Born in 1946 and brought up in Cupar, Fife, I was educated at the local school -
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Stewart Stevenson (Banff and Buchan) (SNP): I, too, congratulate Kate Maclean and all members of the Equal Opportunities Committee during the first session on their work, as expressed in the report. The successor convener of the committee, Cathy Peattie, has given us a strong signal that she is equally determined that the Parliament should move forward on this subject and that everything that we learned in the first session should be worked on and delivered in the new one.
It will come as no surprise that my Scottish National Party colleagues and I are happy to support the nine recommendations in the report. However, like today's motion, I simply note the content of the report. In part that has to be our approach, because some of the recommendations are directed to the new Equal Opportunities Committee, which is sovereign and entirely responsible for deciding whether to accept them. However, if committee members dinnae accept them, I may be around with a grip to persuade some individuals—certainly my political colleagues—that they should.
Over the past week, I have acted in an entirely non-discriminatory manner and have sought to share with as many colleagues and friends as possible the cold that still afflicts my throat. That explains the absence of Campbell Martin, who was originally scheduled to open for the SNP. He has seized the opportunity offered by my cold a little more enthusiastically—and more equally—than have others.
We know that we will have succeeded on this subject when there is no Equal Opportunities Committee in the Parliament and no reports on the matter. However, although progress has been made and continues to be made, the absence of such a committee seems a rather distant prospect. That is partly because as we develop as individuals we become more aware of the lack of equality exhibited in our personal behaviour. Parliament operates in a much wider context. We are not just a little introverted body of people. We are here to set an example and to get things right as far as we can by our own processes. We are also here to encourage and to hold to account the Executive's activities in that regard.
In the wider world, 1 January 1975—some time ago—was a key equality date, because it was on that day that discrimination against women in employment became illegal. On 31 December 1974, my then employers were offering discounted mortgages only to men, not to women. Until very recently, my mortgage continued on the same pre-equality terms. The post-1974 terms were equal for men and women, but they were not equal to those for the men such as me who were lucky enough to have borrowed money before the legislation came into force. The point of that little story is that when the committee's research states that
"mainstreaming requires tenacity ... to sustain commitment to equality over a significant time period",
it is 100 per cent spot on. Given that the effects of the 1975 change in the legal framework have yet to work their way through the system and through society, we can see the reality of that statement. Two generations have passed and we still do not have the equality promised in that legislation. Women who were not yet born in 1975 are today in employment and, as likely as not, remain underpaid, under-rewarded and undervalued in comparison with their male colleagues.
My wife had the grave misfortune to work for a while for the merchant bank Hill Samuel. She worked at a senior level and on her various trips to the head office in London had to attend meetings in the boardroom. There was not even a ladies' toilet on the same floor as the boardroom—and that was in the late 1980s, not 1975—so she used just to go to the male toilet.
Equal opportunities is not just a male-female issue. As Cathy Peattie said, it is not even wholly within the Parliament's power. Last week, my political colleagues and I met in Inverness and we agreed that
"The SNP will positively pursue an equal opportunities agenda to ensure that pension rights, property rights and inheritance rights are brought into the 21st century."
The context was that we were revisiting and trying to bring up to date legislation on partnerships, on which the Executive is consulting.
We must do what we can. We must encourage others by example and by persuasion to play their part. We have made progress on male-female equal opportunities. The men are outnumbered in the chamber today, but I do not think that that is a good thing, given that we are talking about equal opportunities. We have to reduce discrimination.
In the Communities Committee meeting this morning, Elaine Smith said that disability issues come up a wee bit less frequently and with considerably less passion. Is that because we do not have any members with a disability?
Mrs Margaret Smith (Edinburgh West) (LD): The member will find that my colleague Mike Pringle is registered as disabled.
Stewart Stevenson: I thank the member for that information, which I accept entirely. I did not want to assume that he has a disability and that he views himself in that way.
Let us ask ourselves some questions. Have we in the Parliament done well? In the new Parliament building, we would have failed in our duty if we had not ensured that whoever was First Minister could, if in a wheelchair, go from their office, through the members' lounge and into the chamber, thus not losing out on the banter and chat in the corridors that is an essential part of fixing the wee problems that we often have. I understand that there will be markings on the floors that blind members will be able to feel through their feet, thus enabling them to navigate safely round the Parliament. That is good. However, do people with disabilities know that we aspire to having a new Parliament building—one that we think we will see—that will be world class in its ability to support people who are disabled and are discriminated against in too many places?
Are we doing better on ethnicity? Last August, I asked a question on that. It transpired that the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body employed 402 people. Two were Asian and one was black. Three were non-white. Eight employees had a disability. In each of those categories, the numbers were well under what would have been a representative share of the population. We have much to do and I think that all of us in the chamber want to do it.
In all that we say and do, are we doing well enough? Are we guilty of inflicting our prejudices—residual as I hope they now are and even when we are trying very hard to be inclusive—on people whom we continue to think of as "others". Paragraph 58 of the committee's report states that responding organisations suggest that the phrase "mainstreaming equality" should be replaced with the word "integration". I could not disagree more fundamentally. I absolutely agree with the idea that people should have the opportunity to integrate, free from discrimination. However, I believe in the absolute right of an individual to remain separate, if that is their free and informed choice. It is not up to us to make decisions for people; they have to make their own decisions.
Being part of the community, in its widest sense, must not require rejection of any other community. It must not preclude people from having allegiance to multiple identities. As Stonewall Scotland says, people cannot be categorised by the group of which some of us might say that they are a member. Being black, being gay, being female or having a disability is not necessarily the most important thing for an individual. That is why I probably had not been aware of Margaret Smith's colleague's disability: it was not the most important thing in my relationship with him. We must put people before labels and individuals before groups.
The Equal Opportunities Committee has made much of the need for training parliamentary staff and, indeed, parliamentarians. The Parliament has started a course of training. I do not think that all that many of us have been on it yet, but there is still time. I hope that we will take part. If we do not get trained and improve our sensitivity—and paragraph 72 of the committee's report warns against the use of tick boxes—we may not have the deep understanding of how we fail to create equal opportunities; all that we will have is a non-comprehending list-based approach that will deliver very little.
We cannot list all the discriminations that we, as individuals or as a Parliament, may be party to. Let me choose one that members have almost certainly never encountered or thought of. More than 20 years ago, I was at a wedding. That, in itself, is not an unusual event, but one of the couple getting married was photograph-phobic. I do not know the word for that; I do not think that there is one. The person could not bear to be photographed; they had an absolute loathing of it. In all the wedding photographs, there is only one of the bride and groom. The person could not get a passport because they could not be photographed, so there was no foreign honeymoon. If they were elected to the Parliament, would the cameras around the chamber be able to exclude them so that they did not have to have their picture taken? Would they be able to have a parliamentary pass without a picture? Would we tease them because we thought that their phobia was a wee bit funny? It is not the slightest bit funny for that individual. I choose that case to illustrate the extra miles that we will always have to travel.
As the report notes, the equality guidelines will enable committees to stop and think. Let us hope that we have all received the wake-up call about equal opportunities in the chamber, in the committees and in every aspect of our public and private lives. I congratulate the committee.
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