Chamber and committees

Areas for action regarding LGBT equality will focus on policy issues identified as a priority by the LGBT community in Scotland.

In 2012-15, Scottish LGBT organisations were awarded over £2.3 million of funding for LGBT equality work by the Scottish Government. Longer term funding decisions aligned to the next spending round will be informed by the strategic approach developed.

Pensions are already affordable for Scotland. Total expenditure on social protection, which covers pensions and broader welfare spending has been lower in Scotland than the UK over the past five years.

As set out in Scotland’s Future, this government would pursue a broader growth-based approach to boost working age population, increase labour market participation and improve productivity.

Both diversity and unconscious bias training is available online to all Scottish Government employees through the Civil Service Learning portal. Although no diversity training for external selection panel members specific to this workstream has been delivered to date, plans are currently being considered jointly with the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland to develop suitable training. The Public Bodies and Corporate Diversity Programme Board and stakeholders will consider the content and timing of this training to ensure that any investment made delivers results.

The Public Appointments Centre of Expertise uses a range of different evaluation methods to measure the impact of events. This is tailored to the type of event and its audience. This has included an increase in applications received following a particular event, increased interest from those with particular skills or experience, additional requests to be added to our mailing register for details of future opportunities and informal feedback from event attendees. Further work will be undertaken to ensure evaluation methods are robust and able to fully inform future action.

Both diversity and unconscious bias training is available online to all Scottish Government employees through the Civil Service Learning portal. Although no diversity training for external selection panel members specific to this workstream has been delivered to date, plans are currently being considered jointly with the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland to develop suitable training. The Public Bodies and Corporate Diversity Programme Board and stakeholders will consider the content and timing of this training to ensure that any investment made delivers results.

Following Diversity Delivers it was felt appropriate to establish a Public Bodies and Corporate Diversity Programme Board, to give a renewed focus to the diversity agenda and to build on the work done to date. This work is centred around providing strong leadership and influence and on delivering diversity through practical change to the appointments process. Practical measures undertaken so far have involved the use of increased outreach activity, streamlining our application processes and guidance and the use of social media to highlight opportunities.

The four national LGBT organisations, Equality Network, LGBT Youth Scotland, Stonewall Scotland and the Scottish Transgender Alliance have participated in an initial scoping meeting to develop a strategic approach to LGBT equality work in Scotland. This work will be further developed through engagement with officials across key areas of the government where the action plan will impact. The plan will be launched in spring 2015.

(a) Diversity data for new appointments to regulated public boards have been collected at the application stage of the process for the last three years. Applicants are invited to complete a diversity monitoring form which contains ten questions. Each question includes a 'prefer not to say' option. For all existing board members who were appointed before 2011, diversity data was collected by means of an exercise carried out in 2013 which asked members to complete and return the diversity monitoring form. Therefore, all current board members have been asked to complete the diversity monitoring form, with the vast majority providing some or all of the information. The completion of the diversity monitoring form is voluntary, so we rely on the co-operation of the board members and applicants for new positions to provide accurate and complete data.

(b) The accuracy of the diversity statistics for public boards depends on the level of non-responses (including those who selected the 'prefer not to say' option). The higher the non-response rate, the less reliable our statistics will be. In 2013-14, the response rates for applicants for new board positions was very high, with nearly 70% of applicants completing the whole form and a response rate of more than 90% for nine of the ten questions (the exception being the question relating to household income which had a response rate of just under 80%). Therefore, we would expect our diversity statistics for new appointments in 2013-14 to accurately reflect the true position.

The Scottish Government’s view was that 2025 was a reasonable target. It aims to balance being attainable and stretching, given the significant resource constraints on the organisation, such as a general presumption against external recruitment. These resourcing constraints have an impact on our ability to change the shape of the organisation. The timeframe also gives the organisation time to reflect on the 2021 census results.

As previously answered in S4W-20607, a programme of activity is currently being developed by the Scottish Government, in conjunction with the programme board and stakeholders. Action plans and targets are still in the developmental phase. Connecting with users’ experiences and raising awareness amongst influencers will be key to the success of the programme.