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I totally understand the issue. The statistics are stark, which is why we are taking a lead on the matter and, as I said, my focus on those issues is relentless. As a minister, I am mindful that my duty is to serve all the protected characteristics. As a black and minority ethnic woman, I have extra knowledge of the matter, so I assure Pam Gosal that it is definitely in my mind to be aware of the intersectionalities.

However, the same principle—that we are not one thing—applies to all protected characteristics. One day, your colour might be the most important thing; on another day, your gender might be causing the barrier; on another day, it might be your socioeconomic background or communication skills. That is where mainstreaming comes in, to ensure that we are in fact cognisant of all those different strands.

I will bring in Nick Bland to speak about the regulation on pay gap reporting. Pay gap reform is quite complicated and it might be beneficial to hear a bit more about it.

Absolutely. I hope that the toolkit and the guidance that goes with it will provide direct and practical support.

I have sympathy with the EHRC’s position. Every organisation wants to be as effective as possible. I would be very supportive if the UK Government increased the EHRC’s resources. I know that its budget has been cut substantially over the years, which is unfortunate in these challenging times, when, more than ever, we need to be leading on equality across the four nations in the UK. I would support any moves for the EHRC to have additional resources.

I am sure that the health portfolio can provide further information about hospitals in particular, but my general understanding is that the estate is moving towards single-sex provision. It is a big estate that is moving away from mixed wards towards the provision of single-sex wards. Particularly as new hospitals are built, certain buildings are moving towards the provision of single rooms in order to ensure that patients’ dignity is intact.

Thank you. As the Scottish Government, we fund a wide variety of organisations and procure the delivery of certain services from organisations. Our funding for any organisation will not necessarily be 100 per cent, because it will provide only specific services that we have commissioned. I just want to make that clear. Thank you for raising that point.

Please do. I would be happy to receive that correspondence.

There is no simple answer—if there was one, we would have solved the issue—so I am in the position of extracting the different threads, some of which concern competency, some of which concern capability and some of which concern cultural change. I heard from some of the contributors to your committee last week that they felt that there was often resistance, too. The other side of that, which I referred to in response to the first question, is that there are often different ways of seeing things and different perspectives.

My focus, which I think I share with you, is on the actual impact at the end of the day. We need to ensure that, although we have bureaucracy, duties and expectations, the processes are outcomes driven and impact driven, as opposed to being mechanistic and bureaucratic. I am trying to avoid using the term “tick box”, but I want to get away from that tick-box approach, and we recognise that, traditionally, there has been a danger of that.

If we are trying to embed a human rights approach in the delivery of all our public services, it is incumbent on us to make that our starting point as opposed to that consideration coming in later, when it is almost too late and we are then looking at mitigation. We want to be strategic, which is why we are taking a phased approach to reform. In that way, we can learn from each phase what is working and what is not working and then ensure that we distil that down into concentrating on the specific actions that will lead to change. I referred to that as scaffolding, but I can go a bit further into what that looks like, namely providing the training and the toolkits and ensuring consistency of delivery.

That is where the visible leadership bit comes in: people see that I am on this, that I am rolling my sleeves up and that I am engaging extensively with more than 100 different duty bearers. I am going to continue with that work. There is a relentless drive to improve consistency.

It is a complex trajectory and the value that I can add is to make it clear that I expect this way of working to be embedded and not seen as additionality. I understand what people are saying; I worked in the public sector for decades, and I know that there can be a fear of additional expectations being put on already hard-working people who are trying incredibly hard to work on equalities. Often, the reaction to this sort of thing is, “Oh, here is another thing we have to do,” but I want to shift the narrative to, “This is about how we as public authorities approach and do our work.” It is not about the amount of work to be done; it is about improving how we do the work. That is not additional work.

That is where the committee can add value, if that is one of its recommendations. A lot of public authorities already have anti-racism action plans. For instance, in the teaching sector, a lot of excellent work has been done over a number of years. I have seen the trend of moving from multiculturalism to being positively anti-racist in order to prevent those harms, as opposed to just having policies to deal with matters once the harms have come about.

It is only right that there is a phased approach. Every local authority or public body will be at a different stage of developing a plan, but my expectation is very clear that it is good practice to have that plan as part of the body’s supportive policies.

I gave the bit about fostering good relations some thought and I listened to the views that were presented to the committee by other witnesses. I have a two-fold approach to fostering good relations. We want to make sure that we maintain and advance cohesive communities. That is essential. We also have to make sure that we always deal with conversations with communities in a compassionate way. The two-fold bit is that communities can come together and public organisations and bodies have a role to play there. Moving on from that, it is also about increasing understanding between different communities, and education is needed to make sure that we do that in a compassionate way that shows that building strong, cohesive communities is important.

There was an example of that during the summer when there were the unfortunate situations in Southport. As a minister, my approach when tensions were heightened—it was led by the First Minister; there was leadership right from the top—was to bring together people with different views and experiences in order to communicate, to aid understanding and to provide clear expectations and leadership. You are right, in as much as the fostering of good relations does not get the profile that it deserves. It is quite hard to do that bit. Nick Bland may have more to say.