Chamber and committees

I am sure that you would.

In my earlier comments, I said that I do not make any decisions without having the people for whom I want to effect change at the forefront of my mind. That is why we use panels of people with lived experience and have stakeholder events. There are many other organisations that put on a fantastic array of events, and we attempt to work with them all. We take feedback, which is the important factor here.

Our two reports on the delivering equally safe fund and the equality and human rights fund are peppered throughout with feedback both from people who have benefited and others who found challenges, as well as those who provided resolutions, because they had ideas about how to fix some of the challenges. Therefore, we can see who has been impacted, who is accessing the services, what they think of the services and how we take that forward.

We also get that information from the fund managers who work with us. The monitoring and auditing processes have been developed over the past wee while, from perhaps a straight monitoring of financial aspects that involved looking at the money that had been spent and the outcomes, to a deeper and softer approach. There is benchmarking, such that outcomes are now caught that would not have been caught by taking that more formal approach.

Having conversations and injecting those thoughts, feelings and experiences into all that work has allowed us to see what we have done. We have done the six-month reviews because we wanted to look at the difference that the funding has made, which we can see very clearly.

A few months ago, at the beginning of the cost of living crisis, Jo Ozga from Scottish Women’s Aid sent us an email with a two-page document on how bad the crisis is for women. We were able to use that piece of work in our work with colleagues in Government and across the teams of officials in my team and in finance and the exchequer, to respond to that in a way that gave that sector some stability. It is only for six months, but there is some stability now, and I felt that that was important. That is a perfect example of how the experiences of stakeholders can be injected straight into the decisions that we need to make, which means that those decisions give the outcome that people want to see.

I am just double checking something.

We are doing a huge piece of work in the Government right now on data collection and the disaggregation and quality of the data that we collect. Since my first outing to a committee in the Parliament, which was 15 years ago, we have been looking at how we collect, use, disaggregate and share data in order for us to obtain better outcomes. A big piece of work is on-going right now in the equality data improvement project. Over the summer, the chief statistician consulted on equality data improvement plans, which cut right across the whole Government. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has its own approach, so it might be worth the committee taking evidence from COSLA. It has a new committee chair, with whom I am working very closely. I will be meeting her in the next few days to discuss some of this work, in among all the other things in which there is crossover in our jobs.

The public sector equality duty is in place right now, but you have made the point that, despite the statutory footing, data is not being collected. Public sector bodies might argue that data is being collected, but perhaps we do not see in it what we need, which is where we need to improve what we are doing.

The next equality evidence strategy, which will cover 2023 to 2025, will be published in spring 2023. At that point, I will come back to the committee and will let you know what that looks like. That will mark the conclusion of the first stage of the equality data improvement project—EDIP. In autumn 2021, an internal network of lead analysts covered all ministerial portfolios. You picked up on the point about data gaps in social care and across other parts of Government. It is not for me to respond on behalf of those Government ministers, but that mainstreaming work is being done right across the whole Government. An audit was done of equality data that had been collected and published in key data sets and of how that was then used to produce official and national statistics and update the national performance framework—because it is all linked to those indicators—and to inform significant ministerial decision making.

Another piece of work is on-going. We are reviewing the public sector equality duty and undertaking the equality data improvement project and the mainstreaming work: those all work together to make all the changes that we need to see.

In my info folder, which is usually about things that are happening across Government, I can see that there is much more of a gender, human rights and equality budgeting focus. That is beginning to emerge through other parts of Government. I am happy to take the issue of social care back to the minister who is responsible for that and get you some answers.

As I said, we carried out a public consultation in the summer. People who think that data collection and how we use and disaggregate data are pretty dry subjects should have been at the event at the DataKirk that I was at yesterday, where the chief statistician gave a presentation on data. I could see people thinking, “Oh my goodness, this is going to be dry,” but it was not uninteresting at all; it was incredibly interesting. He talked about how the data is collected for the Scottish index of multiple deprivation and how we then use that data.

We are working on how we collect data with regards to hate crime. I am leading on the equality evidence strategy, which ties into all parts of Government. Alongside the consultation on the strategy, we have carried out a series of stakeholder engagement events, in order to go back to the people who are asking for changes. There is an incredible interest in Government data, and in how we commission and use it. The aim was to help us to understand the practical steps, and what data people need so that they make the right decisions. It is not just about Government making decisions; it is about organisations that deliver services looking at the data and perhaps seeing an intersection that they had not picked up, and so deciding to focus resources on that. Alternatively, they might see that they have made some progress and decide to highlight that as an example. There is all of that as well.

Part of addressing the barriers to collecting data is about systems and how we develop them. They are developing rapidly all the time, and we use all the advances in technology. For example, we are looking at using drop-down menus and other simple ways of collecting as much data as possible. One criticism that I heard from people who were at the DataKirk event yesterday—it was a black talent summit event—was that people from mainly African heritage communities are just denoted as African, yet there are so many more ways in which they could be identified in the data set.

During the pandemic, the expert reference group on Covid-19 and ethnicity picked up that issue. We were able to analyse that with National Records of Scotland to look at what we needed and how to use that in making decisions that could be life-changing for people on issues such as access to vaccines and providing information that allowed people to access vaccines and the support that they needed during that time. That is another example of how we can use good data to make a difference immediately.

We are of the belief that the data needs to be improved all the time. It is another living document that we need to keep working on and improving all the time, and we are doing that.

I will answer the final point first, because it is the easiest one. We are currently considering how we do that. We produce a number of documents in different formats, including XXL, Moon and EasyRead, and usually the team at the Scottish Commission for People with Learning Disabilities helps us with that. We are looking at ways to do that in an EasyRead version. I will come back to you on that, because we heard that point raised last week and we initially thought, “We produce the documents in those formats,” but when we realised that people were looking for the deeper documents that help them to understand what the budget means, we thought that we would go away and consider it. We are doing that now, so we can come back to you on that point.

On the minimum core outcomes that we want, we realise that, for everyone in society who experiences disadvantage and inequality and who lacks power, which is usually the case when people have to challenge, the human rights route is a difficult way to go.

If we think of folk from the Gypsy Traveller community, people impacted by disability, people from minority ethnic communities and those from LGBTI communities, it is clear that there are areas of policy development in which they lack influence and power. I gave an example from Jo Ozga’s paper about how that can influence what we do.

A few weeks ago, I met the members of the learning disabilities sector lived experience panel for the human rights bill. They did a superb presentation on what the treaties mean for them and what it means to see that realised. I understand that that will happen a wee bit in the future but we also need to consider what we can do now to ensure that people are engaged.

The social renewal advisory board had all those organisations around the table, as will the advisory board to the human rights bill. We involve lived experience panels in all the social security work that we do. Hearing those voices and making the time to hear them is important.

I said to that group, “You tell me what you need me to do and I will be there”. They told me that they wanted me to listen to a presentation and then they wanted to quiz me on those points. I do a lot of that. I do not make any decisions in my portfolio without having those folks at the front of my mind.

My background is in learning disabilities and I used to run a project called promoting independence—it was absolutely nothing to do with politics but was all about the independence of adults with learning disabilities. I have that professional understanding, but I also understand how impenetrable Government and public authorities can be, especially if someone has a learning disability and their ways of communicating are not mainstream. It is not for those folks to fit in with us but for us to change our approach. That is why I take an intersectional approach.

I worry about some of the groups that are impacted the worst in all this, such as Gypsy Travellers, folk who have had a universal credit cut, and folk who care for someone in their household, have a disability or are part of the learning disabled community in Scotland. They are at the front of my mind when I make decisions, and they are in the room so that I can hear what they need and use that information to make those decisions. That is the way that I do it, but I know that other ministers do it that way, too.

There are always ideas about how we can do it better, and I am always open to those and to how we can help people to see themselves in the policy that is being developed and see their influence on that policy. That is particularly the case for the budget. We tend to find that those families and individuals are the ones who are most reliant on services. If those services are not there, do not work or are not flexible enough, people cannot realise their independence and their rights. If you have any ideas about that, Pam—I sure that you do, because you always have ideas that are really helpful—I am keen to hear them.

There are lots of events along the way to underpin and reinforce all that with legislation. In the meantime, we need to consider how we ensure that those folks are in the room. I do that to the best of my ability but there are always ways to do it better and I am happy to take those on board.

I absolutely accept the principle of integrating intersectional gender analysis in all our policy making. I am an intersectional feminist and always have been. I have never looked at just my characteristic of being a woman; we are all different and we have a set of characteristics that bring us together. Where those characteristics cross over at intersections for some women is where the deepest areas of deprivation, discrimination or lack of access to better outcomes manifest themselves. The pandemic exposed that in a really stark way.

That is why we are very keen to make sure that the process of integrating an intersectional budget process will allow us to take forward some of the work that we do in the wider area of equality and human rights budgeting. I return to the point that I made about always going back to stakeholders. We work very closely with all the women’s organisations that are stakeholders in the work that we do.

We also work with the Scottish Women’s Budget Group; you will have seen some of the work that it does. It has been working with officials in our Government to train us in a number of these areas, and we have been attending training delivered by that organisation, which, basically, is to grow our competence on gender in this area. We often hear, “Where are women in this?”, “Where are minority ethnic people in this?” or “Where are Gypsy Travellers in this?”. It is about being able to pull all of that out and having it there.

We recognise that the impact of the crisis will not be felt equally by all people, and certainly not by women. There will be a disproportionate impact on certain households and groups, including women. In 90-odd per cent of single-parent households in Scotland, the head of the household is a woman. In lots of those families, the woman is a carer, because there is a disabled person in the family as well. We take all that into account and we recognise that those are the people who will be affected the most.

We are also exploring whether the public sector equality duty and the Scottish-specific duties could be appropriate vehicles to put an intersectional budget process on a statutory footing. I am not saying no to putting it on a statutory footing, but we are still investigating whether that is the right way to go. There are different opinions in the sector around that. We have asked for stakeholder views specifically on the practicality and feasibility of placing a duty on listed authorities to do it and are awaiting that work coming back.

The Scottish child payment is a perfect example of how we support those families. Bridging payments have been doubled, and the child payment has been doubled and is now paid up to the age of 16. That is a perfect example of how we understand where this impacts women and families, so we know where to inject resources to address those inequalities to a point where people are not being discriminated against or marginalised because of their status in society. They are valued, and the work that they do as mums and carers is valued, too.

It is probably not for me to set out what cabinet secretaries and other ministers will want to do in that area. However, it is certainly for me and the mainstreaming team to ensure that such ideas, proposals and resolutions to challenges are injected into the whole process, and that is what we are doing. I will bring in Rob Priestley in a minute to give an update on where we are with the mainstreaming strategy and how that ties into the work that we are talking about.

I am disappointed to hear that organisations, especially learning disability organisations, felt that they were not listened to or were the last to be listened to. I will take that on board and deal with it. A big piece of work that we did just before the pandemic—we know that the pandemic had a disproportionate impact on some folks and that people with learning disabilities were very badly affected because they lost lots of their services—involved developing, jointly with COSLA, a programme called the keys to life, which the committee probably knows about. On the back of the comments that Pam Duncan-Glancy has just articulated, I want to speak to the minister responsible to see whether we should be looking at that issue to ensure that organisations and, more important, the people they represent—the stakeholders in those organisations—get to hear their voice in all this. I take that point on board and will take it away.

I ask Rob Priestley to give an update on mainstreaming, which is a fast-moving feast at the moment. There was been work right across the Government. That has included our response to the emergency budget and the resource spending review, and it will include our response to a normal budget if we ever get a normal budget round.

You will not be surprised to hear me say something similar to what I have already said. Policy development and policy outcomes are incredibly important and must be informed by lived experience. If we take an intersectional approach to the issue, we see that those are the very women and folks who emerge as facing multiple layers of discrimination and equality issues.

The work that we do with stakeholders across our portfolio is incredibly important. As a privileged white woman, I would not speak for the women in Scotland’s diverse minority ethnic communities, so stakeholder engagement is incredibly important. During the summer, I spent a good amount of time meeting stakeholders from organisations such as Amina—the Muslim Women’s Resource Centre and Shakti Women’s Aid; I spent almost a full day at Shakti in Edinburgh. We spoke about disaggregated data. A number of women were there, but there were also a number of women from the Chinese community who had experienced different forms of domestic abuse, and there were women from different cultural backgrounds who had experienced honour-based violence, female genital mutilation and other female-orientated issues.

I sat with my mouth shut and my ears open to hear those stories and learn about the issues that those women had, and I did the same during my visit to the Saoirse project. There were women who came from areas of multiple deprivation and who were also carers or victims of domestic violence or who had addictions. We see the deepest inequality at those intersections, so that is where we focus our work; partnership and intersectionality are criteria for organisations to receive money from the delivering equally safe fund. Organisations such as Shakti, Saheliya, Waverley Care and a number of others allowed me—as someone who does not have first-hand experience—to understand what happens, how it happens and how we can use those experiences to inform and improve our approaches.

A lot of those organisations train people across a number of sectors, by which I mean that they embed intersectional approaches across many sectors so that, if an individual who has different characteristics from those that they deal with walks through their door, they know how to tackle that and who the experts in the field are to help them. Shakti, Saheliya and others might say that it is them, and that that person should come and work with them. That is why the delivering equally safe fund had partnership as a key element, because, with the best will in the world, a person could walk through the doors of an organisation that does not reflect them. Going through those doors is a big step, so if a person can step through the doors of one organisation and be signposted to an organisation that is more culturally or religiously appropriate—or whatever that person needs—that is the way to do it. The Saoirse project gave great examples of that.

That is how I do it. When we are mainstreaming across Government, we are looking at how money is spent to tackle these issues. You will not be surprised to know that I work very closely with justice colleagues and colleagues in other parts of Government in relation to our equally safe strategy. I work with health and education on access to services and justice when a victim or witness is going through the justice system. We have worked with many organisations to do that, and we continue to work with them. Hopefully, they will say that we provide feedback, but you have sparked an idea in my head: we should consider how we can create some feedback loops.

An example of that is our draft proposals in response to the EHRBAG’s recommendations. We gave it the draft proposals to ask whether we are on the right track. We go back to stakeholders to say where we think something will work and ask them whether it works for them. It is about testing that and ensuring that it works when it comes to final publication, so that the person who walks through the door of an organisation—whether they are minority ethnic or have other protected characteristics—gets the service that they need and deserve.

I totally agree—please tell your mum to engage with that group. I think that I have an idea of which one it is, but I am going to find out about that, and see how we did it, so that we can replicate that approach across the board.

You make a really good point about faith communities. Since the change in portfolios after the election last year, faith communities now come under my portfolio, so I have spent the past six months or so building relationships with them. Just a few weeks ago, I met all the faith leaders. It was interesting to see that there were few women around the table; we need a few more women there. However, the interaction with all those leaders was incredibly positive. That particular meeting was on hate crime, but a few other issues were brought up at the same time.

Over the summer, I took part in a number of events, including with Shabir Beg and the Ahlul Bayt Society. I also attended the Interfaith Scotland event at the Baha’i temple in Edinburgh at the end of June; the focus there was on women and gender inequality. I was able to take part in that event and answer questions in that format.

The most recent piece of work by the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls focused on minority ethnic women and the work that they do, and you make a good point about faith communities in that regard. Over the past six months, I have been getting up to speed with that area, because it did not previously sit in my portfolio; it sat in the communities portfolio. I have been doing a lot of work to build those relationships—when we do that, we get good, frank and honest feedback because we build an element of trust.

The project in which your mum will—I hope—get involved is just one example of the many ways in which we do that. I will go back and have a wee look at how we did that and ensure that we replicate that approach across the board.

That was an ask from a number of forums and organisations, and it was one of the recommendations from the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls. There was also a call for better policy coherence, in relation to not only the budget process but how different parts of policy work together to produce better outcomes.

With regard to the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement, work is being done to reverse the process a bit, so that outreach is done not at the end of the process but at the beginning. Budget scrutiny in the Parliament is an example. Pre-budget scrutiny includes all the questions that members have asked me today about the process and how people can engage with it, and being much better at ensuring that stakeholders’ voices are heard.

A number of the recommendations from the previous iteration of Angela O’Hagan’s EHRBAG centred on how we improve those processes. There are a number of recommendations, and we are carefully considering them all. As I said, we have produced a draft response that has gone back to that group to ensure that we are on the right path. As soon as we have that feedback and come to conclusions on it, I can give that information to the committee for your consideration in the process. Much of what we are doing is around ensuring that we take a participation, accountability, non-discrimination and equality, empowerment and legality—PANEL—principles approach at the beginning of every policy development. Every policy development will have a financial impact, so not looking at the budget at that point would seem to be a bit myopic.

When I first came to the Scottish Parliament, I was on the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, and we did a piece of work around trying to track £1 from the Government to the front line. We found that that was impossible—it was especially tricky when it started to go through COSLA agreements and so on. What we produce now gives us a clear understanding of how equality and human rights considerations can make budget processes and the outcomes much fairer and more able to tackle endemic and systemic inequality. The approach is much better, but I am not saying that it is perfect, because it is not. That is why we are considering the recommendations from the EHRBAG.

I thank everyone for all their good wishes. I am glad to be back, too. It is good to be here. I hope that you are feeling better, Pam.

Three great reports were published last week, including the Inclusion Scotland report and the UN’s guide report. With all the reports, we are considering the impact of Covid and the areas in which we can tackle the associated inequalities.

I have been really pleased to see the work that disabled people’s organisations are doing around incorporation of the UNCRPD—it is something that I have been advocating for for a long time, personally, professionally and politically.

The human rights bill process is under way and will be led by the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, Shona Robison. I chair the advisory board for that, and we have learned lessons from the work of the social renewal advisory board and the national advisory council on women and girls. We are hosting a number of opportunities to hear from stakeholders. You will not be surprised to hear that disabled people’s organisations are front and centre in that. I know Glasgow Disability Alliance and the work that it does. Like you, Pam, I herald the work of the GDA and other organisations, and hold that work in high regard.

The GDA and others have been pivotal in the work that we are doing in developing the policy around the bill. They have contributed to the advisory board and have considered some of the intersections with disability, including those relating to race and age. We are working on all of that.

To get to the crux of your question, which is about how we ensure that such organisations are adequately funded, we are not quite sure yet what they need and what we will do as far as incorporation of the UNCRDP goes. We are at quite an early stage in that work and in understanding what that will look like. However, the bill will incorporate several treaties into Scots law and will give people a remedy so that they can challenge public authorities when their rights are not being respected. That is a huge shift in how we do things.

You would think that, as a Government, we would be quite nervous about that, but actually we are fully centred on ensuring that we create a Scotland where people have a judicial route to realise their rights. We hope that they will never have to use such a route because all the other work that we are doing emphasises the responsibilities on public authorities to deliver. However, it is a real step forward for people to know that such a remedy is there and that they can use it, and for public authorities to know that they have responsibilities that they must act on or they could be challenged in court.

The advisory board has started to meet again—I met the board a few weeks ago. It is looking at a whole host of issues in relation to incorporation but there is a question about how far we can go within our devolution settlement. There are challenges; it is a huge piece of work, but one that we have entered into with open hearts and minds as well as lots of drive and determination. Disabled people’s organisations are incredibly important in helping us to understand that. They are there at the beginning so that they get the outcomes that they need at the end.

I will update the committee as we develop that work on the question that Pam Duncan-Glancy is asking, which is one that I like to ask: what difference will it make and how do we ensure that it works? That is where we are focusing right now and we will come back to the committee on that.

Absolutely. We are tackling all of that in a few ways. We published the Gypsy Traveller action plan in October 2019, and we got into doing quite rapid work on that. Then Covid hit, and we had to pivot everything that we had into ensuring that we could support Gypsy Travellers in communities, with temporary sites, negotiated stopping places and sanitation. All of that had to be put in place. We set up an action group to do that, working alongside stakeholders, the community and our colleagues in local government. We were able to pivot and put that support in place very quickly, and actually deal with some issues that had been on-going for a very long time regarding new sites and negotiated stopping places. We have learned a lot from all of that, and we intend to apply that learning to the work that we are doing now.

Getting to your point on the worries about sustainability, I had a community conversation just two weeks ago—we have those conversations very regularly—and we then had a joint ministerial group meeting with community representatives last week. We are bang up to date on all of this and on all the concerns. The committee’s work last week complemented all of that, as you heard the comments that were made and discussed the priorities, which was incredibly important.

We have re-established that work. The plan was set for two years, but that two years has been eaten up by Covid. We agreed to extend it to October, and I am now having conversations with the community about how much further we can extend work on the action plan. That means that the joint ministerial group, which is jointly chaired with our colleagues in COSLA, will remain in place to drive the work across all the areas where we need to drive the changes.

We have made lots of progress. I have a list of the many things that we have done, which I will quickly run through.

The Gypsy Traveller accommodation fund, which contained an initial £2 million, has now been spent, and we are waiting for local authorities to give us an update on the progress that we have made there.

We identified the Gypsy Traveller community’s accommodation needs in “Housing to 2040”, which established a £20 million fund. We have had three local authorities bid into that, and we are about to start the next phase with other local authorities. That is about “more and better” accommodation, which is the term that we use in the document.

One of the things that the Gypsy Traveller community told me at the very start was, “Things get done to us, not with us.” In my portfolio and the things that I do, the phrase “nothing about us without us” is not just a phrase; it is a working ethic. We therefore have lots of opportunities, lots of working groups and lots of stakeholder engagement to ensure that the policy development part of that work happens with people, not to them. I think that we have done that incredibly well with the Gypsy Traveller action plan.

The Gypsy Traveller community told us that sites were not designed in a culturally appropriate way. We now have a site design guide that is being used by the three local authorities that have the money, which include Clackmannanshire Council and Aberdeenshire Council. I cannot remember the other one off the top of my head, but I will come back to it. They are going to learn the lessons from that work and we can then tweak the guide to make it work even better. The community came up with ideas that are more culturally appropriate, and we said, “Why was that not done before?”

We have five new community mental health workers who were recruited from the community. People asked for that link so that the people who give them support are people from their community. We have some additional funding coming in for that.

The same applies in relation to early learning and childcare. There has been support to pivot to digital working, which has seemed to be a very successful way of learning for a lot of Gypsy Traveller children. We are learning the lessons on how we can do that, working with the Scottish Traveller Education Programme with the funding that we have put in place.

I hope that that reassures you and that you understand that the word “stagnation” is not in my dictionary when it comes to this work. We will continue to drive the work forward. In the joint ministerial group, we have health ministers, employment ministers, social security ministers and planning ministers all sitting at the same table and driving what happens across their portfolios, and I monitor that very, very often to make sure that we are making the progress that we need to make.