Chamber and committees

We know that families from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds are one of the six priority family types that are identified in our tackling child poverty delivery plan as being at the greatest risk of poverty. We recognise that the intersection with other protected characteristics, including disability, increases the risk of living in poverty. Since 2018, the Scottish Government has strengthened the evidence base on poverty, building on a series of focus reports, including on minority ethnic families, that outline the challenges and barriers faced as well as policy approaches that might be taken that are successful in addressing those challenges.

Remember that tackling poverty and inequality is a priority for all ministerial portfolios, so those actions should be driven across the Government to deliver on that progress. That includes our more focused work, such as on the take-up of devolved social security benefits and benefits for seldom-heard groups, and our anti-racist employment strategy, which is focused on addressing structural barriers to enable more people from racialised minorities to access, sustain and progress in employment. Understanding how we can address unacceptable levels of poverty for Black and ethnic minority families is a shared endeavour that we will continue to drive forward, and the member knows that I will do that.

Yes, absolutely. Please write to me with any supplementary questions that you have.

I will bring in Nick Bland.

I believe that the overall budget for delivering the equally safe strategy has increased. I was at the launch of that, with SAY Women. Indeed, that was an excellent visit. That organisation provides support to women and girls between the ages of 16 and 24 who are dealing with sexual abuse and violence. I think that there was an uplift in equally safe funding of £2.4 million, approximately.

You raise a very important point, and I acknowledge your long-standing interest in that area. I suppose that you are referring to advocacy groups in particular, as a lot of organisations provide that as a service. We have taken the approach that we place both equality and human rights at the heart of everything that we do—which relates to fairness, equality, dignity, respect, autonomy, empowerment and participation. Out of the 48 organisations that are being funded, 43 might be categorised as equality advocacy groups.

Nick Bland has some further detail on that.

I am pleased to be invited back to give evidence to the committee. I look forward to providing you with updates on what I am doing to ensure that equality, inclusion and human rights are embedded in the budget and across wider Scottish Government processes.

On competence raising, there is a welcome alignment this week for the committee to fall on. Currently, more than 1,000 Scottish Government officials are participating in equality, inclusion and human rights development academy week, which is a new initiative that forms a key part in further building civil servants’ competence and capability in how to embed equality, inclusion and human rights in everything that we do in Government. I was delighted to contribute to the sessions and, in a recorded interview, I set out the importance of mainstreaming and my personal commitment to demonstrating visible leadership in that area as the Minister for Equalities.

The Government is equally focused on building competence and capability across the public sector. In recent weeks, I have met the Scottish councils’ equality network, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, more than 100 public sector equality duty bearers and 14 equality groups at our equality outcome-setting events, at which I have communicated my expectations and provided active leadership.

This year’s budget focuses on building a positive future and improving the lives of everyone in Scotland. It does so through our resolute focus on the First Minister’s four priorities: eradicating child poverty, growing the economy, tackling the climate emergency and ensuring high-quality public services. This year’s changes to the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement—the EFSBS—focused on improving how evidence feeds into the budget decision-making process and how decisions can be communicated more clearly. Key improvements were an earlier ministerial workshop, publication of gender budgeting pilots and the creation of a more streamlined document. Many of the key decisions highlighted in the EFSBS show positive impacts across many protected groups, such as the increase in the availability of affordable housing that will benefit groups who are more likely to experience poverty or housing insecurity.

I am well aware of the committee’s interest in the Scottish Government’s progress against the recommendations of the equalities and human rights budget advisory group—EHRBAG. That is why, along with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, I wrote to the committee last week to update members on that.

On accountability, I will continue to champion the three principles of human rights budgeting. I note that, in the Scottish Parliament information centre’s recent blog on pre-budget scrutiny, colleagues recognised the personal accountability that I take in my ministerial role. Although I am not directly responsible for budget decision making, I take my role in mainstreaming equality and human rights very seriously. I will continue to do that so that I can hold myself and colleagues accountable.

I am already looking ahead to how we can continue to improve our processes next year. With that in mind, I will build on the collaborative partnership that was developed last year with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government to improve equality and human rights in the budget process. In addition, when I last spoke to the committee, in November, I outlined my plans to carry out one-to-one engagements with my ministerial colleagues. To date, I have held nine meetings, with more happening in the coming weeks. I have been clear that, as ministers, we have a shared obligation to tackle inequality and to progress human rights. I have put across to my colleagues the importance of ensuring that equality impact assessments are carried out from the outset of policy development. I have asked them to highlight to their officials the importance that they place on high-quality and frank impact assessments as key tools to inform decision making. The remit to fully assess the impacts of our proposed policies includes spending cuts, which is critical.

I hope that the committee recognises the Government’s commitment to continuing improvement in equality and human rights budgeting and the actions that we are taking to achieve that. I absolutely acknowledge that there is more to be done. We will continue to listen and will use the feedback from this committee and other stakeholders.

I will be meeting the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands very shortly. There are many people to talk to, and I have got through nine ministers so far. My offer is that I am quite happy to raise anything that comes up today at that meeting, which is yet to come.

I suppose that you are talking about targeted funding to address the sort of geographical issues with regard to rurality and inequality that you highlighted. I understand the issues that are faced by marginalised communities in remote, island and rural settings, and we are absolutely committed to supporting them. Something that the First Minister has encouraged is that, when we make visits as ministers, we do so on a cross-portfolio basis. Therefore, on our summer tours of constituencies, I made a special effort to visit rural and island communities and look at housing provision, and I was able to speak to not only our delivery partners but residents, including potential residents, and communities and see the challenges at first hand. I would not have known all that just by sitting in Holyrood. We are getting out and about and speaking to real people, and that is informing me and allowing me to be in a position to challenge and support my colleagues.

We need to ensure that the services that we offer are tailored specifically to the challenges that people face. Like everything else, rural impacts should be taken into account in all Scottish Government portfolios; in other words, any good policy should already be thinking about its impact across Scotland, including rural areas. Moreover, we have island communities impact assessments, which must be carried out in relation to any policy, strategy or service whose effect on an island community is likely to be significantly different from its effect on, say, another community. Those assessments must also consider the impacts on different groups on an island, too. I would say that, through such an approach, we are actually drilling down to what sometimes can be quite small numbers, which brings me back to what I was saying earlier about our challenges with regard to data sets.

We are in the process of introducing a new systemic approach, which is called the rural assessment toolkit, to aid that further and enable a greater focus to be applied to the unique needs of rural communities and businesses. That toolkit will support civil servants to understand the unique characteristics, challenges and opportunities of rural areas and weave those through all the stages of policy development so that, again, policy is being influenced early—thereby creating more robust policy that is more reflective of needs.

Thank you for that. I take on board and totally agree with your comments about silo working. That is something that I hear very commonly. However, as I have said previously, when I ask people to come out of their silos, they always say that somebody else should do it, not them. That is just a general human nature thing, is it not?

There is a bigger structural issue here, because humans are complex—we know that—and they do not see themselves as being in a silo. However, even our parliamentary structures, our committees and our systems are based on individual portfolio areas. It is a challenge for all of us, and I am certainly approaching it in the most robust way that I can.

I gave you an example of how we already do that by making sure that ministers with different portfolios undertake visits in communities and see projects that are not necessarily directly within their portfolios.

For instance, housing is not my policy area, although I take an equalities interest in it. I do not make any financial decisions over it, and I am lucky that it sits in the social justice portfolio. Nevertheless, I go out and see the challenges in real life.

The example that gave me a profound understanding was about the cost of building additional housing and the challenges around that. The questions are: why are we not building more houses and why are we not building them more quickly? I have been on the ground, seeing the landscape and the difficulties of drilling into what is pretty hard rock, as well as the transport of goods and services, and being mindful of not only the skills that are required but the impact of decisions that inflate the costs of goods and services.

Through seeing that, I am in a better position to challenge the Minister for Housing. Obviously, he will be an expert, but I put an extra lens on from an equalities point of view. For example, what happens if you are disabled? If you are building a new housing estate, where is the nearest hospital, where are the main transport routes and what is the availability?

That is happening, and I hope that it gives you a good example. I am trying to show visible leadership and encourage all ministers to do that cross-portfolio walking as well as talking.

We are not currently considering adding rurality as a specific dimension to the EFSB. The document focuses on the public sector equality duty and our fairer Scotland duty, and it supports budget scrutiny and provides evidence of our meeting those duties. Portfolios are best placed to consider the rural impacts of their policies and, where appropriate, consider those as part of their decision processes. Island impacts are considered separately as part of the budget process. Rural considerations are mainstreamed in the Scottish Government, which means that good policy should already be thinking about the impacts that policies have across all areas, including rural ones.

We know that EQIAs are an essential tool in policy development that helps us to better understand and address the needs of the people we serve. The best way to understand the impact of budget measures, including on marginalised groups, is through thorough, high-quality and robust evaluation. I am absolutely resolute in my stance that good-quality EQIAs should underpin everything that we do, and I push back on the idea that they do not have an impact.

The Scottish Government has continued to improve in this area, and it provides training materials, online guidance, best practice examples and impact assessment surgeries to support the completion of good-quality equality impact assessments.