Chamber and committees

I am, of course, going to say no, Pam. You might not have picked up the point that I made earlier about the Deputy First Minister meeting the women’s budget working group and Engender as part of the budget process. Women’s voices were there. If you get a chance—even five minutes—to spend any time with the national advisory council on women and girls, you will see that they are not silent and that they and the work that they do have both influence and impact on the Government.

The NACWG is just about to produce its next set of recommendations, many of which are about where women are seen and where and how they are consulted. In many ways, that is the work that we are improving, as well. We are absolutely clear that women’s voices are at the heart of it. We have a gender-balanced Cabinet, so there are women’s voices around that table and those women are not shy about raising their voices when they need to.

I do not see that characterisation. I see a progress from it—absolutely—but I do not see the characterisation that women’s voices were not heard, because they absolutely were. I give you that commitment, and I certainly have the evidence to justify that position.

Yes. It might have come from a different part of Government. If you give me the details, I will look at that. I have visited Shakti Women’s Aid and I speak to Saheliya and other women’s organisations quite often. I completely understand the issues about multiple characteristics. If you send me the details, I will look at that issue. I will not try to say something off the top of my head. Once I know the details, we can address the issue head on.

I am glad to hear about the project in your constituency. It is always good when such a campaign is successful, but you have to ask why a campaign was needed in the first place, because good decisions should be made at the earliest stage.

We do a number of things in relation to the point that you raise. Obviously, the equality and human rights budget that accompanies budgets is an important tool that can be used to understand, to mainstream and to influence things. The fairer Scotland duty and the public sector equality duty are other elements that focus in on the issue. We are reviewing those duties alongside our work on mainstreaming and on the new human rights legislation in order to ensure that they all work well with one another.

As part of the public sector equality review, we have had a lot of responses from stakeholders asking us to go further and deeper. In the summer, many organisations in the race equality area contacted us to ask us to do more, so we decided to spend a bit more time with stakeholders in order to enable them to influence and focus that process in a way that would meet their needs. That includes working with our colleagues in COSLA on its work. The new boards are just getting off the ground. I have met Councillor Chalmers, who is the new chair of the community wellbeing board. Much of the work sits in the wellbeing portfolio. I have met her to discuss a few issues—it was a general session to get to know her and to ask what the focus of the committee will be over the next few years. We also looked at the work on which we can collaborate. That includes work relating to public sector equality duties, the fairer Scotland duty and local authorities’ general core duties.

I am meeting Councillor Chalmers in the next few weeks to discuss our work on women, domestic abuse, gender discrimination and inequality. I am also meeting her to discuss a specific point to do with our new human rights bill. We are working with local authorities and other folk in the public sector to look at how we can improve processes, and the PSED review is now under way.

The equality data improvement programme demands plans. If we are to strengthen public sector equality duties, the data that is collected, disaggregated and used will be incredibly important. That ties into that work, too. How we use all that to influence things is incredibly important.

In the new Scottish human rights legislation, we will incorporate four United Nations treaties. As there are no UN treaties on older people or LGBTI people, we are looking at how we incorporate in the legislation sections on equality for those people so that those have the same effect in law as the UN treaties.

Part of the issue is to do with people not having their human rights and inequality issues realised by public authorities. Legislation is a tough tool to use. I would rather public authorities uphold the fairer Scotland duty and their public sector equality duties in a way that people do not feel that their rights are being disrespected and that they have to seek judicial remedies. The legislation will give us another tool in the box to effect societal, organisational and institutional change. We know that that needs to happen—we have been working towards that for many years. We are seeing progress now, but there is more to do, and I am always open to hearing ideas about how we do that.

I will give one example of where we spend money and how that makes a difference. JustRight Scotland is one of the organisations that we fund, and it is included in our six-monthly report. It has launched a free and confidential second-tier discrimination advice helpline, which is directly aimed at advisers and other front-line workers who support members of the public. The line helps to ensure that the people who offer such services are trained in a way that responds to an individual’s needs, should someone pick up the phone and say that something is not working for them and that they need support. The line gives people the support and the opportunity to tackle and challenge that.

That is just one example of the organisations that we fund to do front-line work. Those organisations are much better placed to understand the needs, wishes and challenges that people in Scotland have, especially when their rights are not being realised.

I have mentioned my for-info folder. There are lots of documents for my interest in that folder in which those conversations are taking place and in which actions on those issues are referred to.

When I sit down and talk to finance officials or other ministers, they use the language of the PANEL principles approach. It is really reassuring to hear that, but we then need to ensure that that is reflected in the work that they do.

A joint ministerial group on the public sector meets every few weeks. There will not have been a time when I have not spoken up on behalf of the organisations, groups, stakeholders and individuals who have spoken to me over the weeks previous to those meetings. I am always injecting such issues into those meetings.

I referred to the work that Jo Ozga did on the effect on women. There is the same impact on unpaid carers and family carers. I am able to feed back some of what people are experiencing, and what I am hearing is about the adult disability payment and the child disability payment and how different the application processes are. I just heard from a family who had fought for personal independence payment for years and got adult disability payment without having to go through all the assessments that they had had to go through for PIP.

I inject such examples into the discussion, because that puts a real human face on a policy, and when I feed that back to the Deputy First Minister and other colleagues, that clearly demonstrates the impact that the right decisions can have on people’s lives. I will continue to do that, and I am always open to hearing about ways that we can do that better. I will use all the avenues that I have to raise such issues as many times as I can.

The equality and human rights budget advisory group helps us to understand some of that. Also, the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement—there are so many acronyms in my head; I try to remember them all but I try not to use them because I do not like them—becomes incredibly important with regard to how we do what we do and how we ensure that the processes are transparent enough for people to understand them and see themselves in them.

I will take your comments back. I cannot comment on how the Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care is working on that, but I give you a commitment to look at that and come back with a more detailed response. I will look for that across the whole Government.

The work that we are doing with the mainstreaming team is important in ensuring that those processes are done in a way that means that people’s lives are reflected and real human stories are carried through those decision-making processes, so that we do not have the issues that stakeholders commented on in the committee’s previous meeting. We take all that very seriously, and I inject that into the work that I do. I am not silent on any of that, as you can imagine, and neither are other ministers. The Government is committed to doing that better, so we will come back to you with a more detailed response. I hope that that is helpful.

Thank you; that is a good point. Pam Duncan-Glancy was looking at you as if to say, “Don’t steal my thunder”.

You have asked some questions on that in the past few weeks, and work is being done by the responsible minister, so I will take that question away and say that, again, you have pushed us on getting a response on that. I know how important that employability work is. We have managed to support about 9,000 parents, because some of that fits into the child poverty action plan—“Best Start, Bright Futures: tackling child poverty delivery plan 2022 to 2026”—in relation to how parents can be supported to lift families out of poverty.

We see the value in that work. We must always review whether approaches are working, but we are in a difficult situation with our budget. In some areas, it is incredibly difficult because we have to make decisions to cut things that we know are valuable, but how else can we fund some of the other things that we need to do to ensure that people do not fall deeper into poverty? These things are always up for review. We make difficult decisions, and I do not envy the minister who had to make that decision. I have also had to make decisions to ensure that money is focused on the people for whom, and places where, it is most needed, but the budget process has not been easy. It is the worst situation that I have ever experienced in that regard.

There are a number of legislative and non-legislative ways in which we do that. Obviously, there is the fairer Scotland duty, we have our processes, and there is equality impact assessment development. The work that I have been doing over the past few years has included looking at EQIAs to find the gold standards and ensure that they are used all the way through Government. That is a big part of the mainstreaming team’s work. We have offered a number of opportunities to other colleagues across Government to take part in training and experience the way to do EQIAs that details the outcomes that we want to see. That is the important part. It is not just about completing the document; it is about what that does and how we can measure progress against it.

The most effective place for EQIAs is throughout the cycle of the development. They should not be done at the end of the process or just at the beginning of it. The document has to be a living document, so it always has to go through all the processes. That is done so that it informs our decision making as we go a step at a time, whether we are talking about annual budget allocations, the help that we give to people or outcomes.

I mentioned the Saoirse project. There are a number of other projects. I have a list of them at the back of a folder, and I will give members information on some of them shortly.

We measure against our national performance framework. What have we committed to making progress on in that? How does that map across to what we are doing with an EQIA and what that EQIA does to inform policy making and create better outcomes? We go all the way through that.

We have committed to doing work around the emergency budget, and we have done work around the resource spending review. These are pretty exceptional times in which to do that. The fairer Scotland budget statement comes along with that.

Among all of that is Angela O’Hagan and her team. I have extended the remit of the group and extended Angela’s contract with us to chair it. The group has been renamed; it used to be called the equality budget advisory group—EBAG—but it is now called the equality and human rights budget advisory group, although EHRBAG does not really sound right, so we are not calling it that.

We have extended the group’s influence, and we have reviewed many ways of improving the processes. We have done some draft work, which we have given to Angela and asked whether we are on the right track. It is good to have a critical friend in an organisation that sits there and scrutinises and analyses our work but also gives us recommendations on how to do it. The group is very motivated and has given us a bigger piece of work to do, and we have drafted a response to that. I will give the committee updates when Angela comes back to us. We have regular catch-ups and I am meeting her again soon.

The issue is about having judicial processes—things that we have to do under the fairer Scotland duty—and other processes around what we must do to ensure that decisions are made effectively and create outcomes. We work with stakeholders and external organisations, which provide that critical eye and give us guidance, support and recommendations on how we move the work forward.

That is the process, and then we see projects such as the Saoirse project, where we are taking an intersectional approach to the challenges that are faced by women who are victims of domestic violence—who might also have substance abuse or addiction issues—to get them the right support in a one-stop shop. When it comes down to it, what makes the difference is seeing the outcomes for those women.

I heard those comments from People First last week, and I was pleased to see that we are making real progress in that area. We recognise that accessibility is an important part of ensuring that key stakeholders have their say and see themselves in the work that we do.

Members will know that we have accessible communications legislation in place. As we move forward with our human rights bill, there will be a right in it for people to have access to documents in formats that they want. However, we currently do quite a lot of that in publishing many of our high-level documents.

I suspect that People First and others are looking for the more detailed on-going work on that. We are currently exploring all the options on how to do that in not just EasyRead but other accessible formats. We have committed to producing documents in plain text format, and we are now doing so. We have had direct feedback from stakeholders on how important that has been and why it has made documents much more accessible.

I do not take any decisions at all in my portfolio work without ensuring that I have worked very closely with stakeholders. That means publishing what we produce in a format that is their preferred method of communication. We do a lot of that already.

As far as the deeper budget documents and the ask from People First are concerned, we are currently exploring how we can do more of that. I can give members that commitment and update them when the review is completed.

Yes, I would. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for inviting me to your pre-budget scrutiny session, during what I think we will all agree is one of the most difficult budget rounds since devolution—certainly in my 15 years of being in this place.

I am sure that the committee shares my frustration that, at this very late stage in terms of preparing our own budget, we are still playing a waiting game with Westminster. It is unnecessarily challenging to undertake business in this way, when the goalposts keep changing. Even the dates for announcements are changing rapidly, and it is sometimes hard to keep up.

The reckless behaviour of successive Prime Ministers has left us in a situation of crippling inflation, which has reduced the Scottish Government budget by around £1.7 billion from when it was published just last December. The forthcoming budget is taking place in a context of impending recession, with record levels of inflation affecting the Scottish budget funding base, decreasing the spending power of the available funds, while the demand for spending increases—you will have seen many of those demands in the course of your budget scrutiny. That necessitates difficult decisions, so that we do not increase the pain that is felt by those who are most marginalised in our society—including all the folks under my portfolio, for whom I hope we have better outcomes.

I am under no illusion, however, as to the size of the task that lies ahead of us. The cost crisis is of a scale that we have not seen before. I want to make it clear that the Government understands that all budgetary decisions have an impact on equality and human rights, which is why we need to bake it into our processes.

Taking an equality and human rights approach means looking holistically at our available resources and at how we can further the realisation of human rights with what we have available. That is why we continue to focus on support for the most vulnerable. Direct examples include our equality and human rights fund and our delivering equally safe fund. Among a range of projects that are getting more than £4 million to the front line, the equality and human rights fund supported 38,000 people through one-to-one casework and helplines in its first six months alone. We have published both the reports on that, if the committee is interested in reading about it in more detail. That support is increasingly dominated by responding to the cost crisis, such as by helping with benefits, housing and applying for home energy and food bank vouchers.

The delivering equally safe fund, which targets support at eradicating, and supporting survivors of, violence against women and girls, has provided £9.5 million to 121 projects over the course of its first six months. A report on that has been published, too. Those projects give one-to-one emotional and practical support, as well as refuge, legal and financial advice and other services. Many of the organisations also run training and outreach programmes aiming to prevent violence against women and girls, and prevention is one of our key pillars in the equally safe strategy.

I was very moved and inspired by the conversations that I had with women supported by Saoirse project in Blantyre, which I visited recently—although those who are from the area will not forgive me for mispronouncing the town’s name just now. I hope that members have seen the project; if not, I suggest that they go and have a look. It is directly supported by the delivering equally safe fund and brings together specialist domestic abuse and substance use services to target the multiple, complex issues that service users face, helping them to rebuild their lives. The women I spoke to were able to tell their story once, at one door, and all the services then clicked into place. That is what Saoirse gave those women, with access and support tailored to the individual needs of those needing interventions. The women were empowered to shape the decisions about what their support looked like, which was incredibly important.

The project represents a human rights-based approach to recovery, with survivors right at its heart. It is a great example of that and, again, if committee members have not seen what it does, please have a look at it. It is just one of the projects across Scotland that offer lifelines to survivors of violence and abuse and that seek to tackle the root causes of the issue. I can truly say that it was awe inspiring. The women I met that day will be at the front of my mind every time that I make decisions on how we spend the money that we have, so I am incredibly committed to continuing to support such projects and our other third sector partners through these increasingly difficult times.

As well as working with external partners, we continue to work across Government to ensure that equality and human rights are considered in the evidence-based policy making that takes place in all our portfolios. That is why Rob Priestley is here. Mainstreaming is a key part of all that. The Government is demonstrating that it is serious about supporting those who have been, and continue to be, hit hardest by a succession of crises in Brexit, the pandemic and, now, the cost of living.

The committee has asked me about the Government’s equality data improvement programme in the past and I can give an update on it today. The programme is building a stronger and more robust equality evidence base. That work is vital to ensuring that we have all the information available to make decisions that will support the needs of the people most impacted by the cost crisis in Scotland. We take an intersectional approach and ensure that we can focus our resources appropriately on the areas where the deepest deprivation or discrimination is.

We are driving forward work on the human rights bill, which will incorporate a number of international treaties into Scots law. Giving justiciability to people’s rights is an incredibly important part of the work that I am doing in Government right now. I have met stakeholders across Scotland to hear their views on that. They have been very motivated by that piece of work and all the work that we are doing. The draft budget for this year includes funding to ensure that the bill’s consultation is accessible and inclusive—I know that that is of great interest to the committee—so that diverse voices and communities can participate in the legislative process.

We are working with the Scottish Commission for People with Learning Disabilities, which has done a fantastic presentation on the incorporation of rights. If you have not had a chance to see that, have a look at it and the outcomes from the decisions that we take.

I repeat my commitment to taking an equality and human rights-based approach to the budget. If we do not take seriously the prerequisite for detailed needs analysis and do not listen to the views of the most vulnerable in our society, we will not address the crisis affecting our most vulnerable citizens. I am committed to continuing to do that and look forward to hearing from the committee.