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To be absolutely clear, you have not been involved in discussions on issues such as education and skills and council tax with your ministerial colleagues.

Good morning. I will focus on the equality impacts on the back of the budget.

The Scottish Government has chosen to cut council budgets year on year, which has undoubtedly had impacts on areas of the equality portfolio. Examples of that include the threats that we have heard about of potential closures of leisure and sports facilities, as well as budget cuts to our school learning environment. Although those decisions were taken outwith your portfolio area, they will have severe consequences across your brief.

Were you consulted on any of those decisions before they were made? Did you have contact with your ministerial colleagues regarding those budget cuts?

I have a final, more practical question. Does the cabinet secretary believe that a board with five men, four women and someone who was born male and has transitioned, obtained a gender recognition certificate and identifies themselves as female achieves equality for women?

I will pick up on stakeholder engagement. I understand that the Government did not consult on the matter, but officials have engaged with the LGBTQI+ community on legislation relating to gender in the past. Following the court ruling, has the Scottish Government engaged directly with women’s groups to mend relationships and perhaps to reassure them that there will be no repetition of what happened with this bill?

You mentioned “a variety of stakeholders”. Does that include women’s groups?

Thank you. I will move on to a question about legislative competence. Can the cabinet secretary confirm that the Scottish Government has accepted that, to be legislatively competent, the bill must use the definition of the protected characteristic of sex and, within that, the definition of women as applied under the Equality Act 2010? Can she confirm that no further amendments will take the bill outwith legislative competence?

We have had SNAP and we are now on SNAP 2. You harnessed data back in late 2017, when about 1,500 people participated in various community events, your online surveys and of course your national participation event. Since then, we have had a pandemic and we are currently experiencing a global cost of living crisis. Is the data that you harnessed back in 2017 still relevant to the action points that you gathered? We live in an ever-changing world and I am interested in whether the action points and opinions of the Scottish people back in 2017 are still relevant.

Thank you. The reason why I am asking that question is that SNAP 2 is described as a “living action plan”. If SNAP 2 were included in a human rights bill, how would that work in an ever-changing environment? How would that fit into the scope of legislation that might go through the Parliament?

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Finally, I have a question on data sets and monitoring because one of the concerns that I have had with the Scottish Government for quite some time is to do with the lack of data that records human-rights-based issues or other issues that are contained within the action points you have raised. Are you actively encouraging the Scottish Government to record more data to make sure that we can benchmark against the 54 action points that you have outlined? Certainly, MSPs would be keen to see that so that we can effectively scrutinise the work of the Scottish Government on the action points that you have highlighted within your report.