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Good morning. Thank you for having us along to give evidence.

The simple answer is that I am not wedded to that model at all. I see the funding of a disability commissioner’s organisation and how it functions as being the least important aspects of its operations. The disability community wants to have an independent voice on Government, health services and local government issues. How that organisation might be put together is a secondary consideration.

The reason for my going down the road that you have described was that that was the one that was taken for other commissioners in the past. At that point, it seemed logical to keep everything under the same roof, as it were. However, if the committee or the Parliament, either now or in the future, were to say, “Look—there’s a different way of doing this that would provide economic benefit or allow us to pool services,” that would not concern me. There are different ways of doing this, which we could perhaps explore later in the meeting. I am not wedded in any way to that one model.

You are right to say that there are existing models that work, and there might be others that you would like to explore. For me, the key issue is to get a disability commissioner in place and advocating on behalf of a community in Scotland that feels that it has been left behind and has, in practice, been left behind, both before Covid and certainly since then.

Yes. As you will be aware, SCOSS scrutinises legislative proposals from the Government to see whether they reflect what the disability community wants. The work of a disability commissioner would go much further. The committee has already heard evidence from other commissions, but they have done very little work on disability issues, which is why the disability community feels that it has been left behind.

When I did my public consultation, people’s responses were that they felt that they had been left behind. That was not just a feeling; it is backed by facts. I have just come from a meeting of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee on issues relating to older people and pensioner poverty. The community that is most left behind in that regard is the disabled community. A pensioner who is poor and disabled will really have to struggle against everything else.

I am not so worried about the model that the Parliament comes up with for how such a commissioner could operate. It could be done through the Scottish Government or perhaps with one central bloc that had an HR team that looked after all the commissioners and had all the backroom resources behind it. I know that the latter is a model that the committee has already explored. For me, that is not the issue; it is about establishing an independent disability commissioner who can advocate on behalf of disabled people in Scotland. The rest of it can follow on from that.

I have three things to say. First, disabled people make up 20 per cent of the population in Scotland, which is not an insignificant number, and that number is growing, for various reasons.

Secondly, we need to follow the evidence on poverty, employability, the transition from education and all the other key issues that we talk about in the Parliament. On almost every occasion, disabled people have been left behind or find it hardest to access those services.

Finally, I will quote Murdo Fraser, who asked a previous panel:

“Are you telling me that, as it stands, you do not believe that the Scottish Human Rights Commission properly represents the views of disabled or older people?”—[Official Report, SPCB Supported Bodies Landscape Review Committee, 27 February 2025; c 7.]

The answer to that was, “We do not think that it does.”

To be honest, if the Scottish Human Rights Commission and other bodies were doing their jobs at the moment, perhaps we would not need a disability commissioner. However, the evidence is that, although those bodies are pursuing other very important issues, they are not dealing with disability issues. I do not foresee there being any change in that regard, which means that the 20 per cent of the population who have diverse needs and face diverse situations simply do not have a voice in the Parliament or the Government.

That does not mean that third sector organisations are not doing their jobs. They are doing their jobs very effectively, but there is no coherent voice of the kind that disabled people strongly feel is needed in Scotland.

It is important to say that it could be doing that work already. It has chosen to put its resources into certain areas, and it has chosen not to put them into disability issues. We could give the Human Rights Commission more money and whoever is in charge of the organisation at the time could say, “Yes, we’re going to sign up to that and we’re going to do that”, but three to five years down the line, when a new person with new priorities is in place, there is nothing statutory to say that it must continue to highlight disability issues. To be fair, it could have done such work in the past, but it has not. Unless we are going to absolutely change the remit of the commission and give it a whole new way of working, I fear that that simply will not happen in practice. We can put more money into it, but it still gets to decide what work it does. If it chooses not to address disability issues, that will take us no further forward.

I am slightly further down the road than my two colleagues, in that a stage 1 report has been produced on my bill. Redefining the Scottish Human Rights Commission would probably be too broad an area for a member’s bill; such a bill would need to be led by the Government or a committee. Having consulted the office of the Children and Young People’s Commissioner on how it works, I have tried to mirror in my bill many of its powers. In fact, my bill goes further, because the Children and Young People’s Commissioner said, “Here are some of the weaknesses—we wish that we had these powers,” so we added those powers to my bill.

Ultimately, if we are going to change the Scottish Human Rights Commission or do something different, that will take time, and it will not happen in this session of the Parliament. The issue might be back on the agenda in the next session of the Parliament, but we do not know what the Government will be or what the priorities of MSPs will be. If my bill is not passed, the disability community will have no voice for two, three, four or however many more years. It is really important that my bill is passed at the moment, so that there is that voice at the table.

There are legitimate calls for a big debate on what the landscape should look like. However, my concern is that, if there is no one to advocate for the disability community in Scotland, it is inevitable that that voice will not be heard. Let us have that debate, but it will not happen fully in the next 12 months—there will certainly be no worked-out legislation in the next 12 months.

There are legitimate questions about how such bodies are funded and where they sit. The question that the Parliament has to ask in the next few months is: do we believe that there needs to be an independent commissioner to advocate for disabled people? That is the issue that we need to address. Everything else will follow from it.

Yes.

It comes down to personalities. Over the past 20-odd years, different children’s commissioners have had different influences and different ways of doing the role. Getting the right person in post is key.

My bill includes a duty on the disability commissioner to provide an annual report to the Parliament, which would go to the appropriate committees. However, I think that Sarah Boyack is right. If my bill succeeds, there would be an opportunity for the commissioner to raise issues with MSPs on an on-going basis. They would not simply report once a year but would build relationships with the Government, MSPs and other people so that the voice of disabled people could be heard. I think that the commissioner would allow that to happen.

I met a number of the commissions, but the most useful meeting was the one with the Children and Young People’s Commissioner, because that office’s set-up is quite similar to what I propose. Like Colin Smyth, I looked at the issue of duplication, and I had conversations with the SHRC about its remit and how it works. Those conversations were robust on occasions.

That is a good question. I see the proposed disability commissioner as being proactive and reactive.

I think that proactive—