 Welcome to the first meeting of the welfare reform committee for 2016 and a happy new year to everyone. It now seems so long ago that it's faded into distant memory. Could everyone make sure that the mobile phones and other electronic devices are silent and switched to aeroplane mode? First item on our agenda, can we agree to take item three or consideration of the report of the budget in private? The second item on our agenda today is our consideration of the Scottish draft budget for 2016-17. I apologise for the tight timescale involved in this exercise. It's one that's been totally out with, our control, but we did feel important to take some evidence on it. One of the issues that we did want to consider was the gender perspective on the budget. I'm pleased that today we have a number of contributors from a wide range of organisations to help us to shape our view. We had hoped to have Anne Henderson, the assistant secretary of the STUC, to participate today, but unfortunately Anne is ill and she has sent her apologies. I should say that Claire Adamson and Christina McKelvie will join us slightly later. We have with us today Emma Rich, who is the executive director of Engenda. Angela O'Hagan, who is the convener of the Scottish Women's Budget Group. Samantha Smithers, the chief executive of the Faucet Society. Dr Marcia Scott, the chief executive of Scottish Women's Aid. Lorna Kettles, the research adviser for the Scottish Women's Convention. Welcome to the committee. I know that all of you have very strong views on not just the budgetary process but many of the issues affecting women in society. What we are specifically interested in today is whether any of the financial decisions being made by the Scottish Government with reference to the budget will affect either positively or adversely on women in Scotland. Some of that might well be the direct spend of the Scottish Government in its departmental activities. Some of it may well be the funding for the services for which the Scottish Government has responsibility, such as health. Indeed, some of it may well be responsible for other areas of expenditure by the Scottish Government, such as in local government, where employment is important to women and service delivery is important to women. I ask a general question to start. Do you feel that what you have seen so far is enough to support and enhance women in society in Scotland? Anyone? I will launch in. I suspect that I am going to try to focus specifically around a few issues that are terrifically important around domestic abuse, but I think that it is important to establish at the outset that I am a big supporter of Scotland's approach to domestic abuse being intrinsically linked to the drivers of women's inequality and want to just remind the committee or commend the committee for connecting domestic abuse and the impact of social security cuts and structures. In fact, if we are serious at all about ending domestic abuse in Scotland, we have to show significant political, social and economic commitment to addressing the broader indicators of women's inequality. That theme will run through, I suspect, much of what is said today, but certainly through the three points that I think are most urgent for us in the budget. I think the point that will certainly be raised by my colleague in the Scottish Women's Budget Group will be about the problem of a local national disconnect in terms of budget thinking. We absolutely are delighted with the fact that most of the Violence Against Women and Girls Fund and the Children's Services Fund money seems to have been protected in the budget, and that money is a really important funding source, both for Scottish Women's Aid but even more importantly for local groups. However, the message has been from the national government for quite a long time that local groups need to wean themselves from national and central funding and become part of the local and community picture around community planning partnerships decision making around local funding. The difficulty is that we have a strategy in this budget that protects the never enough, but we're delighted to see that it's a relatively stable amount of funding at the national level while maintaining a freeze on council tax and cutting local services, which are something like 58% of the budgets of our local groups come from local funding, and mostly from housing budgets. It can't be taken separately as if somehow the women and children experiencing domestic abuse don't live in these communities that are affected by local council tax. Our concern is that there's a lack of gendered joined up thinking around that and it's very clear if you look at housing allocations and housing policy that there's a real failure in think in terms of the 90 million allocated for affordable housing, which we absolutely welcome. The single biggest reason that women return to abusive relationships and this is true and has been true for many years is a lack of affordable quality housing and safe housing. This is an absolutely critical issue for safety for women and children and the failure to gender housing allocations and housing policy means that women experiencing domestic abuse continue to be disadvantaged in the system and I'll just draw your attention. I can't share this with you quite yet because it's still protected, has been sent to the Minister for Housing. It's a report called Change, Justice and Fairness. Why should we have to move everywhere and everything because of him? The project done with women experiencing homelessness and domestic abuse in Fife, I think it's a critical damning piece of damning good intentions really about the impact of the failure to gender housing policy in Scotland, both at the local and national levels. I just need to underscore the importance of being willing to move from good intentions to actual good practice in that. Finally, I think the largest issue for us and I will of course want to come in again later if possible, but the third issue that's really critical and problematic for us in this budget is legal aid and legal services. As our colleagues in the Law Society have pointed out, the situation for legal aid is fairly dire for women and children experiencing domestic abuse and one of the core recommendations in this report is that women be given access to free legal support for protection orders for dealing with the housing system in general, which is legally incredibly complex if you're looking at matrimonial homes issues in the law. Finally, the issue of women with no recourse to public benefit and around child contact issues are enormously expensive legal for women, which means that they have to make very unsafe decisions in the issues around representing themselves and their children in child contact cases, but also the failure to stay in their own homes and the enormous harm that relates to having to move into refuge or into other forms of emergency accommodation. Thank you for the opportunity and the on-going interest of the committee and the follow-through from the inquiry to maintain a focus on gender following the recommendations from the committee's inquiry last year. In trying to set out some key points, I commend the submissions from sister organisations as well that I think have highlighted a number of key specific issues. I think that the all-point to a mixed bag of measures and impact in this budget. I think that there are significant protections, some of which Marsha has touched on. The retention of funding, albeit slightly reduced, but the retention of the Scottish welfare fund, the bedroom tax mitigation and the council tax reduction funding are all very welcome. However, the focus on mitigation is—certainly the Scottish Women's Budget Group had anticipated an indication of more signals of a move from mitigation to more direct transformative action as to how the new powers coming down the line, albeit not within the scope of this budget, but signalling how the character of social security in the future is to be in Scotland, rather than the enduring focus on mitigation, which is necessary and welcome, but it needs to be partnered with further action. The focus on mitigation is also significantly undermined by the massive cuts to local government, although health budgets have been protected. There are questions about what is meant by the funding allocated to the integration funds of health and social care and what the impact of that is on local authority budgets alongside the massive reduction in local government funding. I appreciate difficult resource allocations. Choices had to be made around resource allocation and some of those choices are difficult in terms of resources. Potentially—or they seem to be—political choices as well. The budget is always about difficult choices, but mitigation is severely undermined when front-line services that women rely on as service users and service providers will be significantly affected by the reduction in funding to local government. I think that there is lots more to see on that, but by a way of setting out a stall, as it were, I think that I will leave the comments there. Thanks very much, convener. In gender, as with other sister organisations, I think that it welcomes the opportunity to give evidence to the committee on this and very much values the committee's engagement with the issue of women and social security over the past session and the sustained follow-through from the inquiry, which was exceptionally welcome and really illuminated some of the terrain. As our written submission alludes to, austerity and welfare reform have both been processes in which successive announcements have revealed cuts that predominantly affect women and children, and this seems to be a very helpful way into this budget. I think that I would echo the comments made by Scottish Women's Age and Scottish Women's Budget Group, and in gender has joined Scottish Women's Budget Group for years in calling for substantive and substantial gender budget analysis to be included within Scotland's budget process. We absolutely recognise that this budget was the product of a very abbreviated process that was not within the gift of Scottish Government, and that placed enormous pressures on officials and others. However, I think that we share the disappointment of others at the extent to which some of the rhetoric around women's equality has been reflected in the process and the explanations of spending allocations. The Cabinet Secretary for Community, Social Justice and Pensions Rights has made very clear in written submissions to this committee that the current constitutional arrangements of Scotland do not allow the Scottish Government to mitigate fully all of the cuts that have been made in the form of social security. Clearly, we are looking to the future in terms of the additional powers over social security that are coming to Scotland, but in the meantime, a more broad-based approach to mitigation must therefore be taken. Things are getting worse for women because of cuts to UK social security under the aegis of welfare reform, and therefore, we would call for mitigation attempts to look at the whole raft of spending that is necessary on women and women's concerns, including violence against women, as set out by Scottish Women's Aid and also by colleagues at Rape Crisis Scotland, but also employability, transport, issues around women and the labour market, housing, as Dr Scott said, and childcare, and long-term care. Mitigation cannot simply be about trying to redress some of the cuts to universal credit and other provisions by direct payments to individuals, but it must recognise the effect of those cuts on households, families and on women's lives and to go back to your initial question, convener, to women's equality, because clearly all of the cumulative effect of these cuts and the women's budget group tells us that women have now borne 81 per cent of the decade of cuts in terms of consolidation and personal tax rises and cuts to social spending. That affects women's equality. We know that women's income is directly related to the extent to which they enjoy equal rights with men in Scotland, and so we must take other action if those cuts are to persist and be sustained. We are very much looking forward to the future in our submission. We did have a sense of deja vu when looking at the budget this year. We could actually have resubmitted last year's submission with very few changes, but recognising the fact that this is a pre-election budget, that it is happening within the time frame that it is, we are calling on the committee to make some fairly stiff calls for a better process. We have heard a lot about the ambitions of Scottish Government for realising women's equality through the medium of the allocation of spending in Scotland. We consider that to be imperative now in the face of these cuts to women's incomes, and we urge a much more substantive process that equals gender budget analysis. We have had very small incremental changes that have been positive to the equality budget statement, but we have not yet seen what we want, which is an analysis of the impact of the cumulative spending decisions of Scottish Government on women's inequality and steps taken to redress any inequalities that still exist. To echo what sisters have said previously, the Scottish Women's Convention really appreciates the opportunity to come and provide a bit of evidence today. To echo the comments that have already been made, the women that we talk to on a daily basis have said the same things. We try to be positive where we can be positive at the Scottish Women's Convention, and we do quite a lot of work on a national level with other organisations that are down south. They often comment on things like that and the ability to be involved in a process and to have a closeness with electorate representatives that does not exist down south. Similarly, when efforts are made, such as the Scottish Government's commitment that they have made to mitigating the bedroom tax and the welfare fund, that is not seen down south. I suppose that we have to appreciate that efforts are trying to be made, which is positive and which we would always welcome as an organisation. However, there were a few things that we were a bit disappointed with. I echo what you said about it being a budget that was very similar to last year's budget. There was a lot in it that we are still constantly asking for the same things, and there are really common sense things, but there does not seem to be a joined upness. We understand that there are limited powers in relation to welfare. We did quite a bit of work at the end of last year around the employability services that will be coming and the changes to social security. It is very positive about the special engagement processes and the effort that was made to try to get women involved in that. That was really positive, but we have to look at it as a whole. We have to look at it not just as altering the frequency of the payment of tax credits, but we need to look at why women are receiving tax credits. It is because of the type of employment that they are doing, because from a very early age there is more spending on modern apprenticeships that are designed for men and for women, so that gender streaming that continues will perpetuate inequality as it goes on. Although there are positives, there are some things that need to be borne in mind, such as transport, childcare and women's access to the labour market, and why there is a reliance on welfare support anyway. We know that women tend to rely on welfare support when they are in employment. It is a top-up. It is through tax credits or through council tax or housing benefit. We were somewhat disappointed that a little bit more was not done about supporting things that will mean that there is perhaps not as much as a reliance on welfare benefits. Again, they seem like really simple things, but we are positive. We are looking forward to seeing what is going to come out of the powers that will come down, but we cannot just look at the powers themselves. They must be borne in mind with other aspects that the Scottish Government has power to make budgetary decisions so far. Thank you very much, convener. It is a fantastic opportunity to come and give evidence here today. As you said, down south, we do not really get this opportunity, so I notice the difference. A couple of things that I wanted to pick up on, which a lot of the points have already been made by colleagues here today. There feels like there is a lack of a strategic approach to this. When you are mitigating the impact of what is a tidal wave of welfare reform, that is not that surprising in a way, but the missed opportunity of taking that gendered approach is about a more cost-effective way of managing our public finances. It is not about a concession to women. It is about doing things better, which is better for the public purse as well as everybody else. The connection between local and national is really fundamental. Cups at local level will have a massive impact on women. There is absolutely no question about it. They are disproportionately relying on local services. What will happen is that women informally will step into the breach in some cases. When you have social care services being pulled back or thresholds rising for those services and fewer people qualifying for them, that will have a direct impact on women, a direct impact on their employment. We know that. We also know in terms of childcare, where childcare becomes less affordable. It is often older women, grandparents, who step in to fill that gap. Despite the investment in childcare, children do not just stay three or four years old. Women need help when they want to return to work after maternity leave, and there is an absolute desert of childcare. There is no childcare support of any meaningful offer from the age of nine months to three years old. We need to invest in childcare infrastructure in the UK and create what we have been talking about as more of a national childcare service. It would be great to see the Scottish Government taking a different approach to childcare rather than an incremental, small steps approach that we have seen from the Westminster Government. There is a real opportunity for that. I think that the key thing to think about is the particular groups of women within this. Loan parents in particular by 2020 are going to be really significantly hard hit. We have only staved off the impact of the tax credit changes. We have not reversed them, so they are going to be coming down the line in 2020. Prediction is that there is going to be twice as many lone parents in poverty by 2030 as we have now. Women are in work and in poverty. That is the projection that we have seen. That is just going to get worse. It is going to be for other groups of older women, disabled women and so on. You know all the categories that have been listed in the submissions. It feels to me that there really could be a very different approach taken by the Scottish Government if they chose to see the opportunity of a gendered approach rather than simply by steps of mitigation. It feels a bit like it is lacking that ambition. There has been a huge range of issues raised, and no doubt we will come back to them. The issue that Dr Marcia Scott raised about legal aid is quite a fundamental one. Council cuts, council tax freeze. Can I just pick up on something that Dr Scott mentioned? You mentioned that with reference to domestic violence in women's aid groups and national and local funding, but, to be honest, it could apply to a range of things. There are two aspects that I wanted to probe about. You suggested that some of the local groups should look at trying to win themselves off national funding and look more to local sources of funding through community planning, partnerships and so on. There is a debate going on in Scotland. You see it in relation to health, education and the whole range of services. We do not like postcode lotteries, but we also believe, apparently, in local decision making. There is a contradiction. Do you believe that local groups should have the same level of funding and the same access to services across Scotland? Do you support the continuation of a variation of services across the country, depending on how local decisions are made? I think that it is a bit of a false dichotomy, I have to say. I want both of those things in a sense, which is, first of all, I have to reiterate that I am not saying to the local groups that they need to win themselves off of national funding, but I am just saying that that is the message through a series of governments that have come out with successive announcements around violence against women and now the violence against women and girls funding that is centrally driven. The question that you are asking is essentially what are the benefits and disadvantages of taking a local approach versus a national. I actually do think that it should be an and, not an or, in the sense that the services become sustainable and secure and mainstreamed at local level when they are clearly and transparently linked to local need. What you need in Shetland is going to be very different from what you need in West Lothian, or in Glasgow. The distribution and the exact shape of services needs to differ according to postcode, as far as I am concerned. There needs to be a gendered and needs-driven assessment at the national level about how need differs across those places. I think we need a pattern of spending that allows local control over shape, but that is driven by national outcomes as represented in Equally Safe. You know what you are saying about allocation should be based on postcode and need. Does that allocation then come nationally? The scale in Shetland is clearly different from the scale of issues in Glasgow, and therefore Glasgow would get more money based on need and demand. Do any of you support a view that says that services could be better in Glasgow than they are over the boundary in North Lanarkshire, or do you think that the services and funding for women who have need should be the same, whether you are in Cotebridge or in Carmthine? I think that there is not a yes or no answer to that. I think that women should be offered what they need, and I think that what they need depends and is driven by local circumstance. I suppose we could set a national standard, and I would love that actually. I would really love a national standard that says all women should have access to the criminal justice and civil justice system, and we are going to ensure that by making sure that any woman who experiences domestic abuse has access to free legal aid and free legal representation. That could be a national standard, and how that is delivered locally would need to be designed locally. You need to consider that in terms of how the rural services in practice would be funded to meet someone's needs in a rural area compared to a city. It may require a different funding model for some areas where it is a disproportionate cost to them to meet that need, but it is a really important need that needs to be met, so you just need to recognise the way that would impact. That is not what I am asking. I suppose I am thinking about the service users' perspective. You might not be familiar with areas that I have mentioned, but Carmthine and Cotebridge are only a few miles apart. They are both areas where there are significant levels of deprivation, but they lie in different council areas. Should it be right that, for example, Glasgow might decide to fund and support women across a range of services in one way, but North Lanarkshire might decide that we will use our money differently? Or should women in both communities have the same level of support because we do not support postcode lotteries? If we start with the service user and what their journey is, what their experience is, then it could be possible that we meet that need in different ways. However, you have to expect some differences by local area, but as long as there are minimum standards and needs that are being met, it does not matter in a way that local authorities meet them in different ways. My second and last question on that issue is that we have had a big debate in recent years about ring-fencing of funding. Dr Scott mentioned that she welcomes the protection of some of the sources of funding. Many of her colleagues in local government do not support ring-fencing. They want to have local flexibility to spend their money. Should there be any ring-fencing for services to women, either at a national level or, indeed, should there be ring-fencing at a local level? I think that what I was trying to say probably not very articulately was that I think that there needs to be a ring-fencing at a national level around outcomes. If, in fact, we connect women's improved access to the paid labour market with decreases in domestic abuse, which I'm very happy to say I would find no difficulty doing, then in my imagination, there would be a ring-fenced and gendered policy and provision, so funding, around those outcomes, but the design of how they would be delivered. In a sense, it's a bit like the single outcome agreement process. We agree with you what the outcomes are, and we give you the money and then you do it. The problem with the current structure, as far as I'm concerned, is that the decision-making at the national level reflects that disconnect between national and local, so there's no analysis about whether the money is adequate or is appropriate based on different needs. The other thing is that there's not adequate engagement with the third sector in the decision-making process at the local level, so the funding structure really needs to change as far as I'm concerned, something like public social partnerships that would create that mainstreamed sustained support for local decision-making would be very welcome, but I think we can't have a, we give you all the money and let you do it because absolutely then you would have places that might make decisions that are not in line with national strategies or policies, but there has to be a combination of the two. I really don't think that it's an either or. Before I bring other members in, any other contributors want to say anything on that, Angela and then Emma? I think there is a number of points to underscore here, maybe. The starting point needs to be about meeting women's needs and the starting point needs to be a gendered approach to public policy making that has a clear vision that others have alluded to, that what is the purpose of the public service, what is the purpose of the public resources being allocated, they are to achieve an advanced equality, to achieve an advanced improved wellbeing for all, and part of that process is eliminating the inequalities that exist along the way, one of which is male violence against women, amongst many others, and colleagues have talked about, women's access to the labour market, we've talked about care, and I hope that we'll talk more about those matters. In terms of the allocation of public resources, I think that we've collectively, over the years, made the argument for the importance of ring-fenced funding, the important job that designated funds do, but recognising that designated funds are only part of it. One of the issues always around gender budget analysis is not focusing on what is the direct spend on women, but rather on how does mainstream spend contribute to the advancement of women's equality. That's where colleagues are highlighting some of the absence of a bit of a derailment of the process of gender analysis and the public spending process that we have hitherto been positive about. I think that this time round we're seeing, it feels like the wheels are coming off a wee bit, around some of the decisions where we have a disjuncture and a disconnect between what's going on in terms of the imposed measures from UK Government welfare reform and what's within the powers of the Scottish Government to do. Scottish Government taking action within its own terrain, its own domain, across policy areas that will exacerbate the impact of not-as-welfare reform cuts imposed by the UK, but other austerity measures, including reduction in funding, and that disconnect can derail us into some of the arguments around, as Marcia said, a false dichotomy between levels of allocation and levels of service quality. We absolutely have to have a common ambition of the highest level of quality of service, but local accountability to meet local need and the imposition and sustained imposition of the council tax fees has removed some of that democratic accountability and that local decision making. I would absolutely agree with everything that Dr O'Hagan, I'm giving everyone their Sunday names today, said about that. I suppose I'm just reflecting back to when Engender supported Scottish Women's Aid, Rape Crisis Scotland and the Scottish Women's Budget Group in the Save Our Services campaign, when violence against women funding was set to be unringfenced, and we were campaigning for ringfencing as Engender, partly on very practical grounds, because we saw that local authorities were not performing gender budget analysis and that there did not seem to be political will to increase the spend on violence against women services. I think that we would find ourselves now in a very difficult position if that ringfencing decision had gone the other way, if the Scottish Government had not listened to those calls. I'm minded of the fact that Rape Crisis Glasgow, I sit on the board of Rape Crisis Glasgow, and they have not had an increase in funding from Glasgow City Council for over 10 years. In the face of massively increased demand on the services, partly because of cuts to public services as a result of downward pressure on budgets. I entirely endorse the calls of colleagues for beginning the thinking with demand and what women need. Absolutely Engender does not want to see a differentiated service in terms of outcomes. We want women to achieve the best possible outcomes, but recognising that that may be delivered in a different way in different spaces because of geography, other stakeholders and partners in the area and other things. We absolutely would see a really clear need for all budget setters to be taking a gendered approach, because it's without that gendered approach that we see decisions being made to slash local rape crisis centre funding without taking cognisance of the impact for women who are experiencing cuts to their income because of so-called welfare reforms as well as other things. More gender budget analysis is being one of the solutions to some of those problems. Can I just make a brief point about rurality, which is being touched on, because it's something that doesn't always get recognised the way that it should in this country? We live in a fairly rural country, and it goes back to the points about services and the delivery point of need. There has to be a recognition, which at the moment—the Scottish Women's Convention anyway would certainly say that there probably isn't—that there might just be one woman who lives in WIC that needs a service, but there's so much given out that it's blanket and that it will give funding overall for this, and it just doesn't work. It's really important that gender budgeting is the most important way to achieve a fairer society, but you really need to bear in mind rurality as well and to take into account the unique geography of this country and to take into account the fact that we're not speaking necessarily about somebody who lives in the Highlands or away down the borders, but somebody who stays 10 minutes out of a main town or a city can still be considered living in a rural area, and the services that they receive as a result of that can be quite different, so it's just really important to bear that in mind. I can now move on and waden it out, Kevin Stewart. Thank you, convener. As per usual, when we're talking about budgets, we are talking about the people, but we've also been talking about the process of where we're actually at. I think that that's often very important to get to the right outcomes for people. People here today have rightly been talking about some of the issues around the restricted timetable in terms of this budget, which doesn't do very much for any of us in terms of scrutiny, but we are where we are there. One of the other things that Dr O'Hagan talked about was what can we do in the future with the powers that we are going to get? Again, we're a bit restricted in knowing what is possible or not, because we don't have the financial agreement on that either. Sometimes we get ourselves into positions because of the way that budgets have worked in the UK for generations, let's be honest, that we actually don't get the opportunities to have the discussions, to sit back and think about what is required. That doesn't only just happen at national level, it also happens at local level, and because of that, we get the disconnect and services that have been talked about around the table today. What my question is is how would the groups around the table like to be more fully involved in that budget process from the bottom all the way up? How do we ensure that the UK Government, Scottish Government, sometimes when it may be to blame, and local authorities, actually take cognisance of the need of folk out there rather than what they may necessarily think is the need that's out there? Any of our contributors want to pick that up? I just have to say that it is about process and outcome, I totally agree. I suppose I repeat the sense that we have at Scottish Women's Aid that the local and national funding processes don't work, they don't work for the Government, they don't work for us, they're enormously inefficient, we have short-term budgets and therefore short-term projects, projects spend, at the maximum we get three years worth of funding, which means that you wind up spending at least one year of that time on recruitment, retention and exit planning, and it engenders not only waste of the public pound but enormous waste of the talents and skills of the staff working in services and of Government officials who create good strategies for funding and then wind up getting very little outcome for the money, relatively speaking, because of the inefficiency that we're building into the process. My thought about this, I have to say, and I have had some discussions with some officials in the Government, would be to take a look at what would be a political process that could happen, and I would I suppose call on all parties to be willing to think about how we could get there in a consensus manner to agreeing social care budgets for the life of the Parliament. At the moment, we are looking at three-month extensions for our budgets, for services that rely on the Violence Against Women and Girls Fund and the Children's Services Fund, and we are absolutely clear and understand that that was the best possible scenario prior to the holiday break in terms of the budget, the schedules of the budget reviews, but it's just not good enough. It's not a process that's going to get us to where we want to be in Scotland around domestic abuse, around women's inequality in general, so I would really like people to commit to just as we have and enjoy a wonderful consensus in Scotland around domestic abuse and other forms of violence against women, could we not commit to a similar consensus-based approach to finding our way out of this cycle of inefficiency? The process does then come back to how do you plan a process that identifies need at the local level, that engages stakeholders without providing them with undue influence? I understand how that's all messy, but it certainly could work better, I think, than it does. A really key no-brainer piece of it is being willing to commit to something that we think is a good idea for a longer period. We do that with capital infrastructure. It's not like we don't commit subsequent Parliaments to invest in bricks and mortar. Why can we not invest in people over longer periods of time? We could do that through centralized decision making, but then, as I mentioned, did something like funnel money locally over longer periods of time through something like public social partnerships that could be third sector-led, that would be absolutely mandated to engage with service users and potential service users in the decision making. You asked about how to involve people in the budget process. While it's not everybody's burning passion to be engaged in budget analysis, I hold my hand up to having that special interest, but I think that there is a really important piece of work to do about engaging the Scottish public in understanding our resource base, where it comes from on a non-party basis, but understanding the complex nature of our funding and what that funding can make possible and what it does make possible. That comes back to valuing public services and valuing the resources that we have and understanding that takes us on to how taxation powers can be used now and in the future. As we look forward to more powers coming to Scotland, what those taxation powers can mean in terms of generating revenue and then the process of allocating revenue and resources. What is the role of local government? The budget sends some mixed messages around the role of local government in the future in a number of ways, but it is clear engagement that the Parliament and its structures as well as the Scottish Government could direct engagement with citizens on what the budget process is. In the first instance, there is some straightforward information provision. On celebrating something that Sam mentioned, we have a different approach in Scotland. We have the founding principles of the Parliament on accountability and openness, and we need to live up to them. We also have one of the more open budget processes in the world, in Western Europe, but it is also quite a well-guarded secret in that we have this consultation time. In name, it is a public consultation period from the time that the cabinet secretary brings the draft budget to Parliament, and it closes. What is the public engagement in that process? This is a very elite discussion that we are having, and that process can and should be opened up much more before we even get to talking about what the fiscal framework will finally fall out and what shape will that take further down the line. In some ways, although I would not ever diminish the importance of our robust fiscal framework that works for Scotland, the structural issue is how we use that structure to advance what should be the fundamental vision and objective of what is the vision for a fairer and more equal Scotland, and how do those structures around the fiscal framework work for that? I come back, convener, because Dr Ohegan previously mentioned the council tax raise, and we have seen much greater cuts to local government services in England, but also at the same time in some places some fairly hefty council tax rises. In 2012-15, there was nearly a 20 per cent cut to local government services in England. Can I ask if she knows of any analysis that has been done south of the border on the impact of those council tax rises on women, as well as the impact of the cuts on women south of the border? It is to say that we have the same coin. There has been excellent work in Coventry on the impact of local government cuts, council tax, etc., and the impact on women and South all Black sisters have also done similar work in London. The equality budget statement says that, with no evidence that the council tax freeze has protected vulnerable households in times of economic difficulty, I would question the evidence for that at a time when local council tax freeze and other measures have contributed to a reduction in local authority revenue that has had a knock-on effect on women's employment services provided for and used by women. The subsequent effects are referred to as well. Where does the impact fall, then, of a withdrawal of care services, a withdrawal of respite services, a withdrawal or reduction in transport services, etc. A reduction or withdrawal of council services has an impact primarily on women either in reducing their paid employment, participation in the workplace or withdrawing from the labour market overall. We need to look at that alongside the much heralded high levels of women's employment. Where are women being employed and in what context are women being employed? What are the conditions of women's employment, the character and quality of those jobs that are being eroded? When we talk about cumulative impact, that is the kind of impact that we mean. When you ask about council tax rises and council tax freezes, which is the lesser of those two evils in a sense, what is the impact on household incomes and women's incomes and women's participation in paid employment in addition to women's unpaid care in relation to council tax freeze? So, to what extent is the intended relief on household budgets offset by all the additional costs that result to the household as a consequence of a reduction in publicly available services and employment? I haven't got specific examples to quote for you right now, but we are going to be doing some work looking at local government. Does local government work for women as a project? We're going to be launching later this year, so we're going to be looking specifically at women's representation, but also the impact of service cutbacks, focusing on childcare, social care and women's safety, so that it's going to be a priority project for us running for about a year. Two things I wanted to say very quickly. One is infrastructure investment and treating infrastructure spend, the spend on care as infrastructure spend, and thinking about it in that way is something Marcia mentioned. I think it's really fundamental to both the way we think about care services, and at the moment we don't think of them as infrastructure, which is why they're so patchwork and poorly provided. It's also fundamental to the way in which we spend on them, so you do then need longer term commitments and spending to make that happen, but if you want to really see a transformational change over a period of time for women, then that kind of infrastructure spend and that approach to spending on care services fundamental. I think the other thing that Angela mentioned is really important as well about the quality of women's jobs, the jobs that women are doing. Great, we celebrate women being in work, but they are in poor paid, insecure employment, multiple part-time jobs and so on. We are creating an economy fundamentally based on poor quality, low paid work, and that undermines everything else, so you have to fundamentally change that. It's a structural change, and again, that requires a longer term approach. All of those things, the Scottish Government could take a very different approach and make some of those changes in Scotland, and set a bit of an example, I think, for the rest of the UK in approaching it in that way. Okay, thanks. Anyone else? Kate, Clare Adamson? Can I first apologise? I'm afraid that the weather did for my travel arrangements this morning, coming in to committee, so apologies for being late. I just wanted to pick up on the council tax freeze issue, because the most recent research that I've seen in this was by Spice independent research within the Scottish Parliament who actually concluded that the council tax had not only been fully funded but actually had councils used RPI percentage increases, then the funding given to local government could have been slightly less, but certainly the conclusion of that information and that research was that the council tax had been fully funded to councils. I'm a bit unclear as to how the council tax freeze itself, you think, has impacted on the services or whether it's the other budgetary cuts that local authorities have received that have impacted on that. I think it's a combination and I think one of the things that we would go to and we have consistently raised as the Scottish Women's Budget group is the cost of that, is the cost of funding that freeze and had local authorities been allowed to exercise the autonomy that one would expect of local authorities, would the £3.1 billion, is it, that there's the cumulative cost of funding the council tax freeze, could that have been directed elsewhere to better effect over the period of your since 2007, since the council tax freeze? The figures would show that lowest earners have received a benefit of 1.1 per cent in their net income. As a result of the council tax freeze and average mandate properties, people with mandate properties have saved £1,200 a year from that, putting the spending power into the hands of the people rather than the local authorities, would that not have an impact on local economies as well? How is that £1,200 offset by all the other questions that we've raised around having to meet the costs of services being reconfigured, services being withdrawn, additional transport costs, having to reconfigure employment? At the same time, we've seen a reduction in women's employment certainly in the early stages of the council tax freeze, women coming out of local government, funded employment at all levels. There are impacts on both sides. While what remains to be costed and researched is what the impact has been to quantify the kinds of impacts that I'm talking about. While £1,200 is the spice figure of the income generated by the council tax, how has that been offset by other costs arising from the cumulative impact of other measures? If that hadn't been done, households wouldn't just be £1,200 worse off than probably worse off, because the increases in the council tax have been estimated at around about 10 per cent, just to stand still. In order to raise money from the council tax, just to stand still, you're talking about 3 per cent increases or 4 per cent increases in the council tax, just to stand still, so anything above that. You're talking about quite a big increase in household incomes to generate any money for local authorities from council tax. Income increases that might have been possible had there not been the job losses or the associated increase in household costs of having to find alternative means to cover all household needs in terms of whether it's care provision or others. We can back and forth. I think that the core point is to be cognisant and to conduct research and inquiry that explores what the cumulative and additional effects have been. Women who are on the seat of 100 per cent council tax benefit, have they financially gained during the period of the council tax freezing the way that I have and members sitting around this table have? I can't answer that question directly, I would assume so, but one of the things that I mentioned at the outset is that the council tax reduction and that that has been protected and funded is absolutely to be welcomed. When you look at who is in receipt of that, it's lone women, parents and older women, so that partially answers your question. I don't think that it's difficult because if it's a £1,200 figure of gain and yet at the same time you're on a five or six-year pay freeze or a low inflation pay increase, if you've lost your childcare because your wraparound facility is closed, if the fruit and veg co-op that you used to go to for your cheap fruit and veg is shot and all those other services, then very obviously your £1,200 quid is going to be wiped out very, very quickly. I don't think that it's very difficult to understand and my issue is that these are the services that civilise us as a society, the services that we're speaking about are what civilise us. And there's a cost to that and there's a cost that we all should contribute to. And if you look at some of the issues that I'm finding from women in my region, it's absolutely, it makes me want to weep what's happened because I had cleaners speak to me the other day who have worked in a school that their kids have gone to. They take great pride in their work. It's their school. There's nobody else's school. It's their school. And they tell me that their hours have been cut, that their pay doesn't keep in line with my inflation and that now they only clean the classroom every second day because the council is completely strapped. Now, not only does that have an impact on their financial situation but it has an impact on their professional pride and their work, which is a key thing in this as well. And that's only one small indication for a cleaner. You could go across the whole range of public services where professionals in social work and education, if you look at classroom assistants and the like, are seeing not just their financial situation eroded but their professional situation eroded as well. I think that's as significant. A couple of things that people have mentioned that we've not got too much to social care but I think that social care is the biggest disaster we have in Scotland at the moment without a doubt, absolutely catastrophic situation in social care. Unless we completely revolutionise what's going on there, I really think that it's coming to a juddering hall and women will be in the very, very front line of that disaster that's unfolding before our eyes. I suppose that if we look at all of that, is the disproportionate cut to the disproportionately high cut to local government through the budget and the council tax freeze as a public policy? Is that one that advances women's equality or not? I think that he said something that resonated with a lot of the women that we've spoken to as well, to be honest, in terms of that they've done a job for a long time. There's another sort of issue around older women in the workplace who have perhaps worked for a local authority or not just a local authority but an organisation for a long time. Because of the situation in the country overall, they've found themselves unemployed, they've been made redundant, they've been reduced to jobs here, that kind of thing. So they're in a new position and they're now having to look for alternative employment where it's not existing. The budget doesn't make much recognition of older women. There's a lot about employment for young people which is so important and nobody's going to deny that but it doesn't make an awful lot of recognition that there are a lot of older women who have lost their jobs, who have been in a job for 30 years, who have never had to write a CV and who are discriminated against because they don't have hires so they can't complete a form that asks about hires because they don't have hires. That's something to take into consideration as well. We all know that there's not a lot of advancement for gender equality at the moment and I don't think that you can put the blame on one single factor. However, certainly, as I said at the start from the Scottish Women's Convention point of view, we need to look at everything as a whole, we need to look at things like childcare. We've always welcomed the additional hours that have been brought forward because anything that's going to move, anything that's got the potential to advance women, our gender equality, is a positive thing. However, when you look at it really, when it went up from I think it was 475 to 600 hours, works out about 16 minutes per day which, as a working parent, doesn't really help. There's also a lot about the way that childcare is provided, lack of local authority childcare, reliance on private childcare, that kind of thing. It's more about looking at it overall but I do think that it would be fair to say that the services that are provided by local government are often in the main access by women and are often provided by women. Therefore, it stands to reason that if there is a substantial cut, then it's going to impact on women, it's going to impact on a broad range of women and in different ways, like those women that you were talking about who have done that job for a long, long time. They find themselves now having to go into a job share or to, you know, they're losing their job. Where do they go? Because that's the only job that they've ever known and that kind of sense of there's not a job for life anymore and there's not that kind of that. There used to be getting into local authority when you're younger because it's a good job to do, but it kind of does stand to reason that if there are cuts to services that are provided by women that are in the main access by women, then that's going to push gender equality back. To try and answer the question about whether the council tax freeze imperils women's equality. The local government did disproportionately high cuts. I think that Engender has historically joined the calls of sister organisations, closed the gap, mentioned it in their submission. Scottish Women's Budget Group have already mentioned it. Others have as well that the council tax freeze is not helpful in terms of advancing women's equality, but I think that the dialogue that happened here really speaks to the need for the process of figuring out what the impacts of the council tax freeze and cuts to local government spending on women should be. We can't guess, I suppose, and the women's budget group is not getting, but some of these questions are very difficult to answer. When we were at Engender looking at the questions that this committee had for us, it said what is the impact on women? It was very hard to answer because we haven't seen within the budget documents the cumulative impact assessment that we would want to see. There isn't gender budget analysis that takes a look across the spending portfolios and says in the whole this budget advances women's equality or not. I think that the message that we've had for years and years has been that you really need to connect all of these things together. The Scottish Government has ambitions for women's equality, very clearly set out in the programme for government, in other articulations, but just to pick up on an example that was mentioned, childcare as infrastructure, the rhetorical statements that the First Minister has made about this have been enormously welcome. It was several years ago now on International Women's Day that she described childcare as infrastructure and talked about the necessity of conceiving it as such to advance women's equality. We were absolutely behind that perception, but if you look at the budget, then you see that the new fourth crossing is in there at a £1.6 billion value, and yet there is no enumerated resource commitment to childcare investment. There is a bit of a gap between the rhetoric around childcare as infrastructure. We would want to add long-term care to that piece and absolutely recognise the immense pressure that women in communities across Scotland are under in terms of vanishing care resources. To go back again, sorry to keep making this point, but the issue of process is so important. If you do not do the analysis, it is very hard to answer those questions. We would want to see gender budget analysis integrated into the Scottish budget process. We would want to see it integrated into local authority budget processes, because otherwise we are doing the best we can to try and piece together the impact on women. We really need to be doing better with the allocation of resources across Scotland's people and communities. Thank you for that exposition in a sense of what the Scottish Women's Budget group stands for and what sister organisations support. In answer to your question, Neil, the council tax fees and local government funding do the advanced women's equality. Local government funding cuts rather advance women's equality. Well, no. Notwithstanding current pressures on local government funding, we still have outstanding equal pay claims that have not been met by local authorities. We have not seen the process by which budgetary decisions are analysed for their full effect on gender equality and that transformative intent behind gender budget analysis. To what extent does it recast gender relations? Does it take women and men out of the traditional roles, either in the family or in the workplace, in relation to care and employment, and to see the budget in the round as having an impact on women's economic autonomy and independence and men's status as well? What we see in the budget, and forgive me if this is a kind of overlong contribution at the moment, but one of the things, and I will make a written submission on this to the committee as well as to the Equal Opportunities Committee, if we look to the work that the UK women's budget group has done looking across policy domains and apply that in the Scottish context, and look to the work that Howard Reid, who has previously appeared before the committee, has done in a model that has been developed subsequently by Diane Ellison and Sue Himmell-Fight. We use the data that I mentioned that is talked about in the equality budget statement and the draft budget and spending plans on council tax reduction. We take that as an overarching measure or proxy. It shows the potential extended impact on women of the Scottish Government draft budget proposals, where we have cuts that will, according to the gendered household-type analysis in the land-man economics model, and Samanth has already mentioned that, women loan parents stand to lose more, women pensioners stand to lose more. Now, while the health budget is protected in Scotland, the impact of local government funding may well again offset some of those gains. It comes back to Emma's key point on process, to integrate appropriate tools and time and build the capacity of policy makers. I say this at every intervention that I make, build the capacity, the confidence and competence of the officials that are putting together the budget and the equality budget statement so that there is substantive evidence and substantive analysis that can support claims such as the council tax freeze that protects vulnerable households. We need to see that analysis and we need to see it across the piece. We have talked and touched on investment in infrastructure. Scottish Women's Budget Group had high hopes that the budget would talk to the investment plan and the investment plan, the refresh of the Scottish Government investment plan. Building on the political agreement and support that there is for the idea of a caring and sustainable economy, as set out in plan F, by the Scottish Women's Budget Group and the UK Women's Budget Group earlier this year, the Scottish Government fully supports that idea. We see it in many policy statements across the piece and Emma's alluded to or has directly referenced the First Minister and the Government commitment to childcare, which is enormously welcome, but we need to see that shift from the rhetoric to the allocation of resources as investment in our economic and social infrastructure. That is not yet coming down the line, even in these straightened times. I understand the constraints, both the time constraints and the financial constraints on this budget. However, some of the signals for what is coming forward are coming into an election period, and that is the challenge to all the political parties as well, is how the resources that we have and will have available in Scotland will deliver a sustainable caring economy. I think that it is really important for the medium and longer term as well as for now. One of the things that has been really striking that we have seen through the social care debate in England, and I am sure that it applies in Scotland as well, is the prediction of a shortage of informal and formal carers in the not too distant future. We are heading into a future where a raging population will not have the care in need simply because we do not have the people there to do it. What we are expecting older women to do in particular is to work longer and care more. They are also caring down the generation as well as up the generation, so you have that double whammy of working care concentrated on a population of women of 50 to 65. Unless we have a vision for the caring that we want in our society and our economy, we are going to hit some big problems in the very near future because we just will not have people there to do the caring. That is a product of us undervaluing care anyway. We do not see it, we do not value it, and therefore, when we run out of it, it is only the only time when we are going to start to realise what it means to not have a caring economy, if you like. Not terribly surprising, my point is directly related to that. I am coming back, Neil, to your comment about a civilised country and the cost. I suppose, although it would be worth discussing the cost of having an uncivilised country, which we pay every day. But I think for me the problem that we have both in terms of a disconnect between national and local financial and budget analysis, and the lack, as Emma pointed out, of really robust analysis about what the impact is disaggregated by gender and where money in the household goes. I can not believe that we have not really mentioned much about the universal credit issue, of course, and the fact that we still have not heard whether the Scottish Government is going to take up its power to direct universal credit to individuals in the household, which would be very problematic if they do not. Very, very problematic for women experiencing or at risk of domestic abuse. But the larger question around all of that, that I think is very frustrating for us at Scottish Women's Aid, is that there is no framework that involves outcomes and measures and planning around making Scotland a less unequal country for women and children. If we had a larger economic model that reflected everybody's understanding of the ways, in our personal lives, of the ways that unpaid care and paid care and paid work intersect, then we would have budgets that would reflect the way those things interact. A larger economic model that treated childcare as a long-term investment that was critical to the outcomes, both economic and social, that as a civilised country we should be demanding of a very rich country in general terms. Just as an example of that, I'm going to beg your pardon for this story, but at my previous employment I got into a conversation one evening when I was working late, as so many of us do, with the woman who was cleaning our offices, and she had previously been engaged as part of the organization's regular staff. The cleaning had been outsourced quite a number of years ago under a different set of governments. This woman was in her late 60s. She would come to work, she had to get up in the morning and be prepared to be prepared, but not always know whether she was providing childcare for her daughter. She was a grandmother, childcare for her daughter, who was on a zero-hours contract. And was a single mother. At five o'clock she would come to work and work for four hours to clean the offices that I worked in. She would then go to another office, a private office, at 9.30, which she quite liked because she could do that on her own pace and grab a sandwich while she was doing that, and then clean those offices and then she would get home sometime between 11 and 12 o'clock at night and the day would start again the next day. Now if we can't see the intersection of the problems with unpaid, of not accommodating and accounting for unpaid care in that equation along with the paid care that this woman was providing, and indeed all of the consequences of living in a gendered economy will mean that of course she won't be able to retire now until later, but when she does it will be with an extraordinarily small pension compared to men her age. So all of this is just to plea that people begin to think about the mitigation of women's poverty in the round as part of an integral part of our larger economic strategy rather than being often as it is shunted into a discussion about good cuts and bad cuts. Okay, thanks. John McAlpine, and then I'll bring in Christina. Thank you very much, convener. I think that the examples that Marcia raised there were very useful because of course in terms of pensions and employment law, which obviously are big contributors to women's poverty, they are powers that are not coming to this Parliament and that we did have the opportunity to get employment powers to the Parliament, but we didn't get the support in Westminster to have employment powers to the Parliament. I think that the discussion here has been very, very interesting because you know that there's only so much mitigation that you can carry out and we've talked about priorities and we've talked about things that we're going to be faced with in the future in addition to all the other things that we've talked about like the universal credit issue, talked about local government funding and Spain acknowledged that the health service has been protected. In the context of care, of course, it's important to mention that this budget allocates 250 million to the integration of health and social care, which I think is a really important point to make, but I would be interested to know if you don't accept the independent spice research that shows that the council tax is fully funded even if you don't accept that and presumably you don't think that the council tax can mitigate all the cuts coming from a UK level plus the pressures from welfare reform going forward. I wonder what you think in that context that we should cut. Do you think that the health budget shouldn't be protected, for example? Can I just clarify something? It wasn't my understanding that Angela Hagan was saying that the council tax freeze wasn't fully funded. I thought what was being said was, in a sense, a question of opportunity cost, that the money used to fund the council tax freeze could have been used for other things. Angela, could you clarify that? I think that it's important. If you don't mind, convener, I could get the chance to ask the question. This is the first time that I've been able to speak. My question is what should be cut? If you don't, given that we're facing these cuts from London— Absolutely, we can come back to that, but I think that it was also suggested that there was a comment made that the council tax freeze wasn't fully funded. I'm not sure that that was said, so could we clarify that and then go on to the question that Joan had asked, Angela? Sure. No, I hadn't disputed the funding of the council tax freeze. I had questioned whether that was the appropriate policy choice. I have also repeatedly acknowledged that those are difficult choices, some of which are imposed by elsewhere and some of which are choices that the Scottish Government has made for itself. I am not suggesting that the protection of the health care budget is not welcome. What would be welcome is greater clarity as to where the 250 million allocation for the integrated funds for health and social care are coming from, given the reduction overall of 6 per cent of the social justice budget, including the very significant cuts to local authority. Are part of those local authority cuts being what's transferred into the integration fund? So, some clarity on that would be very welcome. We've been talking about infrastructure and investment in infrastructure, and Emma's used the figure of the 1.6 billion allocation to the fourth crossing. Economic and other arguments have been made as to the essential nature and utility of that significant capital investment. What we are asking for across the organisations here today is greater clarity on what investment is in the capital and human capital in childcare and social care, and to have greater clarity on what allocation will be made to support the commitment to increase the number of hours of childcare provision and to meet the need for an increase in the childcare estate and the structures of childcare around that. One of the things that we have seen in this budget and one of the areas of uplift and spend is investment in motorways and trunk roads. Now, while good communication networks are essential, no doubt, to our economic competitiveness and wellbeing, that investment in motorway and trunk roads is yet again an example of investment in infrastructure that is not directed at the caring side of the caring, sustainable economy policy. I think that again you've kicked the nail in the head in a sense that you have identified the almost impossible choice that is being forced on us because of these UK cuts, because I'm sure you're not suggesting that we shouldn't build a new fourth crossing, which is really important for the economy and that affects women as well. On roads, we've seen through the flooding recently how important it is to invest in our infrastructure for everybody in society, male and female. I think that many of us who support gender analysis, but at the same time we shouldn't be forced to put the argument that we don't build a new fourth crossing to put money into something else. What we're talking about, I think, is statements that talk about equivalent political value and the statement around the fourth crossing of being of equivalent political value as childcare, and we're not seeing the investment in childcare. What I'm raising challenges around is the balance between, if the Scottish Government… Do you think that we shouldn't be building a new fourth crossing? No, I'm not saying that at all. If I finish my point, I'm saying that what we're not seeing is resource allocation to the second part of the caring, sustainable economy. We're seeing investment in infrastructure, but that's not extending to some of the investment in infrastructure to make the commitments to childcare as part of our economic and social infrastructure as stated and as welcomed. We're not seeing the detail on those commitments. Obviously, in terms of childcare, the First Minister has made a commitment to increase childcare to 1,140 hours by the end of the next parliamentary session. There is a commitment there. People acknowledged at the start of the discussion that there had been a big emphasis under the First Minister of the Commitment to Women and to Women Services. If I may convene a touch on a more specific issue that had been raised by Marcia at the very beginning of our discussion, which was the violence against women and housing in particular, I take it that you would welcome things such as the Scottish welfare fund, which I think that you mentioned. Obviously, in terms of crisis grants for women who are fleeing from violence, and you talked about the importance of affordable housing. Obviously, one of the choices—we do make choices—and one of the choices is that this current Government has made, for example, is doing the sale of council houses. We've got a commitment to build 50,000 new affordable homes. Others have suggested that what we should really be doing with the house and money is giving first-time buyers who have already saved for a deposit extra money to buy a home. I wonder what you thought that would do for women who need housing and who have been abused. Will that benefit them in any way, given couples £6,000 to buy a home? We're starting to stray into proposals for the next election rather than looking at the Scottish budget. We have talked about long-term choices. A number of people have talked about long-term choices. We'll wait and see what the various parties put forward. Equally, we could go into a discussion just now about whether affordable homes are what women want rather than socially rented homes, but we're not going to get into that. We're going to concentrate on what's in front of us today. Dr Scott, did you hear the issue of housing? I'm chairing the meeting. I wanted to come in. One was on the NHS spend and whether that was welcome. One of the really important things to think about here is that if we don't support our social care infrastructure, then that health spend won't really be spent on people's health needs. It'll be spent on keeping them in a hospital when they could be elsewhere. A little bit of money is spent on integration. I suppose that £250 million is spent on integration. It really isn't going to be enough. What do you think should be cut then? Well, I don't feel qualified to talk about things like road infrastructure in Scotland. I think it would be very dangerous for me to stray into that. I'm not going to talk about that, but at the moment, we are not comparing the current infrastructure proposals for spending and the kind of infrastructure that we're talking about. We're not comparing like we'd like in terms of the analysis of the data that underpins that. We're talking about infrastructure spend, but it's not being analysed and compared in that way in terms of the budgeting process. I think that we need to do a bit more of the homework. Maybe the Government needs to do a bit more of that homework in terms of understanding what the potential would be for investing in a care infrastructure and a care economy, because that would be massive. The commitment to almost double the number of hours of childcare, for example, which you have talked about. That's what you want. You want that long-term route shifting infrastructure. When you talk about infrastructure taught in childcare, so there has been a shift. There's a commitment to 50,000 affordable homes. There's the need to continually mitigate against welfare cuts coming from London that we all agree are having a disproportionate impact on women. We agree all that, but we cannot get away from the fact that we don't have full control of our budget. What should we cut? Just to go back to the point that you made about childcare hours. We've all welcomed that in our submissions. One of the critical points is when mums return to work. If you don't support that point of childcare, childcare needs between nine months and two or three years old. Actually, they are more likely to turn to informal care. There's DWP research that shows really clearly that they will turn to their own mums to provide that care disproportionately. Those older women, older women who we would also want to be in work, are more likely to be dropping out of the labour market, which then has a knock-on effect in terms of their dependency on the welfare system and being unable to come back into work. If you took a more strategic approach to it, you would analyse it in that way. At the moment, we're bolting on hours to three and four-year-old childcare because that's a relatively easy way to deliver it, if we're honest. It's because you've got nurseries and it's easy to bolt on those extra hours to nurseries, rather than thinking what do returning parents need, what do returning mums need when they're coming back to work. It's not that we're being childish and not welcoming it. I just think that if you took the strategic approach to it, you'd probably come at it in a different way. It's important to remember that Eurostat figures show that Scotland's female employment level is second only to Sweden and Europe. Although the points you make are, of course, points to consider. We should remember that women's employment in Scotland is actually relatively high in European terms. To be fair, other witnesses have talked about the preponderance of women in exceptionally low-paid jobs and the implications, I think, of Marsha. Employment law, which is responsible for that, is a UK Government issue. No, we're not talking about employment law, we're talking about wages. That's an issue. I suppose that the other side of the conversation, as well as cuts, is whether both the Scottish Government and local government should use their taxation powers, but I don't suppose that we'll have time to get into that. Christina? I thank you very much, convener, and forgive me for being a bit late this morning. I was probably caught in the same line of traffic that my colleague was caught in, so forgive me for that. I think that what we've proved this morning is that there's no easy answers to any of this, and it's not just straightforward, it's no the council tax freeze, it's no equal pay, it's no welfare reform, it's the whole combination of the whole lot. I suppose, for me, looking at the current budget that we have in front of us now, I think, from 2013 to 2016, if I've worked my figures out right, so forgive me, we're spending around £270 million mitigating just three benefit changes from London. So £270 million are around that amount, that we could be spending on other things. So I suppose my question to our witnesses around the table is how do we develop a policy, how do we develop a forward-thinking budget that looks at all of this? Because, to be honest, the local authority that I work with locally puts no gender emphasis on anything to do, so when we're not getting it right at that level, that very fundamental service-led level, when we're not getting that right, then when it comes to budget cuts, the easy pickings are the vulnerable people, they are the women's projects, they are the food co-ops, they are the easy pickings for, in my opinion, a male-dominated philosophy in local government. Okay, so that's my feminist bit out there already. Add that to the fact that the local government area that I'm in right now has had to shell out £72 million this year to settle equal pay claims that they have sat on for decades. But the other side of that is I'm now representing women who, because they've maybe been in a serious domestic violence situation, or been in other situations where they've accumulated debt, they've not seen a penny of that equal pay money because it's been taken back straight away by the local authority to clear debts. Now, in my opinion, that money is wages, therefore it comes under the wages act and not the debt reclamation or council tax debt, that's wages. Now, what I'm coming up against is no, it's not, it's not wages. Now, the only group of people affected by that policy are women. Therefore, what we now have is another compound under the whole problem, the easy pickings, the mitigation that has to go on, the areas that we have very, very little control over that has the biggest impact on women. Now, what I think the work of this committee has done over the past year or so in looking at women and what has been an amazing piece of work that we've all done, we've still not come up with some of the answers to some of that and we've still not come up with some of the reasons even for why we should be doing it are not being articulated out there because when I go back into a local authority chamber they still just talk about the easy pickings and the easy pickings are the vulnerable people and the women and the vulnerable people are usually the women as well. So please, please help me in understanding what we do now, what we have control of now and what we can do with that to make that difference because as far as I can see it unless we deal with that front line local led policy and changing it to a gendered policy we won't make a damn bit of a difference. In any answers could you try and also link it in to the Scottish budget and what we're doing with that? I think I did that when you mentioned mitigation and all of that. Sorry Emma. I'll do my best. I absolutely recognise what you say Christina about local decision making and I think the two issues are kind of reflective of one another in that we don't see a robust process within the Scottish budget yet. Acknowledging the progress that's been made with the equality budget statement and the work that is done with the equality budgets advisory group, we don't see yet a robust gender analysis being taken in the budget process and we don't see robust gender analysis happening within public bodies. That is contrary to the law in that we have the public sector equality duty. There are specific Scottish regulations that require equality impact assessments to be undertaken and published by those public authorities and yet what we see is an almost complete failure of that process, of that law to drive real change for women in local communities. What we have been doing as a gender is working with closed the gap and also Scottish women's aid to look at the issue of how equality impact assessment is working to drive change. Closed the gap recently published a very measured but nonetheless scathing analysis of how much the current public sector equality duty arrangements and responses to those by public bodies are actually delivering equal pay for women working in the public sector and they see regression, regression from the previous round of publications that were made three years ago and regression before that to when we had the gender equality duty and the specific requirements thereof. That's something that has been really concerning to engender seeing gender disappearing into the midst of a whole raft of other equality dimensions as welcome as those are and of course we should be taking an approach that recognises that women have a range of identities that women are not a homogenous group but nonetheless those concerns have been around for the entire lifetime of the public sector equality duty and we brought those to the attention of the UN's CEDOR committee the convention for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women along with sister organisations from across the UK and made that point to them that this just wasn't working what we would hope to do there is possibility for positive change the equality and human rights commission is working in Scotland to try and improve practice other organisations like Scottish women's aid like ourselves like close the gap are acting to try and provide public bodies with usable guidance and information on how to take action but we would like to see a strengthening of the scotland specific regulations and that is something that could be done with the existing powers of the Scottish Parliament and recognise some of Joan's earlier points as in gender we called for the devolution through the Smith commission process of employment law of equalities law and we haven't yet got the final detail of the small measure of equality law that will be devolved to the Scottish Parliament in the form of quotas for public sector boards and quite a miserly provision but one we hope will be taken up but the Scotland specific regulations are something which could be changed and we think it is ripe time for the Scottish government to be looking at making some changes to that they don't have teeth they aren't being taken seriously and women all across Scotland are seeing the impact of that failure to even consider what differential impacts on women and men policy decisions and spending decisions are being made Just to add on to what Emma said more articulately than I could have but I think the failure to actually learn how to do a quality impact assessment runs through all levels of policy making and service design and it's driven exactly as you pointed out I think from a system that has privileged other sets of values and I think the things related to the budget process that are relevant here have to do with both politicians and citizens saying this is not good enough anymore and if you get a report that's not gendered don't accept it you know if our local I think part of the next few years and I do want to acknowledge that this is a very exciting time in Scotland and gender you know feminist is not a dirty word anymore in Scotland and it's a very exciting time for us now is the time however for us to turn all of our good intentions into into transformation transformation of society and of people's lives and some of that will require transformation of the processes and structures we have to pay attention to the fact that local councils are made up of of about 22% of them are women on local council and and there will be absolutely lines that you can draw between the the falsity of of women involved in policy making at the local level and the failure to see any evidence of questions around gender now I wish I could say that that we could then draw a line to say take a look at the fabulous gender impact assessments that are being done at national level as a result of the of the commitment there and there is commitment but there's not capacity exactly as Angela said there's not competence and I've started talking about gender competent and domestic abuse competent analysis we're working with COSLA to do a guidance on commissioning of domestic abuse services and we're saying that if you can't be gender competent you can't be domestic abuse competent so it is about creating just refusing to accept incompetent analysis whether it's a local authority report or whether it is a national budget and and it's not a quick fix but it's the only thing that's actually going to give us transformation I think okay launa thanks convener yeah mash a touch sorry mash a touched on the point that was going to make there and I think you can hit the nail in the head when you said it's the ones groups and the easy pickings at a local authority level and that's where the services are provided by and for women but women aren't represented as mash has said you know terrible terrible levels of women's representation at council level and as an organisation what we've found quite interestingly is when you go into communities as we do all across Scotland it's the women that are leading the way on you know all the campaigns whether it's a save our school campaign or it's something about libraries or it's you know buses or whatever it is it's women that lead the way but there's a real disconnect between activity at a community level and then that next step up and so regardless of obviously the protest is around public sector quality duty and the things that aren't being done that just fundamentally should be done you've also got that lack of of of women's voices at the table and if you don't I mean you know I don't have to preach into the convert here but if you don't have women's voices at the table then what matters to women and what's important to women isn't going to be reflected so I think while you have to strive and you know carry on the work of organisations like closing up that are doing a lot of stuff around the public sector quality duty you've still got to look at representation because if the women aren't there then the issues that are important to women and not just what are women's issues but how every decision that's made will have a gender impact will not be considered so I think that's really really important as well I really welcome your intervention christina and I think the comments already been made about not reducing the the discussion and debate into what's helpful and unhelpful cuts but rather what we need to to be what we are all I think trying to do is to recalibrate a policy process that has as a starting point a concern to advance equality and to improve women's financial, social and political autonomy and status and that in a sense is a starting point and if that is the starting point using the powers that there are as Emma has very clearly articulated in the public sector equality duty which is systematically undermined by the very people supposed to be practising it but the public sector equality duty contains that requirement and again additionally in Scotland contains the opportunity for the Scottish Government to be much more directive to the public bodies that are are funded by it so when we see in the equality budget statement for example the statement that the reduction in funding to the enterprise bodies will have no equality implications how does that phrase stand up and I think that's looking the wrong way down the telescope rather than saying in what way are the enterprise agencies actively promoting equality in business development in business and enterprise support and across some of the issues that we've raised around the quality and nature of employment the quality and nature of pay and remuneration packages looking at this budget there are many commendable and really welcome policy commitments and I think we've stated that and restated that today and elsewhere on childcare on long-term care and on when we look at the at Scotland's economic strategy the pillars on which that is built around inclusive growth and tackling inequalities and as I've said in response to to members today where I think the budget falls short is on balance that balance of commitments where we see cuts in the budget are in pensions social justice fair work and local government and where we see increases are in capital investment on on infrastructure projects and we need to question who stands to gain most and are these in constrained and I said that repeatedly constrained financial time and political circumstances are these constraints are these choices going to advance women's equality and are they going to advance gender equality and that's where the failure of process and the failure of some of the analysis leaves this budget falling short. I've got four members that are wanting to come in and I'm sorry I don't have time I think we're going to have to cut that cut the discussion short because we have to reflect on what's being said because we have to get a report finalised today to go to the the finance committee and apologise for that can I thank the contributors um for a point of order a point of order convener because we have which we have a situation where we have got to write a report um off the top of my head convener I don't have that and I don't need that convener as you well know um but on a point of order you have said that we have got a report to write um today and I understand that and one of the things which we have not really done to the extent that we should have today um I think is to go over the welfare reform aspects of this budget we've touched upon many issues um and fair play to you for allowing that that's grand but we have not really got to grip ship with some of the welfare reform aspects of this and I think it's going to be very difficult for us to write a report unless we tease some of those issues out convener 10 to 12 we don't have time now to go into a full discussion about welfare reform each of the members apart from john each of the members has had the opportunity to ask questions it hasn't come up from members each of the contributors have had the ability to make comment on it they have chosen not to do so so there has been almost two hours in which those issues could have come up um and I think you would be doing it and we would be doing it and injustice in the last what 15 20 minutes to try and cram in a full debate now on welfare reform I am sorry um you know members had the opportunity we haven't had the opportunity and I regret it um they want the issue that marsha raised about legal aid which in one respect might not be seen um as an issue um of welfare reform but it is fundamental to the matrimonial homes it's fundamental to women in a domestic violence situation um who don't have access to to funds we've not had the opportunity to do that so I apologise the contributions that we've had have been formidable they have been well informed and I thank you for that and you know I hope we will be able to reflect some of the comments that we have heard so thank you very much for your contributions and at that I will call the public session of the meeting to a close thank you