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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 said in our response that we are very keen to explore that. We understood from the committee’s work that there was a desire for the establishment of a BSL national centre or a national oversight body. You very kindly did not go into excessive detail about what its function or remit would be. We have made a commitment to explore that further, as we think that the idea warrants further consideration. We definitely want to explore it further and understand how it would fit within the Scottish BSL landscape, what its value would be to the BSL community in particular, and then—inevitably—what resources it would require. However, none of those issues are ones that would stop the show. We have made a very simple commitment to explore the issue further and to look at what role and remit such a body might have. If there is a particular appetite from BSL users for that, no one in Government would oppose it.

We have started the process, because we had to respond to all the committee’s recommendations anyway. We have gone through all of them and established which ones are fairly straightforward to implement and which ones will take a bit more time. The one concerning the establishment of an oversight body falls into the latter category. I am speaking from personal experience, having just come through the Scottish Languages Bill process. I was not in Government when the Education, Children and Young People Committee first started taking evidence on that bill, but I know that the feedback was split 50:50 on whether a commissioner would be better than Bòrd na Gàidhlig. We decided to stick with Bòrd na Gàidhlig but, in the context of an oversight body for BSL, I am conscious that there will be some strong views on whether there should be a board structure or whether another format would be best.

On timescales, it is highly unlikely at this stage that anything new will be introduced prior to the election. My view is that a Government should do all the work in advance of the election, with a view to an incoming Government being able to pick up the mantle and build something. Those are my thoughts on that.

The team might want to say something about consultation. We will need to flesh out our approach a bit further and will probably undertake more informal consultation before moving to something formal. It would be premature to move straight to formal consultation before the idea has been circulated and people have formulated a view on it.

I agree with that. I also attended an event last week, which was hosted by the convener, specifically on this issue. It was about the Sign LOUD initiative, which has been funded for a year by the British Academy. That is a joint project between Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh that is looking at the connection between domestic abuse and the deaf community, and how language barriers compound the challenges that are faced by women and children experiencing domestic abuse.

The project team presented a report to me with quite comprehensive recommendations, and I gave them total reassurance that we would take those recommendations away and report back before the election on what we could do on that. Some of the research that they presented was extremely startling. Deaf women are two to three times more likely to experience domestic abuse. It has a disproportionate effect on the children, too, when they are exposed, sometimes because of the requirement for them to interpret on behalf of their mother. There are huge barriers.

We attended the event last week with members from the equally safe team in the Scottish Government, as well as the BSL team. That is another example of where there are teams in the Scottish Government that are not operating in silos but are trying to work together more closely.

However, I do not disagree with anything that you have just said. I will not go into the detail about all the things that we are currently doing, because there is excellent work going on right now. The delivering equally safe fund is providing Deaf Links with funding this year. That is a project that is integrated with Scottish Women’s Aid that is supporting the delivery of the advocacy service for deaf women in the violence against women advocacy service. There is work like that going on, but it is hard to disagree with what Pam Gosal has just said or what Sign LOUD presented last week on the additional steps that are required to be taken.

I think that the answer is in the project that I just mentioned. Dundee Women’s Aid, Angus Women’s Aid and Perthshire Women’s Aid are working with Deaf Links. That is the organisation that we have provided funding to through the delivering equally safe fund. That is all about providing an advocacy service for deaf women. It provides local basic needs assistance through advocacy support in BSL and specialist support for deaf women who are experiencing gender-based violence, so it is an example. The challenge that you would put to me—and rightly so—is that, although that is great to hear for Dundee Women’s Aid, Angus Women’s Aid and Perthshire Women’s Aid, what about all the other women’s aid services? Let me take that away and understand how successful that model has been and see whether it is could be rolled out.

Let me flag again SignPort, which was developed through CivTech Scotland. I do not know whether you have come across CivTech: it is an alternative approach to procurement and it starts with lived experience rather than with a contract. SignPort is an app that allows BSL users quickly to find and book an interpreter and to have that reassurance. I was at an event a few weeks ago where it was tested by a roomful of BSL users, and I think that it could be transformational in finding an interpreter.

I referenced the police briefly in my response to Marie McNair on emergency services. I do not have anything about specific training at my fingertips, so unless anybody else wants to come in, we can come back to you.

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.

The bottom line is that we expect health boards and public sector employees to ensure that they are meeting all their public sector equality duties and to ensure that the care that they provide is safe, effective, inclusive and high quality, in line with their statutory service provision. Therefore, there is an expectation that BSL users should be able to access mental health care and support in the same way that non-BSL users can. That is a non-negotiable now.

The question then follows: why are people’s experiences not equitable? There are a number of responses to that. First, there is the mental health and wellbeing workforce action plan. That is aligning all the equalities activity across the health and social care workforce. That workforce has its own delivery plan and action plan, which highlights work to embed inclusive practices across the health and social care workforce and so on. That brings together senior leaders from key sectors and organisations to develop a shared understanding of the critical areas where education and training will support the wider ambition of the mental health strategy. It is also looking at how to raise awareness, uptake and accessibility of existing reliable mental health training resources. That is what is being done right now under the mental health and wellbeing workforce action plan.

All that said, a lot of the issues come back to the same core problem, which is the root of any question that the committee might ask me. That is about access to interpreters and ensuring that there is proficiency, which goes to the convener’s point about someone being able to access an interpreter but that interpreter not being proficient—I think you said that they were only at level 1. It is about being able to access proficient interpreters.

We recently launched the SignPort app, which basically enables you to book an interpreter and be confident that an interpreter will be there, so that you do not turn up to the general practitioner or another service and find that you are unable to communicate. I can talk a lot about the mental health-specific inclusivity work, but sometimes that can overcomplicate the core issue, which is whether you can access an interpreter when you need one, irrespective of the service that you are trying to access. We have done a lot with the SignPort app and Contact Scotland BSL has just relaunched on 1 December. However, ultimately, if you train more interpreters, there will be more interpreters there. If you do more training, they will be more proficient, and I think that a lot of that is resolved through investment in training.

Yes. In the mainstream curriculum, BSL can be taught in schools as an additional language within the one-plus-two approach. The 2023 one-plus-two languages survey of local authorities showed that 11 per cent of primary schools were teaching BSL as an L3 language. I do not have with me the data for high schools, but the exposure in primary schools is probably the most important.

At the moment, Education Scotland is leading on the delivery of the curriculum improvement cycle, which will ensure that the curriculum is forward looking. All eight curricular areas, including languages, will be considered, and Education Scotland has confirmed that BSL is included in the draft curriculum improvement cycle documents that the languages team has produced. Scottish Qualifications Authority awards in BSL are offered as well, and BSL is referenced in the languages evidence paper that will be published in January.

My view is that, on paper, there is access and provision, but I hear constantly that the issue is the number of teachers and tutors, as well as teachers’ confidence in teaching BSL in primary and secondary schools. The other challenge that I have heard about is the balance that needs to be struck between ensuring that there is a pipeline of teachers who are proficient in BSL to support BSL-using children and using the same resource to expose non-BSL users to BSL. Does that make sense? I think that that is the tension that we have, which could be overcome by having more BSL tutors and teachers—full stop. Then we could spread them more thinly across the BSL users who need them as their primary source of teaching as well as across those who do not need them as their primary source of teaching but whose lives would be enriched, and who could enrich other people’s lives, if they had access to BSL. That is one of the tensions in all of this.