Seòmar agus comataidhean

We are very alive to the fact that things can change. We have been reviewing the supersponsor scheme pause regularly—previously at three-month intervals and now at six-month intervals, with the next review happening this month. Within that, there are a number of tests—including escalation in the war, which would mean that more people were in immediate need of support—and if those were met, we would consider reopening the scheme.

However, as the member noted, given the number of visas that the Scottish Government has sponsored that have not resulted in Ukrainian arrivals, it is difficult to balance the numbers. We would be in the position of not knowing the scale of the numbers of people to whom we might need to provide immediate support; we have a responsibility to everyone who comes for support to provide the best that we can, and to provide suitable accommodation and not end up with people having to stay in temporary accommodation for too long. That is quite a difficult situation to manage, which is why we need to keep reviewing it and make sure that the tests are met before reopening the scheme.

Yes.

There are certainly difficulties, but I would point more to the successes in councils. Edinburgh has certainly been one where the wraparound support has been good and the partnership working with the third sector has been very visible, despite housing pressures.

We work to encourage other local authorities to raise their game and ensure that they are doing all that they can to support Ukrainians in their areas or to let Ukrainians who are currently in welcome accommodation know what the options are within their area if they have not considered them yet. There are really good examples from across the country, despite the housing pressures, of creative thinking and of good work with the third sector.

I am aware that more than half of local authorities now operate some form of scheme, and we looked into the feasibility of something wider. I do not have the report from the working group.

Yes, that is an argument that we make for migration overall, but also in the context of individual schemes. I am aware that there are Ukrainians who are contributing massively to different sectors that were previously really struggling to recruit.

At the time when I was on the MS Victoria, 85 per cent of the people staying there were in employment of some kind. That shows that we have a cohort of people who not only need our support, but are willing and able to work, and very often in sectors that are struggling to recruit domestically. We have made that point to the UK Government, in relation both to Ukraine and to wider migration needs.

I would be guessing at the details of the UK Government's position, but from our perspective, one of the difficulties is that, although people are displaced internally in Gaza they are not classed as refugees while they are still in that place. The struggle that many have had to cross any border has made it a lot harder for neighbouring countries to provide support of the kind that Poland was able to provide to Ukraine.

That is exactly what we are trying to do. Covid was not the only or the first example of a situation in which not having intersectional inequalities data led to poorer outcomes for various groups. However, it certainly brought together the anti-racism interim governance group, which eventually recommended the establishing of the anti-racism observatory. The impact of its work will therefore be far more wide ranging than simply addressing the inequalities that became clear through the pandemic.

As for connecting pieces of work, it is important to note that the observatory is not the answer to racial inequality; it is part of the solution. It will allow us to create stronger evidence-based policy. It is also not the only approach that we are taking to obtaining data as we recognise the requirement for intersectional information.

You will be aware that we are currently considering a review of the operation of the public sector equality duty. Recently, I wrote to stakeholders to outline the next steps on that, which we propose should include two key regulatory changes, including revising the current pay gap reporting duty to include information on ethnicity pay gaps. Pay gap reporting is an important means of driving action to spotlight and reduce pay inequalities that affect certain disadvantaged groups, and extending the requirement to report on pay gaps between men and women to include reporting on those relating to disability and ethnicity will encourage public bodies to take more effective action on equalities issues that affect their disabled and minoritised staff.

I thank the committee and the citizens panel again for an in-depth question.

I suppose that I would hesitate to take such a broad-brush approach. I know that there are very good examples of PSHE education led by very hard-working teachers throughout Scotland. As I have mentioned, all teachers are required to adhere to the General Teaching Council for Scotland professional values, so they should be demonstrating, welcoming and encouraging inclusive behaviours to ensure that everybody in schools is treated with respect. It is the responsibility of all staff—not just teachers—in Scottish schools to promote and facilitate a culture of equality and diversity and to address individual and institutional discrimination, including where that stems from cultural differences.

I can give a specific example of our delivering appropriate training for teachers. We are currently consulting on revised statutory teaching guidance for relationships, sexual health and parenthood education that is aimed at enabling children and young people to build positive relationships as they age.

I appreciate—the convener has alluded to this—that diversity education has come a long way in 20 years, but there is still much work to do. We recognise that, and I welcome the scrutiny of that aspect. Additionally, I welcome the approach that my colleague the Minister for Children, Young People and Keeping the Promise is taking with the statutory guidance to help to ensure that teachers are empowered to deliver PSHE education in a culturally sensitive way.

I will bring in Fi Robertson in a moment, but I can give you some initial reflections. For something that describes a piece of work as large and as complex as the annual budget, the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement is an incredibly accessible document. However, I appreciate that we do not want people to be involved only at the end of the budget process and in looking back over it; we want them to be involved throughout the process.

We are therefore committed to improving the budget’s accessibility. Through successive open government action plans, we have worked closely with civil society partners to improve the understanding and accessibility of public finances, and our current plan commits us to improving the accessibility of our fiscal data and information, to benchmarking our fiscal transparency against international standards and to improving public engagement and participation regarding public finances.

By using our own research and international best practice, we have developed a prototype fiscal portal to bring together and present our fiscal data and information in a more accessible, open and understandable way. We are working to produce a fully functional minimum viable product by the end of 2023.

Fi Robertson might have more to add on the subject.

We have committed to exploring opportunities to improve public engagement with the budget process and continuing to make the process more transparent, which includes exploring a citizens budget. There is a strong commitment and a will in the Government to hear more from people who have been empowered to comment on the budget in a way that allows us to take that into account. That means not just opening up opportunities for people to speak to us but making the process clearer, more transparent and easy to digest, so that the set of documents is not inaccessible.

Those two things go hand in hand. If people are empowered to understand what we are doing and why we are making our decisions, they will be able to comment and scrutinise in a far more informed way, which the Government absolutely welcomes. We are committed to exploring more opportunities for people to engage with the process.