Chamber and committees

First up, I welcome the proposed UK bill on the matter and the fact that it is to cover all areas. I am in discussions about the fact that the Scottish Government’s bill might look different from the UK Government’s. Our officials are working with UK Government officials on our approaches, and it is important to do that. I welcome the UK Government’s commitment to consult on the principles of the bill, which we will look at with interest.

As we know, it is a tricky area. In the same way as the committee has done, we are looking at what has been done in other parts of the world. We are looking at how to create a bill that covers, as much as possible, everything that we want it to cover.

We are on target to meet the deadline of introducing the bill by the end of 2023. I will receive an update this afternoon on where we are. We are at the drafting point of the consultation and we are working through what that means now. I have committed to give the committee regular updates on that, and I will do that once we have moved on from the next step. We decided to have a good look at what the UK Government is proposing, so we are taking a bit of time to do that and we will come back to you after that.

We are on target and it is looking good.

We have had our own piece of work going on involving the expert reference group on Covid-19 and ethnicity and now the interim governance group to develop national anti-racist infrastructure, and work is taking place on the observatory. We were already on that pathway.

On the UPR, in particular, you will know that the United Nations issued its recommendations in November. We are currently in the process of working through the recommendations that impact us and we are working with the UK Government on how we inform the report. Of course, there is a word limit on what we can contribute to that, so we always try to make it as concise as possible. We are preparing that right now.

What we also tend to do, which we will do in this case, is publish our own Scotland-specific statement, which gives much more detail about the areas of the UPR recommendations that we are working on. We were a bit further ahead than England and Wales on some of the recommendations, so we want to highlight some of that. However, we are working closely with our colleagues at Westminster, to mutually support one another’s work and to ensure that Scotland’s voice is heard when the report goes back to the Human Rights Council in the spring.

There are a number of legislative and non-legislative ways in which we do that. Obviously, there is the fairer Scotland duty, we have our processes, and there is equality impact assessment development. The work that I have been doing over the past few years has included looking at EQIAs to find the gold standards and ensure that they are used all the way through Government. That is a big part of the mainstreaming team’s work. We have offered a number of opportunities to other colleagues across Government to take part in training and experience the way to do EQIAs that details the outcomes that we want to see. That is the important part. It is not just about completing the document; it is about what that does and how we can measure progress against it.

The most effective place for EQIAs is throughout the cycle of the development. They should not be done at the end of the process or just at the beginning of it. The document has to be a living document, so it always has to go through all the processes. That is done so that it informs our decision making as we go a step at a time, whether we are talking about annual budget allocations, the help that we give to people or outcomes.

I mentioned the Saoirse project. There are a number of other projects. I have a list of them at the back of a folder, and I will give members information on some of them shortly.

We measure against our national performance framework. What have we committed to making progress on in that? How does that map across to what we are doing with an EQIA and what that EQIA does to inform policy making and create better outcomes? We go all the way through that.

We have committed to doing work around the emergency budget, and we have done work around the resource spending review. These are pretty exceptional times in which to do that. The fairer Scotland budget statement comes along with that.

Among all of that is Angela O’Hagan and her team. I have extended the remit of the group and extended Angela’s contract with us to chair it. The group has been renamed; it used to be called the equality budget advisory group—EBAG—but it is now called the equality and human rights budget advisory group, although EHRBAG does not really sound right, so we are not calling it that.

We have extended the group’s influence, and we have reviewed many ways of improving the processes. We have done some draft work, which we have given to Angela and asked whether we are on the right track. It is good to have a critical friend in an organisation that sits there and scrutinises and analyses our work but also gives us recommendations on how to do it. The group is very motivated and has given us a bigger piece of work to do, and we have drafted a response to that. I will give the committee updates when Angela comes back to us. We have regular catch-ups and I am meeting her again soon.

The issue is about having judicial processes—things that we have to do under the fairer Scotland duty—and other processes around what we must do to ensure that decisions are made effectively and create outcomes. We work with stakeholders and external organisations, which provide that critical eye and give us guidance, support and recommendations on how we move the work forward.

That is the process, and then we see projects such as the Saoirse project, where we are taking an intersectional approach to the challenges that are faced by women who are victims of domestic violence—who might also have substance abuse or addiction issues—to get them the right support in a one-stop shop. When it comes down to it, what makes the difference is seeing the outcomes for those women.

I heard those comments from People First last week, and I was pleased to see that we are making real progress in that area. We recognise that accessibility is an important part of ensuring that key stakeholders have their say and see themselves in the work that we do.

Members will know that we have accessible communications legislation in place. As we move forward with our human rights bill, there will be a right in it for people to have access to documents in formats that they want. However, we currently do quite a lot of that in publishing many of our high-level documents.

I suspect that People First and others are looking for the more detailed on-going work on that. We are currently exploring all the options on how to do that in not just EasyRead but other accessible formats. We have committed to producing documents in plain text format, and we are now doing so. We have had direct feedback from stakeholders on how important that has been and why it has made documents much more accessible.

I do not take any decisions at all in my portfolio work without ensuring that I have worked very closely with stakeholders. That means publishing what we produce in a format that is their preferred method of communication. We do a lot of that already.

As far as the deeper budget documents and the ask from People First are concerned, we are currently exploring how we can do more of that. I can give members that commitment and update them when the review is completed.

Thank you; that is a good point. Pam Duncan-Glancy was looking at you as if to say, “Don’t steal my thunder”.

You have asked some questions on that in the past few weeks, and work is being done by the responsible minister, so I will take that question away and say that, again, you have pushed us on getting a response on that. I know how important that employability work is. We have managed to support about 9,000 parents, because some of that fits into the child poverty action plan—“Best Start, Bright Futures: tackling child poverty delivery plan 2022 to 2026”—in relation to how parents can be supported to lift families out of poverty.

We see the value in that work. We must always review whether approaches are working, but we are in a difficult situation with our budget. In some areas, it is incredibly difficult because we have to make decisions to cut things that we know are valuable, but how else can we fund some of the other things that we need to do to ensure that people do not fall deeper into poverty? These things are always up for review. We make difficult decisions, and I do not envy the minister who had to make that decision. I have also had to make decisions to ensure that money is focused on the people for whom, and places where, it is most needed, but the budget process has not been easy. It is the worst situation that I have ever experienced in that regard.

Yes, I would. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for inviting me to your pre-budget scrutiny session, during what I think we will all agree is one of the most difficult budget rounds since devolution—certainly in my 15 years of being in this place.

I am sure that the committee shares my frustration that, at this very late stage in terms of preparing our own budget, we are still playing a waiting game with Westminster. It is unnecessarily challenging to undertake business in this way, when the goalposts keep changing. Even the dates for announcements are changing rapidly, and it is sometimes hard to keep up.

The reckless behaviour of successive Prime Ministers has left us in a situation of crippling inflation, which has reduced the Scottish Government budget by around £1.7 billion from when it was published just last December. The forthcoming budget is taking place in a context of impending recession, with record levels of inflation affecting the Scottish budget funding base, decreasing the spending power of the available funds, while the demand for spending increases—you will have seen many of those demands in the course of your budget scrutiny. That necessitates difficult decisions, so that we do not increase the pain that is felt by those who are most marginalised in our society—including all the folks under my portfolio, for whom I hope we have better outcomes.

I am under no illusion, however, as to the size of the task that lies ahead of us. The cost crisis is of a scale that we have not seen before. I want to make it clear that the Government understands that all budgetary decisions have an impact on equality and human rights, which is why we need to bake it into our processes.

Taking an equality and human rights approach means looking holistically at our available resources and at how we can further the realisation of human rights with what we have available. That is why we continue to focus on support for the most vulnerable. Direct examples include our equality and human rights fund and our delivering equally safe fund. Among a range of projects that are getting more than £4 million to the front line, the equality and human rights fund supported 38,000 people through one-to-one casework and helplines in its first six months alone. We have published both the reports on that, if the committee is interested in reading about it in more detail. That support is increasingly dominated by responding to the cost crisis, such as by helping with benefits, housing and applying for home energy and food bank vouchers.

The delivering equally safe fund, which targets support at eradicating, and supporting survivors of, violence against women and girls, has provided £9.5 million to 121 projects over the course of its first six months. A report on that has been published, too. Those projects give one-to-one emotional and practical support, as well as refuge, legal and financial advice and other services. Many of the organisations also run training and outreach programmes aiming to prevent violence against women and girls, and prevention is one of our key pillars in the equally safe strategy.

I was very moved and inspired by the conversations that I had with women supported by Saoirse project in Blantyre, which I visited recently—although those who are from the area will not forgive me for mispronouncing the town’s name just now. I hope that members have seen the project; if not, I suggest that they go and have a look. It is directly supported by the delivering equally safe fund and brings together specialist domestic abuse and substance use services to target the multiple, complex issues that service users face, helping them to rebuild their lives. The women I spoke to were able to tell their story once, at one door, and all the services then clicked into place. That is what Saoirse gave those women, with access and support tailored to the individual needs of those needing interventions. The women were empowered to shape the decisions about what their support looked like, which was incredibly important.

The project represents a human rights-based approach to recovery, with survivors right at its heart. It is a great example of that and, again, if committee members have not seen what it does, please have a look at it. It is just one of the projects across Scotland that offer lifelines to survivors of violence and abuse and that seek to tackle the root causes of the issue. I can truly say that it was awe inspiring. The women I met that day will be at the front of my mind every time that I make decisions on how we spend the money that we have, so I am incredibly committed to continuing to support such projects and our other third sector partners through these increasingly difficult times.

As well as working with external partners, we continue to work across Government to ensure that equality and human rights are considered in the evidence-based policy making that takes place in all our portfolios. That is why Rob Priestley is here. Mainstreaming is a key part of all that. The Government is demonstrating that it is serious about supporting those who have been, and continue to be, hit hardest by a succession of crises in Brexit, the pandemic and, now, the cost of living.

The committee has asked me about the Government’s equality data improvement programme in the past and I can give an update on it today. The programme is building a stronger and more robust equality evidence base. That work is vital to ensuring that we have all the information available to make decisions that will support the needs of the people most impacted by the cost crisis in Scotland. We take an intersectional approach and ensure that we can focus our resources appropriately on the areas where the deepest deprivation or discrimination is.

We are driving forward work on the human rights bill, which will incorporate a number of international treaties into Scots law. Giving justiciability to people’s rights is an incredibly important part of the work that I am doing in Government right now. I have met stakeholders across Scotland to hear their views on that. They have been very motivated by that piece of work and all the work that we are doing. The draft budget for this year includes funding to ensure that the bill’s consultation is accessible and inclusive—I know that that is of great interest to the committee—so that diverse voices and communities can participate in the legislative process.

We are working with the Scottish Commission for People with Learning Disabilities, which has done a fantastic presentation on the incorporation of rights. If you have not had a chance to see that, have a look at it and the outcomes from the decisions that we take.

I repeat my commitment to taking an equality and human rights-based approach to the budget. If we do not take seriously the prerequisite for detailed needs analysis and do not listen to the views of the most vulnerable in our society, we will not address the crisis affecting our most vulnerable citizens. I am committed to continuing to do that and look forward to hearing from the committee.

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.