lesser service just because they are remote? The Deaf Links pilot is great, but I can see that it might be quite difficult to replicate in very remote areas.

:Thank you. That was really helpful. As somebody who previously worked in the Rape Crisis network, I know that we never talked about BSL or deaf culture. It is therefore important that we take on board the point that you have made.

My next question is for Claire Houghton. Claire, you have talked about children acting as language brokers and about having the right interpreters in the right place. Is that all we need? I know that it is still a big ask, but is that the main thing that we need to ensure that children are never put in that position? After all, it is not fair, it distorts the parent-child relationship and it is traumatising—all of that.

:Colleagues will know that I have voted against the orders in the past, when the increase was 20 per cent, but the current increases are broadly in line with, or just above, inflation, so I will not vote against them. I just put that on the record.

:Good morning, minister, and thank you for joining us this morning. In my first question, I want to build on your previous answer and Georgia de Courcy Wheeler’s contributions, too.

When you talked about broader needs-based support—I am thinking of those situations in which a diagnosis is not required but we still need to ensure that those have access to support—you mentioned tools, digital support, family support and so on. What specific steps is the Scottish Government taking to ensure that people who need those support mechanisms know about them, first of all, and then can access them? After all, this is not always about funding, although funding, especially for the third sector organisations that provide such mechanisms, is crucial. What is the Scottish Government doing beyond providing funding to ensure that people have access to the support that is out there without diagnosis?

:When that happens, what do you expect Police Scotland to do?

:I am sorry to interrupt you, but I want to focus on misinformation and disinformation, which you spoke about. In Dundee and Aberdeen, I have witnessed people being directly targeted on the streets because of their skin colour or ethnicity. However, because those incidents have happened at so-called protests, Police Scotland officers who have witnessed them have done nothing about them.

One of my concerns is that you have a high-level action plan and you have arrangements in place, including the community cohesion funding that you were just talking about, but we need all public sector bodies, including Police Scotland and other agencies, to act. I am concerned that there is no real understanding of where protest becomes criminal behaviour, including hate speech, inciting hatred and even blatant racism, and that we are not seeing our public agencies acting to de-escalate there and then. I am really concerned that the conversation does not seem to capture that and that we are therefore not enabling people to express their social and economic rights.

10:30

:Last night, we received the updated timeline for the different activities in legal aid reform, and I put my thanks for that on the record. I know that a lot of work is being done in this space and, although we do not yet have the legislation for legal aid reform, it is helpful to see the other elements that are going on laid out in your correspondence.

I will leave it there, convener. Thank you.

:I appreciate that the tool is coming in March, but that is not much comfort to the people who, week after week, are exposed to racist hate speech and see no action happen. It is deeply concerning that we are not seeing the action to back up all the rhetoric about there being no place for racism on our streets. I will leave it there, convener.