Chamber and committees

I think there has to be some leeway, and I accept that decisions are made in different portfolios for lots of different reasons. This year, I will look at examples that have worked from last year’s ministerial workshop. I will use the best examples of ministers applying equalities and human rights budgeting, which I will share with other ministers in order to set the expectation for this year. For example, it is my plan to continue with the workshop idea, but to have it much earlier in the process, while being clear with ministers about what was received well in the previous process and what was perhaps not as helpful.

That is the point of them. I hope that ministers who maybe do not have as much of an idea of when to apply assessments will, as we develop a better in-the-round process for the budget, take the opportunity to ensure that they are familiar with that need and that they know when to look further at what the impacts would be on particular groups of decisions that are being recommended by others or, in the case of housing, what we are having to do due to extreme financial difficulties.

I refer back to my opening statement. We are in a very difficult position. A 10 per cent cut to medium-term capital spend is a huge thing that we cannot simply absorb without anybody being impacted.

I would not say that equalities and human rights budgeting is about never making cuts. It is about making sure that cuts are proportionate, that there is a reason for them and that all the spend is directed towards the progressive realisation of rights, and I think that that is what we have done.

It is hard to prove the impact of spend-to-save processes, but inequalities drive public spending—whether that is spending on social security, on health, on education or on criminal justice. People who are subjected to the worst barriers to accessing human rights and the worst inequality are more likely to have to use those public services. Therefore, putting money into making sure that services are designed with them in mind, and that public services are flexible enough to react to people, regardless of their background or protected characteristics, will undoubtedly save money, and it will save a lot of hassle and, potentially, trauma for people who are trying to access those services. I have no doubt about that.

On equalities being an add-on, that is the attitude that all the work on mainstreaming is seeking to challenge. That attitude absolutely still exists in many minds in public life, but as I said in my previous answer, we need culture change. We need not only a mainstreaming strategy; we also need people to think about equalities and about the impacts on individual groups of people who are subjected to inequality when they make decisions about where to prioritise spending.

I would encourage engagement with lived experience throughout the year, at all stages of any process within Government, because it is absolutely correct to say that lived experience is valuable and should be considered when we are making decisions that impact on people’s lives.

You said earlier that my job involves speaking to other ministers and supporting and pushing them to consider equalities and human rights. Part of that has involved ensuring that the lived experience of groups that fall within my portfolio—such as disabled people, older people or people who experience racism—have direct access to other ministers. It should not be the case that those people always see the equalities minister—they also have issues with health, transport and education. I have been facilitating that contact. One example is that I have been ensuring that the voices that feed into the immediate priorities plan for disabled people are able to engage directly with other ministers.

Absolutely. I am already feeding into next year’s budget process. I already have written notes on things that I felt went well and things that did not. As I said, I will meet the equality and human rights budget advisory group again this week. We will probably talk about how the budget process has gone, but we always look forward and think about what we could do better next time and what needs to change, because that is why we are all here.

The First Minister has challenged all his ministers to think about how every decision will reduce child poverty. When we make spending decisions, we have to think about the impact on tackling poverty, reducing inequality, creating a wellbeing economy and providing growth that does not contribute to further inequalities. There is a challenge. Last year, for example, we looked at the impact of Scottish Government spending specifically to reduce child poverty, such as the Scottish child payment and other schemes. The information that we got is that child poverty is increasing at a slower rate in Scotland than in the UK.

That brings us back to mitigation. It is difficult to be positive and optimistic about a budget that is so focused on mitigation, instead of thinking about how much more of an impact those measures would have on our goal of tackling child poverty if we had control over the whole lot and were not reacting to cuts in other places.

We recognise that more work is to be done across the board on equality and mainstreaming, and I have been pretty open about that throughout the whole session. However, if, for example, the equality and human rights budget advisory group tells us that it cannot see our workings out or how we have reached a decision, we take that on board.

I am trying to target that approach. Throughout the coming year, in the run-up to the next budget process, I will be working hard to ensure that we are reacting to such feedback. I want to ensure that ministers are, by the next budget process, able to explain fully—as many are able to now in regard to decisions that have been taken in this budget—and more widely how they came to decisions and how they engaged equality impact assessments, equality and human rights budgeting and all the other considerations that can help them to make a better, well-rounded decision that completely takes into consideration the impact on those with protected characteristics in particular.

The other one is the Victoria. That shows the success of having that support service on board. Residents had the space and time to explore all their options while they were in supported accommodation. I know that many of them were keen to take up offers, which allowed a group to be able to travel together and then continue to support one another after building up a support network.

I do not know whether we have any figures for the number of people who are in hosted accommodation.

I will bring in Kirstin McPhee on planning for Gaza, because I know that things are moving very quickly there. Although we are very focused on the immediate call for a ceasefire, which is absolutely the correct focus, we have also asked the UK Government to allow us to be part of a humanitarian response for those who want to leave and need to seek a place of safety.

The hosted accommodation is not the most appropriate infrastructure, and it is probably not our first option. However, the homes for Ukraine policy has allowed us to prove that it can work if it is managed correctly. Members will be getting similar correspondence from constituents who want to do their bit and want to help as I have been. Hosting can be a really helpful piece of the puzzle when we are dealing with humanitarian crises, but it is certainly not the immediate fallback.

There has been really positive progress in moving displaced Ukrainians into longer-term accommodation, and the number of people still in temporary welcome accommodation is dropping steadily. We have seen that since the disembarkation of the two ships. Whereas we previously had to keep a lot of welcome accommodation available in case that disembarkation needed some support, we are now able to move away from keeping so many rooms available, which is bringing down the monthly cost of the Ukrainian scheme. That is possible because more and more Ukrainians are finding suitable longer-term accommodation.

It has been paused.