Chamber and committees

To be honest, I could not speak for local authorities and would not want to do so. It would not be fair. Certainly, in my continuing work with the new COSLA chairs, particularly the chair of the community wellbeing board, I see superb work being done at local authority level, notwithstanding the challenges that everybody faces on budgets, the inflationary squeeze and the cost of living. Those impact on everybody and every penny that they have to spend. We mostly do the best.

That is a great question, and it is one of the aspects that we have been working on closely. I remember doing budget scrutiny when I first came into the Parliament. We would do an analysis of how many times women or disabled people were mentioned in a budget. Now, we have much more deep and detailed data to draw on from the improvements that we have made so far.

You might remember that “Your Scotland, Your Finances” has been published alongside the final part of the budget, whereas, this time, we published it at the first point. The budget was published on 22 December and we published “Your Scotland, Your Finances” the very next day. We are always looking at ways to improve our approach. The document will be published alongside the draft budget, in future.

We have taken accessibility into account, including EasyRead and a number of other aspects. We created a lot of infographics but, from consultation with stakeholders, we found that people felt that the approach was not as accessible as it could be, so we now do a plain English EasyRead version of the statement.

We bring in “Your Scotland, Your Finances” at the beginning and not at the end of the process, and we publish an updated edition at the end; I hope that those two measures will enable people to see the distance that we have moved from the beginning of the budget process to its end.

That is a great question, because we always think that accessibility is about EasyRead, British Sign Language and all those things, but other languages are also a key part of that.

We speak to stakeholders all the time. I am not sure whether we picked up any huge issue about language accessibility during that process, but certainly, we should be communicating in other languages and we will do so. I will go and have a look at what we produce and how we produce it. We tend to use a great organisation, iTranslate, which a lot of grass-roots organisations access, to get good translations of different documents. Because of their technical nature, the budget documents are pretty difficult to translate but, given that we now have the fairer Scotland statement and the “Your Scotland, Your Finances” document, we will have a look at how we can make them much more accessible, as you suggested.

Absolutely. We fund a lot of minority ethnic organisations that do some work of their own on translating budgets, consultations and everything else that comes from Government and is of interest to them. The process will be there, and I will make sure that it is as sharp as it can be.

Yes—I heard some of those comments from witnesses last week. I also heard about the positive progress that has been made.

We view all the documents and the processes that we go through as a continuous improvement exercise. It will never be finished, because we want to continually improve. Every time we have a budget round, we learn new things, such as the need to bring out “Your Scotland, Your Finances” at the beginning of the budget process, and then analyse it and publish something at the end of the process that tells people where we are.

We hear a lot about language and jargon. Some budget documents are technical documents and it is really hard to translate them into something that is much more readable and accessible. We have an on-going piece of work on how we link all our pieces of work together to make them easier to navigate.

We publish all level-4 figures in relation to the previous budget and the forthcoming budget, as well as the differences in that regard. I know that some people say that they cannot track the pound through the process, to see where it gets spent, but we are taking lots of measures to enable people to do that.

As I said, it is a continuous improvement project, and we work on that every time we go through a budget round. We learned such a lot last year, because we had a resource spending review, an emergency budget and then a budget process. We learned so much from the equality work that we did. We have a bit more work to do on joining some of that up—you make a fair comment, which I will take on board. However, we have come on in leaps and bounds. There are ways to access budget documents that were never available to people before. The detail is there. Although the summary is 30 pages long, which seems hefty, in the grand scheme of things and given all the budget documents, people have found it really helpful. We are looking at ways in which we can use that document and raise awareness of it much more effectively, to address the issues that you raised.

From the evidence and last week’s debate, you will know that all committees raised issues relating to equality and human rights. That is a huge step forward from when I convened a predecessor committee of this one and other committees would say, “That’s not for us to look at.” All committees now look at those issues, which gives us an excellent, although complex, picture of what is happening across all Government areas. Rob Priestley is here because he is the head of our mainstreaming team, which works closely with colleagues across the Government.

The equality and fairer Scotland budget statement is a joint piece of work by me and the finance secretary—well, it is the Deputy First Minister at the moment. I am involved in that work at every step, so I pick up a lot of the issues and concerns. Over the past couple of years, in relation to multiple budget evaluations, I have been really gratified to see other officials pick up on the importance of ensuring that budget decisions that have an impact on equality and human rights are made at the earliest stage. They understand the need for that.

We have worked with the Scottish Women’s Budget Group to increase the capacity of officials across the whole Government. That is why Ben Walsh, from the Scottish exchequer, is with us today. Last week, we had a cracking round-table event with the national advisory council on women and girls, at which we talked about gender competence and the intersectional competence that we all need in order to read across in relation to what needs to be done. Colleagues in the Scottish exchequer have undertaken all that work.

Previously, what would come in would usually just be plain figures and other budget stuff, but I now see, attached to that, information on the progress that has been made in analysing and understanding the impact of a pound that is spent in one area on another area, and whether that is the impact that we want. There is much better analysis of that. That is why ensuring that we link up all our documents so that people see a pathway through the budget—how a pound that is spent in one area affects another area—really matters. I am supported in doing that by officials from across the Government.

That is a great point. The committee has done a lot of work to advance that. Making the Parliament a human rights guarantor is a key aspect of that, because it is a people’s Parliament, and it is important that the Parliament speaks with one voice about guaranteeing people’s human rights. The Government takes that view as well.

You might have picked up my comments about recognising that all the committees—12, I think—raised issues to do with human rights and the equalities budget in their work, which is a huge shift from where we were before. The committees were very silent on that before. That shows that the Parliament and its committees are doing that work.

You made a really key point. One thing that always sticks in my head is the Eleanor Roosevelt quote that human rights are for people

“In small places, close to home”.

When something has an impact on an individual, that is perhaps when they realise where the decision is made or the process that they went through to get there, and they almost reverse engineer from their perspective back to asking who takes the key decisions on that, how much money was spent on it and why they were not recognised in that process.

We are doing work to create an environment in which we make the budget process—and, indeed, any parliamentary process—as plain and accessible as possible. Lots of folk do not understand the steps that are taken to get to a decision, although many do. Given the amount of engagement work that I do, I am always blown away by the competence, confidence and understanding of the general population around what they see as a good outcome. That is about where their council tax money, their tax money or other money is spent and how we articulate that.

We all have a job to do to articulate the positive side of that, but also to recognise the challenges and take those on board. That is why the point about the participation of stakeholders is incredibly important. That gives us a two-way street in order to share information out and to get information back. We hope that that will address the issue of what is important to an individual in their community—in a small place, close to home.

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 believe that it is doing that, but I will double-check that and get back to you with a more substantive answer. The work that we are doing to develop the new strategy is being done with stakeholders, and some of the questions are about up-to-date analysis. Some of that work was done before the pandemic and the cost of living crisis, but we are in a different environment now. Part of the issue is about getting quick answers and resolutions. I will go back and look at all that to ensure that we are updating that data.