Equal Opportunities Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Official Report 501KB pdf

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Budget Strategy 2011-12

I echo much of what Ann Henderson has said. One of the strong messages about the new equality duty that are coming from those who are required to implement it is that they welcome and are looking for a more outcome-focused approach, which gives the process a purpose. The purpose, not the process, is the overriding feature of the equality duty, and the purpose is to ensure that public services are delivered more effectively across the community according to people’s diverse needs.

Externally, we have concerns about the extent to which the implications of the contraction and constriction of statutory services may not fall evenly. For example, if there are to be cuts to an education budget, what does that mean? What hidden or indirect impacts will the new duty have, in terms of enabling different groups to access services if the services are centralised? There are transport and other access issues.

You ask whether public authorities will want to duck out. Effective equality impact analysis should not allow public authorities to duck their statutory obligations either on the equalities side or in terms of provision. I echo Ann Henderson’s point—I do not know who has been reading whose notes: I had written “audit, inspection, scrutiny and accountability processes”. Both through the national agencies and in the parliamentary processes, you must come into your own in the future.

In our report “Improving public sector efficiency”, we recommended that public bodies consider using alternative service providers, including those in the third sector, if those providers can improve efficiency, the quality of service and productivity. The issue is about having good information on what the priorities are and good option appraisal of how services can be delivered, including using the third sector.

We do not have any evidence about that at present, but we have commented that, in delivering and funding services, public bodies should prioritise budgets and spending and consider using the voluntary sector for the delivery of services when doing so can improve quality, cost and productivity. That is our strong recommendation in our recent report on efficiency.

Did you examine in detail how the third sector can deliver and improve quality, productivity and so on? Does it do that by having lower wages, for example?

We did not find any evidence of that. The case studies in our report contain good examples in relation to outcomes and outputs, but there is not necessarily information on whether the measures reduced costs or supported efficiency. There are certainly good examples on delivery of services and improvement in quality.

13:30

I ask you to be very brief on the last point.

We have published a number of reports that are directly or indirectly concerned with how public bodies are responding to projections about public finances and potential reductions in spending. I refer in particular to “Scotland’s public finances: preparing for the future”, “Overview of the NHS in Scotland’s performance 2008/09”, “An overview of local government in Scotland 2009” and, most recent, “Improving public sector efficiency”.

In “Improving public sector efficiency”, we commented on the emerging gap between public spending and forecast budgets during the next few years. We analysed current spending and budget projections and concluded that if public spending continues at the 2009-10 rate, a significant gap will emerge during the period to 2013-14, which could be between £1.2 billion and £2.9 billion. In the current economic climate, the plan to deliver 2 per cent efficiency savings will not generate enough savings to bridge the gap.

The STUC questions the prevailing presumption that public expenditure cuts on the scale that is suggested are the only way to deal with the current economic situation. The presumption that such cuts would be a simple cost-saving exercise is wrong and raises a number of questions. For example, if jobs in the public sector are reduced, the tax base is also reduced, so less money goes back into the economy—especially the local economy, given the local economy’s dependence on jobs in the public sector, particularly women’s jobs. Significant cuts in public spending would have many consequential costs.

We do not agree that saving that amount of money across the public sector is the right approach.

You appreciate that there will be a squeeze. There will be less money. Opinions might differ on how we deal with the situation, but do you contest the baseline figure that people are talking about?

We do not agree with the figure. There are other ways of bridging the gap.

We support that position. A 12 per cent cut across the public sector is not necessarily the only way to address some of the wider economic difficulties. What would a 12 per cent reduction mean for social policy costs, and what impact would it have on services and employment across the public sector?

From our experience, and from the information that we are getting from workplaces and our members, we see that the decisions that local authorities have taken so far are not equality assessed. We are seeing a disproportionate impact, with financial difficulty facing projects that would provide child care, support people with disabilities getting back into work or have a particular focus on keeping people in work. There is no evidence that any equality impact assessment was carried out before the decisions were made on them.



When we are talking about equality groups, another point that is important to all the committee’s considerations is that women form the greater part of the public sector workforce. The issue is not just the women who work in groups and projects that focus on equality but the disproportionate impact that cuts in the public sector will have on women. That links to the cuts in the different services—if a child care or education project is lost, that will affect the ability to keep people in work. Cuts in hours also have an effect. A number of our members are reporting that what appears to be a small exercise of reducing the hours of somebody who works part time from three to two days a week can completely destroy a family budget. There are disproportionate impacts.

Yes, we are picking up on concerns from members of the public about the situations that previous speakers have referred to, in which decisions are made about cuts to services with little, no or poor consideration of how they will affect different people. Fundamentally, the equality impact assessment tool exists to help people think about how their decisions affect different people.

Would you like to add anything, Lorna?

Our efficiency study focuses on the approaches that public bodies should take to improve efficiency in its broadest sense and help to accommodate the significant adjustments that will be made to budgets in the next few years. We suggest that public bodies should continue to pursue existing efficiencies and initiatives but that they should ensure that they take a priority-based approach to budgeting. They should focus their budgets on the key priorities for their organisation, council, public body or health board, and they should consider those priorities in their spending as well.

I have said before that improving information on the cost, productivity, quality and performance of services can inform better decision making. It is also important to extend collaboration and joint working in the delivery of public services and to look at innovation far more than has been done so far.

That calls for some radical thinking, or thinking outside the box, which has perhaps not been a priority so far. Are there any other comments on that?

It is really useful knowing that our work is feeding into that of the Finance Committee—we can establish different things here.

We have discussed equality impact assessments. Can I ask Martin Hayward as well, because of the equality measurement framework that you are working on?

Yes. It is part of our statutory responsibility to produce a triennial report on progress against equality and equality of opportunity. The first such report will be done later this year. To support that, we are building something called an equality measurement framework, as you say, which attempts to expand the evidence base with regard to how different people are affected during their life course by such factors as personal safety, opportunities for access to education and so on. Those are the things that define the progress that people are able to make in their lives.

As colleagues have said, the evidence on that has tended to be partial or poor in quality. The measurement framework is an attempt to build something much more comprehensive that will allow us to report on progress overall. The framework will also allow us and other agencies to consider the different stages in different people’s lives, and their different opportunities. It is an attempt to provide a much more holistic picture of how people’s life chances are affected by who they are at different stages of their lives.

Yes, but my understanding is that the first stage of the framework will involve identifying where there are a lot of gaps and how easy it could be to fill some of the gaps in information and data. Some of it might not be terribly resource intensive, but some of it might be. First, we need to find out what we know.

Yes.

And you think that such information would be helpful.

Yes.

You do not think that attempts to gather all that information might run aground because of the right to privacy.

It must be intrinsic. I do not think that the rest of the panel would disagree with that approach.

Elaine Smith has the next question, which is on the important issue of the third sector. I inadvertently covered a bit of the topic earlier.

I will pick up on the point about the alternative delivery of services. The STUC has the fairly straightforward view that wages and conditions across the third sector should be comparable with those for comparable local authority jobs. There is a view that it is cheaper to run services by putting them out to tender and having third sector organisations bidding to provide them. We have a concern about that, which is why our policy is to argue for comparable wages and conditions.





Significant issues arise about the capacity of the third sector to maintain and deliver training—for example on the equality issues that we have been discussing this morning—and to do regular skills appraisals and updating. It is harder for small organisations to do that. As has been said, economies of scale need to be addressed. Things that appear cheaper are not always cheaper; the fact that something appears to be cheaper should not be the motivating factor when we consider how we deliver our services. People might ask why their mum, who is a school cleaner, was last year worth £X in her pay packet and this year is worth less. That is a real question and a society in which that happens is not one that is about fairness, justice and respect for the jobs that the people whom we work with do. It looks like a number-crunching exercise, but we are talking about people’s lives, people’s jobs and the families that they are bringing up in our Scotland. I therefore feel strongly that we should be looking at other issues such as adequate funding and, as I said, levelling up rather than levelling down.

On Elaine Smith’s question about council tax—

Before you move on to that, it would be a mistake to look at provision by the third sector as being purely about providing value for money. It is about the expertise that organisations in the sector have and the flexibility of their working hours, which perhaps goes beyond the time that a public sector organisation could work—it can even go into the evening. The equation is not so straightforward as being purely about value for money—all these factors have to be taken into account in the round.

I think that we would all have concerns if that was the only reason why services were being provided in that way.

Absolutely. The services provided should be complementary. It is about protecting conditions.

This is the first evidence session in the committee’s brief inquiry, in which we will consider how we ensure that the provision of public services that are aimed at equality groups is adequately maintained during a period of tightening public expenditure.

I welcome Lorna Meahan, who is assistant director of audit services, central Government, for Audit Scotland; Martin Hayward, who is policy manager at the Equality and Human Rights Commission; Ann Henderson, who is an assistant secretary at the Scottish Trades Union Congress; and Angela O’Hagan, who convenes the Scottish women’s budget group—Angela is no stranger to the committee.

The witnesses are aware that there is uncertainty about the future profile of the UK budget and how that will translate into the Scottish block. Do you agree with the projection that net public spending will need to be reduced by about 12 per cent during the next four years? If not, what is your assessment of the outlook?

I understand that there are different ways of reducing public spending, but as an opening gambit, I wanted to establish whether the witnesses agree that public spending must be reduced by 12 per cent, however that is achieved.

Would you argue for the status quo?

It was helpful to establish that at the beginning. At the strategic level, what approaches should be taken to ensure that the needs of equality groups are properly considered? Are there any risks with those approaches?

A central focus of the Scottish women’s budget group is on the processes by which decisions to cut services and jobs are being made. It has been suggested—in practice and in corridors—that the public sector’s equality duties can be dispensed with or overlooked and that the integrity of the equality impact assessment need not be applied to the process. Anecdotally, we are hearing about local authority funding cuts and about the relationships between the local authority and voluntary sector providers being contracted very quickly. We are concerned about the speed with which decisions are being made and the lack of evidence of robust equality impact assessments supporting or informing the decisions about where spending cuts will be made.

We have made the point to this committee before that, rather than apply equality impact assessment to budget cutting it should be applied to budget setting. That would identify a different starting point in terms of the users that public funding is seeking to reach and the services that are to be provided for them. Our concern is that the first cuts fall on the margin of spend, which is where equality groups tend to sit, so simply wondering where to start cutting affects marginalised people more directly. Although a focus on the impact on equality groups is welcome, because there will be specific instances of spending cuts severing services, including lifeline services, we also argue that the focus must be on all public authority services and their impact on equality groups, whether direct or indirect. If public services are withdrawn, there might be unintended and unforeseen impacts, and the focus must be on where those impacts fall and how they fall on women, on men, and on older women and men, particularly picking up social care and education responsibilities and other wider social support. That relates to my earlier point about consequences. Whose efficiencies are we talking about? The cuts that are being made in the name of efficiency in one budget may well have displacement and consequential impacts on the lives of individuals and on other budgets such as social work, health or education.

You are highlighting that equality impact assessments are key and that they must be applied whenever difficult spending decisions are made.

There is a read-across between your questions and those of the Finance Committee. The legal requirement to comply with the public sector duty equality impact assessment is not a moveable feast. They are legal obligations and public authorities must meet them, and they are acutely important at a time of cuts.

Martin Hayward, your written submission raised some concerning issues that the general public has approached you about.

This is not particular to equalities, but a general point. One major theme to come through Audit Scotland’s reports is the lack of good information that public bodies hold about the quality of services, cost and other aspects of performance. It is a recurring theme that public bodies do not have good information on which to base their decisions on future service provision.

As was mentioned, there is an opportunity for organisations to revisit their priorities and think more imaginatively. We have suggested significant investment to expand publicly provided child care, which we believe would make a positive contribution to the economy, both locally and nationally, in relation to upskilling and the retention of properly qualified staff. It is important to invest in support that keeps people in work. In recognising that there are constraints on spending, we have a chance to revisit our priorities and say, “What do we want our society to look like? What kind of Scotland do we want?”



I will give a specific example, which I am mindful that the committee mentioned in its request for written evidence on the ageing population. We sense that an uncomfortable situation is developing, given the number of redundancy packages that are being offered to people over 50. That means that we are losing a significant skilled workforce, and yet there is a growing ageing population who will have significant needs and demands for care services. There is a contradiction there, which we think could be addressed in a different way. The independent budget review could helpfully consider such issues.

I will take a deep breath. The principles of equalities budgeting involve transparency and a greater and more effectively targeted allocation of resources. That takes us back to colleagues’ points about good information. Intrinsic in equalities budgeting is having good information about who is using services, what the differentials are and how resources will be allocated to address the various divergences. There might be positive differences in usage, or there could be a need to address some gaps. To give a brief definition, it is about transparency and the effective allocation of resources to meet diverse needs across the community.

As for tools and techniques, some will be familiar to the committee: good-quality information, disaggregated data, trained staff and an awareness of equality impact—both recognising it and using procedures that allow people making decisions on programmes and services to identify equality impact and to do something about it. It is not good enough for public authorities to say that they have conducted an equality impact assessment and have recognised that there is a problem if they are not actually going to do anything about it.

Identifying the flow of resource allocation in the budget is a key technique or tool. Beneficiary analysis—the breakdown of who is using which services—is a further effective tool for redirecting policy priorities to achieve greater efficiencies, to address need and to provide targeted services, rather than just adopting what was described by the STUC as a masochistic approach to spending cuts. I had misread that as “machoistic” earlier—perhaps it is the same difference. Anyway, efficiencies could involve better targeted and more effectively delivered services, and we would argue that that is what equalities budgeting delivers.

It is important because the needs of all people are taken into account at the beginning of a process, rather than at the end of a process or not at all. The implications of decisions are thought through, and where there are different effects on one group of people, for instance, something is put in place to address or mitigate them. However, unless that approach is built in from the beginning, with money being allocated to an action, it is hard to address the issues later—it is hard to start thinking about the issues once decisions have been made about how the money is to be spent and where and how it will be channelled. That is my understanding of it—although my colleague is much more expert about the particularities of budgeting than I am.

Do you wish to say anything about the equality measurement framework that you are working on?

Sticking with the equality measurement framework, I am looking at an extract that I believe to be from your organisation. I will quote a paragraph:

“These domains focus directly on those things in life that people say are important for them to actually do and be.”

The framework addresses, for example,

“an adequate standard of living, being healthy”,

which is subjective,

“legal security, and being free from crime and the fear of crime. It is particularly concerned with the position of individuals and groups with regard to characteristics such as age, disability, ethnicity, gender, religion”.

I will not go on—it is, in effect, the six strands. It strikes me that that covers everybody in the UK. How will it be possible, across all those strands, to develop a tool that in effect encompasses everyone? We all fall into those categories: we all have an age and a social class. How can it be anything other than motherhood and apple pie?

If we have information about everybody, we are able to decide what our priorities are and where our action needs to be directed. At the moment, we have information about some people at only some stages of their lives.

So we do not have information about everyone at every stage of their lives.

Yes.

13:00

It sounds very worth while.

I would like to comment more broadly on the concordat and the absence of priority that is given in it to achieving equality as a central and shared objective. In last year’s draft budget document, the Scottish Government stated that it “stands back from micro-managing” service delivery in local authorities. The view is that doing so frees up local authorities and reduces bureaucracy. I link our concern about that to my earlier comments about compliance with public sector equality duties and providing clear political leadership. From our perspective, that is not micromanaging. The Scottish women’s budget group has been concerned with the absence of equality analysis and equality narrative in the single outcome agreements since the inception of the arrangements.

Scottish Women’s Aid has so far conducted two surveys on the impact of ring fencing and an analysis of the single outcome agreements. The committee may already know about that work or may be interested in it.

I have a further concern. Anecdotally—although I hope to provide evidence of this to the committee either in writing or at a future date—there seems to be a mismatch in that, with the removal of ring fencing, local authorities are able to access designated funds from central Government that are then used in the general allocation. Funds that are designated for a specific purpose in directorate budgets are added on to the allocation. There is then no read-across in respect of the Government’s priorities and how the mechanisms for drawing down and accounting for spend are managed.

The only point that I want to reiterate is to do with priority-based budgeting and spending. The key to accountability and transparency in decisions is people knowing their priorities and having good information in deciding those priorities, and spend following.

In a recent report on drug and alcohol services in Scotland, we made an observation about the complexity of the funding arrangements for voluntary groups in particular and the complexity of navigating and managing them. A focus group of voluntary sector representatives for that study reported that the funding arrangements, which involve all the different parts of government and external bodies, are particularly challenging, as projects are often supported by numerous funding streams with different timescales and different reporting mechanisms. Therefore, there is already a challenge in the system for the voluntary sector in particular, which represents a number of equalities groups, in managing funding streams. If their funding is increased or decreased, depending on decisions that are made by public bodies, there could be a significant impact on them.

As I said earlier, I think that there will be an impact—although I am not quite clear how an “equality group” should be defined—on equality groups. Groups that are focused on delivering services in the community, such as locally run or community-managed projects, can provide valuable support in keeping vulnerable families in employment. We need to take into account what consequences reductions in such projects will have on the labour market and what impact that will have on families who are already living in poverty. Evidence coming back from trade union members suggests that apparently small reductions—for example, a reduction in the number of hours of care or the closure of a community centre—can have a huge impact on keeping other people in work. We would be interested in exploring some of those questions.

Another issue that occurs to me is about performance management and the anxiety that can go along with conversations about achieving greater efficiencies. Talk of reducing costs can place particular sections of the workforce under particular pressure. For example, a supported workplace might keep in work sections of the community that need particular support. If the organisation’s performance targets are then raised significantly—obviously, we are in favour of things working as effectively as possible, but people can have different levels of output and ways of working and need different levels of additional supports—it is important that those people are not disproportionately affected by unemployment. We are quite concerned about that.

We are receiving worrying stories from our members about such pressures resulting in an increase in mental health issues in the workplace. For example, particular difficulties might arise if flexible working arrangements were previously allowed but have now been withdrawn. We should be sensitive to some of those issues and consider how equality groups in the different local authority areas might help with that. People must not be put under so much pressure that they are in effect driven out of work.

In its 2008 report on the race equality duty, Audit Scotland found that—as with budgeting, which I spoke about earlier—thinking about equalities groups was often insufficiently built in early on within the core work of public authorities. In that kind of situation, services that are marginalised—to repeat the word that colleagues have used—can more easily be removed if they are not seen as being central to an authority’s core business.

I might add that that is an argument for strong, Scotland-specific duties under the new Equality Bill. The situations that everyone on the panel has described are an argument for strong specific duties to be placed on Scottish public bodies to consider equalities in their work. That should then be followed up by the wider scrutiny sector—Audit Scotland and other scrutiny bodies—which should continue to consider equalities issues in their work.

In answering Mr Coffey’s question, I do not want to start singling out particular groups, as I support what colleagues have said about the need for a broader focus. Linking the issue back to Hugh O’Donnell’s point about the equality measurement framework, I think that public authorities need better information—Lorna Meahan also made this point—about people’s needs, about the impact of services on those needs and about the extent to which services, and therefore budgets, meet those needs. Hopefully, that is what the equality measurement framework and other tools will deliver. Along with the analysis that the EHRC is conducting, that kind of information will show how to approach service redesign and what the consequential impacts will be that we have talked about.



I know that there are concerns throughout the voluntary sector about the future relationship between voluntary sector organisations and public authorities in terms of service provision, local advocacy and locally provided services. There are issues to do with the appropriateness and level of delivery as funding becomes more precarious and less sustainable.

13:15

I will highlight a couple of examples in which specific equalities groups, dynamics or issues may help to enlighten the argument. If we consider, for example, people with disabilities, the withdrawal of funding to support independent living in the community will have significant knock-on effects on the individual’s independence. It may reinforce isolation and limit economic and social participation, which will affect other aspects of local authority and public authority budgets.

From a gender perspective, we would be concerned about the impact of cuts on gender-based violence, rape and sexual assault services, which might be withdrawn or targeted for cuts. As we have all said, although spending that sits on the margins is more easily identifiable as a target for cuts, the impact of those services is perhaps not so widely considered.

Thank you for all the answers so far. I have a couple of questions about equalities duties and the public sector. I am sure that none of us is happy about the idea of 12 per cent cuts but, if we work on the basis that is what is likely to happen, could we approach the equalities duties with an awareness of the specific duties that the UK Equality Bill will introduce to Scotland, and the consultation that the Scottish Government launched last September? Socioeconomic disadvantage is included among those duties. Everyone will be affected by that, whether or not they are one of the other equalities strands. On that basis, I want to ask about the cost implications of implementing the equalities duties. It might be said that not implementing the equalities duties has even bigger implications because, in a recession, it is always those at the bottom of the pile who take the biggest kicking. Is it possible to consider how the tools and techniques that Angela O’Hagan mentioned earlier in reply to Marlyn Glen’s question can be used more effectively to ensure that we manage to deliver these equalities during this period?

In the EHRC’s response to the Scottish Government consultation, we said that we are very interested in working with public authorities’ existing reporting cycles and ways of thinking about their work in order for them to address equalities. Rather than bringing in duties that impose another requirement for reporting about something else at a different time and in a different sequence and so on, it should be built into the natural reporting cycle of the public authority. In that way it will not add additional cost and will become more central to the way in which the business thinks about its work. That is how I would think about Bill Kidd’s question, although he both asked and answered it at the same time to some extent.

A public body should be able to think about what its priorities are, based on its own evidence. We have said enough about evidence already today. Being able to set priorities that are based on that and take actions that are based on those priorities, which can be measured and reported on in a way that fits with the way in which that public body works, is very much the model that we see for the way in which a set of public sector duties should function in the future. In that sense, the new duty should be brought more into the way in which a public body works instead of being an alien thing that has been added on from outside to the work that the public body sees itself doing.

Thanks for that answer, which was very useful. I have one more question, on the willingness of the public sector to deliver the policy. Is there a danger that public sector bodies might focus purely on delivering the legislative requirements at the expense of the valuable discretionary services? That was mooted earlier, but it bears mentioning again. Alternatively, might public sector bodies take a minimalist approach to delivering the legislative requirements and duck out on the basis that they do not have the money?

The third sector has been mentioned throughout the evidence. It is particularly important in relation to local government. Overall, the increase in the Scottish budget will not be as big as expected, although the actual percentages and figures are a matter for discussion—we have had some discussion and dispute about that. The Government can consider its services and priorities. Nobody has mentioned the option of using tax-varying powers, which have not come into play at all.

Much of the work of the third sector is focused on local government, either because organisations get grants from councils or because councils engage with the third sector to deliver services. That takes us back to the concordat. There is a contradiction in that, under the concordat, local councils get on with deciding their priorities and nothing is ring fenced any more—we have heard discussions about how that impacts on the third sector—but, on the other hand, councils have been asked to freeze their council tax, so they do not have autonomy to think about how to deliver their priorities and whether to raise tax at the local level to do so.

That is a big problem, so perhaps we could finish the session with a discussion of it. I am interested in the panel’s opinion, but my view is that the third sector will suffer because local government will look to the services that it has to deliver and might find it easier to cut funding for third sector projects. That will have an implication for services and will mean that the third sector might suffer disproportionately.

But if local authorities are using the third sector, there has to be funding to the third sector from somewhere and not just from charitable fundraising. Many third sector organisations get grants from local government, but that might be the funding that is hit if local government decides that there is not enough money. Will you comment on that?

That completes our lines of questioning. What we wanted to get from this evidence session—and we have achieved it—was to establish the positive economic benefits of spending on equality issues. For that, I thank the panel very much.

Meeting closed at 13:33.

Absolutely. There are trade union members who work in the third sector. Obviously, there can be innovation, services that develop can complement one another and organisations can work together in a community to provide services. Advocacy projects, welfare rights projects and all sorts of things make people’s lives better. It is just that nervousness is beginning to be evidenced—the recent local authority experience in Edinburgh is one example and members will have their own stories from their own constituencies—when a simplistic conclusion is being arrived at that provision by the third sector would be cheaper and that the same service would be provided. That is not the case.

It is the STUC’s view that the council tax freeze will make it impossible to deliver the services that we all appear to require locally. At some point, that issue will have to be addressed, as it would be more efficient for taxation to be used locally so that families pay a small amount of money into a bigger pot and services are protected for the greater good.

We think that there are other ways of raising the necessary revenue, such as altering the taxation system or collecting the large amounts of unpaid tax.

You do not think that cuts are inevitable.

Reduction of public spending on such a scale is not inevitable. We do not agree with the prevailing presumption in that regard.

I would like to focus on the independent budget review that the Scottish Government has established to discuss future budgets at Government level. I heard what Ann Henderson and Angela O’Hagan said about the overall decision about budgets, but I suppose that it is a matter of fact that most of the macro decisions will be made by the UK Government. It may therefore be that the Scottish Government budget is cut significantly and, even though that assumption is not accepted, it is reasonable to contemplate the possibility of that happening through factors beyond our control.

Against that background, do you think that the approach taken by the independent budget review is satisfactory? It has said that the key issues for it—the general headings—are identifying the primary programmes, the focus of expenditure, the role of capital expenditure, additional resources and efficiency. I suppose that this is your opportunity to give some advice to the review and to tell it how to ensure that sufficient weight is given to equalities issues.

In the first instance, the inquiry by this committee and the Finance Committee’s recommendation to have a budget strategy phase are welcome and significant developments, as is the independent budget review. From the perspective of the women’s budget group, it converts the budget into a primary policy vehicle. It may sound naive to say that, but that is not always how budgets have been perceived.

We hope that the independent budget review will not just take the legal requirements to give political leadership and direction on compliance to public authorities but give some clear direction and leadership to—or, turning that round, not undermine—the achievement of the equality goals that are implicit and occasionally explicit in the Government economic strategy and recovery plan.

12:45

The Scottish women’s budget group argues that gender impact analysis and, more broadly, equality impact analysis are important in identifying the primary programmes that will be economic drivers for change. We must ensure that the provisions within those programmes are effectively gendered in addressing skills gaps, occupational segregation, employment creation and unemployment prevention. It is important to have a gendered analysis of skills and economic stimulus programmes.

On the role of capital expenditure on construction and other programmes, we hope that a different mindset will apply in thinking about how employment-related capital expenditure can more effectively address the labour market dynamics that are well known to the committee.

Perspectives on efficiencies vary according to where one is sitting. I return to the question of whose efficiencies we are talking about. What appears to be an expedient economic reduction or a straightforward cut in the money that is allocated to something might not be an efficiency in the context of overall gains in other budgets or meeting the overall aspiration for a more equal Scotland.

I wonder whether Lorna Meahan would like to give her perspective, because Audit Scotland has presented a detailed paper on some of the issues that the Government faces. If she covers that, the rest of the panel can comment specifically on the equality duty.

If we are serious about objectives such as increasing disabled people’s autonomy and the control that they have over their lives, we need to think about the implications of decisions on, for example, transport, which might impact on those objectives.

Can you provide a brief definition of equalities budgeting as you see it? Why is it particularly important now? Can you explain—briefly, if possible—some of the tools and techniques involved, and how effective you consider them to be? I realise that those are huge questions to expect you to answer briefly.

I am conscious that these are quite technical questions, and that the call for information was more general. We may well incorporate some more of the general questioning and allow other panel members to participate more fully.

What is your question, Marlyn?

Just the same thing: I am wanting brief definitions of equalities budgeting—and why it is particularly important.

Are there resource implications to collecting all the information that you say is necessary?

No, I do not think so. If we find that it does, we will find a way to address that.

I would like other members of the panel to answer my question about the definition and importance of equalities budgeting. Could the witnesses also comment on Scotland’s record on the process of equalities budgeting?

Those questions are very technical. Did you want Ann Henderson to respond?

My response is not so much about the technicalities, but it would be useful for any approach to the budget to take into account the different impacts as outlined. As I said earlier, we are already seeing the consequences, with certain sections of the workforce being affected disproportionately. The fact that higher numbers of people with disabilities and from black and ethnic minority communities are either out of work or in lower paid jobs must be taken into account in budgeting and spending money. After all, we do not want spending decisions to exacerbate the situation faced by certain sections of our community. Coming back to Malcolm Chisholm’s point, I believe that we should look at the budget through an equalities lens. Even when resources are limited the money available should be used to address inequalities and level things up rather than down.

Local authorities play an important role with regard to equality duties. Of course, the concordat has changed the situation and I suppose that the issue that has attracted most attention in that respect is the way in which certain previously ring-fenced funds have been given to local authorities, which now have a much greater degree of freedom. What has been the result of that move? I know that the EHRC has begun a research project on that very issue so, to keep things general and neutral, I would like to hear your views on whether the concordat’s impact on programme delivery, particularly for equality groups, has been positive, negative or indeed both.

In a project that we have started only this week, we are directly contacting local authorities to ask about the effect of the concordat and, in particular, the beginning of the removal of progressive ring fencing in some areas, which we think signals a major change in the relationship between local and central Government and the operation of local government in Scotland. We want to examine the first year of this changing relationship and way of working through the lens of the three existing equality duties of gender, disability and race. The project will report this summer and, although I do not want to anticipate its findings, I hope that it will cast some light on this area.

The Educational Institute of Scotland, Unison and other unions representing staff who work in education have raised concerns about the consequences of the removal of ring fencing for certain services, with a number of our members reporting loss of services and difficulties in protecting what used to be regarded as essential services or services that had previously been ring fenced.

The removal of ring fencing has had consequences for women-specific projects; indeed, one high-profile example has been the removal of funding from the Women’s Support Project in Glasgow. The issue is not just the loss of funding by a project but the removal of a whole management and workforce resource. For example, we might be talking about training budgets for women-specific services such as violence against women services and counselling services, and the public sector in general and management and human resources teams in particular draw on some very skilled and experienced services that it could be argued are being reduced by the removal of ring fencing. Certainly, evidence that has been collected through UK-wide projects that I can make available to the committee shows a definite loss to the wider community because of the removal of ring fencing for women-specific services.

Does Lorna Meahan want to pick up on anything in particular?

A report by Audit Scotland says that, if the current plans come to fruition, we will face a £3 billion shortfall over the next four years. That means that everybody in Scotland will suffer to some degree from cuts. The question for the Equal Opportunities Committee in considering equalities groups is what our specific concerns are about the impact of cuts on them and how we can assist them or enable them to continue their work, bearing in mind that it is inevitable that there will be cuts across the board. What specific issues do equalities groups face? In particular, what protections might we want to maintain?

Perhaps as well as answering Willie Coffey’s question, the panel might want to consider whether there is a greater role for the third sector in the delivery of services.

The point has been made that some of those things do not cost money. It is about looking at how public services are delivered. If the plan is to deliver a public service that everybody can access, putting in place whatever additional things are needed to ensure that everybody accesses the service should not be seen as an additional cost. Some of the ways in which services are delivered can be adjusted in a way that does not involve spending more money if they are looked at in the way that has been discussed. I reinforce the point that we see the importance of reaching everybody in the community and of workers and their families benefiting from the services. That does not need to be an additional cost; it should be the right way in which to do things. The approach just needs to be changed.

There is a nervousness around the language, with people talking about a big, additional cost coming. Training and capacity are an issue, but it is about everybody doing the job that the service should be doing in the first place. In the past, the experience of some of the equality impact assessment stuff may have been that it was seen as a tick-box exercise. The trade unions would be concerned about that, as that is not how we imagine that the new duty will work. We see it as a matter of considering whether the outcome is being delivered and whether the service is being delivered in the way that we think it should be. There is scope for tighter monitoring and working with the agencies that will do that, but it does not need to be more expensive.