4. Ministerial Meetings

Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland Annual Report 2020-2021

4. Ministerial Meetings

This year, despite the challenges being faced by Ministers due to the ongoing health pandemic, we were able to undertake a series of Ministerial engagements. These included committee wide discussions with:

  • Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity, Mr Michael Matheson,
  • Minister for Older People and Equalities, Ms Christina McKelvie,
  • Minister for Energy, Connectivity and the Islands, Mr Paul Wheelhouse, and
  • the newly appointed, Minister for Public Health and Sport, Ms Mairi Gougeon.

The key areas of discussion included:

  • Equality Impact Assessments, the perceived failure for these to be conducted meaningfully and the need for disabled people, or their representatives, to be involved in the assessments;
  • Reinforcing the need for public bodies (including Local Authorities) to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED);
  • 20-minute neighbourhoods aspirations in urban, rural and Island settings and what this will mean to disabled people and older people;
  • Equity of access to Health and Social Care Services, how to progress MACS recommendations from their phase-one work and how we address the evidenced transport failings;
  • How we “lock in” lessons learnt from the multi-agency work to facilitate transportation to vaccination centres, to assist removing the transport barriers and challenges to accessing health and social care services;
  • Exploring the positive initiatives (including joint working projects) for island and rural communities during Covid-19 and how these can be “locked in”;
  • Receiving and discussing the updates on both the National Islands Plan Implementation Route Map and the Ferries Plan; and;
  • Exploring Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) as a solution to accessible and affordable connectivity in both a rural and island setting.

The agreed actions were as follows:

Equality Impact Assessments (EqIAs)

The Minister for Older People and Equalities updated MACS on an animated resource showing the experience of a virtual policy team as they develop an EqIA. She agreed to share this with MACS and the link can be accessed here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARCg9AGB9U0&feature=youtu.be

The Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED)

The Minister for Older People and Equalities raised awareness with MACS that the PSED Review had been paused due to Covid-19 but it has been agreed that it will re-start with a two-staged process.

  • Stage one would be a report on what has been learned from the pandemic response period about the effectiveness of PSED. This would be published in 2021.
  • Stage two would look at issues being considered regarding the Scottish Specific Duties (SSDs) as part of the wider mainstreaming strategy. The new strategy will explore a range of ways to enhance compliance. The Minister confirmed she was open to all suggestions and invited MACS to feed in.

Spaces for People Schemes (SfP)

MACS updated the Minister for Older People and Equalities that in relation to SfP Schemes only 11 out of 32 Local Authorities who responded had stated that they had undertaken EqIA’s ahead of implementation of the Scheme at a local level. There was a recognition that this infrastructure had to be implemented at pace however MACS stressed that more should have been done to ensure EqIA’s were undertaken.

Taskforce for Human Rights

The Minister mentioned the National Taskforce for Human Rights set up in early 2019 and requested that MACS were sent the link to their work including the academic advisory panel.

Follow-ups from meeting with the Minister for Energy, Connectivity and the Islands on the National Islands Plan and Islands Plan Implementation Route Map

The Minister asked that his officials liaise with MACS to ensure they could feed in accordingly to the National Islands Plan Route Map.

The Minister apologised for not being able to discuss in full all of the questions MACS had indicated that they wished to raise. Two questions remained outstanding and MACS Ferries and Aviation Workstream met with the Minister’s officials to continue dialogue:

  • Progress on the National Islands Plan and the Ferries Plan and MACS involvement in both, and;
  • Whether the Minister supported Transport Scotland exploring Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) as a solution to accessible and affordable connectivity in rural and islands settings.

Of Note:

In June 2020 the Committee also had the opportunity to attend the Cross-Party Group on Disability at the request of Jeremy Balfour MSP. This provided an opportunity for MACS to share their expert knowledge and experience but also offered an opportunity to raise the profile of MACS remit, our work, what we do and what we have achieved to date.