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Yes, absolutely. Please write to me with any supplementary questions that you have.

I will bring in Nick Bland.

I believe that the overall budget for delivering the equally safe strategy has increased. I was at the launch of that, with SAY Women. Indeed, that was an excellent visit. That organisation provides support to women and girls between the ages of 16 and 24 who are dealing with sexual abuse and violence. I think that there was an uplift in equally safe funding of £2.4 million, approximately.

Are you referring to intersectionality regarding mainstreaming?

The use of the human rights budgeting principles remains part of the budget process. In our attempt to streamline the document and make it more accessible, we had to focus our efforts on those parts of the publication that we thought would add most value for the readers. We have set out our approach to human rights budgeting in detail over the past two years. Since there has been little change in the principles behind the Government’s approach to human rights budgeting, we focused on analysis of the key budget decisions in this year’s document.

The six key questions that were developed with EHRBAG were used as part of the case study approach, which included two questions that specifically asked how human rights impacts had been considered. Additionally, the portfolio summary chapters tied portfolio budget activity to both human rights articles and national outcomes.

There is an increased use of intersectional evidence and analysis to inform policy making across the Scottish Government, and that is helping us to understand structural inequalities and to inform inclusive policy making. Analysts and policy professionals—I will bring in Nick Bland shortly—are building their understanding of how to apply intersectional approaches. Practical considerations are set out in “Minority ethnic women’s experiences in Scotland 2024: intersectional evidence review”. That was published in December, and the committee will be aware of it.

When undertaking intersectional research, analysts are encouraged to use qualitative and quantitative sources of data and evidence to ensure a deeper understanding of intersectional issues. We then need to triangulate those to ensure that we get the best evidence possible and the clearest picture. Nick, can I bring you in here?

There was a lot in that question. I will do my best to cover everything, but please prompt me to come back in on anything that I miss.

Regarding the gender budgeting pilot and the overarching goals, I welcome the recommendations from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on improving gender budgeting. The Scottish Government recognises the recommendation that we should develop those goals. We are actively considering Scottish gender goals and, in particular, how that recommendation intersects with recommendations from the First Minister’s national advisory group on women and girls. With that group, we are working to identify options to develop gender goals with women and girls with diverse lived experience, including BAME women.

We are also exploring how to progress the OECD’s second recommendation, on the changes that are required to the budget process, while being mindful that adaptations will be necessary to suit Scotland’s specific circumstances. The OECD recognises that no country in the world has managed to achieve what is recommended, so we are all on that journey. A lot of work is required and it is a long-term commitment that has to be specific to, in this case, Scotland.

On your point about cross-portfolio working and the intersectionality that will lead to good practice when it comes to completing good-quality equality impact assessments, that has been part of my discussions with the nine ministers I have met so far. By speaking to all my colleagues, I am able to spot the overarching connectedness across their portfolios. An example of that is in housing. I have a meeting with the housing minister coming up, but I can already spot and will bring to his attention the disproportionate impact that housing policy and budget decisions can have on ethnic minorities. I use that particular protected characteristic group as an example because you mentioned it.

Housing is one portfolio but, to give another example, I can also spot within the local government portfolio the need for access to services in communities. That also links to transport. We know that members of that protected characteristic group are more likely to use public transport and are less likely to have access to private transport. In my conversations with the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, I am able to link those policy areas together.

My role is not to make ministers’ decisions for them but to highlight those intersectionalities, to get them talking to one other and, more important, to get them to do that prior to making any decisions. That is the change of approach. I assure the committee that I am robustly challenging my colleagues to consider those things, to come out of our silos and to move towards that outcome rather than outcomes that are based on portfolios. I am aware that the effect of that approach will take a long time to be seen, because we are talking about people behaving differently and a cultural change is required for that. Ministers have been very receptive and very grateful for the oversight that I am able to provide.

It is early days and I am realistic that the impact that the work will have had on this year’s budget will have been minimal due to my coming into the role when I did. However, I am expecting a difference and I will be holding ministers to account, just as they hold me to account, you hold us to account and, more important, the general public hold us all to account. At the end of the day, that is what we want.

I want to see that work cut through, so that the family that Ms Gosal mentioned feels that tangible difference and can see that connection between their lives and the decisions that ministers make.

You raise a very important point, and I acknowledge your long-standing interest in that area. I suppose that you are referring to advocacy groups in particular, as a lot of organisations provide that as a service. We have taken the approach that we place both equality and human rights at the heart of everything that we do—which relates to fairness, equality, dignity, respect, autonomy, empowerment and participation. Out of the 48 organisations that are being funded, 43 might be categorised as equality advocacy groups.

Nick Bland has some further detail on that.

I am pleased to be invited back to give evidence to the committee. I look forward to providing you with updates on what I am doing to ensure that equality, inclusion and human rights are embedded in the budget and across wider Scottish Government processes.

On competence raising, there is a welcome alignment this week for the committee to fall on. Currently, more than 1,000 Scottish Government officials are participating in equality, inclusion and human rights development academy week, which is a new initiative that forms a key part in further building civil servants’ competence and capability in how to embed equality, inclusion and human rights in everything that we do in Government. I was delighted to contribute to the sessions and, in a recorded interview, I set out the importance of mainstreaming and my personal commitment to demonstrating visible leadership in that area as the Minister for Equalities.

The Government is equally focused on building competence and capability across the public sector. In recent weeks, I have met the Scottish councils’ equality network, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, more than 100 public sector equality duty bearers and 14 equality groups at our equality outcome-setting events, at which I have communicated my expectations and provided active leadership.

This year’s budget focuses on building a positive future and improving the lives of everyone in Scotland. It does so through our resolute focus on the First Minister’s four priorities: eradicating child poverty, growing the economy, tackling the climate emergency and ensuring high-quality public services. This year’s changes to the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement—the EFSBS—focused on improving how evidence feeds into the budget decision-making process and how decisions can be communicated more clearly. Key improvements were an earlier ministerial workshop, publication of gender budgeting pilots and the creation of a more streamlined document. Many of the key decisions highlighted in the EFSBS show positive impacts across many protected groups, such as the increase in the availability of affordable housing that will benefit groups who are more likely to experience poverty or housing insecurity.

I am well aware of the committee’s interest in the Scottish Government’s progress against the recommendations of the equalities and human rights budget advisory group—EHRBAG. That is why, along with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, I wrote to the committee last week to update members on that.

On accountability, I will continue to champion the three principles of human rights budgeting. I note that, in the Scottish Parliament information centre’s recent blog on pre-budget scrutiny, colleagues recognised the personal accountability that I take in my ministerial role. Although I am not directly responsible for budget decision making, I take my role in mainstreaming equality and human rights very seriously. I will continue to do that so that I can hold myself and colleagues accountable.

I am already looking ahead to how we can continue to improve our processes next year. With that in mind, I will build on the collaborative partnership that was developed last year with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government to improve equality and human rights in the budget process. In addition, when I last spoke to the committee, in November, I outlined my plans to carry out one-to-one engagements with my ministerial colleagues. To date, I have held nine meetings, with more happening in the coming weeks. I have been clear that, as ministers, we have a shared obligation to tackle inequality and to progress human rights. I have put across to my colleagues the importance of ensuring that equality impact assessments are carried out from the outset of policy development. I have asked them to highlight to their officials the importance that they place on high-quality and frank impact assessments as key tools to inform decision making. The remit to fully assess the impacts of our proposed policies includes spending cuts, which is critical.

I hope that the committee recognises the Government’s commitment to continuing improvement in equality and human rights budgeting and the actions that we are taking to achieve that. I absolutely acknowledge that there is more to be done. We will continue to listen and will use the feedback from this committee and other stakeholders.

I will be meeting the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands very shortly. There are many people to talk to, and I have got through nine ministers so far. My offer is that I am quite happy to raise anything that comes up today at that meeting, which is yet to come.

I suppose that you are talking about targeted funding to address the sort of geographical issues with regard to rurality and inequality that you highlighted. I understand the issues that are faced by marginalised communities in remote, island and rural settings, and we are absolutely committed to supporting them. Something that the First Minister has encouraged is that, when we make visits as ministers, we do so on a cross-portfolio basis. Therefore, on our summer tours of constituencies, I made a special effort to visit rural and island communities and look at housing provision, and I was able to speak to not only our delivery partners but residents, including potential residents, and communities and see the challenges at first hand. I would not have known all that just by sitting in Holyrood. We are getting out and about and speaking to real people, and that is informing me and allowing me to be in a position to challenge and support my colleagues.

We need to ensure that the services that we offer are tailored specifically to the challenges that people face. Like everything else, rural impacts should be taken into account in all Scottish Government portfolios; in other words, any good policy should already be thinking about its impact across Scotland, including rural areas. Moreover, we have island communities impact assessments, which must be carried out in relation to any policy, strategy or service whose effect on an island community is likely to be significantly different from its effect on, say, another community. Those assessments must also consider the impacts on different groups on an island, too. I would say that, through such an approach, we are actually drilling down to what sometimes can be quite small numbers, which brings me back to what I was saying earlier about our challenges with regard to data sets.

We are in the process of introducing a new systemic approach, which is called the rural assessment toolkit, to aid that further and enable a greater focus to be applied to the unique needs of rural communities and businesses. That toolkit will support civil servants to understand the unique characteristics, challenges and opportunities of rural areas and weave those through all the stages of policy development so that, again, policy is being influenced early—thereby creating more robust policy that is more reflective of needs.

Thank you for that. I take on board and totally agree with your comments about silo working. That is something that I hear very commonly. However, as I have said previously, when I ask people to come out of their silos, they always say that somebody else should do it, not them. That is just a general human nature thing, is it not?

There is a bigger structural issue here, because humans are complex—we know that—and they do not see themselves as being in a silo. However, even our parliamentary structures, our committees and our systems are based on individual portfolio areas. It is a challenge for all of us, and I am certainly approaching it in the most robust way that I can.