Equal Opportunities Committee, 07 Oct 2003

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 7, 2003

Official Report 262KB pdf

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Budget Process 2004-05

Good morning. Welcome to this meeting of the Equal Opportunities Committee. I have received apologies from Frances Curran, who is not able to attend the meeting.

We have witnesses to aid our consideration of the budget process. I welcome Irene Graham and Kay Simpson from Engender Scottish women's budget group, Bob Benson and Adam Gaines from the Disability Rights Commission, and Mick Conboy from the Commission for Racial Equality. Please make yourselves comfortable. Some people say that coming to give evidence to the committee is awful and others say that it is great—I hope that it is halfway between those views. Today's evidence-taking session gives us the opportunity to ask you some questions and is important for the preparation of our report on the budget.

I will give each organisation a short time to make a statement, starting with the Scottish women's budget group.

The Scottish women's budget group is dedicated to the promotion of gender equality in the Scottish budget process. The Scottish Executive has expressed its commitment to gender proofing the budget as an essential part of its work on mainstreaming equality. Committees such as the Equal Opportunities Committee have a key scrutiny role to play in ensuring that gender proofing of all budgets takes place. The committee may wish to consider how best to exercise that scrutiny role, over and above interviewing us. We feel that it is important to note as part of our evidence that the time for consultation on this year's budget process has been reduced considerably. We all know that that is due to the Scottish Parliament elections that were held in May, but it has made it difficult for organisations to respond effectively and give coherent and well-argued responses.

The Scottish women's budget group welcomes our continued participation in on-going work with the Executive and other partners through the equality proofing budget advisory group. That work includes a pilot that has been undertaken under part of the health budget—the smoking cessation programme—to use gender disaggregated information to test and develop tools for equality proofing the budget that would be appropriate not only for that programme but for the whole of Scotland. We are pleased that consideration is being given to a further pilot on the gender impact of spending on sport.

We are pleased to note that progress has been developed in the draft budget in a number of areas. We welcome the fact that an equality statement is presented in the introduction to the document and in each of the portfolio chapters. We identified in previous submissions the need for such statements to be presented in budget documents and we recommend that that approach is maintained and developed in future budgets.

Other positive elements that we have identified include the presentation in each portfolio chapter of objectives and targets along with a statement of priorities and an indication of how allocated resources relate to the objectives and targets. That is a positive development. Another positive step is that micro-level objectives are linked to the Government's overall objectives, and examples of cross-cutting work indicate that the Executive is taking a more holistic approach when it considers its overall objectives.

Improvements in the presentation and format of the draft budget indicate that the Executive is attempting to link policy objectives to spending allocations and to secure a more transparent budgetary process. Those elements are necessary in securing a gender-proofed budget.

We welcome those improvements. However, we feel that the overall content of the document lacks gender awareness and gender information. To be effective in securing gender-proofed budgeting, the link between policy and spend must be underpinned by consideration of those factors. For example, we welcome the objective of increasing the participation of under-represented groups in sport and also the new resources that have been allocated to indoor facilities. However, we feel that the Executive missed an opportunity to illustrate its express commitment to gender proofing the budget by ensuring that factors that limit women's access to sport, such as travel, access and the availability of child care, were both visible and considered in the spending allocation.

The inclusion of gender-specific objectives and targets informed and accompanied by gender disaggregated baseline information is rarely evident in portfolio chapters. That is particularly disappointing where the relevant information is readily available. For example, we welcome the inclusion of spending to address domestic abuse in the equality section of the justice portfolio—domestic violence is both a cause and a result of women's unequal social and economic status. However, we would wish to see an indication of the prevalence of domestic violence and of how the funding aims to address that in the objectives and targets. The funding allocated to refuge accommodation in the equality statement in the communities portfolio is welcome. However, an indication of the current number of places in refuge accommodation and of how many additional places the funding will provide is necessary if we are to determine whether progress has been made.

The document lacks evidence to indicate that gender equality outcomes are being considered. We note the commitment to increase the number of modern apprenticeships. However, research illustrates the low participation of women and their continued segregation in non-traditional modern apprenticeships. Implementation of measures aimed at increasing the participation of men in non-traditional areas would be a more effective way of delivering the intended outcomes.

My final example is child care. The Scottish women's budget group welcomes the continued investment in child care and the on-going commitment to investment in developing the skills of the early-years and child care work force. The group welcomes the recognition that child care is an important issue for several departments in contributing to closing the opportunity gap. However, research indicates that women predominate in the sector and that jobs for child care workers tend to be low paid and often insecure. The very positive steps that are being taken by the Executive to address the demand-side concerns related to child care are boosted by the increased focus on improving the level of qualifications among child care staff. However, we urge that greater attention be paid to the supply-side concerns that have been raised in research and that issues such as low pay, gender segregation and insecure employment are addressed as an integral part of the child care strategy. Greater use should be made of relevant Scottish-based research that focuses on those issues.

I am delighted to be invited to speak to the committee. I underline the points that my colleagues have made about timing and the committee's on-going scrutiny role. As we have already flagged up, it is important that the impact of policy intentions is closely examined and followed through by the identification of specific outcomes.

On the issue of progress from last year's budget, we welcome a number of the new measures that the Scottish Executive has put in place, notably the equality proofing budget advisory group. We also welcome the increase in funding in the draft budget for the promotion of social inclusion, mainstreaming and voluntary sector issues.

As we flagged up last year, our principal issue relates to the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, which, as the committee will know, applies to the Scottish ministers and to public authorities. All public authorities are required to assess functions and policies, and we see budget building and allocation as a function of the Executive. We hope that the Executive will demonstrate how it promotes racial equality in building the budget and in allocating expenditure. The Executive and other public authorities will have to consider the provision of reliable information and a statistical base if they are to meet their obligations under the 2000 act and identify action areas in which they must fulfil their duties. They will also have to allocate specific moneys to the development of racial equality schemes and, most important, assess the impact of expenditure plans across the board and on race equality.

The Executive has published a race equality scheme, which it was required to do under the 2000 act. The details of the scheme are specific; it relates to the core functions of departments and portfolios. The scheme takes us away from a narrower focus on equality and towards consideration of the broader issues of mainstreaming equality into core business. Clearly, a lot of work went into producing the scheme, but we hoped that the scheme would have been better reflected in the budget building process through a linking of the commitments in the various portfolios with their budgets.

I underline the need to develop a reliable information base, involving statistics, research and consultation, to reveal how and where inequalities operate—from our perspective, that means racial inequalities—and to identify action to address them. We also need to put in place measurable objectives, to allocate money to enable them to be carried out and to assess the impact of that activity. Naturally, that assessment should feed into subsequent budgets.

We thank the committee for the opportunity to give evidence and to discuss the Scottish Executive's draft budget. We welcome the Parliament's disability awareness week, which took place last week and which, we understand, led to the participation of many MSPs and staff members in disability awareness courses. We thank the Parliament for organising the disability awareness week, which was a welcome development, as was the debate in the Parliament that the committee initiated on mainstreaming equality.

The budget is an important tool for the Executive and Parliament in making progress with the Executive's work throughout Scotland. We welcome the committee's consideration of the equality aspects of the budget. Our prime interest in the budget is in the mainstreaming of equality and disability issues and in the extent to which equality issues are highlighted. That is important because we hope that expenditure on equality matters is not an afterthought or seen simply as a separate issue for specific groups.

We have considered aspects of budgets for the past three years and, as we noted in our response on last year's budget to the predecessor committee, there has been steady progress. During the past year, further important advances have been made, with a greater number of departments setting out their budgetary equality commitments. That is welcome, but work remains to be done. Some departments are yet to highlight fully their equality expenditure and clarity is required on the linkage of expenditure on equality issues with outcomes. The issue is not that those departments have no expenditure on equality issues or carry out no work on equality; it is more that the budget does not always show that expenditure.

As part of the committee's scrutiny work, we would welcome the committee's continuing to monitor the progress that has been made and encouraging further progress in areas in which it is still not clear whether expenditure on equality has been mainstreamed. In addition, a longer-term objective is that of providing greater clarity on objectives and targets and their impact on disability or equality issues. We need clarity to ensure that we know whether the welcome targeted expenditure has the full impact that we all need and want it to have on disability and equality issues. Such an analysis is still some way off because the Executive first needs to complete the process of creating a standard level of mainstreaming in all departmental budgets, to which it is committed in its equality strategy.

As the convener rightly said last week in the mainstreaming equality debate in the Parliament, mainstreaming is not only about process changes, but about cultural shifts. With this year's improvements, we are getting there, but there is still a way to go.

We will ask the witnesses some questions to help us with our report on the draft budget—I will kick off. This year's draft budget includes an equality statement for each portfolio. What are your views on that development and on the overall impact of those statements on equality?

It is important to separate out the issues raised in that question. The Scottish Executive's spending plans form only part of the overall spending in Scotland on equality in general and on disability equality in particular. Equal opportunities legislation such as the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 is reserved to Westminster and Whitehall, and the United Kingdom Government's expenditure on equalities includes Scotland. It is also worth bearing it in mind that local government has an important role to play in addressing inequality through the provision of key services. UK and local authority expenditure falls outwith the parameters of today's discussion, but should, nevertheless, be borne in mind.

Another point to bear in mind is that the question of how much is being spent is, in some ways, less pressing than inquiring as to how priorities were arrived at, how needs were assessed and how targets were agreed. The questions of process are at least as important as those of resource levels, in as much as it is difficult to have an informed opinion on the latter until we have arrived at a clear understanding of the former. Changes in process can be effected only when culture and values are addressed. It is fair to say that the Executive and the Parliament have done much commendable work on that matter. However, although the budget has a specific equal opportunities spending strand, which we welcome, it would be a mistake to think that that is sufficient.

As we said, we welcome the introduction of the equality statements. Kay Simpson pointed out where we think they could be improved and enhanced. For example, the Executive could look beyond the statements to provide more specific targets. We argue for that on gender issues, but the same case could be made for other equality issues.

Clarity about the distinction between the equality statements and the issues in the "Draft Budget for 2004-2005" would be helpful because the two can be confused. It would be helpful if equality objectives were made clear in the statements.

I was going to ask about the confusion between "Closing the Opportunity Gap" and equality statements.

We would prefer the distinction to be made clearer through a definition.

A clearer distinction between "Closing the Opportunity Gap" and equality statements would be helpful. Perhaps that could be achieved through further guidelines from the Executive's Finance and Central Services Department to other departments. Some equality aspects appear in the "Closing the Opportunity Gap" statements instead of the equality statements and vice versa. That is not to say that those in "Closing the Opportunity Gap" are not welcome—they obviously are.

The introduction of equality statements is to be welcomed and could be described as a first attempt. We need greater consistency and possibly better guidance on what goes into those statements. However, there is possibly also a need to examine what else is happening in a portfolio. The budget contains some positive statements. The justice budget contains little, if anything, that does not reflect the current situation. In some respects, departments do themselves a disservice by failing to flag things up.

Is the draft budget produced in a way that minimises jargon and uses simple language that makes it as accessible as possible to stakeholders?

There has been an improvement in the way in which this year's budget is laid out and in the language that it uses. One of the helpful changes is that it has a glossary. At the top level, some of the targets are easier to find, which is definitely a move forward, because one can start to compare the different sections. However, the Disability Rights Commission would like the budget to be made available in alternative formats for disabled people. We are disappointed that it is not, because many Executive publications are.

I add to that the need to consider the possibility of translations of the budget, which would be of great assistance. On a more positive note, I noticed that, in the health budget in particular, reference was made to relevant websites. That provides more detailed information for those who want to seek it out. Although that will not necessarily be useful for everyone, for those who want such information, the links are useful.

Access to the budget documents is also an issue. People whom I have contacted have been getting back to me and asking, "How do I find the budget on the website?" and I have had to send them the link.

An important part of how the Disability Rights Commission deals with and promotes such matters day to day is by anticipating the likelihood that someone will want to have the information in an alternative format rather than expecting that such requests will be dealt with on demand. It is not inconceivable that a member of the committee might require that service one day. The Executive should perhaps tackle that issue earlier rather than wait for the eventuality to arise.

You have been fairly complimentary about the Executive's commitment to mainstreaming equality in its policy and programme development. What improvements could be made in that area?

We welcome the equality statements, but if we are to make progress, we need to have clear equality champions, not only in the committee, but across the board. Equality needs to be headed up and built in across the budget heads, and we need clear demonstrations of how commitment is being shown. Equality is a wide area. We need not only to say, "We are committed to equality," but to demonstrate how every aspect of equality is being addressed. That would make a big difference.

One improvement could be to follow some of the better examples in the budget. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service has examined its core business across the board and considered the implications for victims, witnesses and even offenders from ethnic minorities of saying that equality should cut across its work. I suspect that the same approach—saying that equality is not an add-on or a specialism but is mainstream and should impact on all—would be welcome across the equality issues. The budget contains some examples of practice that, if they were rolled out, would mean a much more effective document in which not only the public, but Executive departments would be able to see the links between the equality agenda and the departments' work and objectives.

Adam Gaines and I will give a balanced response to the question, as it is important to highlight some of the positive aspects and then move on to some of the areas in which we think a shift is needed. We point to specific spending streams in the budget, such as the £32 million that is earmarked for mental health over the next three years in the community care budget. Similarly, under the transport head, we can point to the £200,000 that is going to the mobility and access committee for Scotland and the £106 million that is being made available for the concessionary fares schemes. However, in other portfolios, such as justice, we know that valuable work is taking place, but we simply would not be able to tell that from the budget documents.

Adam Gaines will address the substantial part of your question.

As Bob Benson indicated, there are quite a number of positive aspects under many of the budget heads where it is clear that equality has been considered from the initial targets through to the detail of the expenditure. The education, transport and health budgets are good examples of that. For one or two budget heads, although they have top-level equality statements, it is more difficult to work out where the detailed expenditure is. In those areas there could be further improvements in future.

You have basically covered my next question, but I would like to ask about transport, about which the women's budget group made a statement in its briefing. All the witnesses have mentioned transport, which I feel is an area in which we can achieve equality across the board. How do you feel about that? Transport addresses the issues of encouraging women, who use public transport more than men do, and their ability to access work and information. However, good public transport can also achieve disability and racial equality objectives. Do you have any further comments on that?

Transport underpins many access issues for women. If we make transport accessible for women with prams or for wheelchair users, we make it accessible for virtually everybody. If we address safety and reliability, we start to address issues for people from minority ethnic groups who might feel rather unsafe on public transport, where we do not normally see them.

The question is what role the Scottish Executive has. At the moment, transport is deregulated. How much influence can the Scottish Executive have on those who provide public transport for communities? How can it encourage providers to make transport accessible for everyone? The research that Reid-Howie Associates did on behalf of the Scottish Executive demonstrated how much more women rely on public transport than men do and how, traditionally, public transport has been geared for a different market.

Transport is particularly important in rural areas. Also, the sectors where women predominate—the service and care industries—require women to work shifts. Those women do not use public transport in the way people with nine-to-five jobs do: they come into work early in morning, late in the evening and at weekends. That is a real issue of access to employment for many women.

My question follows on from Shiona Baird's last question. The Equality Network argues in its submission that, to move mainstreaming policy forward, the Executive should

"start to analyse the equality impact of mainstream spending".

We have just discussed that point with respect to transport. Do you agree with the Equality Network's view? How could the Scottish Executive make useful progress both in the reality of what it does and in what comes through in the budget document?

That would be a great idea. Some models exist, particularly those that are based on gender, and they could be rolled out to other areas. The Government of Ireland has developed a gender-proofing tool that, as a starting point, looks at every policy area and asks what impact that area would have on men and women, disabled men and women or black and minority ethnic men and women.

Governments have to start to look at the implications of their policies. Once the implications have been identified, Governments need to adjust their policies to take account of different needs. It is not rocket science. We can get lost in thinking that the issue is difficult, but it is not that difficult. If those simple, fundamental questions are built into every stage of every policy and programme area, Governments will begin to see who the beneficiaries are. If Governments start to take on that scrutiny role at an early stage, they will deliver better for everyone—whether for men, women, disabled people or black and ethnic minority communities.

I agree with everything that Irene Graham said. In addition, I would like to underline the point that sometimes there is a tendency to over-complicate the issue and perhaps to postpone considering different actions because there is a lack of data. I am thinking of the ethnic minority communities in Scotland, about whom there is a distinct lack of data. Our perspective is that that does not mean that we cannot do anything until we have the answers that will be produced by the data. I go along with the view that impact assessments are absolutely essential to the development of better equality-proofed policies. We cannot afford to wait until we have the perfect data-gathering system.

My next question is specifically for the Disability Rights Commission. You outlined your support for the education spending plans, which you said demonstrate real mainstreaming. Have the mainstreaming pilot studies in education and housing significantly progressed those portfolios with regard to equality issues? If so, is that an encouraging sign of how mainstreaming policy can be developed to deliver tangible results? Although the question is specifically for the DRC, because it refers to a comment that it made, if anyone else wants to come in on it, I would be happy to hear their views.

The Disability Rights Commission thinks that the education and housing pilots have helped. Part of the reason for thinking that is the cultural shift that resulted from the pilot schemes. They made people think from the start about the equality aspects that need to be considered within budgets right down to the level of the amount of money in the budgets and whether performance indicators need to be included to show what could happen as a consequence of expenditure.

In this year's budget, that approach has been adopted under a couple of other departmental budget heads, which now give a greater number of performance indicators, including in equality issues. However, there is great variability in the culture, tourism and sport budget head, for example. A considerable amount of the sport budget takes disability into account, but that is not the case with tourism, which is in the same portfolio. Some unevenness is apparent in budget heads but the pilots have helped to take matters forward—they give people much more of a toolkit.

I want to direct a couple of questions to Kay Simpson and Irene Graham. During the debate in the chamber last week on the committee's report "Mainstreaming equality in the work of committees of the Scottish Parliament", I took the opportunity of intervening on the Minister for Communities to ask about the gender proofing of the budget. Her response was that the situation was progressing. You participate in the Scottish Executive equality proofing budget advisory group. Will you tell the committee a wee bit more about the group's work and about the progress that is being made?

The group is a consultation forum on budget documents. It includes representatives from the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Disability Rights Commission and the Commission for Racial Equality, in addition to officials from the Executive's equality unit. The Finance Committee's budget adviser acts as an observer. The group looks at ways in which to facilitate gender proofing the budget. It also considers the experiences of other countries and how the lessons that can be learned from those fit into the Scottish process. The fact that the Finance Committee's budget adviser observes our discussions is helpful as it means that he is made aware of our views on gender proofing and equality proofing budgets.

In your submission to the committee and in your opening remarks, you said that a lack of gender awareness is evident in the budget document. I think that it was Kay Simpson who gave the example of the sport pilot in which no account was taken of travel, access and child care. Will you expand on that point and say whether the document contains any glaring examples of bad practice? The classic example that is always used is compulsory competitive tendering, which was introduced by the Conservative Government. The negative impact of CCT on women was significant, yet it was not considered. Is anything like that happening in the budget process?

I will take the last question first. Kay Simpson highlighted the Government's child care strategy. Although women generally welcomed that strategy, we cannot say that great progress has been made for the women who work in the child care field. They are still on low pay, in insecure jobs and in a profession that is devalued. Although the Government strategy was welcomed, nobody is looking at its consequences.

I was struck at a conference in Glasgow by one example of the anomalies that can arise. Research had been undertaken on women in low-paid jobs, particularly in the child care sector. The head of Scottish Enterprise Glasgow was invited to the conference. He did not see the anomaly that was staring him in the face, which was that a sector that is getting women into work is also keeping women in low-paid jobs.

We need to look beyond the strategies. We need to ask the about the gender impact or the equality impact. What is the impact of the strategy? Where are the benefits? Where are there anomalies? The answers to those questions begin to uncover the impact of the strategies. That process could be applied to a whole range of initiatives. I do not know what the results will be in every case. We might find that there are good examples, but, unless we start asking the questions, we will not know.

Could you please remind me of the first part of your question?

I cannot remember it, either. I have scribbled notes all over the paper. You said that the lack of gender awareness was evident. I asked Kay Simpson about particular issues in relation to the pilots, but you might have answered that. I also asked about the equality proofing budget advisory group. Although I was directing my questions to Kay Simpson and you, other members of the panel might want to come in, because I jumped ahead quite quickly.

Mick Conboy might like to comment.

Although we are a member of the advisory group, our approach has been slightly different. The approaches that we recommended to the group were not taken on board and a slightly different strategy has been adopted. We still want to be involved in that discussion, as in today's discussion, to ensure that we consider the impact assessment as a way forward, without necessarily getting tied up in the lack of data on ethnic minority communities in Scotland. That is an area in which we are anxious to examine the pilots and their impact.

The pilots are an example of a tendency for a specific initiative to take place that does not necessarily have a wider impact. We are reviewing all education authorities' race equalities policies, which were published last year. Although the final report will be published towards the end of this year, some of the responses that we are getting back seem to suggest that there is a lack of continuity between the pilot exercise, which seeks to influence the sector, and the general experience of rolling out the race equality policies.

As Bob Benson and Adam Gaines have no comment, I invite Irene Graham back in.

One of the questions that I posed was how the Equal Opportunities Committee might improve its scrutiny role. I asked whether there was a role for a committee member to be an observer on the equality proofing budget advisory group alongside the adviser to the Finance Committee. The committee might wish to consider that suggestion.

We talk about a lack of understanding of gender in the budget documents. A mistake is made about what we mean by gender. Too often, gender just means people's sex—whether they are men or women. We would go further than that and say that gender is about considering why women remain unequal in today's society. Although that position is never stated, it is reflected in child care provision, for example. It is possible to argue that the child care strategy is as it is because it accepts that women will be in low-paid and part-time employment and that they will take on the caring role. When we talk about gender, we mean how society ascribes roles to people. Unlike a person's sex, those roles can be changed.

I want to pursue that. Is it also important to encourage men into such traditionally female roles? We often concentrate on opening up traditionally male roles to women, but perhaps we should consider such issues as how the role of typists changed when word processors came along, which resulted in better pay and conditions. Would you agree?

Absolutely. It is not the first time that it has been said that, if men were doing child care, it would be better paid. We must address that issue.

I have a couple of specific questions for Kay Simpson and Irene Graham. In your submission, you mentioned widespread consultation with women's organisations on the draft budget, which has taken place in spite of the short time scale. Will you expand on what improvements that has meant in comparison with budgets in previous years? You mentioned the pilots and the equalities statements that are provided throughout the portfolios and you identified "engagement with stakeholders" and "a more holistic approach" as areas in which the Executive had made progress. Will you explain where in specific portfolios such progress has been made?

Our consultation process with other women's organisations is on-going; we are still waiting for responses. Women's organisations have expressed interest initially, but then caution. There is still a long way to go in making the budget document clearer. There have been improvements in the format, but it is more difficult for a women's organisation to find gendered information, because the budget document is not specific enough in that regard.

Is it your general impression that we are making progress year on year?

Yes—in presentation and format.

In a briefing on the budget process, you mention the fact that the Scottish Parliament has the power to vary the standard rate of income tax but that that power is not used. You do not comment on that specifically, but do you see it as forming part of the process? There are no plans to use the tax-varying power, which is quite a blunt instrument, but could consideration of the whole council tax area help to open up changes in the budget process for the Parliament? I ask that because you mentioned the issue in your briefing.

The on-going review of local government finance is to be welcomed. Although we mention the Parliament's position in relation to the tax-varying power, at this stage we are not recommending that the Parliament should use that power. We are taking a broad sweep of the options. One way of approaching the issue would be to ask what the Parliament could do with such a power and how it could use it to develop the equality agenda to make real improvements. The review of local government finance is an opportunity to examine the issue.

Some of the measures that the Parliament has implemented in relation to the best-value review, such as the introduction of equality as the fourth E, are very positive. As we assess how councils respond to that, we can get them to demonstrate where they are spending on equality.

Although we are talking about the Scottish Executive's budget, the reality is that very little of it is spent in Edinburgh by the Parliament; most of it is given away to others—to executive agencies, quangos or local government. The Parliament has introduced the fourth E of equality into the best-value review of local government, but there is another role that it can play: it can ask where the commitment to equality is of the other people who spend the money on our behalf to deliver our policy and how they can demonstrate that commitment. If the best-value review applies to local government, should it not also apply to every agency that spends and delivers on behalf of the Parliament?

You have already covered a wide area. How does Engender think that existing data and research are being used or are not being used? For example, I am thinking about the evidence of different needs of men and women in relation to enterprise, development and training.

We are now known as the Scottish women's budget group; we are not representing Engender, which might take a slightly different view on the subject.

Data collection is an interesting issue. As Mick Conboy has mentioned, too often people say that there are no statistics as an excuse for not carrying out equality disaggregation. I think that more statistics are available than people say. The work that is being done at the neighbourhood statistics level is very good and is helping to disaggregate statistics at an area base level to take account of sex, ethnicity and disability. Just as asking certain key questions should become a matter of course, we should make disaggregation the standard and the norm in the gathering of statistics. Progress is being made in that area and we need to roll out the process. I support Mick Conboy's point that we should not use the current lack of statistics as an excuse for not doing things.

I will ask other members of the panel the same question. My line was that we might need more research, but perhaps we do not. I understand the reluctance to wait for further research. I would like the panel to give us guidance on that.

A wealth of data was gathered in the 2001 census. That breaks down into very small area profiles and, as far as we are concerned, all the data are there. Although we have produced a brief summary paper, there is a job of work for an academic or somebody in the Executive to pull some of the data together. At the moment, I am not conscious of any moves in that direction.

I will highlight one area where action is being taken, irrespective of the accuracy of the data. The health service has developed a huge programme of work based on its "Fair for All" consultation. We will report this autumn on the progress that has been made, to date, by NHS boards and trusts. That work has been based on consultation, recognition of the issues that ethnic minority communities face, some research and what little data there are. However, the Executive decided that, in that particular department, it could not wait until the full set of health-related data were available, so it went with what it knew.

It is a constant chicken-and-egg situation for us all. It has been very difficult to get information about disability. The Scottish Executive has access to a considerable amount of information about impairment, which it provides itself, or which comes from special groups that the Executive has established or from the voluntary sector. However, information about overarching issues around disability equality is much more difficult to get, especially in health. There has been a notable increase in the budget for health spend—page 73 shows that it is a quite considerable amount—and much of the proposed work will be developed in partnership with the Disability Rights Commission. The commission hopes to look at a lot of the access-to-goods-and-services issues in the NHS and the Scottish Executive. We seek to hear positive announcements on that soon.

We produced the baseline study on disability just over three years ago, which provided a starting point for looking at the research that had already been done on disability in Scotland. That study also pointed to the research that needed to be done. The documentation is there. Adam Gaines may want to make some further points.

I will make just one, if I may, concerning the use of data in the budget. In some parts of the budget, data are used as part of the equality analysis. In the case of disability equality, the further education section of the budget provides a good example of setting a target, for which funding has followed. The Scottish Further Education Funding Council has set a target for levels of access for disabled students to colleges because previous data made it clear that there was insufficient access. Data were used to set the target, and finance has been committed to follow it. When such data come through, they are useful in allowing the Executive to set key indicators of progress in future.

I have two points to make about research. I met some of the research commissioners. I told them that they needed to build an equality perspective into all the research that is being commissioned through the Executive and the Scottish Parliament. If we did that, we would get the evidence that we seek. All consultants should be briefed on building in an equality perspective.

The Scottish women's budget group meets this afternoon and we could discuss research areas that could be added. I would be happy to come back to the committee to let it know the group's views and to recommend research areas.

A substantial piece of work in Scotland has reviewed all ethnic minority research, and the Executive's racial equality scheme proposes that the central researchers develop a research programme that is based on identified gaps.

Further to Irene Graham's point about building in an equality perspective, we had to tell the Health Department that its published research programme did not cover ethnicity. Again, there is a lack of joined-up working; different parts of the Executive are not aware of what is going on elsewhere.

I will pick up on various threads because my questions, which were on collating further data, greater clarity, outlining funding criteria and needs assessment, have been substantially dealt with.

What is your advice to the committee on progressing matters? Clearly, we cannot do everything straightaway. Can you suggest a timetable for what we should be doing?

That is a challenge.

I cannot suggest a timetable, but it would be useful from our perspective if the Finance and Central Services Department worked more closely with equality agencies to establish guidance that would apply across all Executive departments, irrespective of the services provided. That would have a knock-on effect on Executive agencies that disburse and spend money. Another important strand is that Audit Scotland could have a role in the equality impact assessment of any guidance.

In the Executive's race equality scheme, none of the action plans has a column for costings or budgets. My guess is that individual departments have regarded the exercise as, at best, an examination of how their core business—their functions and policies—relates to race equality and impacts on communities and have drawn up plans accordingly. However, the wider business planning process of a portfolio must weave in financial advisers at some point to say, as we all would, "Okay, these are wonderful plans, but let's come back down to reality and see how much it is all going to cost." That kind of activity must be woven in at an early stage because it is a good way of not only identifying specific targets, but costing them.

I have noted down four suggestions for recommendations. One is the idea of having an equality champion, not just in the Equal Opportunities Committee, but in every parliamentary committee. Where are the other committees' equality champions? How can those committees demonstrate that they are asking the equality questions? The issue cannot be left to just one committee.

Secondly, the Equal Opportunities Committee should continue to ask questions not only about the existence of equality impact assessments, but about evidence that they have been done.

Thirdly, Audit Scotland could have a role in auditing how local councils are committing to equality through best-value reviews, which I mentioned earlier.

Fourthly, I was recently at a seminar on the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. The subject under discussion was procurement and the ability of procurement processes legally to take account of not just race equality, but all equality issues. That is something that could have a major impact and a committee such as the Equal Opportunities Committee could be looking for evidence of that. You could be asking where the Parliament's procurement policies demonstrate commitment to race equality through the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, and to other equality issues.

We have heard praise for the equality statement initiatives in the health service and in the justice system. What about the statements that do not have figures attached? Do you have confidence that such statements will go ahead?

There are a number of budgetary heads where equality statements have no figures attached. Those would be the key areas where one would hope that guidance would mean that progress could be made. That is the next stage in the process of mainstreaming equality within the budget.

After that would come the further consideration of equality indicators and performance indicators within the budget. That has been emerging in several areas already, but the budget does not yet cover the whole area of equality.

Have other committees asked the members of the panel to submit written evidence or to give oral evidence? Have the members of the panel been proactive and done that? For example, last week I was on the Communities Committee, which was considering the budget process.

In the past, the Scottish women's budget group has been asked to submit evidence to the Local Government Committee as well as the Equal Opportunities Committee. The problem is that we are a small organisation and not one of the big commissions. We have one part-time worker and everyone else is a volunteer. Our ability to do what you suggest is therefore a bit constrained.

However, in the past, we have adopted a tactical approach to working out which are the best committees to influence. We welcome the fact that committees now follow ministerial portfolios more accurately, which makes it easier for us to back up our work at a ministerial level with working with the committees.

The CRE has not been approached directly and, to be fair, we have not been proactive in going out to committees either. It is worth serious consideration because it multiplies the approach and, as was mentioned the last time that the CRE was at the committee, we are approaching subject committees as often as not. That is where the core business is done and where the responsibility and discussion should lie.

The Disability Rights Commission has been asked on only one occasion to comment to the Education, Culture and Sport Committee. It is not a consistent pattern or expectation. We would welcome it if we were asked, especially if it was about issues that affect disabled people.

The Scottish women's budget group has not been invited to give evidence to other committees. That is important for us, particularly given the lack of time this time around. We are therefore going to submit a full summary to the Executive regardless of whether we are invited to other committees. If we are consulting other women's organisations, it is important that we should present the evidence that they are giving.

I thank the witnesses for their evidence. We will take a short break.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—