Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): Members, you have been provided with a memo from the Clerk on the call for evidence for the Sign Language Bill. We have received 42 submissions, and you have been provided with a list of organisations that the Committee team is proposing to invite to provide oral evidence on the Bill.

Do members have any comments on the call-for-evidence process?

Ms K Armstrong: At our last session, we had people over from a different part of the UK. The feedback that I received — I say this for our staff and for ourselves — was that they could not believe how seamless the session was. They said that the simultaneous translations were such an improvement on those that they had experienced in other Parliaments. I thought that we should recognise that.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): Thanks for that, Kellie. As we are at the conclusion of this stage, I acknowledge the fantastic work that was done by the Committee staff in facilitating and setting up the consultation events. I was able to attend a number of them, and I found them very useful and, in many ways, unique but appropriately so. It was a good process.

Members, are you content to agree to the list with which you have been provided?

Ms Mulholland: I attended one of the consultation events in Banbridge; it was the only one that I could get to. One of the recommendations at that was that there should be engagement with deaf clubs and a focus on that more informal network of support rather than on the organisations that are set up to support deaf people. Could we pass on the contact details for some of those deaf clubs to the Committee staff, because it would be really important to hear from them? At the event that I attended, there were a few comments about how hard to reach the deaf community can be at times, particularly those who are more socially isolated. Basically, the ask was that we do anything that we can to reach them. I was sent contact details for the deaf clubs, which I can pass on. I would love them to be included,

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): I will have to check that the Clerk and members are content with that. The Committee team is considering how best to add an additional session or sessions, perhaps in a focus group format, to allow for the participation of additional stakeholders and those who are not yet familiar with the call-for-evidence process. Ideally, that would take place in early June.

Ms K Armstrong: Normally at Committee Stage, people come here to provide evidence. After the Bill Office provided its evidence in Parliament Buildings, the deaf community had the opportunity to speak to each other while they were discussing the provisions that they wanted to have in the Bill. We will not get that type of engagement if the extra session is purely one where people come along and give their opinions. You talked about a focus group session. Could we ask representatives from all the groups to come together with us in somewhere like the Long Gallery, where we have interpreters, and start to go through the clauses? To do that all at once would be a bit much, but we could pick out, say, clauses 1 to 4, go through them and then have another session at a later date on the rest of the Bill with the same group of people. It is about having that element of co-design and co-production instead of being presented with a proposal. Obviously, we will take advice on that from the team. The communication among the members of the deaf community at the sessions was really constructive. They were bouncing ideas off each other and highlighting issues that no one else had thought of. I saw that happen and thought that it was so productive. They get how a Bill process works, but we need to get into the detail of the clauses. Rather than proceeding as normal, would it be more effective to have a focus group session?

The Committee Clerk: I have a couple of quick points to make on that. I have spoken with colleagues in Parliament Buildings, and we will be able to resource and run at least one event. We had it in mind that we could run something a little bit like our education and other outreach work, where we work with tables and try to make stakeholders as comfortable as possible so that they mix with colleagues and friends as well as with people from different networks and groups. That is very much part of the thinking at the moment. We will also think about how many sessions we need. Round-table groups will very much be part of that stage of the process. That meeting could be halfway between an informal meeting and an evidence session, so we will try to collect the information on a clause-by-clause basis, as Kellie suggested, rather than in a more general fashion. If members receive any further input or advice from stakeholders, I ask that they pass it on to the team.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): Are members content that the Committee team works on organising such a focus group session or sessions?