Chamber and committees

I will make just a couple of points.

We need to be really clear about what happens with consequentials. The fact that a secretary of state says that something might happen in July is not an appropriate basis for our deciding how to use that money, because, as you have said, convener, one budget might go up while others go down, so—

Ms Clark might agree with that principle, but she might want to check with everybody else in her Scottish Labour parliamentary group to ensure that nobody double counts the consequentials that we get and asks us to spend more.

Members might all agree on that aspect with regard to the consequentials, but—and I am speaking from bitter experience here—other members might well raise other aspects, and we will get asked to spend money more than once. That is not how we make a budget. I acknowledge that Katy Clark and Paul O’Kane in particular have been consistent on this issue, but, year after year, when it comes to, say, in-year adjustments or some other budget, we get calls to spend more money than we have. That is why I am sceptical. That said, I am, of course, happy to work with members, and I have heard the suggestions that have come forward.

Deputy convener, if you will bear with me, I will just bring up one other issue. All social security systems are built to deliver the Government’s policy intent, and I ask the committee to give some thought to exactly what it is asking this agency to do. Mr Balfour has said that he is disappointed that the system cannot deal with flexibilities, but how many flexibilities does the committee want us to build into it? We might have wanted to target the payment—or somebody else might have wanted to, even if we did not—but should it be targeted on the basis of age, benefit entitlements or whether a person is in a couple or is single? Do you want us to target it on the basis of geography or income levels?

There are many variations that we could, theoretically, have built into the system at great cost, but I have no doubt that, when we came back before the committee, Mr Balfour would, rightly, be challenging us on why we spent money building a system that did something that the Government did not intend to do. After all, the possibilities and variations are almost limitless. If that is the type of system that Mr Balfour wants, I have to tell him that that is not how our social security system is built, nor is it how any other social security system is built.

Let us be really cautious about the practical challenges and costs involved in the suggestion that the system must be more flexible. It has to be built with specifics in mind. I have given but a few examples of how we could build a system that dealt with theoretical changes that might or might not happen in the future under a different Government, and all of them would have been a waste of public resources.

With the greatest respect, convener, I would push back on that again. We cannot discuss the right to housing—which I give as an example—without considering what would not be within scope. The human rights bill is limited in scope because of the Supreme Court judgment. I want to change that, because that would increase what is in scope on housing, for example. It is because we want to strengthen the bill that we want to go further on some aspects. I am acutely aware of the limitations on what the Government can do on the human rights bill, and I want it to go further. I hope that Ms Gallacher does, too.

Sure. There are two areas in particular where we can make demonstrable progress over the next 18 months. One is capability-building activities; the other is the tracker tool. The work that people wanted us to do on the tracker was outlined in SNAP 2. It would, in effect, monitor and support the implementation of human rights recommendations from the international treaty bodies. We have worked together with international partners to understand what already exists and how that might need to be adapted—or not—for Scotland-specific circumstances.

I am very keen to see what can be done on the tracker tool quickly, to look at what we can learn from those who already use it and to see whether stakeholders would be content for us to move forward quite rapidly on that measure.

Things are made slightly more difficult, if I can put it that way, because we are not a signatory to treaties. However, we need to get past any practical difficulties. I hope that our very different relations with the UK Government might help us to make progress on that.

You are quite right to demonstrate how that tool could be used. I will bring in Kavita Chetty to respond on some of the practicalities that we are already looking at.

In my response to the deputy convener, I tried to deal with the criticism about being blindsided. As I said in my opening remarks—I will reiterate this once again—I absolutely understand people’s deep frustration and anger. I have a job of work to do to build trust and to show that my decision to delay the bill was made because there is an opportunity to make the bill stronger, which did not exist during the other years in which I have been involved in this work.

Forgive me—I am not trying to make a political point about that. It is simply the case that there has been a change in approach. That meant that I was left in a position over the summer in which we could have decided to go forward with the bill, as we had intended to do, but I know, in my heart of hearts, that if we had done that, it would not have been as strong as it could have been.

I appreciate that, last week, the committee heard evidence that suggested that we could introduce the bill and simultaneously make it better. I hope that we will have time to go into why I genuinely do not see that as a realistic and practical option. I am happy to go into further details on that later, if that would help the committee.

There is a great deal that we can still do in this area. I reiterate that we are absolutely committed to the incorporation of UN treaties into Scots law, and that we are absolutely committed to delivering the human rights bill. Therefore, we need to keep up the momentum on the delivery of what we can do in the meantime. There are areas of the bill in relation to which we can still test and refine proposals.

We are very conscious of the fact that it would help if civic society could see how far things have developed. We are not asking civic society to go through the consultation that it has already gone through or to repeat the process that it has been through. I fully appreciate that people have fought for many years for what was going to be in the bill and that they are tired. They have spent a lot of their time and capacity on that, and they do not want to waste time.

Therefore, I am very conscious that we need to move forward with specific proposals that we can implement in the next 18 months. Key to that is our relationship with the UK Government and how we can demonstrate that. Those are the areas that I am keen to work on. We need to use the next 18 months to demonstrate that, together, we have made progress and that we can use those 18 months to make further progress. I hope that, for the first time, a conversation can take place between the Scottish Government, the UK Government and stakeholders about how things can develop.

Professor McHarg’s work in this area is exceptionally important, and I point to some of the difficulties that she raised in her remarks. Her work is absolutely being taken into account, and it is one of the areas that will help form the basis of the event that I have mentioned, at which we are keen to ensure that we work with stakeholders to discuss the limitations that the Supreme Court judgment places on the scope and on how that work can be taken forward.

That work has been examined. Other alternatives, proposals and solutions might come forward, but we need to have that discussion at pace so that we can work with the UK Government on a solution that both Governments are keen to take forward.

I have listened with great interest to the proposals and suggestions on that, and I completely appreciate why they were made. This Government is determined to carry on its work with the human rights bill, and we are keen to work closely with civic society and public bodies on that.

We need to look at refreshing the governance arrangements, as those were set up with the intention of introducing a bill. The bill is not being introduced to the same timeframe; we also want to strengthen it further. Therefore, we need to look at the issues of specific interest that we want to work on and at how we can have a governance structure that enables an eye to be kept on what can be done in the next 18 month and is not just about what is in the bill.

I encourage everyone who is interested and remains, as I am, fundamentally committed to delivering the human rights bill to carry on that discussion with the Government. I feel that frustration, and I have heard about it directly. We can still do a great deal to move things forward in the next 18 months, and I am absolutely committed to leading that work on behalf of the Government.

Thank you, convener, and good morning. I am very grateful to the committee for inviting me along today. The committee will have noted my letter last month on the next steps for the human rights bill, and I will cover some of that ground in my opening statement.

Last month’s programme for government set out our commitments to strengthen the implementation of human rights and to advancing proposals around extended rights protection. It restated the Government’s commitment to legislation that will incorporate international treaties into Scots law, developing proposals and engaging with stakeholders.

I reiterate at the outset that the Scottish Government remains absolutely committed to the deliverance of human rights and to bringing forward the human rights bill. As the committee knows, it was our intention to bring forward that bill during the current session. However, we have decided instead to continue working on the bill over a longer timeframe and to introduce it in the next parliamentary session, subject to the outcome of the 2026 election.

I will briefly explain the rationale underpinning that decision, but first I acknowledge the deep frustration, concern and, indeed, anger that have been expressed by civil society and others who have worked to shape the bill to date. The decision to postpone introduction and continue the development of the bill was not one that I took lightly. It is the Government’s view that, given the significance and complexity of the bill, there is more that can and should be done now to test and refine proposals further to ensure that the bill delivers the improved human rights outcomes that we all want it to achieve.

In particular, it has become increasingly clear to me that the constraints in the devolution settlement that were highlighted by the United Kingdom Supreme Court judgment on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill present a significant challenge to our ambitions for the human rights bill and, as a consequence, our ability to make law that extends protections for human rights as far as we want it to.

The judgment exposes the limits of the settlement as it currently stands, and how far we can go in practice to advance rights through treaty incorporation. Proceeding now would mean a bill with duties on public bodies of significantly reduced scope, complexity for duty bearers and rights holders and, therefore, challenges in making those rights real on the ground.

Up to this point, we have had to—to an extent—accept that challenge as an outcome of the Supreme Court judgment that we had to live with. However, things changed over the summer. The general election has presented, for the first time in 14 years, an opportunity to engage constructively with a UK Government—a Government that appears much more willing to address issues together, including how devolution is working in practice. My ministerial colleagues welcome that constructive and collaborative tone in the early discussions that we have had on a range of matters, and I hope that that will continue to be the case.

We are determined to make progress on addressing issues relating to the proposed human rights bill. Following publication of the programme for government, I wrote to UK Government ministers seeking to establish early dialogue. Officials have been tasked with convening an event before the end of the year to bring together key stakeholders to look at the challenges with rights incorporation and devolution following the UNCRC incorporation bill judgment.

We also want to use this next period to further consider our proposals on the incorporation of treaties concerning women, disabled people and people who experience racism. Stakeholders have pressed us to go further, and that needs careful consideration.

In the period ahead, I am seeking to take early action to advance rights now and to prepare the public sector for new domestic human rights duties in the future. That includes building the public sector’s capacity and capability to embed a human rights-based approach in everything that we do, as well as considering the development of an accessible tracker tool to support the implementation of international treaty body recommendations. I am happy to go into more detail on that, should the committee wish me to.

Even though stakeholders are deeply frustrated—I know that the committee heard that frustration directly last week—I very much hope that they will stay the course and work with us on that path. We are determined to make progress, and we must work together to allow that to happen. I look forward to the discussion today.