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You will know that the consultation closed around the autumn—I am trying to remember all the timelines—and we had a really helpful, if not challenging, letter from a number of organisations that said that they did not think that the proposal went far enough. We are consulting with them on that to inform the next steps.

The timetable for that is on schedule as well. I will see whether I can share the schedule with you. We are analysing the consultation results and the challenge from civil society organisations, which want us to be stronger and go further.

As you know, the whole budget process is about continuous improvement. We are learning all the time. Last week, we learned key aspects of how we can do things better from members of the national advisory council. The important part is how we work together to do things better.

From the stuff that comes into my inbox, I see that other ministers consult very closely with stakeholders. For example, the DFM met the Women’s Budget Group and Engender Scotland to talk about the gendered aspects of the budget. Such collaboration takes place across the board. As I said, I do not make any decisions without stakeholders who are at the table.

You have asked some questions on that in the past few weeks, and work is being done by the responsible minister, so I will take that question away and say that, again, you have pushed us on getting a response on that. I know how important that employability work is. We have managed to support about 9,000 parents, because some of that fits into the child poverty action plan—“Best Start, Bright Futures: tackling child poverty delivery plan 2022 to 2026”—in relation to how parents can be supported to lift families out of poverty.

We see the value in that work. We must always review whether approaches are working, but we are in a difficult situation with our budget. In some areas, it is incredibly difficult because we have to make decisions to cut things that we know are valuable, but how else can we fund some of the other things that we need to do to ensure that people do not fall deeper into poverty? These things are always up for review. We make difficult decisions, and I do not envy the minister who had to make that decision. I have also had to make decisions to ensure that money is focused on the people for whom, and places where, it is most needed, but the budget process has not been easy. It is the worst situation that I have ever experienced in that regard.

Thank you; that is a good point. Pam Duncan-Glancy was looking at you as if to say, “Don’t steal my thunder”.

I absolutely accept the principle of integrating intersectional gender analysis in all our policy making. I am an intersectional feminist and always have been. I have never looked at just my characteristic of being a woman; we are all different and we have a set of characteristics that bring us together. Where those characteristics cross over at intersections for some women is where the deepest areas of deprivation, discrimination or lack of access to better outcomes manifest themselves. The pandemic exposed that in a really stark way.

That is why we are very keen to make sure that the process of integrating an intersectional budget process will allow us to take forward some of the work that we do in the wider area of equality and human rights budgeting. I return to the point that I made about always going back to stakeholders. We work very closely with all the women’s organisations that are stakeholders in the work that we do.

We also work with the Scottish Women’s Budget Group; you will have seen some of the work that it does. It has been working with officials in our Government to train us in a number of these areas, and we have been attending training delivered by that organisation, which, basically, is to grow our competence on gender in this area. We often hear, “Where are women in this?”, “Where are minority ethnic people in this?” or “Where are Gypsy Travellers in this?”. It is about being able to pull all of that out and having it there.

We recognise that the impact of the crisis will not be felt equally by all people, and certainly not by women. There will be a disproportionate impact on certain households and groups, including women. In 90-odd per cent of single-parent households in Scotland, the head of the household is a woman. In lots of those families, the woman is a carer, because there is a disabled person in the family as well. We take all that into account and we recognise that those are the people who will be affected the most.

We are also exploring whether the public sector equality duty and the Scottish-specific duties could be appropriate vehicles to put an intersectional budget process on a statutory footing. I am not saying no to putting it on a statutory footing, but we are still investigating whether that is the right way to go. There are different opinions in the sector around that. We have asked for stakeholder views specifically on the practicality and feasibility of placing a duty on listed authorities to do it and are awaiting that work coming back.

The Scottish child payment is a perfect example of how we support those families. Bridging payments have been doubled, and the child payment has been doubled and is now paid up to the age of 16. That is a perfect example of how we understand where this impacts women and families, so we know where to inject resources to address those inequalities to a point where people are not being discriminated against or marginalised because of their status in society. They are valued, and the work that they do as mums and carers is valued, too.

It is probably not for me to set out what cabinet secretaries and other ministers will want to do in that area. However, it is certainly for me and the mainstreaming team to ensure that such ideas, proposals and resolutions to challenges are injected into the whole process, and that is what we are doing. I will bring in Rob Priestley in a minute to give an update on where we are with the mainstreaming strategy and how that ties into the work that we are talking about.

I am disappointed to hear that organisations, especially learning disability organisations, felt that they were not listened to or were the last to be listened to. I will take that on board and deal with it. A big piece of work that we did just before the pandemic—we know that the pandemic had a disproportionate impact on some folks and that people with learning disabilities were very badly affected because they lost lots of their services—involved developing, jointly with COSLA, a programme called the keys to life, which the committee probably knows about. On the back of the comments that Pam Duncan-Glancy has just articulated, I want to speak to the minister responsible to see whether we should be looking at that issue to ensure that organisations and, more important, the people they represent—the stakeholders in those organisations—get to hear their voice in all this. I take that point on board and will take it away.

I ask Rob Priestley to give an update on mainstreaming, which is a fast-moving feast at the moment. There was been work right across the Government. That has included our response to the emergency budget and the resource spending review, and it will include our response to a normal budget if we ever get a normal budget round.

You will not be surprised to hear me say something similar to what I have already said. Policy development and policy outcomes are incredibly important and must be informed by lived experience. If we take an intersectional approach to the issue, we see that those are the very women and folks who emerge as facing multiple layers of discrimination and equality issues.

The work that we do with stakeholders across our portfolio is incredibly important. As a privileged white woman, I would not speak for the women in Scotland’s diverse minority ethnic communities, so stakeholder engagement is incredibly important. During the summer, I spent a good amount of time meeting stakeholders from organisations such as Amina—the Muslim Women’s Resource Centre and Shakti Women’s Aid; I spent almost a full day at Shakti in Edinburgh. We spoke about disaggregated data. A number of women were there, but there were also a number of women from the Chinese community who had experienced different forms of domestic abuse, and there were women from different cultural backgrounds who had experienced honour-based violence, female genital mutilation and other female-orientated issues.

I sat with my mouth shut and my ears open to hear those stories and learn about the issues that those women had, and I did the same during my visit to the Saoirse project. There were women who came from areas of multiple deprivation and who were also carers or victims of domestic violence or who had addictions. We see the deepest inequality at those intersections, so that is where we focus our work; partnership and intersectionality are criteria for organisations to receive money from the delivering equally safe fund. Organisations such as Shakti, Saheliya, Waverley Care and a number of others allowed me—as someone who does not have first-hand experience—to understand what happens, how it happens and how we can use those experiences to inform and improve our approaches.

A lot of those organisations train people across a number of sectors, by which I mean that they embed intersectional approaches across many sectors so that, if an individual who has different characteristics from those that they deal with walks through their door, they know how to tackle that and who the experts in the field are to help them. Shakti, Saheliya and others might say that it is them, and that that person should come and work with them. That is why the delivering equally safe fund had partnership as a key element, because, with the best will in the world, a person could walk through the doors of an organisation that does not reflect them. Going through those doors is a big step, so if a person can step through the doors of one organisation and be signposted to an organisation that is more culturally or religiously appropriate—or whatever that person needs—that is the way to do it. The Saoirse project gave great examples of that.

That is how I do it. When we are mainstreaming across Government, we are looking at how money is spent to tackle these issues. You will not be surprised to know that I work very closely with justice colleagues and colleagues in other parts of Government in relation to our equally safe strategy. I work with health and education on access to services and justice when a victim or witness is going through the justice system. We have worked with many organisations to do that, and we continue to work with them. Hopefully, they will say that we provide feedback, but you have sparked an idea in my head: we should consider how we can create some feedback loops.

An example of that is our draft proposals in response to the EHRBAG’s recommendations. We gave it the draft proposals to ask whether we are on the right track. We go back to stakeholders to say where we think something will work and ask them whether it works for them. It is about testing that and ensuring that it works when it comes to final publication, so that the person who walks through the door of an organisation—whether they are minority ethnic or have other protected characteristics—gets the service that they need and deserve.

I totally agree—please tell your mum to engage with that group. I think that I have an idea of which one it is, but I am going to find out about that, and see how we did it, so that we can replicate that approach across the board.

You make a really good point about faith communities. Since the change in portfolios after the election last year, faith communities now come under my portfolio, so I have spent the past six months or so building relationships with them. Just a few weeks ago, I met all the faith leaders. It was interesting to see that there were few women around the table; we need a few more women there. However, the interaction with all those leaders was incredibly positive. That particular meeting was on hate crime, but a few other issues were brought up at the same time.

Over the summer, I took part in a number of events, including with Shabir Beg and the Ahlul Bayt Society. I also attended the Interfaith Scotland event at the Baha’i temple in Edinburgh at the end of June; the focus there was on women and gender inequality. I was able to take part in that event and answer questions in that format.

The most recent piece of work by the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls focused on minority ethnic women and the work that they do, and you make a good point about faith communities in that regard. Over the past six months, I have been getting up to speed with that area, because it did not previously sit in my portfolio; it sat in the communities portfolio. I have been doing a lot of work to build those relationships—when we do that, we get good, frank and honest feedback because we build an element of trust.

The project in which your mum will—I hope—get involved is just one example of the many ways in which we do that. I will go back and have a wee look at how we did that and ensure that we replicate that approach across the board.

That was an ask from a number of forums and organisations, and it was one of the recommendations from the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls. There was also a call for better policy coherence, in relation to not only the budget process but how different parts of policy work together to produce better outcomes.

With regard to the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement, work is being done to reverse the process a bit, so that outreach is done not at the end of the process but at the beginning. Budget scrutiny in the Parliament is an example. Pre-budget scrutiny includes all the questions that members have asked me today about the process and how people can engage with it, and being much better at ensuring that stakeholders’ voices are heard.

A number of the recommendations from the previous iteration of Angela O’Hagan’s EHRBAG centred on how we improve those processes. There are a number of recommendations, and we are carefully considering them all. As I said, we have produced a draft response that has gone back to that group to ensure that we are on the right path. As soon as we have that feedback and come to conclusions on it, I can give that information to the committee for your consideration in the process. Much of what we are doing is around ensuring that we take a participation, accountability, non-discrimination and equality, empowerment and legality—PANEL—principles approach at the beginning of every policy development. Every policy development will have a financial impact, so not looking at the budget at that point would seem to be a bit myopic.

When I first came to the Scottish Parliament, I was on the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, and we did a piece of work around trying to track £1 from the Government to the front line. We found that that was impossible—it was especially tricky when it started to go through COSLA agreements and so on. What we produce now gives us a clear understanding of how equality and human rights considerations can make budget processes and the outcomes much fairer and more able to tackle endemic and systemic inequality. The approach is much better, but I am not saying that it is perfect, because it is not. That is why we are considering the recommendations from the EHRBAG.

The equality and human rights budget advisory group helps us to understand some of that. Also, the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement—there are so many acronyms in my head; I try to remember them all but I try not to use them because I do not like them—becomes incredibly important with regard to how we do what we do and how we ensure that the processes are transparent enough for people to understand them and see themselves in them.

I will take your comments back. I cannot comment on how the Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care is working on that, but I give you a commitment to look at that and come back with a more detailed response. I will look for that across the whole Government.

The work that we are doing with the mainstreaming team is important in ensuring that those processes are done in a way that means that people’s lives are reflected and real human stories are carried through those decision-making processes, so that we do not have the issues that stakeholders commented on in the committee’s previous meeting. We take all that very seriously, and I inject that into the work that I do. I am not silent on any of that, as you can imagine, and neither are other ministers. The Government is committed to doing that better, so we will come back to you with a more detailed response. I hope that that is helpful.