Chamber and committees

I will probe more into the facilities side. Do the toilets and the changing rooms comply with the Equality Act 2010? When you write your policies and guidance, how do you prescribe them? Do you go back to the Equality Act 2010 and look at the rights for women and girls?

That is fine. If you could pass on the information, I would be really grateful.

Martin Ingram, what is your answer to that question?

Thank you for that, Martin. You said you have set up a member and officer group. How long has that group been running? Has anything come out of that that you can share with us?

Thank you. I have one more question, which might be for either Nicky or Jillian to answer. The police force in Scotland is obviously predominantly male and it is often faced with difficult situations and dangerous criminals who are also predominantly male. We have seen examples in Scotland of rapists claiming to be female just to be housed in women’s prisons. Current guidance states that only men with a known history of violence against women, including sexual violence, are excluded from the female estate. That policy is not only based on gender self-identification, which is not the law of the land, but ignores the fact that most violence against women goes unreported.

I am struggling to understand why the Scottish Prison Service believes that the responsibility for affirming the identities of male criminals should fall on women prisoners. Do you believe that the Scottish Prison Service is complying with the Equality Act 2010, or is self-ID trumping the 2010 act over women’s rights? I will go to Jillian Matthew first. Has any work been done on that in your area? I will then go to Nicky Page and, if John Dawson wants to comment, that is fine as well.

Okay. Do you know—please say if you do not—whether that guidance will be interpreted through policy or the Equality Act 2010?

As the minister will know, violence against women and girls is one of the areas to which I have paid great attention since I have become an MSP. I often meet with representatives of organisations in the violence against women and girls sector. Lack of funding has been a major issue for many of those organisations, particularly the smaller and less well-known ones. They say that they need more certainty from the Scottish Government to be able to carry out the excellent work that they do in helping women and girls, many of whom are survivors of domestic abuse. What is the Government doing to ensure that those organisations have the certainty that they need, especially through funding, to carry out their important work helping women and girls?

Good morning, minister and officials. The gender budgeting pilot has found that the Scottish Government lacks strategic, overarching gender goals. To give an example, although I understand the importance of fighting both domestic violence and poverty, we need to understand how those areas are linked. Another example could be a woman coming from a black, Asian and minority ethnic background or a woman earning less than a male counterpart and trying to measure how that affects how she raises her family.

The pilot has also found that there is a need to move away from the current portfolio-based budget model and towards a more performance-orientated approach. What action is the Scottish Government taking on that feedback to make sure that there are cross-departmental links? You mentioned that you have been speaking to other ministers, but it would be good to understand whether impact assessments are being done on their own or whether you are doing them while linking and cross-checking.

It is good to hear that it is about the delivery of the service and that small organisations are not being missed out, as they sometimes are.

Would you like me to ask question 15 as well, convener?

There is often an assumption that anti-poverty measures will proportionally impact people from BAME backgrounds, but that is not always the case. What can be done to account for the differences in access to and take-up of anti-poverty schemes, particularly among people of minority backgrounds?

I thank the minister and her official for that response.

Minister, you have said that 43 out of 48 organisations are smaller, advocacy ones. Are you saying that 43 organisations are not the larger ones—that they are more niche in those areas? We know that some organisations deliver on helping people from BAME backgrounds but that it sometimes does not come to light—they must prove that by giving their figures and statistics to the Government because their data is not collected. I know that because my domestic abuse bill was looking at the matter of certain data not being collected. The information on data is kind of bottom up rather than top down. How much does that affect your decisions, and are you saying that 43 out of the 48 organisations that are being funded are smaller ones and that there are five larger ones?