Response to consultation on A Human Rights Bill for Scotland – October 2023

The CLD Standards Council has responded to the Scottish Government’s consultation on A Human Rights Bill for Scotland.

We fully welcome the development of this Human Rights Bill Scotland and the guidance alongside it; however we feel the information offered in this proposal does not go far enough in its detail regarding the full physical and psychological resource requirements needed to realise the aspirations of this Bill in improving lives across Scotland’s communities. The Human Rights Bill Scotland has potential to be a significant life changing piece of legislation. Everyday CLD practitioners are supporting vulnerable learners and communities who are having their rights violated so we urge Scottish Government to set realistic and specific timescales to ensure that the duty to comply comes into effect as quickly as possible whilst allowing the required time to develop guidance, Minimum Core Obligations and capacity across the public bodies and duty bearers. We feel strongly that the CLD sector as a profession should be reflected throughout this guidance as a one of the key stakeholders in its support and implementation.

This response was compiled following consultation with members of the CLD Standards Council, partner organisations, staff team and stakeholders. For CLD Standards Council members, we facilitated online consultation events with the Human Rights Consortium Scotland; we also attended online discussions hosted by partners and had dialogue with individual members and the CLD Standards Council staff team. We have not offered answers for all forty-four questions as set out in the Scottish Government’s consultation, but have responded to those questions we felt relevant to the CLD sector.
Please read our full response which was compiled following consultation with members of the CLD Standards Council, the staff team and partner organisations.