Finance Committee, 26 Oct 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Official Report 227KB pdf

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Budget Process 2005-06

The next item on the agenda is our first evidence-taking session on the draft budget. We have with us today representatives from the Scottish women's budget group, Irene Graham and Kay Simpson. Ailsa McKay, who was to be with us, is ill today, and we send her our best wishes for an early recovery.

I welcome the witnesses to the committee. We have a copy of the submission from the Scottish women's budget group. I offer Irene Graham the opportunity to speak briefly to that submission before we take questions.

I thank the committee for inviting us. How long do I have to make my brief introduction?

We normally say not too much more than five minutes.

Okay. What I have to say will take about five minutes.

The Scottish women's budget group would like to thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to speak to members at this stage of the budget process. For those who do not know us, we are a group that was set up in 2000 to promote the value of bringing a gender perspective to the budget process. The group is made up of women academics and women from the voluntary and statutory sectors, as well as individual women with a specific interest in the field.

From the start, we have tried both to influence the budgetary process in the Scottish policy context and to look at international experience for models and inspiration. Our achievements to date in influencing the Scottish budgetary process have been recognised at international level and developments in Scotland have been presented in various publications focused on best practice and country case studies.

Two members of our group recently participated in Oxfam-led delegations to South Africa and Yemen, and we held a successful pan-island seminar in April, which attracted leading international thinkers in the field. We are asked to speak about our work at a range of UK and international conferences, and individual members are recognised as experts. From an international perspective, there is a great deal of interest in developments in Scotland, with a view to people identifying lessons to be learned and what works in any attempt to introduce gender-sensitive budgeting.

The Scottish women's budget group also works closely with our sister organisation, the women's budget group, which operates at the UK level. In fact, two members of the Scottish women's budget group worked alongside women's budget group members in an expert advisory capacity on a recent Treasury-supported gender-analysis project. The Scottish women's budget group thus feels that both the Parliament and the Executive have a key role to play in ensuring that Scotland remains a focus for attention in this area and that the Scottish experience serves to promote gender-responsive budgeting across the globe by providing practical evidence of an on-going, successful and sustainable initiative.

That said, we are concerned about recent developments—or, to be more accurate, about what we see as non-developments. As our written evidence states, it would appear that a gender-sensitive approach to the resource-allocation process in Scotland is still a long way off. Despite earlier commitments, the draft budget contains little evidence of consistent progress and little practical evidence of a more gender-aware approach, at least with reference to the budget process itself.

We believe that a gender-sensitive approach to budgeting is crucial in delivering on the Executive's overall strategy of growing Scotland's economy. Adopting a gender-aware approach to the practice of allocating public moneys across the Executive's devolved responsibilities would enhance the effectiveness of policy, thus securing the desired efficiency gains. Gender-sensitive budgeting allows for actual beneficiaries, as opposed to target groups, to be clearly identified, and would show up where gender-blind targets and initiatives were missing the mark.

Let us take the example of policies on child care. We welcome the target in the communities budget that reads

"by March 2008, increase by 15,000 the number of parents from disadvantaged areas and groups entering or moving towards employment",

which is to be achieved

"by removing childcare barriers".

If a gender perspective were applied to that, it would show not just who would be likely to benefit but whether the initiative would shift the fundamental economic imbalance that exists between men and women.

The strategy will require more child care workers, and traditionally child care workers are women and the pay in the sector, as we all know, is very low. Therefore, the women who get those low-paid jobs will not necessarily be better off than they are at present. Who will enter employment once the child care has been provided? Traditionally, women have been prevented from entering the workplace because of a lack of child care, so it is safe to assume that women will be major beneficiaries, but without a gender analysis and gender-disaggregated statistics, we will not actually know. That seems to us an inefficient way of planning.

An additional example of the inefficiencies created by gender-blind approaches to policy design and delivery can be seen in the operation of the modern apprenticeship scheme. As an entry-level labour market initiative, the modern apprenticeship programme is key to delivering the overall objective of improving skill levels and promoting greater rates of productivity. However, evidence indicates that the actual operation of the modern apprenticeship programme may be contributing to and sustaining the existing gender pay and productivity gaps.

The modern apprenticeship scheme is characterised by gender-based segregation that mirrors patterns of segregation found in the wider labour market. Women dominate the frameworks associated with lower-paid and lower-skill level occupations. If that continues unchecked, gender inequalities in the Scottish labour market will persist. A gender-aware approach to budgeting would serve to make such outcomes more transparent and in turn would facilitate the development of policy initiatives to redress any unacceptable inequalities.

We believe that the Finance Committee has a key role to play in taking the lead on gender budgeting—a lead that will result in greater effectiveness and efficiency. The committee could, for example, ask for reports from the equality proofing budget and policy advisory group, with specific reference to the proposed pilots in health and sport. The committee could issue guidance to the subject committees, recommending that they scrutinise the relationship between spending plans and gender inequality within their remits. The committee could also recommend that subject committees develop capacity with respect to understanding the nature of gender inequalities that exist within their area of scrutiny.

Thank you. I think that Kate Maclean has the first question.

You mentioned the operation of the modern apprenticeship scheme. Could you expand on how you think that it could be operated in a better way in terms of gender balance?

If we do not have a target and do not try to do something about the situation, nothing will happen, because things will continue as they are. If we want to change that, we have to look at how we can get women into those non-traditional work areas. That might be achieved by advertising campaigns, by promoting modern apprenticeships to girls as they approach secondary 4 in school or earlier than that, or by introducing into schools the kind of programmes that are used in Glasgow, where specific courses are offered in sport and in other areas that lead up to apprenticeships. That can encourage young people in school to think ahead and can help to change the balance, but that will not happen if we do not challenge the status quo.

I absolutely agree that a gender-neutral approach to such issues is not really helpful in promoting gender balance. What do you mean when you say that modern apprenticeship schemes are characterised by gender-based segregation?

If you look at where the apprenticeships are, you will see that they tend to be in construction and the traditional skilled craft areas. Traditionally, those have always been sources of male employment and if you look at who is going into those areas, that continues to be the case. For example, it is reckoned that, at 29 per cent, males are more likely to have left school after S4 because they were offered modern apprenticeships—the figure for women is only 11 per cent. Therefore, more young men than young girls are going into modern apprenticeships.

We also find that, at 16 per cent, young men are more likely to go into technology apprenticeships; the figure for young women is 8 per cent. The figures for modern apprenticeship schemes in the fields of social work, youth work, community care or child care show that, at 18 per cent, young women are more likely to go into such schemes than men, at 0 per cent. It is clear that that the long-standing segregation of the labour market continues in the modern apprenticeship programme.

Although all of us tend to pay lip service to the need to iron out the problems of gender inequalities, the evidence can show that not much is being done in that regard, as you say.

In your submission you say that there is "significant interest" in what is happening in Scotland. Can you put the situation into context for us by giving us a comparison of gender inequality in Scotland and the rest of the UK and in the UK and Europe? For example, what is the situation with pay levels? In your submission, you claim that women in Scotland earn

"16% less than men in average hourly earnings"

and as much as 37 per cent less if they are part-time workers. Can you give us comparable figures for the UK as a whole and for the rest of Europe?

The Scottish figure is pretty much in line with the UK figure. I do not have the European figures with me at the moment. The Scottish figure varies by 1 or 2 per cent up or down on the UK figure depending on when the evidence is taken. The situation is pretty much the same across the UK.

Have you any indication of trends in Europe? Kate Maclean spoke about modern apprenticeships. Do you have any indication that more interest is taken in Europe to ensure that more women go into apprenticeships, including the technological apprenticeships about which you spoke earlier? When I was in Spain recently, I was interested to see that many of the people who were working on major road constructions—including the engineers who were using instruments to align the roads—were young ladies. Are there any indications that more of that is happening in Europe than is the case in Scotland?

To be honest, I could not give an authoritative answer to the question. If the committee is interested in the area, I could ensure that we get the figures for you.

It would be useful to get them.

Okay. We guarantee to get them.

Is your group an offshoot of the United Kingdom group or is it a stand-alone group?

The women's budget group, which we sometimes refer to as the Westminster budget group, has been established much longer than the Scottish women's budget group. Traditionally, it has taken a different focus from the one that we take in Scotland. The women's budget group tends to focus on fiscal policy—it works very closely with the Treasury.

The women's budget group is very interested in the Chancellor's budget announcement. Perhaps one of its most famous campaigns was the from the purse to the wallet campaign when the Chancellor proposed to change the way in which some benefits, including the family support benefit that traditionally had gone to women, were paid. He proposed to put them into the man's wage packet. The women's budget group mounted a big campaign to highlight the fact that if the Chancellor did that, he would impoverish a range of women.

We have tended not to take the same approach as that taken by the women's budget group, which tends to look at the impact of fiscal policy on women across the country. However, it has begun to show interest in what we are doing in Scotland with the budget process. As we know, Scotland has not used its tax-raising—or lowering—powers. If the Executive were to exercise those powers, the Scottish women's budget group would focus on that as well.

Although I acknowledge the fact that pensions are not a devolved issue, I was very disappointed that your submission contained only a one-liner about single pensioners. A female pensioner gets 50 per cent of the pension that is paid to a male pensioner. Where has the suffragette spirit disappeared to? You are tolerating a totally intolerable situation. You should make pensions a flagship issue and tell your colleagues down south to get the Chancellor of the Exchequer to rectify the situation.

Your submission also contains some lovely empty rhetoric—

We need a question.

I will come to the question.

Quickly please.

My question is when will the witnesses get their colleagues south of the border to do something about the nationwide pension issue?

The submission also says:

"At a recent business summit organised by the Equal Opportunities Commission the Scottish Deputy First Minister"—

Jim Wallace—

"acknowledged the urgency of gender equality in securing economic development and prosperity."

That is all just talk. There is nothing in the Liberal Democrat manifesto about equal pensions for women. The witnesses should be pushing such issues.

I think that that is a question for me.

I welcome Mr Swinburne's commitment to the cause of pensions and, in particular, the cause of women's poverty in old age as a result of their pension status. He is absolutely right on the issue. However, as the Finance Committee has no locus on pensions, we chose not to focus on it. We constantly make the points he raised in setting the overall scene of women's poverty. The women's budget group also looks at the pensions issue.

I return to the points that you made about the modern apprenticeship scheme, which were well made. It could be argued that a reverse gender analysis could be done on the subject of under-achievement and criminality among young males, as those areas also need a gender-sensitive approach.

Is one of the reasons that the Executive has not made a lot of progress on gender-disaggregated data because it is difficult to see how to do that work? Perhaps the Executive is not sure how to present the data. Do you have any concrete suggestions about the sort of information that you seek? For example, are you looking for targets, outcomes or outputs? What should the Executive do to improve the analysis?

Alasdair Morgan has a supplementary question.

Elaine Murray has asked the question that came to me as a result of reading the witnesses' submission. What changes would need to be made to the draft budget to allow us to say that we have achieved something?

One of the things that the Scottish women's budget group has been requesting for a long time—indeed, we asked for it four years ago when the Scottish Parliament was first established—is the provision of gender-disaggregated baseline data so that we could use that information as a benchmark to measure whether progress has been made. At the moment, we cannot determine what progress has been made because there are no baseline data figures.

We have previously given examples that relate to sport. One of our more recent examples is that of women in business. I think that we give a figure of 14 per cent for the number of small to medium enterprises in Scotland that are owned by women. If the committee had a baseline figure it could look at the gender differences and determine what outcome it hoped to achieve. In two or four years, it would be possible to measure progress using the benchmark figure. One of our difficulties is that the draft budget document contains no benchmark figures that enable us to determine the progress that has been made.

We realise that it is difficult to produce those figures—it is a big job. However, we have been working for the past four years on the issue. When we asked committees in 2000 to consider gender equality, they did so. One of the areas that we highlighted was the lack of disaggregated data. Although provision was made at the time to provide figures, we seem to have got a bit lost along the way. The data have not been consistently provided.

We want to see a clear focus on equality in each portfolio, not just in one portfolio. We are talking about mainstreaming equality across the board. That would give us a clear statement on equality and would include measures around gender equality. We want to be able to measure progress, but at the moment it is difficult to do so.

Are you suggesting that such an approach should be taken in particular pilot areas? I suppose that one of the problems might be that if that approach were adopted in every portfolio in every area, the budget document would get bigger and more difficult to analyse. Do you think that such data should be contained in the budget document or should there be supplementary publications that conduct a more rigorous analysis?

Until we get the process under way, that information will have to be given under each portfolio in the budget document. The equality proofing budget policy and advisory group is working on two pilot areas. Although we acknowledge that the pilot projects are very important, we are concerned that much of the focus has been on them. Given that we are talking about mainstreaming, we would expect a similar approach to be adopted in each portfolio.

We have criticised the Executive for having too many targets; we have encouraged it to reduce the number of targets and it has taken that on board. Are you suggesting that some of the targets in the draft budget should be amended to reflect gender balance or that they should be taken out and replaced with alternative targets that offer improvements as regards a gender analysis?

Let us take the example of modern apprenticeships. It is recognised that the Executive has already met its 2006 target of providing 300,000 modern apprenticeships. There is a commitment to continue with such provision and to increase the number of modern apprenticeships on offer. I have been asked what would be different in the budget. If we viewed the issue from a gender perspective, we could commit to ensuring that some of those new apprenticeships went to young women. Without such a commitment, the chances are that the present situation will continue—in other words, those opportunities will go mainly to young men. If such a gender-sensitive approach is not taken, although one target might be met, there will be a failure to recognise that that will do nothing to shift the fundamental imbalance of the gender pay gap and the job segregation that affects the roles of women in society.

On page 106 of the draft budget, there is a "Statement of priorities". Among those priorities are those of

"tackling domestic abuse and violence against women; tackling the gender pay gap and barriers to gender equality; challenging racism and homophobia; promoting equality for disabled people; supporting refugee integration; and promoting community cohesion".

Page 105 refers to the promotion of equality. Unless I am missing something, it seems to me that the budget for that is very much reduced. The allocation for this year is half of what it was in 2003-04 and that will be the case again in 2005-06. Where is the evidence to back up such statements of priorities? I cannot see where the statement on gender equality is followed through in the budget.

What will be used to tackle domestic abuse and violence against women, which have a huge impact on the economy? There is no evidence of expenditure in that area in the budget. If we are serious about sustaining and increasing growth in the economy, we must tackle that issue. The Home Office's recent study estimated that £1.3 billion was lost to the United Kingdom economy as a whole as a result of the effect on the employment sector of domestic abuse and violence against women.

If we do not include specific targets that provide a gender perspective in the budget, I do not see how we can make progress. Providing a gender perspective on all the targets in the budget would allow us to identify whether men or women were the beneficiaries. If men are the main beneficiaries of modern apprenticeships, is there a commitment to change that? We would argue that there should be such a commitment, because it is not possible to address the fundamental inequality that women face in the labour market unless such issues are tackled. We can do that and committees such as the Finance Committee have a role to play in that process.

You are suggesting amending how the targets are set, so that they point towards a rectification of existing inequalities between the sexes.

Yes.

That would depend on the availability of more information.

Kay Simpson is right about the need for a commitment to provide gender disaggregated statistics across the board, but there is more information around. For example, there is fairly detailed evidence on the modern apprenticeships scheme. I was surprised to find that female modern apprentices are paid £1 an hour less than their male counterparts. I do not understand why that can be allowed. Unless we take a gendered approach to things, such figures will not be uncovered.

I want to return to gender disaggregated statistics, which are available from organisations such as the Scottish Low Pay Unit. Do you co-operate with it in drilling down into the data?

Absolutely. One of the members of the Scottish women's budget group is on the board of the Low Pay Unit. We use its statistics and we work closely with a range of other bodies, including the Equal Opportunities Commission. We use the statistics that are available, and they are available not only to us but to everyone. If we can access them, the Executive can access them and bring them into play.

As regards factoring those data into your planning process, what progress would you like to be made? On page 1 of your submission, you express "considerable frustration and disappointment" about the draft budget. What would transform those feelings of frustration and disappointment into more positive feelings? What targets would you like to be met?

I want there to be an acknowledgement in the opening statements in the different sections of the budget that gender plays a part in the continuing inequality in Scottish life. Once such an acknowledgement has been made, a number of targets can be examined.

I scanned the draft budget and found examples of where such acknowledgement was missing. For example, in the section on justice, there is no specific mention of targets that relate to women, even though violence against women is a major issue. Mention is made of the three court pilots, one of which deals with drugs and another of which deals with domestic abuse, but no mention is made of continuing those pilots beyond where they are at the moment.

In education, there is a great deal of concern about the failure of young boys. Bringing a gender perspective to our consideration of the issue would allow us to think about how to focus on it. It is interesting that, even though boys do much worse in school, men end up earning more than women. I do not notice people jumping up and down and asking why that is the case. I would be happy for more boys to do better in school, and if we adopted a gender perspective, we would be able to target that sensitively.

In health, a range of issues affect men and women differently. By bringing a gender perspective to our consideration of those cases, we would be able to examine the spending more sensitively and to make it more effective.

I understand that. Are you doing any work internationally to pick up role models, especially in Europe, that might prompt the Executive to make progress? In particular, I am thinking about the interesting work that the Economic and Social Research Institute in Ireland has done. I think that the topic of gender equality dominated their summer schools this year. The Norwegians are poised to make it law that, from January, unless 40 per cent of the members of a company's board are female, it will not be able to trade, full stop.

I am suggesting that there might be role models in Europe that can prompt better behaviour on the part of the Executive. You might be able to make your proposition in such a way that you can prove to the Executive that, if it were to make some movement, there would be a better chance of Scottish competitiveness and economic growth improving. That might motivate the Executive to play a part in a more virtuous circle.

It is ironic that members of our group act as advisers to Norway and Ireland and have done work in that area. In Ireland, a gender proofing budget handbook has been produced, which is very useful for gender testing policies. For example, a local economic development company would be asked about the make-up of its board and targets on that would be set. That information is already there.

Are you saying that we still need to argue the case and that people are not convinced? Is that right?

To a certain extent. I listened to an excellent programme on Radio 4 one night, which discussed the Norwegian experience. Clearly some companies had moved ahead of the legislation in rebalancing the board—getting rid of men in grey suits and populating it with more women. They found that they were able to put their sales propositions to the totality of their customer base much more effectively.

I agree; that would have great benefits. We are saying that if we had a gender perspective, we would start to ask, "What is the gender make-up of the typical big company board, quango or non-government body and what will be the gender make-up on community planning boards?" If we do not bring that perspective or make a requirement in that regard, the chances are that all those structures will be dominated by men and therefore the male agenda will dominate. If we have a commitment to a gender perspective we will begin to see what the situation is and be able to make changes.

There is not a lot in your submission—which is not to say that you have not been working on it—on the reliability of the data that we have on earnings and the pay gap within the private and public sectors. When I invited to the Borders representatives of the Scottish Low Pay Unit and the Low Pay Commission, as part of the commission's inquiry into the national minimum wage, they failed to give data for the Borders with regard to the pay gap, because the sample was too small to give an accurate figure. The statistics that you have to hand are in effect statistics from initiatives and policies. The new earnings survey within Scotland relies on an old methodology and a small sample base. Do you think that a crucial part of the budget should be to put more resources into the statistics group of the Scottish Executive? You have not mentioned that at all.

In previous submissions to other committees we have strongly recommended that there be gender disaggregated statistics. If the Scottish Executive does not have the capacity to produce them, more resources need to be put in.

I am talking specifically about the pay gap and the links between the new earnings survey, the Office for National Statistics and the statistics group of the Scottish Executive.

To be honest, I cannot comment on that. The statistics should be there. Are you saying that the evidence on the gender pay gap is not robust or reliable?

I am saying that it is not robust and it is hard for it to be reliable. In my area of the Borders it is impossible to get reliable data on the pay gap and the real make-up of pay in the local economy. Both the Scottish Low Pay Unit and the new earnings survey admit that the data sample is 20 companies—out of 100,000 employees. I am not saying that new statistics would show up anything different from what we have at the moment. Nevertheless, you are saying that the budget is about implementing policies to make a real difference, but I am unable to get the core information, because the data sample in the Borders is small.

I have statistics from the new earnings survey 2003 from the Office for National Statistics. They take all the major sectors and show the pay gap by hourly earnings and full-time weekly earnings, providing a picture across a number of sectors. You are telling me that the data are not robust and do not apply in areas such as the Borders, but I cannot comment on that. I am assuming that the statistics from the Office for National Statistics are reliable.

In a way you have answered the question I was asking by saying that you are assuming that the data are reliable. I was asking whether you think that it is right that in Scotland we should assume that the data from that organisation and others are robust. You are saying that you have not looked into the data, because you are assuming that they are reliable.

If there is a gap in the data it should be filled. On the Borders, I am a Borderer; I come from Eyemouth, which is not far from Berwick, where you went to high school. With or without the data, we can say that women in the Borders predominate in low-paid jobs.

It is interesting that that is clearly the case in the public sector, but in the private sector women have had a higher proportion of household income in the past, because they have been the predominant earners in the textile industry as finishers and workers in the mills. A higher proportion of males were second earners in the Borders, although that has changed slightly. What I am getting at is that parts of the economy are different. If there is a real policy to tackle the gender pay gap, we, as those who hold the policy-makers to account, need accurate statistics and reliable data. I was asking whether you thought that the ONS was doing enough. Perhaps we can have further contact about that, rather than discussing it across the committee table.

We are both saying that there is a need for reliable statistics. You are saying that there is also a need for specific Scottish statistics and indeed regional statistics within Scotland. We would support whatever it takes to achieve that.

I want to explore further what action should be implemented to even out some of the inequalities that you outlined. You have rightly drawn attention to the fact that boys do not perform as well as girls do educationally and that far fewer girls than young men seem to take up modern apprenticeships. Are you saying that where qualified young men are competing for jobs against young ladies who are perhaps not as well qualified, there should be a weighting towards the females to try to address the inequality?

I would be interested if that were to happen. We are in favour of positive measures that would address inequality. Where inequality is identified, we need measures to change it. Unless we have a gender perspective, we will not realise where the inequality is.

I am not sure that that answers my question. The inequality might work the other way as well. Do you believe that people who are less qualified, who are perhaps female, should have jobs weighted in their favour?

I believe that any job should be given to the best person for it.

Thank you.

In response to a question from Elaine Murray you said that in modern apprenticeships girls earn £1 less an hour than do boys. Were you referring to analysis or a report that you could give the committee? What you said was interesting. I suspect that the take-up of jobs has more to do with stereotypical aspirations of boys and girls than with how modern apprenticeships are promoted to teenagers. Perhaps that is something that should be dealt with much further back, at nursery school or even from birth, rather than when young people are 15 or 16. Can you clarify the point about girls being paid £1 an hour less than boys?

Yes. The source of that information is the Scottish Enterprise Glasgow construction skills action plan for Glasgow 2003-2008. It is based on a report that states that female modern apprentices are paid £1 less per hour than are male modern apprentices and that females earn £2.55 per hour while males earn £3.55 per hour. I can get a copy of that report to you.

Presumably that is not for the same job.

That detail is not given. It might be and it might not be. I do not know.

I would have thought that it would be illegal for a female going through a modern apprenticeship—to become a joiner for example—to be paid £1 an hour less than a male doing the same thing. Presumably that is part of the wider discussion about the pay gap for similar types of job rather than the same job.

If we take it that women are not likely to be in the high-end construction apprenticeship jobs but in the lower-paid-sector jobs, that could account for it.

It would not be that girls are getting paid £1 an hour less for doing exactly the same modern apprenticeship.

I hope not, but that is not clear from the report that I am quoting.

Can you furnish the committee with some analysis of the modern apprenticeship scheme or will you let the clerks know where that information comes from?

Work has been done on the modern apprenticeship scheme and we could tell the clerk where to get that.

Does there not need to be considerably more research to discover the reasons for this kind of gender segregation? Is the issue that women are going into low-paid modern apprenticeships and we have to consider the value that society puts on those jobs rather than saying that more women should go into construction when they might not want to? Is the issue the balance between the jobs that we think are valuable and those that we think are less valuable? How much research is being done on that?

Ted Brocklebank seems to have the wrong end of the stick when he talks about underachievement. There is more underachievement amongst males than females, so it is not that underachieving females are benefiting from positive discrimination. Underachieving males do not go on to well-paid jobs; they are more likely to go into criminal behaviour. We might have to consider offending and reducing re-offending in relation to that sort of underachievement among young males. That reflects what Kate Maclean said about determining why women are going into less valued posts and how much that can be addressed to ensure that 50 per cent of teachers, for example, are male and 50 per cent are female. I speak as someone who studied subjects that were not considered attractive to women. If the jobs that we think of as being female were properly valued and paid, there might eventually be a fairer distribution between men and women in the different types of job because each job would be as important as the next.

I do not know if research has been done into that question but I agree with your analysis. It is said that if men worked in child care, wages would not be so low, and if more value were placed on child care and the wages were higher, more men would go into it. There is a lot in what you said.

Part of the difficulty for the Executive is selecting the kind of targets that would be most effective in addressing some of those problems.

It is emerging that we require to be more gender sensitive not just when we are considering budgets, but during the policy development process. Those two strands need to be coupled.

Irene Graham suggested in her opening remarks that the committee could ask for reports from the equality proofing budget and policy advisory group, specifically with reference to their proposed pilots on health and sport. Your written submission shows that you had made reasonable progress during the four-year period, but you are concerned that there has been a loss of momentum during the past year. The committee could certainly ask for reports on where we have reached, and it could encourage consideration of further pilots. If that is agreeable to the committee, it would be helpful.

The guidance to subject committees gives us a catch-22 problem through which we have to find a way. Because we scrutinise the Executive, we depend on the Executive doing things that we can scrutinise. We need to hold further dialogue with the Executive on how progress should be made; that could then feed back into the way in which we scrutinise the Executive's work. We cannot analyse the Executive's progress against targets if it has not set targets. We might need to have further discussion with the Executive and the SWBG about how to examine the issues. We should certainly ask for reports and updates on where we are going and what progress has been made. I am happy to ask the Executive for those on the committee's behalf.

Given that we are considering detail rather than strategy, I am not sure how we can progress the discussion during this budget process. I am sure that Arthur Midwinter would agree to maintain a dialogue with the SWBG on how we can include the issue in the budget process, and to report back to the committee on that.

The subject committees' capacity to consider gender inequality highlights a general problem of how we educate parliamentarians on taking on board such issues. I know that the Equal Opportunities Committee is concerned that it has not had a response to its recommendations. Arthur Midwinter reported to us earlier in the meeting that we will be pursuing that along with the Equal Opportunities Committee.

There are several steps that we could take that would assist you and the committee in progressing the agenda.

I am not an expert in this area; indeed, I am on a steep learning curve on all such issues. However, I am an observer of the equality proofing budget and policy advisory group.

The Executive appears to have adopted a more selective approach than that which is being urged. Whatever the language of mainstreaming, it does not seem to me that the Executive is going to mainstream everything.

A lot of the work that is being done was more relevant at the Westminster level. A lot of development in that work was on tax, benefits and pay rather than on the specific services that are provided by the Executive. There was not a readily available model to implement from elsewhere. The notion was that the Executive would establish the pilots in health and sport with a view to drawing general lessons that could be used elsewhere. That is not just true in the case of gender; we are talking about age, disability, ethnicity and all sorts of equalities problems.

I understand that the pilot on sport has not started and it is going back to the advisory group because of concerns about costs. The pilot on health is stuck because it is still looking for a researcher to do the work. As a result, there will not be instant progress despite the fact that it must be more than a year—

The advisory group last met in February.

Yes, and it is more than a year since the decision was made in principle to support the gender impact assessment studies as a model for dealing with all groups in the equality statement. That is where we are, and I think that the pilot groups are meeting next month.

There have been recent changes with regard to the finance department. I was looking back to the early meetings when Peter Collins was head of the finance department. There was talk about the pilots, but other work such as awareness raising within the department was being done and the equality unit was holding seminars. The SWBG was involved with that, but there has been nothing like that since. Since we began to focus on the pilots, everything else has stopped. We have all identified that there is a need to build capacity around gender issues and considerations. That is one of our concerns.

We will write to the Executive to ask what has happened to the pilots and what is being done to build capacity. We will seek an indication from the Executive of how it intends to progress the issue. That will allow us to respond in our stage 2 report on the budget.

That would be very welcome.

We must also build capacity in the committees. The recent trip to South Africa showed that everyone faces the problem of building capacity in committees and departments. In South Africa, a manual was developed that highlighted gender issues and provided information on the budget process. Parliamentarians found that very helpful, so consideration could be given to producing a similar manual here.

We can examine what has been done elsewhere to see whether it could usefully be applied here. We would be happy to consider any further information that you are able to pass to us.

Thank you for your attendance. There are some questions that we did not ask. May we pass those on to you and seek a written response?

Yes.