Seòmar agus comataidhean

I welcome our first panel of witnesses, who are all joining us remotely, as are my colleagues Foysol Choudhury and Marie McNair. I welcome Dr Marsha Scott, chief executive officer of Scottish Women’s Aid; Eilidh Dickson, policy and parliamentary manager at Engender; Davy Thompson, campaign director of White Ribbon Scotland; and Laura Tomson, co-director of Zero Tolerance.

There are a few housekeeping things to note before we get started. For those who are participating remotely, if you want to contribute, please type R in the chat box. I will keep my eye on that. Colleagues, please direct your questions to a particular panel member to get us started. We have only a short time this morning of about an hour for this first panel, and then we have a second panel. I therefore ask panel members to add new and salient points if something has been gone over. Please make sure that we get as much information from you as possible, but that it is new information. Please submit in writing after the meeting anything that you think that we need to hear, and I am sure that we will have some follow-up questions.

We have a number of themes to explore. The first theme is about background and context, our second theme is about prevention work and our third theme is about front-line support and funding. To kick us off, I will hand over to my colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy, who will come in on theme 1.

Good morning, and welcome to the ninth meeting in 2022 of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. This morning, we will be talking about domestic abuse and violence against women and girls. As a former front-line women’s aid worker, that is an area close to my heart, and I know that what we will hear today will be very difficult but very necessary for us in our roles. Yesterday, the committee met informally with the Lord Advocate and the national procurator fiscal for domestic abuse, which provided valuable background for this morning’s meeting.

Apologies have been received from Natalie Don, and we welcome our colleague Stephanie Callaghan, who is attending as her substitute.

Our first item of business is a decision on whether to take item 3 in private. Do members agree to take item 3 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

I see that Marsha Scott would like to comment briefly.

Do you want to come back in, Marie, or have all your questions been answered?

Thank you very much for that. I can see that Davy Thompson wants to come in, too.

We will move on to our final theme, which we have heard a lot already this morning: front-line services and funding. We can run over time a little bit, and Miles Briggs will kick off our questions.

That is fantastic. We will make sure that we pick that question up with the next panel.

Thank you all for your time and for your evidence this morning. We will suspend briefly for five minutes to give everybody a comfort break and to swap over panels.

Next, I will bring in Jeremy Balfour, who is in the room. Foysol Choudhury, who is remote, will be after him.

You remind me of my outreach-worker days, running women’s lunch clubs and groups and going into schools to deliver training as a third-sector women’s aid worker. It always felt as if the statutory-organisations part of gathering data was missing. Thank you very much for drawing our attention to that.

I will bring Stephanie Callaghan to finish up on this theme. Then we will go to Miles Briggs to take us on to theme 3.

That was a very good question, and it was evidence that we needed to hear.

I now hand over to Miles Briggs.