Chamber and committees

Thank you for that, Heather. Thank you to all our witnesses for their opening statements. I will move straight on to questions.

The witnesses have given a general view of the budget. I have a question on funding as an opener. Colleagues will be probing much deeper and scrutinising things much further, so it is just a question to get us started. I would like your overall reaction to the Scottish Government’s funding allocations for equality, inclusion and human rights. I heard that they were broadly welcome, but we would be interested to hear any further opinion on that. I will start with Heather Williams first.

Good morning, and welcome to the third meeting of 2024 in session 6 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, which is fully virtual.

We have no apologies. I remind all participants that they must keep their cameras on. Our broadcasting colleagues will control your microphones, so you do not need to touch these at any point. Just watch for your mic icon to show you as being unmuted and then take a second before you speak. Thank you.

Agenda item 1 is to agree to take item 4, which is consideration of today’s budget evidence, in private. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you, Angela. I will bring in Heather Williams. If answers could be brief, that would be very helpful, as I am mindful of the time. We have a range of questions to get through, so I remind everyone that succinct and focused answers will enable us to cover the wide range of scrutiny that we wish to undertake this morning.

Thank you. Paul, is there anything further that you would like to ask at this point?

We will now look at the theme of participation, with Karen Adam.

Thank you, Heather. We hear you. Thank you for making reference to the way that the committee engaged in citizen participation. We got excellent feedback from the citizens who took part. They felt more connected to the process. I hope that that could be rolled out across other committees. Thank you for acknowledging that.

Thank you, Heather. Would either Clare Gallagher or Angela O’Hagan like to come in on that one? They may wish to come in on my next question.

The committee intends to focus its pre-budget scrutiny of 2025-26 on transparency. What should our priorities be? What is paramount? I bring in Angela.

Thank you very much for that extensive but very useful list. I will bring in Clare Gallagher.

That will probably be the last question, so I will give all of you the opportunity to respond to it. Heather Williams can start, followed by Angela O’Hagan and Clare Gallagher.

The third agenda item is to continue our budget scrutiny. I welcome to the meeting Clare Gallagher, who is the human rights officer from the Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector Organisations, also known by abbreviation as CEMVO Scotland; Professor Angela O’Hagan, chair of the Scottish Government’s equality and human rights budget advisory group; and Heather Williams, the training lead from the Scottish Women’s Budget Group. You are all very welcome this morning.

As our meeting today is entirely virtual, I remind our witnesses and members to type R in the meeting chat if they would like to come in on any questions as we go through the session. I also remind members to direct their questions to a particular witness in the first instance.

I refer members to papers 2 and 3 and I invite each of our witnesses to make some opening remarks. We will start with Clare Gallagher.