Chamber and committees

Often, in the past—not only in the Scottish Parliament but in councils—equalities and human rights have been seen as add-ons to any report or any decision making that was taking place. Often, and especially when I was a council member, I was told that those things were rather costly. That was probably your experience too, minister.

Would you say that mainstreaming has saved money by getting those things right? Has it also saved money in whole-budget terms? We are taking account of the impacts of budget decisions on equalities and human rights.

Thank you very much, convener, for allowing me to come back in. The minister said earlier that she looks at everything through an equality lens—I do not think that anyone could doubt that.

Today, we have had lines of questioning about what the minister would do if she was compiling a budget from scratch. Does she see a bigger role in future for priority-based budgeting, not only in her portfolio but across Government, to ensure that those priorities are at the very forefront of budget work?

Has the Scottish Government carried out enough equality and human rights impact assessments of the cuts to budgets that have been imposed on us by the UK Treasury?

Good morning, minister. Part of your job is to challenge ministers to ensure that equalities and human rights are embedded in everything that they do. You have talked about the workshops that have taken place. I know that there are many other fora in which those issues come to the fore. How do you feel about where we are at in respect of mainstreaming equalities and human rights in all that the Government does?

Maybe you could bring that back to the committee, because I am interested in seeing an assessment of what damage the cuts from the UK Treasury have done.

Minister, as you well know, I am very interested in ensuring that the voices of people with lived experience are at the heart of policy making. When that happens we are much better at taking account of equalities and human rights impacts. I know that it is sometimes difficult to allow for that because of one-year budgeting and because the Government is unaware of the amount of block grant until very late on—if an indication is given—but how do you feel about listening to the voices of people with lived experience when it comes to budget making? I am not talking about the large stakeholders; I am talking about the input of the average Joe and Josephine.

Thank you, convener, and congratulations on your new role.

Cabinet secretary, this is perhaps not a question for you directly, but perhaps you could take it back to colleagues. It is about technical fixes and finding the right legislative vehicle to deal with them. You carried out a search and could not find the right legislative vehicle. All of us who have been ministers have had that situation at one point or t’other, even in relation to simple things. Could the cabinet secretary go back to colleagues and to Parliament to see whether there is a way to deal with technical fixes across the board in some other way, rather than with individual pieces of legislation?

I know that that might require amendment of the Scotland Act 1998, but it seems that we, in the Scottish Parliament, sometimes make things overly complex because of the Scotland Act 1998, and sometimes things that should be fixed remain on the statute book for longer than they should. I wonder whether a conversation with the Minister for Parliamentary Business, the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, the Parliamentary Bureau and others could lead to something other than dealing with such matters through very short, technical bills.

I will go on a little bit, convener. This is from an equalities viewpoint, but, if you rule me to be outwith the scope of the bill, I will understand. Language is used in pieces of primary legislation, and in old legislation, particularly in relation to folks who have mental health problems, that is outdated and utterly out of order. That kind of thing should also be looked at if we are going to consider how to deal with technical fixes.

Stacey Dingwall, what are your members’ views on frameworks? Is there too much bureaucracy? Are the wrong folk putting in place the frameworks and the tenders?

You talked earlier about the need for more transparency. The fact that bidders are told that bids have come down to a seventeenth of a per cent is a bit more transparent than it was before, is it not?

Very briefly, is it off-putting for folk that the feedback from different public bodies—say, the 32 local authorities—is different? Should we see if we can come up with a more uniform scheme of feedback to open up transparency?