Chamber and committees

Analysts across the Scottish Government and the National Records of Scotland are now progressing with the equality data improvement actions set until the end of 2025. Action leads provided an update on progress in September 2024. I can highlight to you that, of the 45 actions in the strategy, 14 are complete, 23 are on course, seven are delayed and one is not yet started. Details of progress and causes for delays are discussed with the EDIP project board on a quarterly basis. An interim review of the equality evidence strategy and EDIP will be published by the end of 2024. That will set out the challenges faced, which can be expected to cover points such as issues with collecting and analysing data, especially with regard to datasets that are too small, for instance, and delays due to indirect processes. For example, some surveys are currently being evaluated, so new data is delayed because of that, as well as there being issues of resourcing and prioritisation, as you would expect.

I will try to answer that question, although it is quite complex, and there are many views on the issue. I listened with interest to the evidence that was given to the committee. It is a conundrum that I wrestle with, as I have a history and an interest in mainstreaming in particular. The matter is actively being considered, and one of the issues is about mainstreaming. I am also getting calls regarding disaggregation and intersectional data. At the moment, I am wrestling with the need to make sure that there is no dilution for any particular group.

One of the calls that I get is to recognise that we are not a homogeneous group, and women are not a homogeneous group, either. We should bear in mind that women make up more than 50 per cent of the population, so they are not technically a minority group, either. However, we know that budgeting has an impact on women, and there can be exponential negative impacts for those who are also disabled or in an ethnic minority, for instance.

That is where I am at the moment. I am considering all those strands and weighing up whether we need to have one thing or the other. Is there a way that we can bring it all together while not having so much data that we do not know what to do with it all? Sometimes, when we gather data on intersectionalities, it can be so small that it is not valid. It is about making sure that we have quality assurance across the piece.

I take extremely seriously my role in mainstreaming equality across all portfolios. The member will be aware of that. Ultimately, I suppose that I should do myself out of a job because, in every portfolio, every minister who makes budget decisions should have the confidence, the tools, the data and everything that they need—[Interruption.]

All countries around the world are grappling with that challenge. I am satisfied that we are making progress and I assure the member and the committee that, in my role, I will continue to provide the service, support and leadership that the true embedding of mainstreaming requires.

Thank you for that question. I have reflected on that issue. On balance, it is an absolute bonus that I had that previous role on the committee, because I can see more clearly the lens through which the citizen sees those things. While the Government does its work and provides its documents, we have to challenge the accessibility of those documents to the average citizen and improve their transparency.

Another reflection is that equalities covers every strand of the various portfolios, but the big fiscal levers and the big budgets do not lie within the equalities budget. The big challenge for me in my role is therefore to encourage, support and challenge my colleagues across portfolios.

Thank you, convener. It is a pleasure to be back for a second time since I took over as Minister for Equalities.

I am no stranger to the committee, given my previous role as its convener, and members will be well aware that, at that time, my personal commitment was to ensure that the budget delivered for the most marginalised in Scotland. I came to my ministerial role determined to ensure that we accelerate progress to embed equality and human rights into everything that we do, and the budget process is an integral part of that.

This year, I know that you are particularly interested in transparency in the budget process. The Scottish Government is committed to embedding equality and human rights considerations into budget decision-making processes and the three principles of accountability, participation and transparency. For example, we have improved the Scottish Government’s publication, “Your Scotland, Your Finances”, which we publish as a citizen’s budget. That online publication has been reviewed to improve accessibility and is now produced four times a year, alongside the draft Scottish budget, the final budget approved by Parliament and in-year adjustments to reflect autumn and spring budget revisions.

Through successive open government national action plans, we have worked with the Parliament, its committees and wider stakeholders to improve the understanding of our public finances, and as a result, 23 supporting documents have been published for the 2024-25 Scottish budget. The open budget survey, which was published by the Scottish Human Rights Commission in July, highlighted that Scotland has made progress on all three areas of open budgeting at a time when many countries have stalled or, indeed, slipped backwards.

We are also progressing actions to deliver the recommendations made by the equality and human rights budget advisory group. Last month, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government and I met the group to discuss how we can achieve our shared ambitions.

As for the Scottish budget process of 2025-26, the Scottish Government continues to face the most challenging financial situation since devolution. Although the United Kingdom budget is a step in the right direction, it still leaves us facing enormous cost pressures, and we therefore must make difficult decisions to put Scotland’s finances on a sustainable footing while putting money behind our priorities. Equality and human rights considerations are not separate from those priorities, but underpin them all.

The Scottish Government will ensure that the budget process complies with our legal and statutory duties, but we must—and will—go further than that. Evidence is being gathered from across Government to support the decision-making process, including through a recent ministerial workshop on equality and fairer Scotland and child rights considerations in this year’s budgets that was chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and supported by me as Minister for Equalities.

Improvements that have been made this year have focused on better integration with the programme for government and the budget process itself to ensure that evidence actively shapes budget decisions when they are made. For example, the cross-ministerial workshop took place earlier in the budget process and had a clearer focus on the difficult decisions required to bring the budget into balance.

Those improvements are supported by new analytical capabilities, which build on previous feasibility studies to provide evidence on the distribution of Government spending on childcare, health, schools and transport across different households. The equality and fairer Scotland budget statement will set out major decisions that are taken as part of the budget, including the evidence to support those. That will include decisions to maintain, increase or decrease spending.

I use my role to demonstrate visible leadership, exert influence and support my ministerial colleagues to deliver effectively. Changing the culture to mainstream equality and human rights across Government is a matter of urgency as well as a moral obligation. In the coming months, I will meet one to one with my ministerial colleagues to explore what actions can be taken in each portfolio to improve equality and human rights. That will include emphasising their duties under the public sector equality duty and highlighting the excellent guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

I hope that the committee recognises the Government’s commitment to continued improvement in equality and human rights budgeting and the actions that we are taking to achieve that.

Policy areas are expected to conduct an equality impact assessment during the policy cycle to inform their decisions. That is a clear expectation. Those assessments should draw on available evidence, as you say, to show the impact on groups with protected characteristics and the effectiveness of any mitigation measures.

It is important that we track that bit, too. We expect portfolios to develop evidence so that they can take account of the impact of the budget on groups with protected characteristics and make that connection with the scale of the impact of the proposed spend. As you say, there is a range of quantitative and qualitative evidence. That is where participation and lived experience come into it. That is especially important with marginalised groups such as the BAME community.

That can be translated into policy in a variety of ways. For example, officials are happy to receive briefings from external organisations. I meet with Engender, the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights and many others—I will not list them all because I always miss folk out. Organisations and individuals may participate in formal consultation exercises, and published work may feature evidence reviews and support policy development. For example, the equality analysis team is currently finalising an evidence review on the experiences of non-binary people in Scotland. That action was set out in the non-binary action plan, which is to be published shortly. Similar exercises are undertaken across the protected characteristics, including the BAME community. I hope that that gives you some reassurance.

I will split that one between myself and Nick Bland as well. I will give you my view on it and what I am trying to achieve, and Nick will do the technical side of the data. We will do a double-hander.

As I alluded to in my opening remarks, the value that I can add is through working very closely with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, and through making sure that I have access to the cabinet secretaries who are making those decisions. I have arranged one-to-one bilaterals with each of the cabinet secretaries. I am starting with the Cabinet Secretary for Transport this week, in fact, so that work is now well under way.

In terms of improvements, the difference between now and what happened before is that, last year, the equalities minister simply attended those meetings. This year, my role has been enhanced; I have been given a specific role at the table and I am taking an active part. I will have one-to-one bilaterals with each cabinet secretary who makes those decisions, based on connecting the data. As the cabinet secretary put it, my role is to step back and see the wood for the trees—to make those connections and put them front and centre.

For instance, when I have my one-to-one with the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, there is no doubt that I will be able to draw on the equality impacts of budget decisions in relation to transport. They may have a knock-on effect on town planning, for instance, or schools or the availability of healthcare. In my role, I can provide those connections and therefore urge the cabinet secretaries to consider those outcomes when they are making a decision in their portfolio.

One element of my role is about seeing the knock-on effects, but I can also convene and pass information between the cabinet secretaries. With the best will in the world, Government is a big machine; everyone is in their bit trying to do the best job that they can, and they do not always have that.

That leads me to the cultural change that is required of all of us to see things not only from our own point of view, but to make those connections. I am leading on that, and I am pursuing it vigorously. I am reporting back to the cabinet secretary on how the bilaterals go, and I will make recommendations on that.

Another key bit that I am providing is support to the officials who support the cabinet secretaries. We are working within Government so that our papers and evidence gathering all align and are bringing everything together to give a clearer picture.

Nick Bland can speak about the specific data.

You are right to highlight the work of the external agencies. They do a power of work to provide evidence on that to Government; it certainly comes to me. I cannot say 100 per cent that it goes to everyone else, but the copy lists are fairly wide. That is where my role as the Minister for Equalities comes in. The cabinet secretary has asked me to work collaboratively to support cabinet secretaries when they are making decisions, to ensure that they are cognisant of the exact kind of scenario that you bring up.

I said that I was meeting people in the transport portfolio this week, and I will meet the Minister for Housing. I will put those issues front and centre in our discussions, so that he can take cognisance of them when he is making his housing budget decisions. That is a progressive way of working. That is where I add value, given the background that I come from, the awareness and information that I have and the skills that I developed when I was on this committee.

You are right to say that that kind of intersectional data set could be quite small and that it might not figure in the evidence. That is where the collaborative and supportive work comes in. Remember that I am there to support, but I am also there to challenge—that is a key part of my role as Minister for Equalities—because we know that further work requires to be done. We are absolutely making progress, but evidence on culture is very difficult to capture unless a human being is presenting it. I would argue that it is the role of an equalities minister to do that.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to reinforce the message that I gave at the beginning of my contributions. You have highlighted health in particular. As equalities minister, I cannot be expected to deal with such in-depth detail on each portfolio. I would be expected, as you said, to highlight the equality impacts that can happen and to draw them out by working with my cabinet secretary and portfolio leads in those areas, so that they are cognisant of the issues. I would do that on rurality as I would in relation to disabled people and all the different issues.

During the summer, I had the chance to visit different locations. One issue that was raised was that it costs much more money to build houses in certain areas. Transporting materials, for instance, is easier in the central belt.

The approach is about looking at budget decisions and making sure of accessibility and availability. My job is to support my colleagues so that they see decisions through that lens, and I assure you that I will do my absolute best on that.

Thank you for that question. Obviously, our approach to impact assessments is guided by the need to meet our statutory duties while ensuring that our approach is proportionate. I note that a full analysis will continue to be provided annually as part of the Scottish budget process. We remain committed to protecting the most vulnerable in society and we have sought to minimise the impact on people as much as possible through identifying underspends and pausing or slowing activity.

In the interests of transparency, on 3 October, less than a month after the pre-budget fiscal statement, the Scottish Government published the details of the equality and fairer Scotland impact assessments that were provided by portfolios. We aim to publish those assessments as quickly as possible following policy decisions. For example, we will often provide impact assessments alongside regulations when they are laid and when legislation is amended.