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The next item is a briefing from the equality proofing the budget and policy advisory group. Given that the committee will begin its formal scrutiny of the Scottish Government's draft budget for 2008-09 very soon, we thought that it would be helpful to have a factual overview of the work that has already been done on equality proofing and the budget process. It is my pleasure to welcome to the committee Philippa Bonella, who is a member of EPBPAG, and Laura Turney, who is the chair of EPBPAG. Would you like to make any introductory comments?
I head up the gender and mainstreaming equality team in the equality unit of the Scottish Government. I represent the Government side in the EPBPAG arena.
I am from the Equality and Human Rights Commission in Scotland. There are a number of members of the advisory group who are from outwith the Government. I am here to show that side of the group's work.
Thank you for those remarks.
At the moment, Government representation on EPBPAG comes from the equality unit and the finance department. Although the equality unit takes the role of chairing and providing a secretariat for the group, the finance department has a role to play as a member of the group.
It would be useful to be given an outline of what the finance department's role in EPBPAG has been to date.
The role of the representative from the finance department has been to provide the finance perspective, just as the equality unit provides an equalities perspective, from the Government side. Obviously, the finance department representatives can deal with the technical issues of finance and the budget. They have been very much involved to date and I assume that they will continue to be involved. Philippa Bonella might have a view on the issue.
Some of the group's most fruitful work has come from the interlinkage between equalities experts and finance people, as neither set of people has expertise across the board. The finance department has managed to ensure that equalities are embedded in the guidance that is issued to Government departments on the spending review and the budget process so that every department knows what it needs to do to ensure that such issues are considered in the budget process. I think that we have made the biggest impact in those kinds of areas. We have done that by ensuring that finance people are aware of equalities concerns and by ensuring that those are fed in throughout the process.
The finance department takes a lead role when guidance is issued. Finance and equalities have certainly had a role to play in the guidance that has been issued to different portfolios this year.
Given that the allocation of resources is crucial, how important is the finance role?
I think that it is very important. If I may gallop ahead very slightly, I would say that, although the allocation of resources is important, there is a role not just for the finance department but for the individual policy teams that manage the budgets for taking forward particular areas of work. The role of EPBPAG has been to look at the mapping of the connection between evidence, policy and spend. From our perspective in the equality unit, we have focused on things such as equality impact assessments and on taking an outcome-focused approach, which is also enshrined in the public sector equality duties. There is a role for the finance department, but the issues are not confined just to that department; the responsibility lies with the Government's various policy teams, too.
Given the various changes to the equality organisations in Scotland—such as the establishment of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and of a Scottish human rights commission—does the advisory group have any plans to look at the group's current configuration to take account of those changes? Will it consider including other equality groups that it might be pertinent to have involved?
The group's membership has already evolved in light of those changes. For example, Philippa Bonella was previously our Equal Opportunities Commission representative and we had another representative from the Commission for Racial Equality but, now that those bodies have ceased and have been replaced by the new Equality and Human Rights Commission, Philippa Bonella has taken on the role of representing that body, which covers equality across the six strands plus human rights. However, we probably need to reflect on the group's membership in light of the establishment of the new commission and in light of the changes that have been made to the way in which the Government is organised internally.
The group grew out of a gender budgeting perspective so there was much more expertise on how to mainstream gender equality into budget work than there was on other equality strands. As the group has grown, it has tried to take a much broader view of equality than just a gender budgeting approach. I think that that has borne fruit already.
I anticipate that the chair of the Scottish human rights commission will be announced in the near future. Will that individual's name be somewhere on the radar when the group is considering any proposal for additional members?
We can certainly consider it.
Will someone from the office of the chief economic adviser be invited to participate in the group?
We have invited people from the centre to join, but we are still in discussion on who would be the best person. Because everyone is very busy in the run-up to next week, we will probably get an answer in the next few weeks.
So there has been no invitation specifically to the chief economic adviser.
No.
Has the advisory group's work followed the budgetary cycle in Scotland?
That would not necessarily be appropriate, as the equality proofing budget and policy advisory group's more recent work has not focused only on the budget. One reason why the group's title was changed to include the words "and policy" was that we sensed that the best focus was provided through using on-going impact assessments. Whereas the budget is very much focused on high-level spend within a particular timetable and cycle, work on delivering new strategies or bills or policies is very much on-going and, we believe, needs to be followed through all the time. That is why we have focused on pulling together an effective equality impact assessment tool that should be part of the Government's policy-making process as a matter of course rather than just on an annual cycle.
Is the group's focus really on the spending review and—given the name of the group—on advising? The group sounds good and I am glad that we have such a group to provide advice, but who in the Government heeds its advice and acts on it?
We have Government representation from both the equalities side and the finance side. In providing advice, we pull together the notes, minutes and action points—all of which are published on the internet—from the group's meetings. We then punt out—for want of a better phrase—that advice across the relevant parts of the organisation. It has certainly been passed on by us and by the finance people to the various people who have worked on the budget process this year.
From my perspective, the value of the group is that it works as a cohesive whole that includes both civil servants, who represent the Government, and representatives of external organisations that have an interest in equality budgeting. That means that we can work together to work out what is realistic and practical within the processes that the Government uses for both the spending review and for its ordinary policies, so we tend to end up with recommendations that fit the way in which the Government works. Those can then be fed through the usual channels by the Government representatives. The recommendations tend to be about the guidance that goes out around budget time and the equality impact assessment process, which all officials must now use. The group seeks to influence those standard processes and we have had a degree of influence. We do not tend to produce formal advice or recommendations that the Government then considers—the process tends to be more organic.
I will follow up with an example. The recommendations and guidance that were pulled together during the pilot projects last year fed into the equality impact assessment toolkit process. The group's work had a positive impact on the process that was under way in the Government at the time to develop, finalise and roll out the tool and then to brief people on its use and provide them with support to equality impact assess their policy areas accordingly.
The group's work, although perhaps subtle, is extremely important. However, I would like to think that it did not need to work subtly and that it had real influence on the spending departments at an early enough stage to make a difference. Do the spending departments listen and react to your advice?
A bedding-in process is required for the new structure, but it should help us to do that work better, because there is a cross-directorate and more cross-cutting approach to making progress on any agenda. The new structure, which is based on the five overall objectives and the common purpose, should enable the group to have a stronger voice in the coming period.
I echo what Marlyn Glen said. All the external members of the advisory group are clearly in it to make a difference. We are waiting until the budget is announced to see whether we have achieved that because, as yet, we do not entirely know. It will be interesting to see the extent to which equalities are embedded in the next spending round.
I was interested to hear Philippa Bonella say that the group fits into the way in which Government works. If the focus is on equal opportunities, should not one recommendation be for a review of how Government works to ensure that equal opportunities are mainstreamed? If mainstreaming is not happening, how can we go about making it happen?
That is an interesting point. I argue that a lot of legislation is now in place to require the Government to mainstream equalities. Particularly on gender, race and disability equality, there are now duties on the Government and other public bodies to show how they are making a difference in everything that they do. The group's role is not really to review how Government goes about meeting its legislative requirements. However, the Equality and Human Rights Commission is certainly interested in that.
My main question is on the draft budget and the budget. If, as we have heard, the process is in future to be framed around the Government's stated strategic objectives, how do you foresee a sustainable link between overall mainstreaming and the budget or draft budget?
I have one answer to that. Equality impact assessment is the key issue, as the advisory group has said consistently. That is terribly jargon based but, in essence, we mean that if a measure—whether it is the Scottish budget or a small piece of policy—impacts on people, those who are setting it need to know what they are trying to achieve, who could be affected, whether there are barriers and whether more money needs to be put in certain places to ensure that everyone gets the same outcomes from the policy or budget. We are keen to see that happening throughout the Government, from low-level policies right up to the budget.
In your answers to Marlyn Glen, you referred to the role of the pilot studies in health and sport and you mentioned using those in making progress with the commitment to equality proofing. Previously, there was a commitment to report on the work of EPBPAG in the formal budget documents. Can you confirm that future budget documents will contain reports on the work of EPBPAG and/or developments in promoting a more equality-focused approach to the Scottish budget, or will that not happen?
With the new Government and the new approach, there has been a change. The previous commitment to report on the work of EPBPAG in the budget documents has not been taken forward. What we were trying to do, particularly in the last period, was to broaden out the different spaces where reporting on equality work is undertaken, such as our equality schemes and the various reports that the Government produces during the year. It is not as if EPBPAG's work is not reported on or covered in other areas, but it will not be taken forward in the way that you mentioned.
The committee might want to reflect on that.
That takes us back to the equality impact assessment approach, which Philippa Bonella and I have talked about today. That is the key tool for mainstreaming, and the important links between evidence, policy and spend need to be made through that process. We all agree that the advisory group can help us to fine-tune that. I am not sure that we have got the questions exactly right or that they are helpful to everybody throughout the organisation, so we look forward to having dialogue with the group and fine-tuning things to ensure that the approach works appropriately.
Paragraph 12 of your submission states:
It is too early to say. Although the tool has been in use for a number of months, the process of undertaking an impact assessment is completely dependent on the piece of work in question—it can take a few months or a year, depending on the development time for the policy or strategy that is being assessed. The impact assessment needs to run alongside the development of the policy or strategy, to help get it right when it is finalised. We are putting together monitoring tools around the impact assessment per se. The tool, which is an on-line tool, can be accessed via the Government website—people can work through all the different questions. Once an impact assessment is published and a policy area is signed off, the assessment should be available on the published database. It is too early for us to say anything conclusive about that aspect of impact assessments. It is something that we will consider in the longer term.
If it is not built in from the beginning, how will it work?
I am sorry. I am not sure that I understand your question.
Recording where changes have been made can help to inform processes.
That is included in the impact assessment tool, which asks specific questions, such as who is going to make the change and when are they going to do so. Given that every impact assessment is different—because all the policy areas are different—where possible we have tried to include a few tick boxes. We have tried to avoid the tick-box approach, but tick boxes on a technical database make it easy to analyse information.
Will you be able to monitor what is happening?
Yes, but it is too early to tell you the results of that monitoring.
I want to pick up on what you said about previous commitments to report back on EPBPAG in the formal budget documents. I have been on the Equal Opportunities Committee for only a couple of years, so I do not know whether such reporting has taken place. I am concerned that if the necessary information is not included in the formal budget documents, that will impact on how you are able to carry out monitoring. Have you been given a reason why the information is not going to be included in the budget documents?
There is a distinction to be made between monitoring via impact assessment and the overall budget documents. There is a continuum that links the two, but they are different beasts.
My point is that if we cannot see where equality proofing is put forward at the beginning, we do not know what is being targeted. Do we have evidence of previous commitments coming to fruition?
I do not want to pre-empt what is going to be said next week from an equalities perspective. I am not sure that I feel comfortable discussing that just now.
I have not seen what is going to be published next week. In previous budgets, there has been a short summary of what the advisory group has done. My opinion—I have not spoken to other advisory group members about this—is that it is fairly hard to see what impact the advisory group has had on the process from that summary. However, the impact that the group has had in previous budget documents can be seen in the equalities section in each portfolio section. That came about only because of the work of the group and its attempts, through working with the equalities and finance civil servants, to get a consistent level of quality in the budget documents. I do not think that we achieved entirely consistent quality, but we certainly got an equalities section in each portfolio area. From my perspective, that was a more useful way of showing the equalities work that was on-going than reports of meetings and so on. I have no idea how equalities will be represented in the documents that we will see very soon, but I hope that that every portfolio area will set out clearly and consistently what it is planning to do around equalities.
As Elaine Smith said, we will need to keep an eye on that.
The witnesses have partly answered this question, but perhaps they would like the opportunity to expand on how the budget work relates to the commitment to mainstream equality across all Scottish Government activities and functions.
Following an earlier question, I became curious about whether members have a sense that there is somehow a conflict between the Government's structure around the five strategic objectives and the mainstreaming approach. I do not see any such conflict. From the smallest policy areas or approach to engagement with anybody about anything, all the way through to high-level, big documents such as the budget, our mainstreaming work should take place. We see the budget as part of a continuum that is underpinned by our commitment to equality impact assessments and other approaches to mainstreaming equality across a range of areas while keeping the equalities focus—which the equality unit supports—across Government.
No, that is okay. I think my next question has been answered as well.
Okay—if you are satisfied, Bill.
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