Thank you so much for allowing me to appear in front of the committee for the second time in some weeks. This morning, we are focusing on the 2019-20 draft budget.
Before I get into the substance of my opening remarks, I pay tribute to the committee and the work that it undertook to realise the human rights takeover day, which was a magnificent event. It demonstrated the Parliament—whether it was the Government, officials or, indeed, committee members and the speakers—at its best. The highlight for me was all the young people who had stuff to say. By working together through our joint endeavours, we might realise some of those young people’s dreams and hopes. I am really looking forward to undertaking that work through my role.
I am also looking forward to addressing the committee’s questions on my portfolio’s budget and on the progress that we have made with the budget equality statement. As you know, a range of activity across Government supports the mainstreaming of equality—I know that the committee has been instrumental in realising that work. My ministerial colleagues have all shown how they are tackling inequalities in areas such as health, justice, employment, and educational attainment and accessibility, even at a time when the United Kingdom Government-imposed austerity has meant that there has been a real-terms cut to the Scottish Government’s budget.
The draft budget will deliver more than £700 million of additional resource investment to health and care services, with a substantial uplift for mental health. There will be expanded budgets for early learning and childcare and for colleges and higher education, and the attainment fund will include £120 million for pupil equity funding. I hope that the committee agrees that those are all crucial areas in reducing inequality.
This year, we are demonstrating our commitment to improving openness and transparency by clearly setting out the total operating costs for the Scottish Government in each portfolio in the 2019-20 budget. In this year’s equality budget, that means that there will be a headline rise to £24.6 million, which includes the total operating costs element.
The budget will help us to deliver on our commitments that are set out in the race equality action plan, the disability action plan and the equally safe strategy, among others. That shows our commitment to respecting, protecting and implementing human rights for everyone in Scotland.
Tackling violence against women and girls is a particularly cross-cutting area in which, in addition to the significant resource from my portfolio, my justice colleagues continue to invest significant resources. This year, that will include funding the expansion of the innovative Caledonian programme to tackle domestic abuse. We will also deliver a full response to the reports from the First Minister’s advisory council on women and girls and from the advisory group on human rights leadership.
This Government recognises the contribution made by older people, and the budget will support a renewed focus on that through our older people’s framework. It will also deliver the implementation of our social isolation and loneliness strategy, which I launched the other day.
As in previous years, equality analysis and assessment has been undertaken alongside the budget, and that was published last week in the equality budget statement. I am sure that the committee agrees that it is an important document, and we are continually striving to improve it. We have been supported in the equality budget process by the equality budget advisory group. I put on record our thanks to its members for the expertise, insight and challenge that they bring as we continue to look for the best ways to ensure proper consideration of equality in our budgetary processes.
The committee will be aware that, in recognition of the need for further improvement around equality and human rights budgeting, in September we invited Dr Angela O’Hagan to become the first independent chair of EBAG. Angela has set out a work programme for 2019 and we thank her for her continued enthusiasm and commitment to improving the budget processes. I believe that the committee had a conversation with Angela recently. I and my officials look forward to working with Angela and the rest of EBAG to decide what future analyses and approaches are feasible and useful, given the available data, methodologies and resources.
I thank you again for allowing me to speak to the committee today and I look forward to answering your questions.