Human Rights Bill Lived Experience Boards

Overview

In 2022 the Scottish Government established a Lived Experience Board to help ensure the Human Rights Bill is informed by the views and experiences of people who face historic and ongoing barriers to realising their rights and to being heard in policy development processes. The Board has played a key role in informing development and delivery of the Human Rights Bill, working equally alongside the Human Rights Bill Advisory Board and Human Rights Bill Executive Board.

Outputs

In 2022/23 the Boards produced ten reports giving detailed consideration of human rights issues, directly informing the proposals set out in our 2023 Consultation on the Bill, as well as work to support the consultation with accessible versions and supporting materials. We are grateful to all our Lived Experience Board participants for their time, and for sharing their expertise and experiences.

The Scottish Commission for People with Learning Disabilities published two reports on behalf of the group they supported. Both reports and more information about the group itself are available on the Lived Experience Board page on their website.

Human Rights Consortium Scotland published six reports on behalf of the group they supported. More information on the group, and the published reports, are available on the Lived Experience page on their website.

The Together Group published two reports on behalf of the group they supported. More information about the group – the Rights Detectives – is available on their Lived Experience Board webpage.

Next Steps

Our work the Lived Experience Boards will continue in 2023/24, with further discussion and reports expected from the groups supported by the Scottish commission for People with Learning Disabilities, and by Together.  This work is led by the views and direction of the Board members themselves and will involve supporting Board members to engage more widely with relevant communities of rights-holders and report back their findings. Further reports produced by the Board will be available here.

We are continuing to consider how best to ensure public participatory approaches inform how we develop the Bill as it progresses towards introduction to the Scottish Parliament, and beyond into the implementation phase once the Bill is passed. More information about future work with people of lived experience facing human rights challenges will be available here.

Members

In 2023/23 the Lived experience Board was comprised of three separate groups of participants. For each group, the Scottish Government funded and worked closely with civil society stakeholders to facilitate accessible discussions, publish follow-up reports, and support participants to take part.

The Scottish Government worked with Human Rights Consortium Scotland, Scottish Commission for People with Learning Disabilities and Together Scotland to support the work of each group in the Lived Experience Board.