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I gave you an example of how we already do that by making sure that ministers with different portfolios undertake visits in communities and see projects that are not necessarily directly within their portfolios.

For instance, housing is not my policy area, although I take an equalities interest in it. I do not make any financial decisions over it, and I am lucky that it sits in the social justice portfolio. Nevertheless, I go out and see the challenges in real life.

The example that gave me a profound understanding was about the cost of building additional housing and the challenges around that. The questions are: why are we not building more houses and why are we not building them more quickly? I have been on the ground, seeing the landscape and the difficulties of drilling into what is pretty hard rock, as well as the transport of goods and services, and being mindful of not only the skills that are required but the impact of decisions that inflate the costs of goods and services.

Through seeing that, I am in a better position to challenge the Minister for Housing. Obviously, he will be an expert, but I put an extra lens on from an equalities point of view. For example, what happens if you are disabled? If you are building a new housing estate, where is the nearest hospital, where are the main transport routes and what is the availability?

That is happening, and I hope that it gives you a good example. I am trying to show visible leadership and encourage all ministers to do that cross-portfolio walking as well as talking.

We are not currently considering adding rurality as a specific dimension to the EFSB. The document focuses on the public sector equality duty and our fairer Scotland duty, and it supports budget scrutiny and provides evidence of our meeting those duties. Portfolios are best placed to consider the rural impacts of their policies and, where appropriate, consider those as part of their decision processes. Island impacts are considered separately as part of the budget process. Rural considerations are mainstreamed in the Scottish Government, which means that good policy should already be thinking about the impacts that policies have across all areas, including rural ones.

We know that EQIAs are an essential tool in policy development that helps us to better understand and address the needs of the people we serve. The best way to understand the impact of budget measures, including on marginalised groups, is through thorough, high-quality and robust evaluation. I am absolutely resolute in my stance that good-quality EQIAs should underpin everything that we do, and I push back on the idea that they do not have an impact.

The Scottish Government has continued to improve in this area, and it provides training materials, online guidance, best practice examples and impact assessment surgeries to support the completion of good-quality equality impact assessments.

We have brought forward a budget that is set within the mainstream of Scottish public opinion, and that would not have been possible without engagement and participation. We have worked in good faith with Opposition parties to deliver a budget that can command the support of a majority of this Parliament, and I am hoping that it will be voted through this afternoon. I believe that we have listened to and assessed the extensive proposals that were received as part of the budget’s development; we have heard a range of views from a range of stakeholders from diverse communities across Scotland, and we have heard the priorities of the third, public and business sectors. We can deliver progress for Scotland only with the support of our partners and Parliament, and we will continue to take that approach.

On your first question about my raising various issues with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, I believe that that meeting might have happened. Regardless of that, though, I am happy to raise the two areas that you have highlighted—that is, NHS Grampian funding, and ADHD assessments and the shortage of medication.

As for your second point, I published, in the interests of transparency, the amount of money that we spend across my portfolio. We put that up; we did not wait to be asked for it in any shape or form—it was published proactively. As for the budget lines, which you have quite rightly pointed out, we procure from organisations specific services that are required to address mental health issues, provide refuges for domestic violence and so on. There is a wide range of projects dealing with socialisation and loneliness, for instance, and those are all listed with their budget lines next to them.

What happens then is that there is a clear contract—for want of a better word—that sets out the terms of engagement, the services and the quality that we expect to be delivered. We fund helplines that support people at high risk of suicide, for instance; indeed, we fund a wide range of organisations to deliver specific services.

We then have fund managers that provide the governance for the process. They are in regular contact with all the organisations, making sure that the Scottish Government is getting the service that it is paying for. The fund managers do all the quality assurance, and they are independent of the process to ensure that Scottish Government money is actually being spent on the services that we have procured.

Many organisations will, of course, provide other services. We procure particular services provided by third sector organisations, although the organisations may themselves be providing other stuff. We are responsible for our bit.

Analysts across the Scottish Government and the National Records of Scotland are now progressing with the equality data improvement actions set until the end of 2025. Action leads provided an update on progress in September 2024. I can highlight to you that, of the 45 actions in the strategy, 14 are complete, 23 are on course, seven are delayed and one is not yet started. Details of progress and causes for delays are discussed with the EDIP project board on a quarterly basis. An interim review of the equality evidence strategy and EDIP will be published by the end of 2024. That will set out the challenges faced, which can be expected to cover points such as issues with collecting and analysing data, especially with regard to datasets that are too small, for instance, and delays due to indirect processes. For example, some surveys are currently being evaluated, so new data is delayed because of that, as well as there being issues of resourcing and prioritisation, as you would expect.

I will try to answer that question, although it is quite complex, and there are many views on the issue. I listened with interest to the evidence that was given to the committee. It is a conundrum that I wrestle with, as I have a history and an interest in mainstreaming in particular. The matter is actively being considered, and one of the issues is about mainstreaming. I am also getting calls regarding disaggregation and intersectional data. At the moment, I am wrestling with the need to make sure that there is no dilution for any particular group.

One of the calls that I get is to recognise that we are not a homogeneous group, and women are not a homogeneous group, either. We should bear in mind that women make up more than 50 per cent of the population, so they are not technically a minority group, either. However, we know that budgeting has an impact on women, and there can be exponential negative impacts for those who are also disabled or in an ethnic minority, for instance.

That is where I am at the moment. I am considering all those strands and weighing up whether we need to have one thing or the other. Is there a way that we can bring it all together while not having so much data that we do not know what to do with it all? Sometimes, when we gather data on intersectionalities, it can be so small that it is not valid. It is about making sure that we have quality assurance across the piece.

I take extremely seriously my role in mainstreaming equality across all portfolios. The member will be aware of that. Ultimately, I suppose that I should do myself out of a job because, in every portfolio, every minister who makes budget decisions should have the confidence, the tools, the data and everything that they need—[Interruption.]

All countries around the world are grappling with that challenge. I am satisfied that we are making progress and I assure the member and the committee that, in my role, I will continue to provide the service, support and leadership that the true embedding of mainstreaming requires.

Thank you for that question. I have reflected on that issue. On balance, it is an absolute bonus that I had that previous role on the committee, because I can see more clearly the lens through which the citizen sees those things. While the Government does its work and provides its documents, we have to challenge the accessibility of those documents to the average citizen and improve their transparency.

Another reflection is that equalities covers every strand of the various portfolios, but the big fiscal levers and the big budgets do not lie within the equalities budget. The big challenge for me in my role is therefore to encourage, support and challenge my colleagues across portfolios.

Thank you, convener. It is a pleasure to be back for a second time since I took over as Minister for Equalities.

I am no stranger to the committee, given my previous role as its convener, and members will be well aware that, at that time, my personal commitment was to ensure that the budget delivered for the most marginalised in Scotland. I came to my ministerial role determined to ensure that we accelerate progress to embed equality and human rights into everything that we do, and the budget process is an integral part of that.

This year, I know that you are particularly interested in transparency in the budget process. The Scottish Government is committed to embedding equality and human rights considerations into budget decision-making processes and the three principles of accountability, participation and transparency. For example, we have improved the Scottish Government’s publication, “Your Scotland, Your Finances”, which we publish as a citizen’s budget. That online publication has been reviewed to improve accessibility and is now produced four times a year, alongside the draft Scottish budget, the final budget approved by Parliament and in-year adjustments to reflect autumn and spring budget revisions.

Through successive open government national action plans, we have worked with the Parliament, its committees and wider stakeholders to improve the understanding of our public finances, and as a result, 23 supporting documents have been published for the 2024-25 Scottish budget. The open budget survey, which was published by the Scottish Human Rights Commission in July, highlighted that Scotland has made progress on all three areas of open budgeting at a time when many countries have stalled or, indeed, slipped backwards.

We are also progressing actions to deliver the recommendations made by the equality and human rights budget advisory group. Last month, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government and I met the group to discuss how we can achieve our shared ambitions.

As for the Scottish budget process of 2025-26, the Scottish Government continues to face the most challenging financial situation since devolution. Although the United Kingdom budget is a step in the right direction, it still leaves us facing enormous cost pressures, and we therefore must make difficult decisions to put Scotland’s finances on a sustainable footing while putting money behind our priorities. Equality and human rights considerations are not separate from those priorities, but underpin them all.

The Scottish Government will ensure that the budget process complies with our legal and statutory duties, but we must—and will—go further than that. Evidence is being gathered from across Government to support the decision-making process, including through a recent ministerial workshop on equality and fairer Scotland and child rights considerations in this year’s budgets that was chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and supported by me as Minister for Equalities.

Improvements that have been made this year have focused on better integration with the programme for government and the budget process itself to ensure that evidence actively shapes budget decisions when they are made. For example, the cross-ministerial workshop took place earlier in the budget process and had a clearer focus on the difficult decisions required to bring the budget into balance.

Those improvements are supported by new analytical capabilities, which build on previous feasibility studies to provide evidence on the distribution of Government spending on childcare, health, schools and transport across different households. The equality and fairer Scotland budget statement will set out major decisions that are taken as part of the budget, including the evidence to support those. That will include decisions to maintain, increase or decrease spending.

I use my role to demonstrate visible leadership, exert influence and support my ministerial colleagues to deliver effectively. Changing the culture to mainstream equality and human rights across Government is a matter of urgency as well as a moral obligation. In the coming months, I will meet one to one with my ministerial colleagues to explore what actions can be taken in each portfolio to improve equality and human rights. That will include emphasising their duties under the public sector equality duty and highlighting the excellent guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

I hope that the committee recognises the Government’s commitment to continued improvement in equality and human rights budgeting and the actions that we are taking to achieve that.