Chamber and committees

Thank you very much. We will now hear from Dr Angela O’Hagan.

As a couple of you mentioned, this is the first time that any parliamentary committee has taken a human rights approach to its budget scrutiny, so we are in a learning process. It would be helpful if you could give us any pointers to areas in which we need to make sure that we are getting things right.

Emma, you mentioned the data. Maybe you could identify areas of data on which we need to push the Government or other agencies to help us to do our job in taking a human rights approach.

Chris, do you want to add anything?

Alison or Angela, do you have any further comments on scrutiny?

Angela O’Hagan talked about that earlier, so perhaps she could expand on that a little.

Thank you. There were some nods around the table there.

Unfortunately, time is against us. We could probably go on all day, as the committee is at the start of the process. Thank you for your evidence.

Thank you. I do not know whether you watched the previous panel of witnesses give evidence, but we said that this is the first time that the committee has looked to take a human rights based approach to budgeting. In the past, we have looked at gender and equality budgeting. How do we make sure that those different aspects do not end up in conflict with one another and that they all add value? Eilidh Dickson can start us off on that.

That point about intersectionality is really important.

Unless anybody has any burning questions, I will wrap up the session, although there are lots more questions that we could ask. You have got us thinking about lots of things, so thank you all very much. It has been a really useful session.