Chamber and committees

Good morning, and thank you for inviting me to the committee’s second budget scrutiny session. I welcome the opportunity to give further evidence to the committee on one of the most challenging budget rounds since devolution.

The year 2022 was an exceptional year for public finances. Throughout, we focused on analysing the equality implications of budget decisions. In May, we published an equality and fairer Scotland analysis of the resource spending review and, in November, we published an equality and fairness evidence summary, alongside the emergency budget review. In December, we published our “Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement 2022-23” alongside our main budget document. It has been a busy few months.

The “Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement 2022-23” sets out how the Government has assessed the impact that the budget has on equality and fairness and how those considerations influence our budget decisions. It is a vital piece of the budget jigsaw, which is a complicated jigsaw. The statement helps to ensure that we understand the impacts of budget decisions and that we have the relevant analysis to support the difficult decisions that we must take.

Over the past decade, we have worked to continuously refine and improve our processes, remaining committed to embedding in them the principles of transparency, participation and accountability. The improvements have been recognised by our stakeholders, including the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Scottish Women’s Budget Group. Those stakeholders welcomed the inclusion of more detailed analysis by portfolio and protected characteristic.

I welcome stakeholders’ continued help in pointing to further areas of improvement. I listened to some of the committee’s meeting last week and took notes on some of the proposals that were made. We will continue to work on those areas, drawing on the expert guidance of the equality and human rights budgetary advisory group and its chair, Professor Angela O’Hagan, who was at the committee last week. I was pleased to note that, in her evidence, she commented on the

“significant improvements in the multiple documents that are part of the suite of budget documents”.—[Official Report, Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, 24 January 2023; c 3.]

I will meet Professor O’Hagan in February, when we will discuss our forthcoming formal response to the recommendations made by the equality and human rights budgetary advisory group. I will update the committee on that when we get that response.

We remain absolutely committed to advancing equality and human rights through our continued financial support for organisations that work with disadvantaged people throughout Scotland, such as Glasgow Afghan United. Last week, I was at the Burns and Rumi supper night hosted by Glasgow Afghan United. That organisation, which is supported by Scottish Government funding, is one of our partners in delivering the new Scottish strategy. It does incredible work—if members have not seen it, please go and have a look. Most recently, the organisation was a partner in the Afghanistan relocation and resettlement schemes, helping people to relocate to Scotland from Afghanistan.

We are providing up to £1.5 million for the establishment of a race observatory on ethnicity and racial inequalities, which will provide a range of functions in relation to anti-racism. That is a significant step towards bringing about systemic change to help to create equity in Scotland’s communities.

That is just one part of our £48.9 million commitment through the equality, inclusion and human rights directorate. I will give the committee a quick list of some of the things that it includes. There is £19 million per year to support more than 100 organisations—I think that it is 112—to eradicate violence against women and girls through our delivering equally safe funding. There is a £971,000 emergency winter funding package to tackle social isolation and loneliness—we announced that just this week. There is £205,000 of funding for Age Scotland to help to keep the doors open for older people’s community groups—I know that many MSPs were concerned about the report that Age Scotland published on that at Christmas. There is dedicated funding to ensure that the consultation on the forthcoming human rights bill is as inclusive and wide reaching as possible, and we are working with many key partners on that.

The money that we are investing will contribute to our short and long-term goals. In the short term, I am focusing on: the implementation of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021; prioritising funding to tackle violence against women and girls; progressing the recommendations of the national advisory council on women and girls; legislating to end conversion practices; implementing the social isolation and homelessness fund; furthering the work of the interim governance group to develop national anti-racist infrastructure; and progressing engagement with our faith and belief groups on our new strategy for that.

We cannot do any of that in isolation, so I also want to implement effective and fair grant funding approaches to our third sector partners, and I am working to increase the pace and effectiveness of mainstreaming—which is why Rob Priestley is with us today—to support the embedding of equality and human rights. Only by working across Government and the public sector can we effect real change.

As I said, we have had to make some difficult budgetary decisions, this year. The Government has a duty to direct our limited funding to where it can have the most positive effect on people, in order to advance equality and human rights. We remain committed to doing so. I will continue to listen to diverse needs. I do not make any decisions on my portfolio without speaking to stakeholders, including the folk who are impacted. I seek to create meaningful and lasting change in this space. I look forward to the year ahead and to continuing to work with the committee on many of the issues that I have on my agenda.

I am happy to take questions.

I believe that it is doing that, but I will double-check that and get back to you with a more substantive answer. The work that we are doing to develop the new strategy is being done with stakeholders, and some of the questions are about up-to-date analysis. Some of that work was done before the pandemic and the cost of living crisis, but we are in a different environment now. Part of the issue is about getting quick answers and resolutions. I will go back and look at all that to ensure that we are updating that data.

You will have seen from the equality and human rights budget advisory group’s recommendations that public participation is key. As I have said a few times, I do not make many decisions in my portfolio without having stakeholder and public participation at the heart of them. It is important for the Government to integrate the thoughts, experiences and understanding of those with lived experience.

We recognise that there is more work to be done in that area. For example, we should look at how we use lived experience boards in Social Security Scotland. We now use lived experience boards in panels and advisory groups across the Government, which allows us to have people with lived experience at the heart of what we do. The challenge is to communicate that experience; some of my work is around using networks to get that information out. Organisations such as CEMVO Scotland, which was at the committee last week, BEMIS and the Glasgow Disability Alliance have huge networks; the older people’s strategic action forum has a massive network. We need to feed information out to people through those groups.

Recently, we have been criticised, because some of the people who are involved in those organisations have had consultation overload, so we have had to think about how we time consultations for specific groups in order to get the maximum participation. It is always a case of continuous improvement—we are always asking people, “Right, you’ve just taken part in this piece of work to tell us your experience and we’ve used it in this way. What could we have done to make it better?” We are working on all of that as we move forward.

Participation is a key aspect, whether that relates to local budgeting decisions or something else—I have a great local group in my constituency that does a participatory budget and awards micro-grants. It has been able to make a big difference in local communities with those grants, because the folk who live in the local streets, villages and towns are saying, “This is what we need. This is how much we need to do it. This is the difference we can make with it,” which is extremely important. How we track how the pounds are spent is also important. It is not just a question of saying, “You’re at the table. Thanks very much for your comments—goodbye.” The process should involve an on-going relationship that allows us to understand what the next steps are.

In relation to legislation that I am currently working on, we are working with, for example, the ending conversion practices advisory group and the interim governance group on tackling racism. We are going back and forth all the time and checking to make sure that, when it comes to participation, we are not just paying lip service, but there is an actual commitment to make sure that those voices and people are at the heart of the process.

A huge piece of work goes on in that regard. We use about 10 indicators, which produce hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces of rich data. We use those to analyse the impact of budget decisions, but we are also pushing towards using them to analyse the formulation of budget proposals. We are shifting quite a bit towards that work.

One of the aspects that we picked up on, which many of you have asked about, is the quality of equality evidence and data. We have been working through a major piece of work on equality data improvement plans. The project commissioned each portfolio to come up with an equality data improvement plan, which they are currently in the process of doing. Once we are a bit closer to completion of that work—which should be in the spring; the first quarter of this year—we should be in a position to give you more information about how we have used all of that data to analyse not only the difference that we have made but how we will make decisions in the future.

That work has essentially informed the work that I have done around how grant funding is distributed now. The project that I mentioned is a perfect example of how we can get more for the small amounts of money that we have, and deliver a much better outcome for people.

Okay, but you mentioned local authority budgets and the impact on the third sector.

One thing that we have considered in our portfolio, which is now being considered across many portfolios, is the provision of multiyear funding to give sustainability. We are doing a full review of the violence against women sector to consider how we can make it much more sustainable. We see local authorities taking decisions that have an impact on those services—and maybe not for the better, in some cases. We are considering all that, so we are mindful of some of those issues and how we ensure fairer funding outcomes.

Another issue is how responsive we can be. I announced just short of £1 million for a winter package on social isolation and loneliness. Some of that money—£200,000—is, as you heard, going to Age Scotland, which produced the “Keeping the Doors Open” report before Christmas. That work is about small, grass-roots organisations that would get bits of funding from different places, including local authorities, and how they found it a tight squeeze because of the cost of living crisis. We have been able to respond to that.

Fairer funding is about not just long-term sustainability but whether you can react. That is becoming much tougher; it was incredibly tough to do that in the current budget round. We had to think really carefully about how we funded things, but we felt that it was important to fund Age Scotland to do that piece of work to ensure that organisations on the ground could keep going.

Of course, our argument would be that local government has more money this year than it has had, although we all realise that the budget situation is very tight. We have a finite budget within which we have to work, and that is really tough. If a local authority, a third sector organisation or the Government makes decisions based on tackling the deepest and most challenging inequalities, it makes the best decisions for those outcomes. That becomes tough when money starts to be squeezed very tightly indeed.

It is for other ministers to respond on the specifics, and we can get you responses on all of those.

On your wider point about the £48 million that I have to spend, I will be as creative as I possibly can be with that so that it makes a difference, particularly for disabled people’s organisations such as the one that you mentioned. You will know about the Glasgow Disability Alliance and about the power of Tressa Burke and how influential and insistent she is, and rightly so, because she tackles such decisions every single day. The cabinet secretary attended the GDA conference last week and heard at first hand about all the challenges that you have talked about, with heating or eating, nutritious foods and so on. There was some positivity around some of the support that we have put in place and given to organisations that support people and get them the right advice.

On the back of that conference, we have had a deeper discussion about the particular challenge of the cost of being a disabled person in the UK right now and the additional costs that disabled people face, compared with a family or household. It is a really challenging situation, and we are working on how we can help them to cope.

The GDA produced a report that said that we are all in the same storm but we are not in the same boat, which contained some really powerful stuff. Again, we are looking at what more we can do. A big part of the issue is the reserved benefits situation and where we are with that. Hopefully, some of those issues will be alleviated as people transfer over to the adult disability payment, the child disability payment, the warmer homes discount and the rest of that package. I am now doing a bit of work to look at all that.

That work runs in tandem with the development of our new disability strategy, which we are working on with stakeholders. I will get you updates on your specific points from the relevant cabinet secretaries, and I will come back to you on the wider question about where we have got to on developing the new strategy, while taking into account the real impact of today’s cost of living on disabled people.

The points that you made about autism and transitions in the education system are not lost on us at all. You are doing great work in that area. In the past week, I read the analysis of your consultation. We recognise that Government can do more, and we are looking at how we can work together on that.

Yes.

I would say that we are listening. I will meet with Angela O’Hagan in February, and I will pick up that point with her. I will also arrange to meet with Susan McKellar, to pick up the point with her as well.

Angela O’Hagan is an amazing champion for women’s rights, and she will always try to push the Parliament and the Government to go much further than where we currently are. We welcome that. It is a good challenge to take on, although it is not easy in some respects. That is why Angela is in the position that she is in. I am grateful to her and was glad to offer her an extension in her position as chair of the equality and human rights budget advisory group. She uses the independence of that role to great effect. I am always in awe of her and the work that she does.

I will meet Angela O’Hagan in February and pick up those points, and I will also pick up the points with Susan McKellar. I pay tribute to Angela and her undiminished push to make the Government work better. I welcome that with a smile.

I do not have open funding rounds just now, so I do not know whether that was from my portfolio. If you give me the details, I will—

First up, I welcome the proposed UK bill on the matter and the fact that it is to cover all areas. I am in discussions about the fact that the Scottish Government’s bill might look different from the UK Government’s. Our officials are working with UK Government officials on our approaches, and it is important to do that. I welcome the UK Government’s commitment to consult on the principles of the bill, which we will look at with interest.

As we know, it is a tricky area. In the same way as the committee has done, we are looking at what has been done in other parts of the world. We are looking at how to create a bill that covers, as much as possible, everything that we want it to cover.

We are on target to meet the deadline of introducing the bill by the end of 2023. I will receive an update this afternoon on where we are. We are at the drafting point of the consultation and we are working through what that means now. I have committed to give the committee regular updates on that, and I will do that once we have moved on from the next step. We decided to have a good look at what the UK Government is proposing, so we are taking a bit of time to do that and we will come back to you after that.

We are on target and it is looking good.