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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 ���˿��� 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 ���˿��� on an on-going basis. They would not simply report once a year but would build relationships with the Government, ���˿��� 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—

I think that my proposed commissioner should be 70 per cent proactive and 30 per cent reactive.

I will give a quick example. Let us say that a disability commissioner is appointed. In their first year, that individual will have to go out to the disabled community. The commissioner should not expect that community to come to them, but should go to it. They should spend six to nine months meeting as many people as they can so that they can understand the priorities of the disabled community. Most of us know what those priorities are, but let us make sure that they are right.

The commissioner would need to work out how to advocate for those priorities. They would need to consider whether a particular priority is a local government issue, a Scottish Parliament issue or a health board issue. The commissioner would have to talk not only to you—or, rather, to your successor, as you will not be here—but would have to talk to the local councillor in Dundee to find out why, for example, there are no accessible toilets in that area. There might be accessible toilets in the Dundee area—I am just inventing an example.

The commissioner would have to go to the health board and ask it, “Do you know the effect of what you are doing is having on disabled people?” If the commissioner were to talk only to the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament, they would not be doing their job: they would need to talk to other bodies, as well. It is clear that the next Government will introduce legislation that will have an effect on disabled people. The commissioner would need to react to that legislation and to put across their points to ���˿���.

I say this very carefully, but a person who is not disabled will not know what effect certain things will have on individual lives. I have no idea what it is like to have a visual impairment, nor do I have any idea what Pam Duncan-Glancy goes through as someone who is a wheelchair user. The disability commissioner would need to represent many different voices. It would not be as easy as going to one or two people in order to understand how the disabled community feels. They would have to get the views of people with different disabilities, some of which are hidden and some of which are very obvious. They would need to bring that information together and to ask the health boards and the Government, “Do you understand what effect this will have?”

Therefore, I think that the role of the disability commissioner would be a very proactive one, which would involve listening to the disabled community and advocating on its behalf.

I will address your second question first, but I will reverse it. Why are we pulling up the drawbridge now? In the current session of the Parliament, it has already voted to have a patient safety commissioner. Depending on how the votes go on the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, we could also have a victims and witnesses commissioner. In this session, the Parliament has said that commissioners still have a role to play, and that position has been supported by all parties. Therefore, I reverse your question and ask why we should pull up the drawbridge now and leave behind 20 per cent of the population.

In response to your first question, in an ideal world, we would not need any commissioners at all, because ���˿���, the Scottish Government and the third sector would all be doing the job. However, we have seen that that is not the case. The work of the children’s commissioner has resulted in changes in the law—some of which I support and some of which I do not support—that would not have been made without the commissioner advocating very loudly to us as ���˿��� and to civic society that such change should happen.

We are all inundated with requests from people who have contacted us with their issues. There are lots of different issues around disability, in particular. Someone who has a visual impairment will—depending on how they deal with that visual impairment—want certain changes to be made, but two disabled people with two different disabilities might want very different things. Therefore, there is not the sort of unified voice that we get with other protected characteristics, so my suggested commissioner’s role would be to bring people together so that we can have that more unified voice.

In the disability world, that voice is fractured for lots of reasons. The commissioner would be able to speak with such a voice not only to the Government and ���˿���, but to health boards, local authorities and other statutory bodies. Let us be honest: it is a voice that is not really being heard in the Parliament. How many debates on disability have there been in the past nearly four years of this Parliament, even though 20 per cent of the population have a disability? We discuss other protected characteristics far more. They are all important, but 20 per cent of the population feel that their voice is not being heard.