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Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022/23

Background

The National Taskforce for Human Rights published its leadership report in March 2021. One recommendation was to incorporate the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) into Scots law. The report also recommended that rights for women, disabled people and minority ethnic communities should be part of Scots law.

This includes:

• right to an adequate standard of living, including the rights to adequate food, clothing and housing and the continuous improvement of living conditions
• right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health
• right to education
• right to social security
• right to take part in cultural life

Whilst there is more to delivering human rights than ensuring the right budgets are in place, the taskforce report also says, specifically on the budget: “it will be essential that human rights budget scrutiny and monitoring forms part of the framework implementation”.

As a guide, the committee suggest that those responding may wish to take account of some of the questions raised in this blog on human rights budgeting by Dr Alison Hosie (of the Scottish Human Rights Commission).

Your views

The call for views closed on 24 September 2021.

You can view all published responses on Citizen Space.

About the budgeting process

The Parliament’s budget process is now based on the approach of the Budget Process Review Group from 2017, whilst the Finance and Constitution Committee also provided guidance to committees on this year’s budget process.

The main task for committees is to provide a pre-budget report to their respective Minister. This should happen at least 6 weeks before the publication of the Scottish budget. It is currently assumed that pre-budget reports will be published by the end of October.

The budget document will then set out how committee views have been taken account of, with more detail provided individually to committees, within five sitting days of the publication of the budget. 

Budget documents now include an Equality and Fairer Scotland statement.

The “standard” budget timetable has been set out by SPICe (the Scottish Parliament Information Centre). The Scottish budget is expected to be published no more than three working weeks after the UK budget (normally published in the Autumn). However, HM Treasury have yet to announce a date for publication of this year’s UK budget.