Chamber and committees

that is really helpful, Nareen—thank you.

Alyia, I saw you nodding as Nareen Turnbull was speaking. Do you want to come in on this point, too?

You have spoken about dealing with the disconnect. In your experience, if there is good work happening in your local authority, and if there are different projects that are tackling inequalities, what are the barriers to using the duty as a tool to address inequality and actually change things for people, so that it is not just about the process or collecting the data, but is about making individuals’ lives and communities’ lives better?

Thanks, Alyia.

Martin, I come to you with the same initial question. If we are using the PSED, which is a measure that is supposed to help us target resources and work, why are inequalities still widening?

It does. Thanks, all—that is helpful. We are keen to use these evidence sessions to give the Scottish Government some pointers as to how its reforms can be more effective. I will leave it there for now.

That is helpful. I will take you up on that offer, minister.

The next chunk of my questions are about human rights budgeting more generally. You will remember from your time on this committee all the challenges and questions about data: who has it and where it is available. A substantial amount of data is available. We think that it informs budget decision making, but the EFSBS does not describe how it does so. Can you say more about the data—which sometimes is really good and sometimes has a lot of gaps—and how it informs your and your colleagues’ decision making?

Thank you, Matthew. That is helpful.

Minister, you mentioned the relationship between the budget planning work, national outcomes and human rights principles. What role does the equality data improvement programme have in supporting the direct read-through to national outcomes and sustainable development goals, which open up the human rights space a little bit more broadly than the national outcomes do?

When we debated the original statutory instruments last autumn, I moved a motion to annul them all, because of the barriers that Citizens Advice Scotland and others said that increased fees would create. Given that the order will amend one of those instruments and my motion to annul clearly did not go anywhere, I am not going to challenge it at this point.

I will leave it there, convener.

Good morning to the minister and her officials. Thank you for joining us this morning and for your comments so far.

I will follow on from Marie McNair’s questions on mainstreaming and ensuring that equalities and human rights are everybody’s business. The Scottish Human Rights Commission chair was clear that they should not be only in the remit of this committee. You have described the work that you have done with Government colleagues. I am interested in exploring how we can ensure that equalities issues, perhaps specifically in relation to autism and neurodivergence, are taken seriously by portfolios across Government and public bodies that the Scottish Government funds.

We have probably all heard too many stories of autistic people being fobbed off, not listened to, misdiagnosed and given treatments that do not work and could cause further harm. We have also heard about autistic people being arrested or being made homeless. All that costs the taxpayer and departments across both central and local government much more money. That is before we even consider the life-changing impact and detriment to those individuals and their families. It is even more galling that when those harms are brought to light, public bodies close ranks and do not take the human rights and equalities agenda seriously.

Minister, how have you worked with colleagues to try to ensure that that kind of waste of resource and human potential does not happen? How can we minimise that, and how can we get away from the stress and the detriment that it causes? I have a follow-up question on the issue, but I am interested in your comments on those points first.

Thank you, minister—that is helpful. In your opening remarks, you talked about the competence and capability training that is happening. At the heart of what we are talking about here is prevention—that goes back to Campbell Christie’s principles of prevention, which are now more than 10 years old but which still require a lot of work to be implemented.

You also talked about the need for cultural and behaviour change. I suppose that there are some challenges in that regard because when people are at a point of crisis, and they are being made increasingly ill, homeless or worse, there is not always a mechanism for saying, “We can see exactly what we need to do—how do we do that?” That is not necessarily about resource but about transparency and accountability, which you also talked about in your opening comments.

Maybe we can pick the subject up after the meeting. There are some specific questions that it is not appropriate for me to ask here, but I would be interested to pick some of them up with you after the meeting.