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Good morning. I am delighted to be back to discuss the impact of the 2015 act, the BSL national plan and BSL local plans following the publication of the committee’s inquiry report. As you know, this is a significant year for BSL in Scotland, as it marks 10 years since the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act 2015 was passed. In those 10 years, the Scottish Government has produced two national plans alongside local BSL plans produced by listed authorities.

I would like to acknowledge the significant contributions of the deaf and deafblind communities, interpreters, practitioners and representative organisations, whose work has delivered tangible improvements to the daily lives of BSL users. The committee’s inquiry has provided a valuable opportunity to recognise which actions have succeeded, and to identify where further progress is required. That is why I welcome the committee’s scrutiny, because none of us believes that the situation is perfect.

I have met many community members over the past year and they have told me about the practical effects of the 2015 act in their lives and the good that has stemmed from it, but they have also pressed me quite robustly on the challenges that still exist, pointing to areas such as health and education and stressing the importance of embedding BSL language and culture at an early stage of young people’s lives. Over the period that I have been in Government, one of the most inspiring engagements that I have taken part in involved listening to BSL users and understanding their experience and where they want to see further progress.

We remain committed to improving the lives of BSL users in Scotland. The current BSL national plan concludes in 2029, and at its heart is a clear focus on the accessibility of public services and tackling the systemic barriers that are faced by BSL users in their daily lives. The 10 priority themes in the plan are areas that the deaf and deafblind communities have told us are important to them, such as education, health, justice and culture, but those are wide-ranging sectors covering all aspects of society, and the scale of the task is quite significant. That cannot be an excuse, because dismantling barriers is the right thing to do. It needs to be a priority but it requires that whole-scale change. We have been clear that the six-year plan is not static, so it needs to continue to evolve, learning from and building on the actions within it during its life cycle.

Your committee report has provided us with the opportunity to reflect on the actions that we have set out. It contained 44 recommendations, and we have assessed each recommendation against two key factors. First, the extent to which it aligns with the priority areas and actions in the BSL national plan, and, second, its overall deliverability, which includes a consideration of resource and cost implications. We have accepted, either in part or in full, 40 of the committee’s recommendations, which I think is quite a significant majority. We have also agreed to further consider three recommendations, noting that some more detailed analysis is required to determine the cost and the deliverability of the proposals, but we are happy to come back to the committee to give an update on the progress on those three. We declined one recommendation, simply for the reason that it is for the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service and not for the Scottish Government—nothing more profound than that.

In accepting the recommendations, we are reaffirming our commitment to tackling barriers. In doing so, we also recognise the importance of key partners such as listed authorities that are responsible for delivering BSL local plans. That is why we have created a support network for listed authorities, to enable them to share good practice resources and raise challenges. That network will encourage partnership working, improving data collection, fostering connectivity and enabling greater accountability. Lastly, the BSL national plan implementation advisory group also plays a key role in informing actions delivered under the plan, and each partner has taken an active interest in the committee inquiry, with some of their points helping to inform the recommendations.

The second year of the current plan is focused on delivery. We want to work across all portfolios and look for opportunities to strengthen and embed actions for change. BSL users have made it clear to me and to this committee that the BSL act is an important piece of legislation, and that it is important to take that law and implement it in reality in order to ensure that everybody has the same experience of being able to access services fairly and with equity.

There are two parts to that. From the teaching perspective, the committee suggested that teaching students should spend some of their teaching placements in deaf schools or hubs, which is a brilliant suggestion for giving them exposure and experience. Some of these decisions are for teaching bodies, but I think that that suggestion has a lot of merit. On the curriculum, inclusion is a central value of education, so it is absolutely critical. I will ask an official to speak about it.

We can perhaps ask Police Scotland to come back to you.

Yes. I may bring in Lucinda Fass or somebody else shortly.

There are a number of routes to supporting more trained teachers and tutors—if I can expand it to tutors as well. Right now, qualification accreditation and training for the BSL tutor workforce are delivered by various different bodies. There is a shortage of that workforce across the country, which obviously has a negative impact, so we are looking at whether we could establish a national provision to bring more individuals into the profession and to upskill those who have some proficiency. The different organisations that are involved right now are the British Deaf Association and BSL learning partners such as Signature, Qualifications Scotland and higher education institutions—it is all very piecemeal. The first active step is to bring them together and to ask, “Where are the gaps, and can we do something jointly? Can we do something nationally to bring more individuals into the sector?” That is vital, because, from the engagement that I have had, BSL tutors are absolutely critical.

The point about training teachers in our schools is one thing, but what has struck me in all my conversations is that having BSL tutors who supplement what is happening in our schools can be one of the most transformational experiences. I would just make that small distinction.

In terms of supporting BSL users to become teachers themselves, we are looking at whether the initial teacher education at university could create a specific dedicated course for BSL users. That would take some years of development and approval within a university, followed by General Teaching Council for Scotland accreditation, so it is not a quick approach, but it is being considered just now. It would need to be taken forward through engagement with each of those organisations, so we cannot say unequivocally now that we will do it, but I am keen to look at it.

Those are two direct actions for supplementing the current provision. I do not know whether any of our education officials wants to add to any of that.

Yes. The Scottish Ambulance Service is currently working with the British Deaf Association to look at what facilities it currently has in place for BSL patients and service users and how it can improve and develop in that area. The Ambulance Service is looking at ways that it can make improvements in the way that it engages and communicates about its service. The service is promoting how to be deaf aware to staff using Royal National Institute for Deaf People Scotland guidance, and there has been an increase in BSL users accessing the service via Contact Scotland and 999 BSL. Patients who are deaf, hard of hearing or have speech difficulties can use the SMS text service to contact the Ambulance Service in an emergency. The SMS text service is available to all, but users need to register for it in advance. Then, with partners at Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, the Ambulance Service has linked with TapSOS, which is an organisation that has developed an app for use in emergencies. That is helpful for members of the public who are deaf or hard of hearing or have difficulty with speech. That is the current provision of support that is available.

I am aware of some of those comments. It is perhaps difficult for me to be as robust on this area as it is on other areas, because I was not involved in the early formulation of the plan.

I confirm that it is not a static document. It is designed to be responsive to new barriers that emerge for BSL users over its six-year life cycle. I know that BSL users were consulted extensively in the development of the second plan. There was a steering group that included representatives from organisations of the deaf and deafblind communities contributing to that action, and those discussions were very wide ranging.

We are committed to on-going engagement and we have established the implementation advisory group specifically to tackle delivery. You could have a super-ambitious plan that is not implemented, which would not be much use, or you could have a plan that feels less ambitious, but, irrespective of how ambitious or otherwise a plan is, if it is implemented it could be totally transformational. We are constantly engaging with BSL users to reflect their lived experiences, and there are several actions requiring collaborative working, for example in education, health and justice. I think there has been some really exciting progress, particularly in education through the Education (Scotland) Act 2025.

There has been progress, and that is how I see it working. The implementation advisory group is the key driver for identifying solutions to any challenges that emerge that were not necessarily captured in the national plan. Does that answer your question sufficiently?

Others might want to come in on that, particularly with regard to education. I see there being an important role. We should be accountable to Parliament, and parliamentary committees should be very robust with Government on where we are not doing enough. We need to channel that robustness to other listed authorities, although like local authorities, they are not directly answerable to Government. I said in response to Paul O’Kane that I want to see the network work well before we get too robust in reporting. However, once the network is established and there is very obvious extensive access to support, there will be absolutely no excuse for not comprehensively delivering the service that listed authorities are statutorily advised to deliver.

I frequently come across the fact that some people have brilliant experience and some people have really poor experience. In other words, there is a postcode lottery element that is down to local delivery, and not necessarily down to the entirety of a particular part of the public sector. For example, somebody’s experience of accessing healthcare might be really superb in one part of the country, whereas it is really poor in another. The problem, therefore, is not health boards per se. The question is whether every health board is recognising its obligation.

Maybe six months ago, I did some engagement with Highland BSL users. We specifically decided to go outside. It was not just that it was close to home, but we decided to go to a rural area. I was blown away by how different the experiences were in a rural area compared with what I have heard in some of the other engagement that I have had. To be honest, most of my engagement has been with organisations that are located in Edinburgh. Those experiences were totally different on even some of the basic elements, such as being able to get an interpreter. There are just fewer interpreters and it is harder to access training.

You asked about listed authorities and support. There is the support, but there is also the recognition of an obligation, and we expect equity across Scotland irrespective of where somebody is. That needs to come through more in our monitoring. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities might say that it has now implemented X, Y and Z. Fine—great—but does that filter down to every local authority, and even within local authorities, is that filtering down to everybody’s experience of engagement? This is where we start making policy in direct response to situations—almost live policy. I would like to know whether we have a means yet of monitoring that intensely local effect, beyond just people raising their lived experience.

Data is part of the national plan, and it is clear that, if we have good, strong data, we can make better decisions, particularly on public policy.

We have some useful data that comes from the census, which provides quite detailed insights into the characteristics and outcomes of BSL users. As you will know, 2.16 per cent of the Scottish population are BSL users. It also reports on whether BSL is the main language used at home by BSL users. We can do quite a good intersectional analysis of equality characteristics and outcomes for BSL users across a range of areas like health and housing. That allows us to begin to understand where there is still an evidence gap and how to address that with existing or new quantitative or qualitative evidence.

The equality evidence strategy is looking at making improvements to the availability and analysis of equality data. That is being carried forward at the moment, but it is interesting that there is quite a lot of data already.

On encouraging BSL users into roles, one of the most obvious is teaching—BSL users becoming teachers themselves because of the shortage of teachers—but, across the board, ensuring support in education allows BSL users to achieve their potential.

One of my earliest engagements with the BSL community was with Deaf Action—I cannot remember the street but it was in Edinburgh. I was struck by the fact that, because there was early provision of education for BSL users a couple of centuries ago, Scotland led the way across history, pioneering a lot of initiatives and transforming the deaf and deafblind community. In my little history lesson, I was told that it comes back to the fact that there was early provision of education. In other words, the provision of education early on equipped BSL users with the tools they needed to achieve whatever they wanted to achieve and, true enough, they went on to achieve everything they wanted to achieve. Essentially, they led the way globally with new opportunities, transformation and so on.

The idea is that education comes first and that, if everybody has an experience through education where their needs are met and they are able to communicate effectively, the world truly is their oyster in doing whatever they want to do. Teachers are therefore an area that we need to focus on. Teachers are at the root of everything—of a great experience in school, of sufficient provision at school and ultimately of everything that goes on in our economy and all the other public and private sector roles. All those opportunities are opened up with good education.

We will need to get back to you on that, because I cannot find the figures quickly. I am pretty sure that we will have some data on that, but it is not at my fingertips.

We have two groups of officials here—or maybe we have three, but I think we have two. There are those who are dedicated to BSL in the equalities directorate, who work directly with me, and there are those in the learning directorate, who work directly with Ms Gilruth, not with me, but who are doing a lot. On the BSL side, it is 100 per cent of their time. There are officials who are dedicated to supporting me in the work on BSL. I am afraid that I cannot answer for those on the education side.