Meeting of the Parliament 11 December 2025
I welcome this debate. For me, it is a debate about post-legislative scrutiny, which we have not seen much of in the Parliament. Therefore, I welcome the fact that the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee took the time to do such scrutiny of the 2015 act. I thank the members of the committee and their clerks for putting together the report. I also thank everyone who provided evidence to the committee—many charities and organisations, sometimes small organisations, that work in our communities. I also pay tribute to Mark Griffin for his long-standing campaigning on BSL and to the convener, Karen Adam, for her and the committee’s work.
As Pam Gosal mentioned in her opening speech, according to the latest Scottish census, there are just over 117,000 BSL users in Scotland. That is about 2 per cent of our population, so delivering on the 2015 act matters.
In 2015, the Scottish Parliament passed the British Sign Language (Scotland) Bill, which has helped to deliver many improvements. We must acknowledge that; it is fair that we do. The committee has found that the act has increased awareness of BSL as a language, with respondents to the committee’s call for views agreeing that the act has increased the visibility and recognition of BSL and that it has helped to raise public awareness. However, for me, as with everything in politics and everything that we do in the Parliament, it is about outcomes. We must challenge ourselves, and the committee report certainly does that.
The committee found that responses were not completely positive. Several responses suggested that there was a lack of enforceability with the act, as has been mentioned in the debate, and some responses mentioned a postcode lottery, which we so often talk about, when it comes to delivering on the act in local government and in our health boards. The committee received mixed responses on the second national plan—I hope that ministers have taken that into account—in relation to not only measurable goals and timelines but clear accountability mechanisms, which need to be improved. One respondent said that there had been
“little in the way of measurable progress across the piece”—[Official Report, Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, 3 June 2025; c 10.]
in relation to the plan.
As a member of the Education, Children and Young People Committee, I want to concentrate my comments on education. It is not surprising that education aspects received the most feedback during the committee’s consultation. Issues that were raised include early years provision, mainstreaming, support around transitions, qualifications and the fluency of teachers in BSL. The committee recommended that the Scottish Government consider what action could be taken to increase the number of deaf BSL users being qualified to perform teaching roles, which is really important.
What has struck me is the work of other members during this parliamentary session—for example, Pam Duncan-Glancy’s bill on transitions and the key principles behind it. Although the bill has not been taken forward in this session, a lot of the key issues that it covers need to be picked up in the next session on the back of the committee’s recommendations.