Seòmar agus comataidhean

Stephanie Griffin, in your opening remarks, you talked about the extent of the EHRC’s powers. Where do you see problems with implementation and accountability? Has the EHRC had any thoughts about examining that area in detail?

Is there anything else from Paul O’Kane? I see that he is happy with that. We had Marie McNair online to ask a couple of questions, but she dropped off. Have we been able to get her back? I see that we have not. If we can get her on in the next couple of minutes, we will. In the meantime, I will carry on.

In our conversations so far, there have been a couple of questions specifically on participation and engagement with different groups of disabled people and members of the diverse and varied disability community across Scotland. Where do you think that the challenges lie in having a commissioner in this area?

I suppose that that follows on from what Meghan Gallacher was talking about, with regard to how we understand disability in the round. Rather than having a disability commissioner, how would you see us tackle some of the potential tensions, and perhaps even conflicts, within the whole context for disabled people in Scotland?

Thanks. Stephanie, is there anything that you would like to add?

Your point about sharing information is interesting. We have not really touched on the barriers to sharing information across existing organisations, never mind an additional one, so that is something for us to consider as well.

Given what you said about participation, as the committee progresses through its gathering of evidence at stage 1, are there people, groups or organisations that you think we absolutely must talk to and that we must ensure are on our list over the coming weeks? Do you have any suggestions or ideas?

My colleagues will pick up on potential overlaps and duplications, but, if we do agree about having a disability commissioner, is the SHRC concerned that certain commissions or commissioners will potentially have powers that the national human rights institution does not have? Does that cause the SHRC concern?

It goes back to the questions around enterprise support and innovation and that link. One of the challenges—Kevin Stewart probably knows some examples of this, as well—is that engineers who are working in renewables need financial support to develop their prototypes and ideas, but they only get it for a limited time and some such things take a few years to develop. Is there a body of work that has been done, or is there work that could be done, on ensuring that we support the innovative people who want to be part of delivery of the outcomes that you were talking about? Is there a way to think more creatively about how we can allow those people to focus on their innovations and be able to live at the same time?

It is sometimes one or two people.

Thank you for that. Moving on to the green industrial strategy and the just transition, I hear what you say about the restrictions on what you can say during the purdah period. However, already this morning, you have talked about cross-Government working and the need for a strong economy to support our ambitions—you talked about ambitions in relation to health, education and apprenticeships in response to Brian Whittle’s questions. Do you see the green industrial strategy as being an overarching economic approach, or as being more to do with specific and narrowly focused—not in a bad way—objectives and aims?

My next question was actually going to be about making the energy transition fair for everybody. As you say, we have not done that sort of thing well in the past, with the result that inequalities have widened and perpetuated in our economy and our society.

As well as the issue of macro-energy, if I can call it that—I mean the big stuff around renewables—we desperately need a focus on and investment in things such as retrofitting houses, because we cannot build new houses for all the people who are currently living in shoddy homes. Action in that regard is as urgent as action on renewables and so on, and must take place concurrently. How do you see the supply chain and people’s skill sets working in that regard?

That links to what you said about communities, because one of the things that came out strongly in the inquiry that the committee held on the just transition for the north-east and Moray is that communities do not trust that the things that you mention will happen. I think that that is because they do not see material benefits in their own lives—for example, they do not see their homes being retrofitted or local transport links improving so that they can get to local jobs that might be available. That direct translation of economic activity into people’s lives is utterly missing at the moment. How will all the work around the just transition and the green industrial strategy deliver in that regard?

I might follow up on a couple of those issues later.