Chamber and committees

First of all, there is always more work to be done—we have to acknowledge that. The National Advisory Council on Women and Girls is very challenging in this space; it has challenged the First Minister and all of us to do more. Our work with them led to funded work with the OECD to explore how gender budgeting approaches can be applied to the budget process in order to make it better and evidence that we are going deeper and further with gender budgeting across all our investments. Through that pilot, we were able to identify some of the gaps, for example the need to have a more strategic overarching gender goal and the need to move away from a portfolio-based budget model to one that is, as you described, not siloed. Those form part of the need for a longer-term reform programme.

We are getting better at avoiding siloed working. If we take the example of tackling child poverty, the child poverty delivery plan does not relate just to the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice’s job but to everybody’s job. The inputs to that plan include not just the Scottish child payment but things such as employability programmes, childcare and other services, fair work, the living wage and transport—in other words, things that sit across Government that have to brought to bear in order to have the biggest impact. I had a meeting last night with local government on how we work together to align ourselves on our child poverty objectives for the next delivery plan. I assure you that that work is continuing.

Regarding the employability service itself, we recognise that there is a strongly gendered element to child poverty and that children in single-parent households are particularly likely to experience poverty, which means that support to get parents towards and into work must fit round the person. Some of the most successful programmes have been delivered by third sector organisations, some of which are quite discreet; they build up trust with women and parents and bridge the gap into statutory services. We must look at what works and some of that has been very successful. The job is far from done, but we can point to good examples of where there are strengths that we can build on.

There should be accountability. As I said earlier, we need to hold to account our senior leaders in the public sector—or whatever organisation—for the services that they provide. The point that I was making is that they have quite a challenging job to do because of all the pressures and demands in relation to an ageing population. The population health framework has set out a real intention to enhance population health measures that can have huge benefits further down the line. We know, for example, that the investment in early years and family nurse partnerships and all those upstream investments have great benefits later on. Breastfeeding is absolutely one of those interventions.

We absolutely recognise that there will be variation among health boards. The question for us is how much variation we are prepared to tolerate and where the accountability is. There has to be accountability and there has to be a service standard across the boards. As I said, I will take that issue back to health colleagues.

Organisations of any type will get funding only if they deliver what the funding is for. The minister has outlined that there is a difference between services being provided, such as suicide helplines, and the advocacy or policy position of any organisation. Numerous organisations may have policy positions that receive no funding but they provide a discrete and important practical support, such as a suicide prevention helpline. That is the distinction that the minister has made.

Every organisation is and should be subject to scrutiny by Inspiring Scotland and, in turn, by the Government to make sure that the funding that they are provided with goes on the services that they have said that the money is for, and that will continue.

That is the answer that I am giving you.

Yes, absolutely—we are. We have heard from the Minister for Equalities about the changes that we have made in the process to ensure that it is not a case of doing a human rights analysis after the event but of engagement before budgetary decisions are made, to ensure that decisions and potential decisions are put through a human rights lens. Success looks like having that engagement earlier to ensure that the assessment process is transparent and open.

The added opportunity on this occasion, with the upcoming fiscal events, is that, through the spending review, we are able to demonstrate the line of sight for funding that will ensure that we can be open and transparent about the commitment to this work over a number of years. Ensuring that human rights are at the heart of the budget process is the job of not only the Minister for Equalities. It is the job of every cabinet secretary and every minister to ensure that human rights are at the centre of the work that they are doing and that they engage with the Minister for Equalities, who is providing a check in the system that the processes and work that are under way meet the requirements and are being done in a way that engages with not only ministerial colleagues but key stakeholder groups.

That is what the process looks like; it should not be overly complicated, and it should have a demonstrable effect. I emphasise that we are not talking only about the funding in the equalities brief; we are talking about funding across the board and looking at whether the decisions that we are making and the decisions that have been made can stand up to the scrutiny of a human rights perspective. We are not there yet. We have work to do, but progress has been made, as I outlined in my opening statement.

You touch on a real tension. I will have to watch that I do not go back to speaking as a home care organiser, which I was in my former years, because I feel very passionate about this area. Without a doubt, huge improvements need to be made.

Clearly, as you have described, the debate on the national care service became focused on territory, powers and disagreement rather than the areas of extensive and broad agreement. What service users and their carers want to see from social care services should have been at the heart of it, but that was lost somewhat both in the broader debate and in the debate in the Parliament.

There is now an opportunity to work outside Scottish Government and local government silos and to focus on how we will improve social care, not just in the here and now. The demographics show that there will be a huge increase in the over-80 age group in the not-too-distant future. There will be a requirement for us to take a root-and-branch look at how we provide social care and ensure that the budgets will work. Silos do not help; the health and social care integration joint boards were established with the intention of moving away from siloed budgets but, in my opinion, there is still far too much siloed working.

We all have to take a step back and think about how we will transform social care in a way that will meet people’s needs both now and in the future. Human rights are at the heart of that, because the rights of those who are often the most vulnerable in our society need to be considered first and foremost. If we keep that at the heart of our discussions perhaps we can avoid falling back into what you described as the territory and powers issues.

I could talk all day about that area, but I will stop myself there because I think that we need to have a very long and hard look at it.

I agree with the point that you made about local government and health boards. There is scrutiny there, and it is a difficult job. Councillors are working in a very challenging environment—given everything that we understand about the political environment, we know that the work of councillors is very difficult and can sometimes be a thankless task. I recognise the work that they do.

On the point about citizen involvement in the budget, we have worked to improve people’s understanding of how it works: how we reach a budget and its development. We have heard a wide range of views from stakeholders across Scotland, from diverse communities, and we have heard the priorities of the third sector, public sector, business sector and communities at large.

We have produced public-facing information: following a review of international best practice on citizens’ budgets, we enhanced our guide to the Scottish budget, “Your Scotland, Your Finances”. That is now produced alongside the draft Scottish budget publication and is updated to reflect the finalised Scottish budget agreed by the Parliament. It is also updated on budget revisions agreed in-year by the Parliament. It is a complicated system. There are in-year revisions in spring and autumn—it is not a straightforward process. However, through that publication and the updating of it, we have tried to set out how the process works in straightforward terms.

I recognise that there is more to do. We want to make those improvements, which is why last year’s budget document signposted the 27 supporting documents and associated publications that accompanied the 2025-26 budget. I do not expect that there will be many folk who have read every one of those from cover to cover—present company excepted—but we try to go from that to “Your Scotland, Your Finances” to provide a much snappier way of producing information about something that is very complex.

Those are the attempts that we have made. It is work in progress. There is more to do, but we have recognised that we need to try. We want people to think about the budget. We want people to be involved as much as they can be and to give their views on process and outcome.

We are delivering against our commitment to develop what we described as a fairer funding approach by providing more multiyear funding to third sector organisations that are delivering front-line services and, in particular, that are tackling child poverty. As part of the 2025-26 programme for government, we committed to what was described as a fairer funding pilot that provided multiyear funding to a range of third sector organisations, totalling about £130 million over 2025-26 and 2026-27. That supports projects in areas including health, education, justice, poverty and culture.

That is the first step towards what you described as mainstreaming multiyear funding agreements. I hear all the time from the third sector that certainty is sometimes as important—or more important—than quantity. It is important that organisations have line of sight and know what they are getting, because they can then hold on to staff and do not have to work on a year-to-year budget.

To be fair to the Scottish Government, we had been subject to single-year budgets for many years, and it is difficult to guarantee funding to other organisations when we do not know what funding we will have. There has now been a multiyear spending review by the United Kingdom Government. That is why we set out that we will have a spending review alongside the 2026-27 budget, which will allow us to, as much as possible, look at providing that line of sight, which is only fair in relation to the spending review. I am keen to go further—this is really important, particularly when money is tight. We know that multiyear funding will help the third sector to hold on to key people who deliver vital services.

I hope that that gives you some reassurance.

The quality assurance of making sure that any funding that goes to any organisation is spent on the services that it is supposed to provide will be done by the intermediaries that are paid to do that job, and that is what they will do. If an organisation is not spending the money on what it is supposed to spend it on, that would be relayed to ministers, and that is when ministers would become involved. That is how the process works.

I do not think that alarm bells should be ringing.