 Good morning and welcome to the 20th meeting of 2023 in session 6 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. This morning, we have received apologies from Annie Wells and Paul O'Kane. Our first agenda item is to decide whether to take agenda item 4 in private, are we all agreed. Rwy'n meddwl i'r agenda item 2, rwy'n meddwl i'r pre-budget scrutiny. This is the evidence session, where we have a citizens panel from the whole family equity, sorry, a beg your pardon equality project, and I refer members to papers 1 and 2. Now, we have all met previously before during an engagement session, and I'm delighted to welcome you back. I do realise that this is more a formal of a setting than our previous meeting, so I shall introduce myself and then invite the other committee members to introduce themselves as well. My name is Gokab Stewart and I am the convener of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. Hi everyone, I'm Maggie Chapman and I'm the deputy convener of this committee. Good morning everyone, I'm Cardin Adam MSP. So now, if each one of our panels would like to briefly introduce themselves, I think we'll go from left to right as I see it, so John please. Hi everyone, my name is Nyam, you can call me John. Thank you. Good morning everyone, my name is Justin. Hi, I'm Erica. Hi, I'm Shama. Good morning, my name is Affam. Thank you, and once again you are very welcome. I know that you are supported by other members of your group in the public gallery as well, and we welcome them too. Recognising their input and enabling us to be in this position today. I do understand that John is going to make an opening statement and then each of you will in turn read out a question or questions that you would like us as a committee to put to the minister for Equalities, Migration and Refugees in our session later this morning. John, are you all right to begin your statement? Thank you. Thank you. In August 2022, the Citizen Panel was adabrished as part of the whole family equality project of Capital Citizen Partnership. The panel brings together representatives from ethically diverse and economically disadvantaged communities aiming to create a space where we can combine our leave experience to advise a better practice for service provider. Over the last year, we have shared our leave experience and worked with a variety of partners producing some powerful insights in order to address socio-economic disparity. We have begun to engage in wider decision-making forums and developed ourselves into a consultative body, rude in a right-based principle that plays the human rights of individual front and centre. In August 2023, we embarked on participation in the Scottish Parliament pre-budget scrutiny work with Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. Throughout the process, we acquire knowledge of the budget process, the Equalities Committee's role and the integration of equality principles into policy. We also familiarise ourselves with ministerial responsibilities related to equality within portfolios. Our active involvement includes sharing experience, practical discussion and formulating department questions representing communities' priorities. This question may touch on various committees' areas such as housing on education, but our primary lens is equality. So we hope that by sharing our leave experience, we can encourage meaningful consideration of financial resources utilisation in order to improve inequality. Our goal is to represent a bridge between the committee and the communities we serve, facilitating open dialogue and collaboration for the betterment of all. Finally, we are aware that there is a new approach of consultation for the participation and communities team, so we would like to take a moment to say how much we enjoy the process, and we are eagerly looking forward to actively participating in any opportunity that arise, not only to enhance our surface but also to participate in advocacy library projects scrutiny in the future. Thank you. Thank you very much, John. That was very, very helpful to the committee. I would like to now hand over to Justin. Justin, I believe that you are going to give the question that you would like us to ask to the minister, and then I will leave it to you to introduce the next person who will be asking a question after yourself. Thank you, Justin. Thank you very much. Once again, my name is Justin. Thank you for this opportunity. The panel thinks that the universal boss pass policy has been a great way to tackle inequality and poverty, and that a similar approach should be used for free school meals, including removing stigma and barriers that, by taking away tokens, schemes and raising the age for free meals to 18. Now, here's the question. What has the minister done to work with the minister for children, young people and keeping the promise to understand the equality's impact of the current approach to free school meals? Will she commit to carrying out work on understanding how cross-cutting successes, like the universal boss pass, can be replicated in other policy areas to alleviate inequality? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Who would you like to go next? Erica. Erica. The panel thinks it's important that Scottish Government ministers work together to find ways to close the poverty gap without people having to rely on charities and social security payments. Keeping the promise is one way that children and families could be supported, but it must be delivered by a diverse workforce. My question is, can the minister explain how she is working with the minister for children, young people and keeping the promise to ensure that the promise considers, reflects and supports the cultural and ethnic diversity of all of Scotland's children? Thank you. Thank you, Erica. The panel has strong concerns about the ethnic minority pay gap, both for children growing up in Scotland and for the new Scots, and supporting people with ethnic minorities throughout the lifetime. We know that two thirds of emigrants in Scotland have a degree, but there still remains a significant pay gap. My question is, how is the minister taking a cross-profile approach to closing the ethnic minority pay gap, including working with ministerial colleagues to make sure that there are equal employability opportunities for school leavers and more turned ethnic minority pay gap, especially in the context of under races employment strategy? Thank you. The panel feels very positively about the opportunity that it has had to participate in the budget process and would like to see more of this work being done, especially by the Scottish Government. My question is, how does the minister connect directly with communities and how will she work with the colleagues to make sure that there are more participation and opportunities across portfolios, including policy education, awareness, raising of engagement, opportunities and feedback on the outcomes of engagement? The panel feels that many people, especially those from diverse ethnic backgrounds, are unaware of what makes their basic human rights, especially when they have moved to Scotland as adults. My question is, can the minister outline her commitment to ensure that all communities and people of all ages, including in Newscots, are educated on their human rights by explaining the opportunities that the new upcoming human rights bill will bring, including how the bill may link to national indicators and measuring the process of existing quality and anti-racism strategies? John, is there a question that you will ask? Our panel has concerns that, even though diversity education in personal social health economy classes has a lot of details on issues such as sexuality, race and gender, there is a little reflection or understanding of cultural differences. Here is the question, how is the minister working with the minister for children, young people and keeping promise to ensure that teachers have appropriate equalities and diversity training to fully support the teaching of cultural diversity and delivering the issue in a culturally sensitive way? Thank you very much for that. Thank you to all of you for such thoughtful questions. We now have time for a short discussion on how you have found the experience of participating and engaging with the committee. First, I want to ask any committee member if they have a particular question from our panellists that they would be happy to put to the minister in our next session. We have given it some thought prior to that. Maggie? Good morning and welcome to the committee again. Thank you for coming along. Thank you for the time that you have put into preparing for the session today. We have been talking about how we will ask your questions. Shama, I am going to ask the two questions that you have just dreaded out on your behalf and on behalf of the panel members to the minister. I suppose that one of my questions, just in my mind as I ask, when you were thinking about the question, are there any examples or any bit of your lived experience or the panel's lived experience that you would like me to keep in my mind as I am asking the question? I pass the answer. Just a little bit of thinking time, I suppose, for the panel is that I think that it would be helpful for us as committee members to have a little bit of insight in what made you think to ask that particular question if you have an interest in that area or an example that you would like to share with us, but you do not have to. Justin, could I bring you in? Erica Wood. Yes, so regarding the second question Shama asked, my input is that I think often when people move to Scotland from other countries, they do not know about their rights here and it would be great to see that the government launches programmes that help to raise awareness on human rights and just in general to educate us. I think that the responsibility lies on both sides, but it would be great to get more support. Thank you, Erica. That is really, really helpful, to be that in mind. Thank you, thank you very much. Captain. Thank you, chair, and thank you to the panel for your questions. I am going to be asking a question today on behalf of Affam. I would just like to ask you if there is anything that I should keep in mind while asking this question. I am particularly going to be focusing on participation and on that topic. Thank you. I had to think quite a bit about my particular question with the word communities and engagement. Personally, I think that the word communities kind of separates the person, separates the observer from communities. I like the idea of, like the citizens panel, the community is in the Parliament as well. We are part of the community, including the MSPs, everyone, and it would be nice for my experience as the panel to be more involved with different portfolios and then feed that back to the wider community. Seeing and experiencing, discussing ideas, lived experiences with MSPs close up, sharing the environment of ideas with everyone else, I think it's personally made a difference and it changes the definition of community. Overarching that all would be human rights, which is the guidelines for it. I have the pleasure this morning of asking John's question to the minister in relation to understanding of different cultures and how we start that in the classrooms. That is an important understanding that we all need to grasp. Also, in relation to legislation that comes through the Scottish Parliament and the impacts that that could have on our various diverse communities that we have throughout Scotland, I am just wondering and just to make sure that we are asking the minister absolutely the right questions, is there anything that we could do to help to improve that understanding? Is there anything that perhaps John or the panel might have thought about that we could bring into the committee or indeed our structures within the Scottish Parliament to make sure that culture and our cultural differences but also our cultural, in terms of what we actually do share as a community, that we can bring into the Parliament? Right. Before that, do you have any idea first? When it comes to education and especially children, we are at the beginning of influence with regards to understanding other people. I think the word cultural and differences for kick-off is actually causing a problem. As human beings, we are one to cause the cliché, but actually to expose ourselves to the different languages and the different cultures and the geographical evolution of why there is a difference in skin colour, language, what language is, why is it different. I think it's an important subject. It should be at the base of everything. It will give us more tolerance. Right. For me, I think that particular issue is more on how the government monitor the school curriculum in terms of how they implement the whole education. I've read through some kind of article about that. It's final that the level of unsuitable material in the use in school, that particular problem, is still happening here. There is a narrative experience where the parents who have their daughters being told to create a model of sexual models, male sexual models, in a mixed sex classroom. I feel that is because on the human rights and cultural difference and more on the sexuality of rights, that's a different thing. I think the monitor of the curriculum on how the teacher can train the student or educate the student, that particular problem would be really, really careful to do with. As Alvam said, children are our future, so it's the beginning of the diversity. I think that how we choose the material and what the way that we teach them is very important. Thank you. No, thank you very much and certainly that's my concerns as well. I've had those concerns as well, so thank you so much. Tolerance, parental engagement, I think we've got it, convener. Thank you. Thank you very much. Justin? Add to what John just said by also emphasising the need for the teachers to, for constant training and retraining of the teachers and those who educate our children and young people, because children are our future, and if we really want to achieve equalities, diversities across board, it has to start from the way we teach the children, so emphasis also has to be given to the teachers so that the vision of equalities across the whole of Scotland can be achieved within the shortest possible time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Justin, I beg your pardon. I will go next. I have the pleasure of asking Erika your question. Is there anything further that you wish to sort of let me know about that question or your thoughts around it? You don't have to, but you would like to add something. Thank you. One of the reasons that we were thinking to ask this question, and we want the committee to ask this question, is because the panel thinks that it would be great to see ethnic minority groups being represented in different work areas, for example, on children's hearing panels. That's very helpful. Just to reassure you, your question will be asked by my colleague Fulton MacGregor, who is on his way to the Parliament as we speak, so he will be coming in a little way through when the minister starts. He's just running late, so we're all right. Are there any—we've got a few minutes left, so is there any further comment that the panellists would like to add at this point? I suppose from the committee's point of view, we're particularly interested in if the Parliament can do anything further to support citizens like yourself to be able to talk confidently about budget provisions. Is there anything further that could be done? If you don't have an answer just now, that's okay, please do feedback to us. My other question, while you think about that one, is how do you think that more people could get involved in work like this? What could we do to enable that to happen? I know that FAMU indicated that you would like to say something. I'd like to answer all of them, actually, but I'll just take the one. We've got a couple of minutes. Actually, I've got thrown because there are so many good questions. I guess, because I'm based around the community question, it's really easy for us the panel as one to answer the question about improving community engagement. We sat in some of the luxurious offices in here and discussed, argued, shared our lived experiences and MSPs were walking past us looking in, wondering what was going on. Some were interested. That's community engagement. In a way, we've come to you. You just need to open the door and walk in or ask to be able to sit in and listen to the discussions that are going on. A lot of the times MSPs are misunderstood. They are human beings as well. The contact is lost through many hoops to jump through. I think that to improve the engagement with the community is to have panels like ourselves having our meetings in here, because that's what this is for, and sharing our lives with ourselves to help you, to help the MSPs to get through such difficult times. Thank you for that. That's very helpful and valuable insight. You are correct that our meeting rooms, the Parliament is built on transparency and accountability and MSPs do in fact walk past. It's quite a powerful point that you've made about having that door open and that they can walk in and listen directly themselves. Thank you for making that point. That's great. Fulton has joined us. I will give you a couple of minutes to find your feet. You are going to be asking Justin's question. Are you happy to would you like any further information from Justin regarding why they may have picked that particular question? That's what the rest of the committee members were asking, but you don't have to. We're coming to the end of this session. In that particular area, I was quite keen to follow up, because I know that when we done the engagement sessions, it was a pretty big area around bus passes and other universal access, but I would just give yourself the opportunity Justin to say if there's anything else. You've seen the question obviously, and I know that you're happy with that question. You've been working in partnership with the team here to draft the question, but if there's anything else you want to get across to me just now before the minister comes in. Thank you very much. At the level of the panel, we agreed to bring that particular and the rest of the other questions because we saw the importance primarily based on our lived experiences. Okay. Our engagement within our communities, feedback from children who go to schools, we see some children finding difficult to understand that how can't I eat with my friend? It's lunchtime, my friend isn't eating, I am eating, or my friend is eating something else different from mine, but when it comes to lectures, we sit together. If we can sit together and study together, why can't we eat together? Okay, so we took this among other feedbacks to our discussion sections, and we found that something that has worked effectively very well is the bus pass policy. It kind of equalizes everybody and it makes it easier for irrespective of your status, your ethnicity, everybody uses the bus pass, and it's worked very well. Okay, so we thought if the minister can probably look at that aspect as well and find a way to balance the free school meals, probably the cap of 18 years can be placed so that irrespective of your ethnicity, irrespective of your status, every child is entitled to free school meals. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. That brings us to the end of this part of the meeting, and I would just like to repeat our very sincere thanks to our panellists this morning. I know that you're going to take a seat now in the gallery to observe the following session that we have with the minister, and I know that you're going to be watching and making sure that we ask your questions and you will be in the room to hear the answers directly yourselves. So I will be suspending the meeting very briefly in order to allow for a change of panellists. Thank you very much. Our next agenda item is a pre-budget scrutiny session, and I welcome to the meeting this morning, Emerodic, the Minister for Equalities, Migration and Refugees, Rob Prisley, who is the head of mainstreaming and strategy unit, director, rate of equality, inclusion and human rights, and Fee Robertson, head of the Scottish budget team, directorate of budget and public spending, Scottish Government. Welcome to all three of you this morning. I refer members to paper 3, and in welcoming you minister, as you will be aware, the committee has been engaging with a citizens panel from the whole family equality project as part of our participatory approach to pre-budget scrutiny. In our session earlier, representatives from the panel, who are seated in the gallery behind you, gave us some questions that they would like us to ask you. We will go straight into those questions now. I should be very clear that those questions are on behalf of the whole panel, but each member of that panel, but each member of our committee will say who introduced that question in our session earlier. We have agreed the questions that we are going to ask on behalf of which panelist member, and the minister will then respond. I am sure that it will go very well. Just to put on the record the questions that we are asking minister, Arvir Betum, on behalf of the panellists, we thought that it was very important that our panellist voices were put front and centre of this pre-budget scrutiny session. In the light of that, we will kick off with the questions. It is me that is going to go first. I am asking in that sense—it is not me at all, in fact—it is Erika. Erika's question was around the fact that the panel think that it is important that the Scottish Government ministers work together in ways to close the poverty gap without people having to rely on charities and social security payments. Keeping the promise is one way that children and families can be supported, but it must be delivered by a diverse workforce. Could the minister explain how she is working with the minister for children, young people and keeping the promise to ensure that the promise considers, reflects and supports the cultural and ethnic diversity of all of Scotland's children? Fantastic question to kick things off. Thank you very much, convener. I am very aware that the citizens panel members are behind me and I feel a bit rude. Apologies to everyone behind me, but I need to address the convener, but I completely appreciate the work that has been put in here and that those questions are coming from members of the public. Possibly even more difficult to answer than usual, but I will emphasise from the beginning that my portfolio is Equalities, Migration and Refugees, so I will do my very best to answer those questions in the scope of that remit. Although I understand that Equalities is so broad and it might be quite difficult to tie things in, I am certainly more than happy to bring in officials and we are happy to write to other ministers and directorates as appropriate to get the committee fuller answers if needed if we are going into depth on colleagues' portfolios. In terms of working with Natalie Donne around the promise, you will be aware, convener, that there was a programme for government commitment to set up a cabinet sub-committee on the promise. The membership of that is still a work in progress, but I think that it is a demonstration of the wider mainstreaming approach that we are taking. While the promise is not my area of responsibility, I am committed to ensuring that equality and human rights are embedded in all that we do in government, including the delivery of the promise. We are delivering that change in a number of ways. You will be aware of the human rights bill. Of course, the consultation has recently closed on our proposals there. Legislating on those human rights will ensure that, among other things, the Scottish Government is taking a human rights-based approach on how we legislate and how we are treating our citizens. We are reforming the public sector equality duty, which will ensure that other public bodies are acting in the same way. We are focusing on building capacity and changing culture within government and strengthening leadership, including at senior levels, and making better use of the equality data that we have. Thinking about our ambition that Scotland is an equal and fair place for any child to grow up, no matter their background, I will continue to work with colleagues, including the Minister for Children and Young People, and keeping the promise to ensure that we are meeting that across all our services, be it care, health, social education, that will require lots of portfolios to work together, which is reflected in the need for the cabinet sub-committee. Thank you for that minister. I think that, with our communications with the panellists and during this participatory process, what has come through is that members of the public do not see the portfolios in silos that their lives are interconnected. Lots of issues impact, for instance, housing, education—they all cross over. From their point of view, their question is regarding the different portfolios in different departments working together in order to have a budget that is relevant and appropriate in that way. Is there anything further that either you or Rob could give us information about delivering a diverse workforce? I think that the intent behind that question was that, if you have a diverse workforce, that is very reflective of the diversity of the children that they are going to be working with. Any one of the panels, minister, would you like to— Yes, certainly. I understand, particularly with the qualities, that there is so much crossover. That is reflected in the cross-government work that we are constantly undertaking. My only fear would be trying to go into detail on processes that I am not partied to on behalf of colleagues who could possibly come to this committee themselves and be far more helpful in that regard. In terms of a diverse workforce, I think that it is a very important point. However, as you will know, teachers have to comply with professional values, integrity, trust, respect and social justice. All teachers should be positive role models and ensuring that everyone that they encounter is treated with respect. More specifically around an anti-racism approach to employment overall, you will be aware that, last December, we published our new anti-racist employment strategy, which seeks to respond to the scale of institutional racism. The strategy provides practical guidance and support to help employers to take an anti-racist and intersectional approach to addressing racial inequality in the workplace. Rob, I do not know if there is anything else that you would like to add on that. There is work under way on—in particular, we are looking specifically at the Scottish Government and civil servants. There is work under way on diversifying the civil service workforce, which I do not have details on with me, but I would be happy to have colleagues right to the committee and provide some more information on that, which leads directly to Scottish Government civil service work. More broadly, that feeds into the work that the ministers have already referred to under the mainstreaming work, which is how we support other public bodies to equally—sometimes learning from them, sometimes supporting—equally work on diversifying the workforce. The knowledge and understanding of that workforce is also critical. Thank you for those responses. I know myself, especially in the teaching profession, that there have been many, many initiatives over the years to increase the diversity of the workforce. Unfortunately, I think that we would all admit that we are not making the progress in that area that we would like to see, but it is heartening to hear the continued work and the focus of the Scottish Government on that. On that note, I would like to pass over to my colleague, Megan. Thank you, convener. Good morning, minister. Good morning, panel. John is the author of my question today. John says that the panel has concerns that even though diversity education and PSHE classes has a lot of detail on issues like sexuality, race and gender, there is little reflection or understanding of cultural differences. John asks, how is the minister working with the minister for children, young people and keeping the promise to ensure that teachers have the appropriate equalities and diversity training to fully support the teaching of cultural diversity and delivering PSHE in a culturally sensitive way? I thank the committee and the panel again for a very in-depth question. I would hesitate to take such a broad brush approach, I suppose. I know that there are very good examples of PSHE led by very hard-working teachers across Scotland. As I mentioned, all teachers are expected, well required, to adhere to the GTCS professional values. They should be demonstrating, welcoming, encouraging and inclusive behaviours to ensure that everybody within schools is treated with respect. It is the responsibility of all staff, not just teachers in Scottish schools, to promote and facilitate that culture of equality and diversity and address individual and institutional discrimination, including where that stems from cultural differences. A specific example that I can give of us delivering appropriate training for teachers is that we are currently consulting on revised statutory teaching guidance for relationships, sexual health and parenthood education aimed at enabling children and young people to build positive relationships as they age. I appreciate that, as the convener alluded to, diversity education has come a long way in 20 years, but there is still so much work to do, and we recognise that. I welcome the scrutiny of that aspect, and I additionally welcome the approach that my colleague, the Minister for Children and Young People, is taking with the statutory guidance to help to ensure that teachers are empowered to deliver PSHE education in a culturally sensitive way. The phrase culturally sensitive is perhaps one of the most important aspects of that, because we certainly want young people from all different backgrounds to feel included, not excluded. I think that that is the narrative that is certainly coming through here. Do you think that a review into PSHE formats in terms of teaching is appropriate? We are looking at the new dynamic of diverse learning. Do you think that that would be appropriate to look at to make sure that we are including all cultures in the classroom, not just the cultures that we might have here within the Scottish Parliament? It is not something that I can go into great detail about here. I hope that you will appreciate it because it is not an area of responsibility that sits with me, but I know that the Minister for Children and Young People is keeping the promises as keen as the rest of government to ensure that we are doing all that we can around promoting that diverse culture within schools. I am more than happy to pass on any comments from the committee and any others in the education portfolio to her to make her aware of the asks from the committee and the citizens panel. The only thing that I would add is that within my responsibility area, we are doing lots of work at pace at the moment to launch the anti-racism observatory. What will happen there is that the data and the guidance and the evidence base that we can get from that institution will allow us to respond to the systemic issues that we know exist. Policy that is based on the new evidence that has previously not been collected perhaps as much as it should have or could have will allow us to be truly anti-racism as well as simply not racist. I am just wondering, convener, that this might be for private session, perhaps maybe a follow-up letter to the Minister for Children and Young People keeping the promise just to mirror what we have asked the minister this morning. I am happy to discuss that, that is fine. Minister, you mentioned the observatory there since you have brought that up. Where we are in the process with that, what status is the observatory in at the moment and at what point? These are questions that have been raised to me regarding the observatory. At what point will we see an impact? You will appreciate that I am working very closely with the anti-racism interim governance group co-chairs around what exactly the observatory will look like, functions and the constitution of the body. I am not in a position where I can share all of that with committee at the moment, but I will, of course, keep you updated as things move along, but we are, as I say, moving at pace and as reflected in the programme for government in a position at the moment that we expect to be launching the observatory by the end of the year. Well, that would be great. Thank you very much. I shall move on to my colleague Maggie. Thank you very much, co-chef. Good morning, minister. Good morning to your officials. I have two questions that I am going to put to you on behalf of Shama from the panel. The first one is, Shama writes, the panel has strong concerns about the ethnic minority pay gap, both for children growing up in Scotland and for new Scots, and feel that closing this gap is crucial to closing the poverty gap and supporting people from ethnic minorities throughout their lifetime. We know that two thirds of immigrants to Scotland have a degree, yet there still remains a significant pay gap. So, Shama's question is, how is the minister taking a cross portfolio approach to closing the ethnic minority pay gap, including working with ministerial colleagues to make sure that there are equal employability opportunities for school leavers and monitoring the ethnic minority pay gap, especially in the context of the anti-racist employment strategy? Again, I really appreciate the spirit of the question. I think that this goes back to what Megan Gallacher and I were just discussing is institutional racism, systemic change, the need for which has only grown as we become more aware of its effect on people, including those seeking to work in Scotland. Very simply, we want Scotland to be a place where anyone has equal opportunity to enter, sustain and progress in work in an inclusive labour market. Going back to December 2022, when we published our new anti-racist employment strategy, that is also underpinned by a series of actions that we are undertaking in partnership with key stakeholders, including evaluation of the minority ethnic recruitment toolkit, to ensure that it continues to support employers in their recruitment of people from racialised minority backgrounds. Development of the next stage of our anti-racism workplace training framework, which will support public and private employers to assess their training needs and provide learning pathways that will build the capability of employers to address racial inequality in their workplace, and guidance to show how employers have used positive action to address underrepresentation, retention and progression of staff within their workforce. It will continue to encourage and support public sector leadership to build that understanding of institutional racism and its impact and to address the recommendations of the committee's inquiry into race equality employment and skills. That has all of course been taken forward in the context of our new fair work action plan, which will meet our ambition of becoming a leading fair work nation by 2025. There are quite a few bits and pieces in there. In reference to one of your earlier answers about the anti-racism observatory, there is a challenge that the committee has heard time and time again, year after year, that we do not necessarily have the right data and we do not monitor effectively in terms of comparable data, either geographically or sexually, or any of the other stratifications that we might need to. With the anti-racist employment strategy and the action plan that you have outlined, and I suppose that it is linked into the fair work action plan, what are the relationships between those strategies and the anti-racist observatory? There is no point in all of this good work going on if it does not join up, if it does not connect and we do not actually see the impact of good work and where the gaps and where things are falling through the cracks. That is exactly what we are trying to do here. Covid was not the only or the first example of where not having that data on intersectional inequalities led to poorer outcomes for different groups, but it is certainly what brought the AIGG together, which eventually recommended the anti-racism observatory. The impact of that will be far more wide-ranging than simply addressing only the inequalities that became clear through the pandemic. On connecting, it is important to note that the observatory is not the answer to racial inequality. It is part of the solution. What it will allow us to do is to create stronger evidence-based policy. In terms of getting data, it is also not the only approach that we are taking in recognising that intersectional data requirement. You will be aware that we are also, at the moment, looking at reviewing the operation of the public sector equality duty. I recently wrote to stakeholders outlining the next steps around that. That included two key regulatory changes, including revising the current pay gap reporting duty to include reporting on ethnicity pay gaps. Pay gap reporting, of course, being an important means of driving that action to spotlight and reduce pay inequalities, affecting certain disadvantaged groups, and extending that requirement to report on pay gaps between men and women to include reporting on pay gaps relating to disability and ethnicity. That will encourage public bodies to take more effective action on equality issues, affecting their disabled and minoritised staff. One of the challenges that we have is that we have identified gaps in data. You have explained some of the work and the way to plug those gaps. In terms of evidence-based policy, we already have evidence of inequality, and I urge focus on action rather than just collecting stuff that we already know is problematic. I take on board what you say about things having to work together and some of those strategies being new. I am sure that I speak for the committee. We would welcome updates on the different strands of work that you have outlined in the course. Maybe not only as part of our pre-budget scrutiny but on-going. The question is also from Sharma. She writes that the panel feels that many people, especially those from diverse ethnic backgrounds, are unaware of what constitutes their basic human rights, especially when they have moved to Scotland as adults. Can the minister outline her commitment to ensuring that all communities and people of all ages, including new Scots, are educated on their human rights by explaining the opportunities that the upcoming human rights bill will bring, including how the bill might link to national indicators and measuring the progress of existing equality and anti-racism strategies? I am glad to hear the word opportunity there to describe the process of the human rights bill coming forward, because that is an important and exciting part of what we are doing here. It is not simply about incorporating those four treaties into Scots law as far as we can, but it is also an opportunity to inform people and raise awareness about the rights that they have and will have once the treaties are incorporated. Implementing the legislation effectively and communicating it effectively will be as important as passing the ambitious piece of legislation. That is why we have established an implementation working group to develop early thinking in this space, including on how to best raise awareness of the rights within the bill. It is essential that the work here is targeted, so we are ensuring that those communities who may at the moment be furthest from accessing those rights, furthest from power, have a greater understanding of what the bill does for them. The bill will create a duty on ministers to publish a human rights scheme that will require regular reporting on what Scottish ministers are doing to implement the bill, including on awareness raising. We will continue to develop our thinking on how that links to the national performance framework, as well as broader work across Government, including on anti-racism. I appreciate what you said about this being a work in progress. The political discussion about the legislation being that phenomenal opportunity to be talking about rights more generally across society, you speak about targeted work to make sure that people who are furthest away from power, who are most often marginalised, most often excluded, are really important. We have had discussions here before around the easy-to-ignore groups of people, people who do not have a voice. I think that this panel is one opportunity of trying to redress that balance. It does not go the full way. One of the questions that comes out of what you said for me is that people need to know about their rights in order to know whether they are accessing them or realising them. I think that there is also information that is needed, probably by people in this building, about what we mean by having a right to housing. What does that actually mean? What kind of house? Is it just any form of shelter of your head, or does it have to be warm, secure, or all of that kind of thing? I am interested in the implementation group's work. Is there something around building that understanding of what we might describe as a definition of the minimum call in terms of our obligations? Certainly, this is forming a very key part of the discussions around the human rights bill. That is why we have put a focus on access to justice, because rights have to mean something and not having them realised or not being able to access them has to mean something. I hope that I can count on the member's support in spreading those issues throughout the progress of the bill, because we need to get this right. I appreciate the input from stakeholders and the public so far, and I hope that that continues throughout the process of the bill. Just a quick supplementary from me, the implementation working group. Who is that group responsible to? The implementation working group is one of a number of groups that are supporting the implementation and the formation of the bill and then reports through the direct dry working director of equality inclusion human rights and works through that. And then ministers, minister and the cabinet secretary kept regularly updated of the work of that group and what is coming from it. Thank you very much, thank you for that. I would like to now move on to my colleague Fulton, please. Thanks, convener, and good morning minister and to your team. My question is from Justin, who is in today. He writes, The panel think that the universal bus pass policy has been a great way to tackle inequality and poverty and that a similar approach should be used for free school meals, including removing stigma and barriers by taking away talking schemes and raising the age of free meals to 18. So his question is what is the minister done to work with the minister for children, young people and keeping the promise to understand the equality's impacts of the current approach to free school meals? Will she commit to carrying out work on understanding how cross-cutting successes, like the universal bus pass, can be replicated in other policy areas to alleviate inequality? Again, a very important question on a key policy area for the Scottish Government. I will just highlight that in terms of free school meals we do have the most generous free school meal offer anywhere in the UK. It saves parents £400 per eligible child per year, so it is an incredible investment. We remain absolutely committed to the expansion of universal free school meals. Our programme for government has set out that we will be working with COSLA to prepare schools and infrastructure for the expansion of school meals to primary six and seven pupils who are eligible through the Scottish child payment. The next step is working with local authorities to undertake the planning work that is necessary to deliver that, recognising that there is a big infrastructure and resource requirement on schools to deliver those school meals every day, which is something that needs to be worked through on a local basis. More broadly, I would point out that commitments like that clearly require significant funding, and we are in a very difficult budgetary situation this year and next. However, it is an example of how our on-going work on equality and human rights budgeting is making a difference and that we are still prioritising that social justice response to poverty, climate change and our interconnected goals. We are committed to further embedding equality and human rights budgeting, which is the role that I have in terms of not just the Minister for Children, Young People and Keeping the Promises portfolio, but across all of Government. I recently met the Equalities and Human Rights Budget advisory group along with the Deputy First Minister to discuss what more we can be doing. Of course, we have also produced an equality statement alongside the budget for over 10 years now, which represents an unbroken and consistent commitment to examine the impact of the Scottish budget on Scotland's population with that equality's lens. We have also published our response to the equality human rights budget advisory group's recommendations in September. In that response, we shared an overview of current and planned activity that progresses action on the recommendations. At the heart of that response is continuing to improve how equality analysis improves decision making such as with this example. We have a ministerial workshop on equality and the budget plan for early November, and I will take that request to that workshop as fulfilling the cross-portfolio work-in. Thank you very much, Minister, for that third response. I think that you have actually predicted the supplementary that I was going to ask, and that was around about your role with other departments and other ministers. I am conscious that a lot of the questions that they have asked are questions of other ministers. I think that you have answered them really well, but I was going to ask what specific work you are doing with ministers, how you are doing that work, but I think that you have answered that. I suppose that I will just give you a chance to reiterate the example of free school meals, the universal policy of free school meals, which I, myself, am a big supporter of, as well as Justin and the other members of the panel, is that something that comes up regularly at those meetings that you described, the specific issue of free school meals? I suppose that all policies come up, because we are keen to scrutinise what we are doing constantly, and certainly any measure that is specifically aimed at supporting children out of poverty and families out of poverty, you will know, is a core mission of the Government, and where a substantial amount of our budget is currently focused in on. As an example, we are spending over £3 billion on policies that are aimed at tackling poverty and supporting people, which will have an impact on how people can make it through the cost of living crisis and other events that they are facing. In terms of working with other ministers, it is a portfolio mind that just lends itself to doing that, so a lot of the work that we are doing, Rob, is mainstreaming, encouraging other ministers to think about things within equalities and human rights lens, and also requiring them to do so through the changes that we are making to the budget process and equality duties. Minister, I am going to ask two questions. My first question is on behalf of Afam, and my second question is based on stakeholder evidence. Before I asked the question from my family, I had asked him earlier if there was anything to bear in mind while asking this question, and I feel that it was quite poignant in that he said that when we talk about communities, and I am sure that he will correct me if I am wrong after this, but communities can often come across that word itself as othering, or something at a distance from the person doing engagement with the community. To keep in mind that we are all one community, and communities equals diversities within our whole human race community. I will ask the question from Afam. The panel feels very positively about the opportunity that it has had to participate in the budget process, and I would like to see more of that work being done, especially by the Scottish Government. How does the minister connect directly with communities, and how will she work with colleagues to make sure that there are more participation opportunities across portfolios, including policy education, awareness raising of engagement opportunities and feedback on the outcomes of engagement? Another excellent question, and I just want to first respond by saying that I am glad that the panel members feel so positive about this process. I feel positive about it as well. It is genuinely a really good experience to be coming to committee and hearing from committee members, and to hear directly about how that has been influenced by the work that the committee has undertaken by engaging with the public. I feel very positive about it as well. In terms of my direct engagement with communities' equalities, migration and refugees, it is a very people-focused portfolio, so it is over-recessed, but throughout the parliamentary term there is a lot of direct engagement with people who are making use of services. I am going back to Maggie Chapman's earlier comment about easy to ignore. It is a far better descriptor than the two often used, hard to reach, because we know where a lot of those people are. I will engage with people directly through the Scottish Refugee Council and other bodies that we know assist people who require that extra help to engage with those in power. I am also dealing with councils and other support networks that engage directly with people. Through them, I can meet with clients and people who might not think to email a minister or otherwise to try to get in touch with me. I am proud of the Scottish Government's vision for public participation and the importance that is being placed on ensuring that people's expenses and time are paid when they are engaging or that engagements are designed with a wide range of needs and circumstances in mind, keeping in mind that people may be travelling from rural or island communities or require accessibility measures in place before they are able to fully contribute. The important thing for us now is to ensure that those participation offers result in change that we can meaningfully demonstrate. I would like to come back to the committee and say that this is how participation has changed direction or broadened part of our policymaking due to listening to what people have told us and have taken the time to explain to us. I hope that that has answered the question. I find it really interesting how you are saying that we need to go on to reach out to those communities, because a family that mentioned that they are there, the door is open. I think that that is really important to note that we have to make that effort. You might be slightly covered my second question that I am going to ask, but the witnesses through the scrutiny process that we have done here on the committee have said that understanding the impact of committees on the budget is challenging, and the committee's own work has shown that increasing participation in the process is valuable but resource-intensive and time-consuming, especially given the lack of public awareness of the budget process. That is the preamble. The question is, can the minister explain how she will work with colleagues to promote participation by ensuring that the budget documentation more effectively demonstrates the changes and decisions that are made as a result of committee scrutiny? I suppose that that is saying that we are transparent and that the information is there, but how can we ensure that it is coming back to us in a way that is understandable and digestible? I will bring in a moment some initial reflections on that. The Equalities and Fair Scotland budget statement is an incredibly accessible document for something that is describing a very complex and large piece of work that is the budget every year, but I appreciate that we do not just want people to be involved right at the end. As a look back, we want them to be involved throughout the budget process, and we are committed to improving the accessibility of the budget itself through successive open government action plans. We have worked closely with civil society partners to improve the understanding and accessibility of public finances. In the current plan, we have committed to improving the accessibility of our fiscal data and information, benchmarking our fiscal transparency against international standards and improving public engagement and participation on the public finances. Using our 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, but I will bring in the committee to add anything around that. I do not have very much to add, but what we are also working on at the moment is a research paper for our citizens budget. That is going through the clearance process at the moment, and once that has been done, we can get back to you in writing with what is involved in that. That is really fascinating. Thank you so much, thank you, minister. Back to myself, I have some questions myself. In previous years and this year's stakeholders in the committee have noted a lack of connection between policy and budget documents and concerns about the lack of meaningful detail in the equality and fairer budget Scotland statement. The Scottish Government's response to the equality and human rights budget advisory group recommendations includes the commitment to better align the programme for government and the budget process. In that context, can the minister explain how it will address the committee's previous concerns about the lack of clarity between documents in the upcoming budget round and how the equality assessment process will influence that? Not only from the committee, but also in our previous sessions with our citizens panels, that lack of connection was raised from the community level as well. The average citizen does not always see the connection between the decisions that are made and the direct impacts that it has on their lives and their communities. How will the minister address that? Thank you, convener. I hear the criticism and it is exactly that kind of accessibility and transparency in the process that we are trying to improve. It is not that anyone is not committed to showing our work on equality budgeting, but it is about how we best build that into the process and make sure that it is being put out in a format that is understandable. I will bring Robin in a moment to go in on the detail. In terms of the programme for government, I would say that our equality opportunity community within the policy perspective has given ministers, cabinet secretaries, a very clear focus. The mandate letters that you might have seen go to cabinet secretaries about their portfolios communicate clearly what the expectations are of the Government and how we should prioritise our core missions. I hope that that has gone some way to helping people to see how all of the policy perspective programmes for government budget interconnect and how ministers are putting the work in to make sure that all of what we do is building us towards the missions that the First Minister has clearly set out. However, on the process, I appreciate that there is always more that we can do to increase participation and understanding more widely. I will come on to the point on the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement and the feedback from the equality and human rights budget advisory group. Specifically, there is the question of how do we increase the alignment between the quality analysis that is done around about the programme for government time with the EFSBS, not very catchy title. This year, we have taken on board that feedback both from the committee and from that group. We have made a number of significant changes this year. We have piloted a new approach to reviewing the equality information that is contained within PFG and how that faded, and then feeding that directly into the EFSBS. We are aligning those two pieces of equality analysis, and then we will illustrate that through the published quality and fairer Scotland budget statement. Specifically, we have also moved some of the analysis that is done earlier in the year, which allows it to better inform decision making, which is the critical point that we are trying to reach, which is that it is not a post-hoc analysis, it is directly informing decision making. The minister referenced earlier on that the minister and Deputy First Minister and others are attending a ministerial workshop on equality in the budget in November, and that information will then feed into that to allow that discussion to be well informed by evidence early on in the budget process. It is incremental improvements, but we are continuing to increase that alignment, and, important as the minister's reference, we will be able to show in a transparent way how we are doing it. Just to get a wee bit of further reassurance about the Scottish Government's commitment to implementing the equality human rights budget advisory group, just in the interests of inclusivity, I do not use just initials, so we all know. Yes, the budget advisory group's recommendations. Can the minister explain the funding implications of that? Are they significant, or are they process-driven changes that can be met within existing budgets? This is more ably answered by Rob here, but there is certainly a focus on the process when I have met the chair of the equality human rights budget advisory group. The focus has very much been around culture, processes and the turnaround of the budget, and how we can ensure that we are working throughout the process, not just at the end. Certainly a lot of it has been about that culture change and putting in place checks and balances to ensure that any minister, regardless of their portfolio, has quality and human rights budgeting in their mind, so that it becomes habit rather than something that we have to constantly drive through. The question is about cash costs, and there is a process improvement. The cost is about staff time and critically staff capability. It is not the capability of a small number of specialists in this area, but the capability of broader staff to understand and work with a quality day from a quality budgeting to inform decisions. We are aware of the staff time question, but critically we are working on the staff capability question. An example of that is that we are working with the OECD, who are running a couple of pilots for us on gender budgeting specifically, and a key part of the remit that we have agreed with OECD on that is that they will focus on developing staff capability and that is that broad staff capability, not the capability of a small number of specialists like myself and Fee who work in this area. I would like to bring in Fulton. It is a follow-up question from the discussions that we have already been having. The response to the equality and human rights budget advisory group makes it clear that the Scottish Government does not intend to greatly increase direct engagement with the public on the budget process, and yet that is something that we have heard through our engagement sessions and doing it a wee bit differently here, that the citizens panel in wider public have all asked for. There has been a real emphasis put to us about the importance of understanding lived experience in the context of spending outcomes. Will the minister acknowledge those calls for more opportunities for the public to engage more directly with the Scottish Government in the budget process? If so, are you able to outline why citizen-led approaches to reflect lived experience have not been incorporated into those budgets? We have committed to exploring opportunities to improve public engagement with the budget process and to continue to make the budget process more transparent, including through exploring a citizen's budget. I think that there is a strong commitment there, and there is definitely the will within government to hear more from people who have been empowered to make comment on the budget in a way that allows us to take that into account. That is not just about opening opportunities for people to speak to us, but about making the process more clear and transparent and easy to digest, not making it an inaccessible set of documents. Those two things go hand in hand, because if people are empowered to understand what it is that we are doing and why we are making the decisions that we make, they will be able to comment and scrutinise in a far more informed way, which is absolutely welcome by the Government. I will end by saying that we are committed to exploring more opportunities for people to engage with the process. Minister, I know that it is something that you are personally very committed to yourself. I have a wee follow-up to that. You may not have the answer to that. It came up during our sessions with the citizens panel on retrospective analysis. When budgets are set, it came from our discussions that citizens thought that budgets are set and that they follow policy. What work is done to analyse the impact of that? Did the money reach the right people? What work? As I said, I am fully prepared for the fact that you may not have the answers today. I do not expect that, but it would be good for us to hear what work the Government does to do that impact analysis. Our Equalities and Fairer Scotland budget statement links the spending that has been undertaken with national outcomes. That does, as a document, provide that link between what we have spent money on and how that has changed things for people through an equalities lens. More generally, one of the commitments that we have made in response to the Equalities, Human Rights and Budget advisory group is to say that we are going to ensure that officials are resourced, going back to the points that Robbyn had made earlier, to mainstream and to provide that retrospective look and to analyse what spending has resulted in. That concludes the session now. We will take some time to reflect on the evidence that we have heard. Any matters that arose during the committee of further information that the panel has offered to suppliers with, we will greatly accept that offer and look forward to getting that information from you. We will also write to the Scottish Government in due course. I thank the minister for her attendance this morning and to her officials, Rob and Fee. On that note, I will suspend the meeting as we move into private session.