 Welcome to the second meeting for 2020-23 of session 6 of the Equalities, Human, Rights and Civil Justice Committee. There is no apologies for this morning's meeting. The first agenda item is to agree to take item 3, which consideration of today's budget evidence in private. Are we agreed? We move on to our second item and agenda next. We are to continue our budget scoot huh eh? I welcome to the meeting Claire Gallher, human rights officer at the Council for of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector Organisations Scotland, Dr Alison Hosey, research officer of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, Professor Angela O'Hagan, chair of the Scottish Government of Equalities and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group and Rob Watts, economist at the Fraser of Allander Institute. You are all very welcome. As all our witnesses are virtual today, can I ask them to type R in the chat box if you want to come in on any question as we go through the session? I can also remind members to direct their questions to a particular witness in the first instance and if other witnesses want to come in, they'll type R going through. We don't require every witness to answer and to input into every question. We've got quite a lot of areas that the committee are keen to cover, so hopefully we'll manage to do that in the time available. I remind members to paper 1, and now I invite each of our witnesses to make some opening remarks, starting with Claire Gallagher, please. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for having me here today. My name is Claire Gallagher and I am the human rights officer at the Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector Organisation. We are a national and intermediate organisation and a strategic partner of the Scottish Government's Directorate of Equality, Inclusion and Human Rights. The aim of SEMVO is to develop the capacity and sustainability of the sector, and with the network, we are over 600 organisations. We gather intelligence on issues affecting communities and use that to inform policy and practice. I work within the race for human rights team, and our aim is to embed equality in human rights into the day-to-day functions and strategic planning of public bodies, third sector organisations and private businesses. We adopt an anti-racist and human rights-based approach and offer consultancy support, including policy reviews, trainings, workshops and learning webinars. I invite Dr Alison Hosey, please. Thank you very much for the invitation to join the session today. Budget scrutiny is a theory of my work and a particular strategic focus of the commission. I would like to start by saying that it is very clear to me in reading a lot of the budget documentation that a lot of effort has gone in this year to producing strong budget documentation and strong supplementary documentation to this year's budget. Four years ago, when I was asked to give evidence to the predecessor's committee, I was asked about how much the Government was taking a rights-based approach to budgeting, and the very gloomy answer at that point was that it did not. Although there is still a lot to do, which we will talk about today, a lot of progress has been made over the past four years in this area. As well as the efforts in producing the supplementary documentation, it is also very clear that a lot of work and time has been invested by the committee, especially by your committee, and by some areas of government, in trying to get to groups with human rights budget work and to understand and develop the right processes to support that. A key message for me today is that I want to see parliamentary scrutiny really challenging senior government much more to get on board with this work and to progress it further. For me, the next necessary step on the journey for government is to develop a more grounded understanding of what the content of the rights are that they are trying to achieve. It is good that budget documentation points to relevant human rights and portfolio areas, but the next step is understanding how we respect, protect and fulfil those rights and the budgetary resource that is necessary to achieve them in practice. I look forward to exploring that and the challenges in that this morning. Good morning, convener, and good morning, colleagues. Thank you very much for the opportunity to talk with the committee this morning. Speaking, I suppose, as the chair of the equality and human rights budget advisory group, I think that there is a following on from what Allie has just said. I think that there are a number of positives to highlight to the committee. The advisory group made a series of recommendations some time ago to the Scottish Government in relation to the budget process, building knowledge and capacity within the Scottish Government to do the type of equality analysis and human rights analysis that will make for better policymaking. The recommendations were well received, but we are still waiting for the responses, which I am assured are to come fairly soon. As Allie has also said, we can see significant improvements in the multiple documents that are part of the budget suite and that do continue to make us a focus of interest for international and interest from other territories in the UK. We can see continuous improvement there. What we need to be working towards is a number of things. We need investment in training in capacity building and in time to build the knowledge and building new ways of thinking and doing, if Governments are going to be better able to fulfil the commitments to meet the recommendations of many advisory groups and parliamentary inquiries. That capacity for scrutiny and that capacity for equality and human rights analysis is something that we all share a need for knowledge and capacity in, and that includes colleagues within the Parliament. We need to see greater clarity across the relationship between allocation, spend and outcomes and greater clarity across the relationship between equality objectives and the realisation of rights and how policy has been formulated in such a way that that is the starting point for policy thinking and that resource allocations and spend are aligned. We need to have a better understanding of the outcomes from spend and the implications of changes in spend. I would also like to draw attention to a number of positives that have been in what has been really quite a challenging year for everybody and a challenging year for officials within the Scottish Government. We have an equality and fairer Scotland budget statement, which continues and has improved the mapping across human rights. It also has a very extensive annex detailing some of the policy decisions, which represents a huge but underused resource for policy makers and scrutineers like yourselves in Parliament. The fact that there was an equality statement produced at all alongside the emergency budget review was positive. Despite resourcing pressures, the commitment to integrate that equality analysis into the process was honoured. There is potential in the proposed procurement strategy, given the millions of pounds in public money that are allocated in this way, where there should be much more equality in human rights policy-making and policy outcomes, and there is also an area for scrutiny. The fiscal transparency project, which is led by the Scottish Exchequer, is a really interesting project, but it is hugely beneficial and has huge potential in terms of improving transparency around Scotland's finances. Two things quickly to say about the opportunity that was presented by the forthcoming human rights incorporation bill. The National Advisory Council for Women and Girls, which I should declare an interest in, I am a member of the council, has made a recommendation in relation to on-going scrutiny, but has also made a recommendation that there should be intersectional gender budget analysis on a statutory basis. The incorporation bill, bringing in the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and the International Convention on Economic and Social Rights, gives that opportunity to incorporate intersectional gender budget analysis. I think that that is all that I would say. Sorry for taking more than my allocated time there. Thank you. Okay, thanks very much. Hi everyone, I am Rob Watts. I am an economist at the Fraser Rwanda Institute, which is an economics research institute at Strathglad University. The budget day is a very busy day for us. We have a keen interest in making sense of the choices that have been made and what those tell us about the Government's priorities so that we can inform the public debate about the trade-offs and choices that we face as a society, both in Scotland and across the UK. I think that the reason that I have been invited here today is because last summer I undertook an academic fellowship with SPICE, aiming to further the committee's understanding of human rights budgeting and how it could be applied in a Scottish context. It was a learning journey for me as well. One of my key takeaways was that we often think about human rights in terms of political and civil rights, such as freedom of speech and rights to private life, and they place obligations on Governments to refrain from acting. However, with a new human rights bill on the horizon, enshrining economic, social and cultural rights into Scots law for the first time, those will place obligations on Governments to take active steps to progressively realise rights over time and deliver on a minimum core element of each right immediately for everyone within their jurisdiction. The choices that Governments make over how to raise, allocate and spend resources is critical in meeting its obligations, and we need to think about budgets in terms of their human rights impact. I echo what Dr Ali Hosey and Professor Angela O'Hagan just said. Progress has certainly been made in linking the budget to human rights, so I am very grateful to be here to explore where we are and where this goes next. I look forward to this discussion. That's great. Thanks very much to everyone. I will now move to questions. I want to start with an area that came up in our pre-budget scrutiny, a number of our witnesses in the pre-budget scrutiny said that some of the documentation wasn't accessible to everyone. I just want to ask whether the panel thinks that the documents published this year meet the aspirations of documentation being accessible and maybe if there are areas where accessibility wasn't as good as it can be, what they were and if there was any suggestions about how we can improve that. It is probably one that most people might want to come into, but I can offer it with Clare. In terms of accessibility, I think that there was great progress made in this year's budget. There are always ways to learn, and we are very early on in this journey in Scotland of human rights budgeting. Coming from not a finance background, I found the Year Scotland, Year Finance portal and document really useful and very clear. I would say that it was just, apologies, I would say that it was just maybe about why decisions were made and that it should always be published at the same time as the budget, because that was really integral for my understanding of the budget. In terms of the budget itself and accessibility, there are still a lot of acronyms and economic jargon, which is to be expected within a budget. I think that we could progress a little bit further to put more acronyms easily available on that. I think that we need to remember at the pre-budget scrutiny giving evidence and we talked a lot about accessibility and targeted engagement and what that would look like. I think that we still need to do a little bit more in terms of capacity building about the budget process. What is the budget? Why is it important to me in really targeting those priority groups in society that are not engaged within the process and talking to them about why budget decisions matter to them? Is it for council tax, your children's education? I think that that is really vital. I think that that is all I will say on that just now. Thank you. You never need to apologise for a pet coming on screen, particularly if it is a cat. Angela, would you like to make a few words on that general area about accessibility? To echo colleagues, there has been significant improvement. The improvements are mainly in the annexes and the multiple documents around the main budget document. The main budget document still remains a bit of an art form to try and work your way through the budget document, which goes to Claire's point about public information and how well informed are the public, which takes us into other areas around transparency and other areas of participation. There is still a job to do certainly if you are trying to follow the money across the budget and how expressions of allocations are presented make that very difficult. There is an on-going lack of clarity there. Multiple repetitions of allocations, but it is not clear from which budget line they are coming, the narrative not always aligning with what is in the different tables, etc. In the annexes, I am thinking just now of the Equality and Fairer Scotland budget statement, where there are some very helpful selected examples of the types of policies that are being where money is being spent. There needs to be greater clarity on how those examples have been selected and explain the purpose of those examples. Without having to delve into what can appear to be quite a daunting annex—a very valuable resource, though it is. Further, in terms of accessibility and understanding the budget itself and what different allocations mean, is the need to reintroduce what used to be there or used to be somewhere in some of the documentation—a clearer indication of where spend is up or down. As colleagues, particularly from Audit Scotland, have repeatedly emphasised at EBAG, the importance of understanding the implications of decisions, particularly where the decision has been to reduce the amount of spend and how the implications and potential impacts of those decisions have been considered, and for that to be more clearly articulated and presented. Finally—I do not want to cut across the alley—in terms of accessibility, there is really good stuff in the annexes in terms of the use of graphics and colours and so on, but there needs to be greater mapping across of the individual rights on to different portfolios and greater clarity as to what that means. I will let others come in. My views on the quality and fairer Scotland budget statement and the data in the annexes are that you have to go and delve around to find a lot of the information that you want. I was a bit disappointed with the statement itself. I felt that coming away from it, not really knowing what evidence had informed the decisions or what difference any evidence had made to the budgetary decisions, there was not sufficient clarity around the decision-making process regarding funding and the impact of those decisions or the data that underpinned them. The content, to a degree, felt a little bit elementary, so while I completely understand the need for accessibility and clarity of presentation, which was very welcome, the very elementary nature of the presentation of the information gave rise to a wee bit of concern that what sits behind it is an elementary understanding, and that is where Angela was talking there about the connection between the content of the rights and what is actually trying to be achieved and not sure that the level of understanding is there on that aspect. There are a number of vague statements connecting budget to impact or positive potential impact on people's rights, but there was no substance to explain how that was to be achieved. So a little bit more detail, a few more lines around the illustrative examples that they have around the type of spending, so the analysis of and into formulating those policy actions. Otherwise, at the moment when you read through your left wondering why these examples have been cherry-picked, what was the reasoning behind them? That leads on to transparency issues that I am sure we will come back to later on. On the issue of your Scotland, your finance guide, I thought that that was a really good, accessible document. It introduces a citizen to what the budget is about, why spending is needed, where it is needed, where money comes from, and a citizen's budget should be a gateway to information. They are not meant to replace the detailed budget documents, but they are important for introducing citizens and civil society to the knowledge that they need to participate as informed stakeholders to be able to hold Government to account for its spending decisions. However, I think that there is an important distinction to be addressed here around the question of what we want a citizen's style budget document to do, because there can be more than one type of citizens document produced at different points in the budget cycle and supporting different aspects of the budget process. Should we be producing a pre-budget statement that supports boosting participation and engagement for decisions that are made, or is it just about raising awareness and providing information after decisions are made? That is necessary, and that is what this document does. It is not a bad thing, but the more of the kind of tools that there are, the more we can support participation of people to engage on decisions before they are actually made. That reinforces points that Claire made earlier about education and the need for education. The Government has been a bit too passive, possibly in the Parliament, in producing documents without actively promoting them. We need to support people to engage in this. The budget is not for everybody, but it should be for everybody. We need to help to support public education to make something that people want to get involved with. First, I want to stress the importance of accessibility. It underpins all of the three principles that go into a human rights budget process—transparency, participation and accountability. They cannot happen if citizens are not engaged and able to understand the budget decisions that have been made that affect their lives. It is very important. As an economist, as someone who has worked as part of a team of economists, sometimes it takes us a bit of time to get our head around the main budget document and to make sense of the decisions that have been made. However, that might just be a reflection of the fact that it is a very complex and big process to go through. It is welcome that budget information is conveyed in different formats. One opportunity for further progress around accessibility might be around producing budget documents in a greater variety of formats. For example, in my Spice Briefing last year, I based on a case study of people with learning disabilities. Often, people with learning disabilities use easy-read documents to process information. It would be useful to have an easy-read document published alongside the budget. However, there are other formats, such as a British Sign Language version or perhaps even in different languages. There are some opportunities for further improvement. Good morning to our panel. Thanks again for joining us and also for the evidence that you have submitted to the budget process and to our committee. I just want to ask a couple of questions around accessibility and maybe to start with yourself, Rob. The Scottish Government has said in the response to our letter that it has worked hard to make at least the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement deliberately accessible. Can you see that in the art and is that enough? Yes, it is more accessible. Setting out each portfolio, the clear link to the national outcomes and human rights at the start is quite a way of presenting information that I think everybody can understand. A lot of the very long document and a lot of the narrative in the document could perhaps point to more detailed examples of the impact of spending decisions and the data that backs that up. As for whether it is sufficient, I guess that is a judgment that can be made. There is the open budget survey, which has a set of objective measures that score the budget against, in line with the human rights budgeting process. That was last done in Scotland before a number of recent changes were made, so it might be something to consider to revisit the survey and assess what is happening now in the budget against the metrics. I have a further question in that area, sorry. Okay, do you want to go first before I go? Oh sorry, I might get on to that. Yep, no problem, sorry. Sorry, yep, okay. Unless you want to add that into the mix so that it folk her. No, it's okay. Okay, Allie and then Claire. Hi, it was just a quick note to say that since my last discussion with Rob on this topic, we, at the commission, we decided to repeat the open budget survey process. The research is under way at the moment and we will be publishing the results along with the global survey results in spring next year. We did the process in 2019 and we found that the processes were lacking in a number of areas and we provided information of where we saw improvement was needed. It will be very interesting, as Rob said, to see where or how much progress has been made benchmarked against international best practice. Thanks. Okay, thanks and then Claire and then back to Pam Di-Gi. Hi, thank you. Just finally on the accessibility and it kind of just echoes what Rob was saying before. I think the Equality and Freedom Scotland budget statement is very thorough. It is detailed and thorough, I think, in terms of accessibility. It still has a lot of room to improve. When I read it, it is very clear, but when I am thinking of other people reading it, it is a lot of words on one page and you scroll down it, it is not an easy read. There is also mentioned again what Rob said. There are other versions of the document in other languages and I think that is absolutely paramount in all the items that are required for people to empower people to learn about the budget process and the impact that the budget is having on priority areas and protected characteristic groups. Those need to be published at the same time and there are standards out there in terms of what easy reads, what does that mean and what does that look like. There are national standards out there for that. I am sorry for interrupting. I assume that we are moving on to another question and wrongly, so thank you for setting me straight. I have a further question in this area and it is to Angela O'Hagan, if that is okay. Good morning. I noticed that in your submissions you have said in the past that capacity and support for organisations to engage in the quality and fairer Scotland budget statement is crucial. We know that that is important to accessibility and transparency. What capacity and support is required? Is it there and what could be done to further improve that? Thank you very much. Good morning. It is nice to see you. I think that, as I have said many times to iterations of this committee and across Government, both the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government could do very much more to raise public awareness of Scotland's finances. Your Scotland, your rights is a great example, it is a really good example of an accessible easily understandable piece of public information. However, there needs to be much more work on basic information and public information to make any efforts, approaches and opportunities for participation more meaningful. I do not disagree with what colleagues are saying, but the two need to go hand in hand. Producing the budget documentation in multiple formats and in multiple versions, people need to know that it is there and they need to have some background to what that information is and how they can use it, rather than just produce it and expect it to have that effect. From both the Government and Parliament, there needs to be greater effort, and that means some spending around meaningful opportunities to participate and to achieve those or to make those opportunities meaningful. There needs to be much more effort in engaging people in building their knowledge, building their capacity, understanding the structure of Scotland's finances, the budget processes, what the Government does and what the Parliament does, what the whole raft of public organisations do. We need to remember, as scrutineers, as advisers and as members of the public, that the Scottish budget is largely dispersed to a whole range of other organisations who then spend that money according to their plans or their agreements with Government. That relationship needs to be much more closely scrutinised but also much better understood publicly as to where the distinctions are between what Government does and what a whole set of other agencies do. I think that creating and resourcing participation in knowledge building would increase public capacity for engaging in better quality and more meaningful outcomes from consultation and participation. It would also perhaps shift the practice a little bit and avoid repeatedly asking the same questions of some of the same community and public sector organisations. I have again spoken to the committee and others about the committees themselves being much more engaged with community organisations to build that capacity and knowledge around public finances and scrutinising finances. That information from the lived experience of trying to navigate or trying to understand public information would inform the presentation of content and the different versions of that content in future iterations of the budget and other policy documents. The Fraser of Allander Institute states that there is little evidence of robust analysis of how Scottish budget decisions will enable human rights to be realised. Can I start with Angela Hagan and ask what research and analysis has the Scottish Government conducted on how the budget will enable human rights to be realised? That is a very big question, because there are lots of different facets to it. I can answer it from the perspective of the Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group, which is to say that we have a work plan that cuts across a range of public policy areas. We do not have a policy-making role and we do not have a role in commissioning research, because we do not have a budget either, but we have had a significant input on, for example, the distributional analysis that is produced within Government, the shape and content of the Equality and Fairer Scotland budget statement and a constant improvement programme around how equality and human rights analysis are integrated into the policy-making process across Government. That is involved or that comprises as well. We are trying to influence and inform and shape the review of the public sector equality duty. Lots of recommendations and suggestions on improvement of the equality and human rights impact assessment process. As I have just said in a number of my answers around the need to build knowledge and capacity, there have been significant improvements through the equality data improvement plans. The next steps are not only do we need good and better intersectional data, we need a better understanding of what that data tells policy makers and members of the public and members of the Parliament and a better understanding of how to use that data in policy making and in scrutinising policy decisions, outcomes and spending decisions. There is a whole range of work that goes on across the social research within Scottish Government. We saw some very useful and important research come out alongside the budget in relation to the cost of living crisis. There is the in-depth analysis that forms the annex to the Equality and Fairer Scotland budget statement, but what we do not see are those resources being well used either within Parliament or within Government or externally. They are significant resources that can and should be used to inform policy making. In terms of what research, there is a whole raft of research. What we try to do through eBag is to draw on experiences and expertise across the members, but also to look across other territories of the United Kingdom and internationally. We had an international comparative practice session just a couple of months ago looking at what the OECD would recommend and trying to benchmark where the next steps are for the Scottish budget process in relation to the OECD findings across many, many countries around the world. We look closely to see what is happening in Wales and in the Republic of Ireland and through a range of civil society organisations. We draw on practices that are emerging in Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic and the UK Women's Budget Group, the Tax Justice Network and so on. There is a lot of informal research-based evidence coming into the deliberations in eBag, which then go on to inform some of the improvements that we have seen in the budget documentation. I just want to come back to Angela O'Hagan before I bring the others in. I just wanted some clarification when you opened and thank you for your answer. You said that you had no budget. What did that mean? Exactly. As I say, it is an advisory group that does not have a programme budget, but we draw significantly on the resources of the external members and draw significantly on the time of Scottish Government officials, both in servicing and meeting with the advisory group and in conducting and actioning the recommendations from the advisory group. Pam Degi wants to come in very briefly on that point. I have Ali and Rob both wanting to come in on the wider issue. Are you aware of resources in the budget that go to other organisations to support some of the capacity building in response to my earlier question and following from Rachael Hamilton's question? I mean specifically resources that go to other organisations to boost capacity and understanding around the budget process. Not that I am aware of it. The Scottish Women's Budget group is the most obvious one that would come to my mind, and they have received a grant. I should declare that I am a trustee of the Scottish Women's Budget group, but I had no role in that application. The Scottish Women's Budget group has a programme of capacity building on gender budgeting with local government. That is one, possibly the only, but I do not know across the whole how that budget is dispersed across the whole of the Scottish voluntary sector and third sector in relation specifically to building capacity in the budget process. It is obviously something that I think should be much better funded than it is and should be an integral part of our civic understanding. Thanks. Thanks. Just in relation to the sort of clarity around decision making, moving on from what Angela said, we are still asking frequently for more transparent information around the decision making process to understand how all of that research that Angela highlighted is used to inform decisions. In some of the pre-budget scrutiny on the decisions of the resource spending review, for example, we argued that we could not come to any conclusions about whether the right areas had been focused on because we could not access the evidence around the decision making process that had taken place. There was no visibility of the impact assessments about how the decisions had been reached. That is not new. It has been argued since the committee started doing scrutiny that there needs to be a better showing of the Government's working in the margins of how our decisions are made. Leaving aside the political aspect of the negotiations that happen around budgetary decisions each year, what we have consistently argued for is to see a better rationale and justification of spending decisions that are informed by human rights standards and equalities data. We are seeing improvements, but we are still not there. What we also continue to argue for is a much better relationship between the commitments in annual budgets and the monitoring and measurement of outcomes of those budgets year on year and cumulatively. This is where I feel that the parliamentary committees could be stronger in challenging the Government by saying, you know, this is what you said you were going to do, what have you done and what have the outcomes been of your spend. The clearer the budget commitments are and the links to the main policy drivers or the frameworks underpin them and what outcomes they are anticipating or aiming to achieve and how they intend to evaluate that impact, the easier it will be for us to have that desire clarity over the decision making. The other areas that we have frequently commented here are much better links to the relationships between budgets, the programme for government, the national performance framework, outcome and indicators. I know that that is something that we are likely to come on to later, so I will hold my thoughts on that bit for now. If we are talking about the data and research that underpins decision making and the impacts of budget decisions on human rights, the key document here is the Equalities and Fair of Scotland statement. You can see the progress that has been made directly or explicitly linking the human rights to each portfolio. Within each portfolio, there is commentary around new spend, the expected impact and the links to research. The next steps are some of the information that is quite generalised, some of the rights that are allocated to each portfolio cut across many more portfolios than are sometimes attributed to. Some of the research and evidence that is pointed out does not link to the protected characteristic that it is highlighted under. I guess that just a bit more clarity and detail would be the next steps. The other thing is that budgets are trade-offs. As users, we want to understand not just that x million pounds are spent on this and that is the expected impact, but we also want to understand, if we are spending it on that, why are we not spending it on this and what is the balance of trade-off that has been struck and why is this a priority and not that a priority and then how that links to human rights. That is the kind of commentary that would be useful to have in the equality statement. I want to delve into a little bit more detail on questions of accountability. Angela, you said in your opening remarks that the clear need for much stronger or deeper scrutiny of Scottish Government decision making. Ali, just in your previous answer, you were talking about the linkages across to programme for government, national performance framework and other policy frameworks and how those assists or otherwise are understanding of realisation of rights. I will start with Ali, if I can. Could you comment on the linkages to the NPF and the programme for government? Do they aid our understanding in what human rights outcomes we are seeking to achieve? If not, what could we be doing differently? On a positive note, we are hearing more about progress towards better linkages in the national performance framework and national outcomes and budgets. In the budget documents, as Rob said, the portfolios all indicate the associated national outcomes and relevant human rights, but it does not go any deeper than that. That is where the improvement is needed. There is no obvious depth to the understanding of those connections and there is no understanding of what the content of the specific rights are in terms of what they are meant to be achieving. I talked a lot about that in my pre-budget evidence with regard to the resource spending review and the points that are very similar here. Although there is a narrative on the NPF and the national outcomes presented in the statement, it does not explore the prioritisation of resources through the lines of Scotland's national outcomes. There are no direct connections made between allocated spend and national outcomes. There is no budget line. Therefore, the way that both the NPF and all the budget documents are constructed limits accountability because they do not allow for a transparent assessment of impact. From a rights perspective, those outcomes should be grounded in Scotland's international human rights obligations and commitments. I have argued for a long time that the whole of the NPF could be grounded in our international obligations, but it is not presented in that way just now. In terms of stemming from an assessment of an analysis of human rights concerns, facing different groups across different sectors such as housing, health and education, the broad framing of the national reform and framework needs to be more closely aligned to spending commitments in annual budgets, scrutiny of outcomes and the human rights obligations under international law. The Government's policies would then be designed to respond to those concerns and an assessment would need to be made to ascertain the level of resource required to deliver on those policies. The Government would then be further required to explore how to generate the necessary funds. Following that allocation, the Government would then monitor how the money was spent, was it spent as it was planned to, if not how it was redistributed, what was delivered to whom and evaluate whether the policy was implemented and planned and what impact that had. However, if we are saying that the national outcomes are the key concerns for Scotland, then the priorities and the annual programme for government and the budget need to be aligned with them. Starting with the outcomes that we are trying to achieve, assessing what is required in terms of policy and then resource to achieve those outcomes and then exploring what resource generation is required to fund that. In scrutinising outcomes, this is where parliamentary scrutiny could be improved as well. It is not in a party political way, but actually trying to follow the money, as Angela said earlier, and to follow what we have agreed the outcomes will be and are those outcomes being achieved. If not, however policy intervention has been rethought what implications there are for that. I suppose that the other thing about implications of changing spending decisions, which Angela referred to before, is what happens when we take money away from an area, not just what happens, not just impact assessing when something is to be allocated. Those are all the areas that I think could be improved. Thanks. Thanks, Allie. That is really clear. The suggestions for how we rethink the national performance framework are really helpful. Angela, could I bring you in and ask for your comments on that? If there are particular cross-portfolio issues or inconsistencies or conflicts that you see that we need to be teasing out, particularly if we are thinking about human rights in the round and an outcome or impact focus rather than departmental silos? Sure. I am not sure that there is much to add to Allie's fantastic human rights, but just in the 101 there, it was really superb and comprehensive answer. I would want to maybe re-emphasise, as Allie has done, the alignment with the national performance framework. The NPF is the long-term vision of what we want to realise as a nation and with our resources. We, of course, need to secure the maximisation of those resources, which has significant implications for revenue-raising and how public money is raised. There is often too little attention paid to that, yet it has also been an area of where, in terms of transparency, accessibility and participation, there has been quite a lot of activity in recent months. That is a sight point. Greater alignment with the NPF, as Allie has said, is that the national performance framework is long-term. It needs to be supported by multi-annual budgeting, updated by the annual programme for government and an annual budget statement and adjustments to the budget, which should clearly map on to one another. Therefore, it makes much more clear what it is that government intends to do, what resources are being allocated, how outcomes are understood and are those outcomes achieving the intended objectives, and if not, how they should be re-oriented. Rob, who is an economist, talks about trade-offs. I do not talk about trade-offs because I think that we should start always from the perspective of advancing equality and securing the realisation of rights. However, I understand the broader point that public resources are tight, and that has been clearly set out in the resource spending review and the subsequent emergency budget review and, obviously, in the current draft budget. However, you asked about specific areas. It is very clear that we can see the hollowing out of local government finance that has happened consistently in recent years. That reduction in its resource base makes it increasingly difficult to provide basic statutory services, but education services are about to take a really big hit. Yet attainment and the attainment gap is a priority government mission, and child poverty is the mission of government. Social care is chronically underfunded, and the economic multiplier benefits of investing in care and the care economy are consistently underplayed or even disregarded in economic policy. Cuts to funding across public services have a knock-on effect across all sorts of policy areas. In my home city of Glasgow, we are seeing a proposal to cut funding to food train. Social isolation, the importance of living well and preventing deterioration in health and independent living among older people are priorities within government policy. We know from research for the University of Glasgow for food train that more older people in receipt of local authority care provision are malnourished. That is a consequence of the statutory time limitations on care packages and staff shortages to meet those requirements. Yet the food train in Glasgow faces closure of lifeline food provision and social services due to council decisions. Funding is tight, yes, but decisions need to be made from a different perspective that starts with securing the minimum rights without discrimination and then building the kinds of services and approaches to allocation to come back round that deliver the vision that is set out within the NPA. Thanks very much, Angela. I know Clare wants to come in and then I'll bring Robin. Thank you very much. I'd just like to come back on to your original point about accountability. There's a broader question in the budget about where accountability lies. We know that accountability is one of the three core principles of human rights budgeting, but we also know and read the budget that money gets allocated to a certain amount of public bodies straight away. That is the process. We then have the equality act to make sure that those public bodies are compliant with their public sector equality duties. However, we hear time and time again that the public sector equality duties in mainstreaming reports have largely become a tick box exercise and are not having much impact anymore. However, they have never realised their potential. We have to think about where the accountability lies if an amount of money is given to a public body. We can see through their public sector equality duties and their mainstreaming reports that they are really not meeting their targets in terms of improving race equality, disability and gender pay gap. They are not reaching those targets. What are we then saying to them to be accountable? Is it within the budget that you say that the x amount of money to that public body must be contingent on improvement on that area, or is that the relationship between the Government and the public body? However, wherever that conversation lies, that needs to be clear and transparent, and it is not at the moment. We need to remember that if a public body is continuously not achieving the public sector equality duties, where do we draw the line? Improvement plans are required and necessary, but we are talking about some public bodies providing vital support and realising people's human rights. Where do we draw the line? I know that you need to improve, but while you are improving, you are still missing in not providing services for a certain part of society. To me, that all links in with funding towards the third sector. If I remember correctly, the funding has been decreased this year for the third sector, but we know that a lot of public bodies will lie on the third sector for the expertise, their knowledge and helping them with their mainstreaming report to improve their gender pay gap or their race equality or improve their anti-racism practices. If we are decreasing that support, where is it coming from? Finally, I think that a lot of this can be a step forward and could improve through transparency. One of the things that I noted that would help this would be why decisions were made. We have talked about that a lot in the budget process so far. If x amount of money is given to the development of an action plan on racism within health and social care, the reason is that we know that there is a direct link between institutional racism and the outcomes that it has on people's access to services and positive outcomes on health and social care services. We just need to improve that gap there. The impact assessments are very thorough and each protected characteristic, but we need to be more strategic with them. One huge part of an impact assessment is that we have identified the disproportionate impact on the protected characteristic group or marginalised group, but there is no—there was not the next step that is required in an impact assessment. What are we doing to alleviate that or to help that group to realise their rights, because we know that it is going to have a disproportionate impact? That was missing throughout all portfolios. We always advocate and support that those carrying out impact assessments should be trained continuously on equalities and on protected characteristics and what they are. There were a few discrepancies between some nationalities that were put under religion. We just need to get the system streamlined a wee bit more and be a bit more strategic and make sure that there is consistency across all portfolios. Thanks very much, Claire. That is helpful. Those suggestions are your comments around we go so far and we miss the next steps. I think that those points are well made. Rob, can I bring you in if you have any comments on this? I am aware of time, so I will leave it there after this. Just quickly, on this point around silos, a good illustration of this is social security. The choices that the Scottish Government has made on social security can be seen through a human rights lens. If you look at it in isolation, it could be seen as evidence of progressive realisation of human rights. However, the problem is that these policies are expensive and there is a growing gap between the cost of those commitments and the funding received from social security block grants. By 2728, that forecast has to grow to £1.4 billion. The obvious question is how is this going to be funded and there might be a danger that it is funded by moving resources that would otherwise enable human rights in other areas of public service delivery, for example. That is the danger of looking at things in silos. At least starting a conversation and trying to understand how that is going to be managed through Government decision making is quite essential. I think that that links to the work that we are going to be doing on minimum core and getting that baseline across all those connections, but I will leave it there for now. I still have a number of members wanting to come in in this area, so first of all, Karen Adam. Thank you to the panel this morning. It has been really informative. Angela was speaking about making budgeting more accessible to people and you made it more accessible to me this morning, so I appreciate that. It has been really helpful. I found it quite interesting how we are talking about the outcomes, flipping that and tracing the money from the outcomes backwards and how we can do that in a more meaningful, progressive way. In my previous life, I used to be a local councillor and the public sector of quality was always at the back of the papers. Whether that was seen last or first or how that was used, it was often a bit of a symbol to myself in asking, was this an afterthought? We have a lot of tools, but are they being used in the right way and used at the right time when it comes to making those decisions? Are there any missed opportunities in regards to the Scottish Government's approach that you believe would be more measurable in terms of outcomes? We spoke about outcomes coming first. How do we measure those outcomes? Have there been any missed opportunities? There seems to be a lot of cart before horse, a lot of the time, so if you personally could tidy things up a bit, what opportunities do you feel are there and what would be your preferred system for that? I would flip the way that we budget on its head. We start with our budget pie and we discuss priorities and who is going to get what slices of the pie, but we do not start from, is the pie as big as it could be? What we should be looking at is what is it that we are trying to achieve, so that is within the national outcomes through our programme for government. What is it that we are trying to achieve? How do we believe or what policies do we need to achieve that or laws? What funding do we need to realise those policies in practice and how are we going to raise the resources that we need? I know that we have been discussing resource constraints, but one of the key obligations of human rights budgeting is that you maximise your available resources. Whilst I was really pleased that the Scottish Government did dip its toe into the whole issue around taxation and we were starting to look at more progressive taxation, I do think that they missed maybe in terms of their focus, they did not explore what they could have in relation to council tax reform or local based wealth tax. I know that that is within the Government's existing tax powers. I would recommend exploring the research done by Landman Economics in published in December, where they fully explored and costed out realistic and progressive options with regard to taxation. That would allow Scotland to fund investment in public services, including real-term increases in fees for public sector workers. The reforms that they recommended within the initial years could raise up to 1.3 billion in revenue and, over a longer period, over a parliamentary term, potentially up to just a worth of 3 billion. There are some real opportunities there about how we maximise our resources to start with, rather than starting from a limited point. I do think that we need to look at what we want to prioritise when we all talk about what can Scotland do we want to live in, what do we want our budget service, what are our priorities and start from there. That is how I would work backwards then to what you need and then working out what you need. I will leave it there. Of course, the issue there is what the priorities become the push and pull of politics often, and it is trying to get that out. I suppose that that is where human rights obligations are key, because they are not something nice to do, they are legal obligations. Although we have not incorporated yet, we have signed up to these various treaties through the United Kingdom. What the incorporation in Scotland will do will reaffirm our existing commitments. We already have those obligations, so the legal obligations are there irrespective of who is in power. I know that it does not always appear apolitical, but those are legal obligations, and looking at it from that perspective takes a little of the politics out of it. That is really helpful, thank you. Thank you. I would just like to pick up on the point that you have made about public sector equality duties. They sometimes seem like an afterthought. Definitely through our work at Sembo, that is what we come across. They are not sought through. In the strategic sense, it should be the beginning of the process and continuous throughout the process and not something that is done at the end of your decision making or policy service design, or whatever it should be at the start of it. Also about what our priorities are for data that we collect can tell you a lot. It is our evidence for everything, but we know that we struggle to collect meaningful data in Scotland because of barriers that people face to disclosing their information. I talked about that before about how we can improve the collection of data, but I would like to focus on a little bit about disaggregating the data. We need to disaggregate the data a little bit better because that tells us what is really going on. If we do not do that, we do not know what is going on. That starts with what are we asking in the first place. We need to ensure that service providers, local authorities and public bodies are asking the same questions in the raised bracket that might have white British, white Scottish and other in one local authority. In another one, they will have a full list of other ethnicities. We need to have a much more streamlined and strategic approach to that. If we are not asking the same questions, we will never know what is going on. We can never capture that intersectionality that we know is important. There is something in there about the tools that we have. We know that we have impact assessments and that is a really good tool. As I said before, we need the next step. However, we also need to know how much money is going into each sector data. If we forget our data right, it tells us that we really need to put more money into the realisation of certain rights for persons with disabilities or to challenge institutional racism. Perhaps hate crime is on the rise. That is our priority and that is our evidence. We need to be transparent and say that, but it needs to come back to the term of meaningful allocation. Within future equality and fair Scotland statements, it would be beneficial to have that trace of heroes or information. That is why disability or race is getting more money. We are giving equality in the human rights and inclusion director £8 million, but £3 million of that is going straight towards that area. It sounds simplistic, but it is a good way to start, but we have to start. I did appreciate it. It was noted quite a lot throughout the budget process about improving data processes in Scotland. I know that Rob is wanting to come in, but we also have Pam Degie and Rachel wanting to come in as well. Pam, do you want to go first and let Rob come in early on? It was just further on the points about human rights and also if it is okay to ask at this point as well around the third sector. I am keen to know whether witnesses agree with Audit Scotland about the implementation gap when it comes to human rights and what the Government says in its policy intentions around the budget. Can you outline any areas where you feel that this year's budget process has failed to meet commitments by the Government on accessibility, transparency and participation in relation to the delivery of human rights? I will briefly talk about outcomes. Ali mentioned that those are not less to have. They are essential obligations that are placed on the Government, especially if the human rights bill is incorporated. It is a valid question to ask the Government how they are assured that the Government has met its obligations and how they know what comfort they have that the budget enables them to meet the human rights obligations and what evidence and outcomes are they basing that on. There is also a big other piece of work around minimum core obligations, which I think may be safe for another day. At this point about it, it should be cross-party, it should be able to withstand a change of Government and take the politics out of it. As for the point on the third sector, I would probably leave that to other witnesses who might have more to say than me. Okay, Pam, are you wanting someone else to come in? It would be helpful perhaps to, if Angela could maybe comment as well, and also just in relation to specifically, Angela, if you could, comments that the Scottish Women's Convention made about women being overlooked largely when it came to that part of the process. I think that I would agree that there is an implementation gap and it goes to the point that Sally made earlier on. There is a knowledge gap across Government, across public sector and across the community and third sector in relation to human rights. What human rights means is that it is a contested idea and that it is also an enabling framework in terms of service design and that, as colleagues have said repeatedly, it is a set of legal obligations that are about to be reinforced through the incorporation bill. I think that there is a need for immediate attention to be paid and capacity developed within all those organisations. For it not to be seen as a burden, as an encumbrance upon public services by whoever they are delivered by, but rather it is a necessity, not just a legal compliance, but it is a necessity to take a human rights-based approach in order to secure the realisation of rights. We talk about a wellbeing economy, we talk about all sorts of things about improving people's wellbeing, but we need to, as Rachel has pointed out, to better use some of those analytical tools and to build the analytical capacity in applying the evidence from that. To have a clearer understanding of what the so-called problem is, why actions are necessary and what actions are appropriate, making better use of the tools, not just for legal compliance, but because they make for better policy. I am not quite sure what the point is that you are referring to in terms of women being overlooked. I would certainly have a generalised concern, and I have made this point many times, that taking an equality's mainstreaming approach does risk gendered experiences being subsumed within that more generalised approach, just as an equality's mainstreaming approach may fail to understand or properly identify and be able to act on the experience of people with disabilities, etc. Is it a fine balance or is it about better understanding structural discrimination? Taking a protective characteristics approach risks individualising and increasing silos and individualising concepts of discrimination. How well is intersectionality understood? We are seeing lots of language, gender competence and intersectionality being used a great deal more, but what is the understanding behind some of that language? It is building that understanding that we need to see some resourcing and time spent on improving knowledge and practice. That means understanding the discriminatory effects of race discrimination, disability discrimination and the intersections and overlapping experiences, for example disabled women or low-income women. Disabled women are very often low-income women, just as low-income parents, particularly women, 92 per cent of low-income parents are low-income. It is understanding those intersections and the causes of them, and that they are structural and very often reinforced by policy decisions that do not take cognisance of, that are not informed by equality's data and by an intention from the outset to secure the progressive realisation of rights. I am not sure that I have answered your question now, Pam, but what is that? I have still got Rachel Watter coming in this area, but we have crossed the internet area that Pam Gossel was trying to cover. I wonder if he could bring Pam in and then we will go to hear back, and then we will go to Rachel next, if that is okay. Good morning, panel, and thank you for all your information that you have provided so far. My question goes on from what Pam has just asked. In oral evidence, the Scottish Women's Budget Group said that focus on gender equality was important alongside a participative approach to identify areas for preventative spend or policy. The Scottish Women's Convention noted that improving rights through gender budgeting would improve other aspects of human rights, i.e. child poverty. Do you feel that the budget meets the gender budgeting standards? Could you provide details as to why or why not? I think that I started to drift into that sort of territory around gender analysis and how differences in experience are masked by an equality's mainstreaming approach, because one size does not fit all, absolutely. Gender budgeting is about feminist policy change. It is about taking a transformative view of the world and taking a transformative approach to policy making that understands structural discrimination and the structural discrimination that arises from gendered social norms that are reinforced in the labour market in the family, in social security and in on-going sexual violence, sexual harassment and discrimination on pregnancy, maternity and family-related circumstances. Gender budgeting is about accountability, awareness-raising and ultimately securing changes in government policy from the perspective of informed, quality, robust intersexual gender data being applied throughout. For that to happen, we need to understand the budget as part of the policy process. It is not separate from that. If we set the budget aside from public policy and see policy decisions as something different, then we are missing a big part of the puzzle, a big part of the process. For me, gender budget analysis activates gender mainstreaming, because it brings in those concepts of continuous review, bringing in the analysis and the data that we have been talking about all through identifying problems, identifying potential policy responses, looking at what are the outcomes that policy interventions and associated spend are trying to achieve. Being able to answer the questions through scrutinising what we want to do, how we will know if we are doing it, how we know when we have got there and what outcomes have we achieved and are they the right ones. That takes us back to the budget review process from 2016-17 and the introduction of the pre-budget scrutiny to try, as other colleagues have said, to defuse some of the party politics around budget scrutiny. For parliamentarians to look forward and back, to look back at how spending allocations and policy objectives aligned, are they achieving the kinds of outcomes that we want to see and how might budgets be realigned. For the lived experiences and the different lived experiences of people to be visible, over many, many years we have been trying to do this in Scotland. For many years, finance officials here and internationally have said what gender got to do with the budget, the budgets are about numbers, budgets are about people and people in all the diversity of their experiences and of the discriminatory experiences that they live through as a consequence of the multiple discriminations. Finally, I mentioned in my introductory remarks that the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls has recommended a statutory footing for intersectional gender budget analysis. My view is that the forthcoming human rights incorporation bill combining the convention for discrimination against women and the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights is a really key opportunity to make that happen. There is a role for civil society in scrutinising and there is clearly a role for parliament to be scrutinising that as well. Thank you for that information, Angela, but just coming back to the actual question, it's good to have all that context around the question. Did you feel that the budget met the gender budgeting standard? Sorry, I thought I was quite clear. No, I don't. We've been trying to do that for 20 years. We've been trying to do this for 20 years and the equalities mainstreaming approach is one that undermines that. It's not a politics of equivalence where we should look at gender and then we look at race and then we look at disability. We need to look at them in the round and that needs much more effective resourcing of training to build the knowledge about how to apply, but it also needs a change in our collective thinking. We're talking about a change in ways of thinking and doing. Policy seems to be made from a generalised analysis of the problem and then we look to assess through all the kinds of tools that colleagues have talked about today, gender impact analysis, equality impact analysis, human rights analysis. There's a retrofitting that goes on there to see the policy decisions that we're taking. How do they fit with our obligations? How do they fit with our objectives around gender equality, race equality, whatever? Rather than starting with the better understanding of what's the problem, what's it represented to be so that we can unpick it and understand it better and then have better, much more gendered policy making as a consequence? Thank you, Angela. Just a wee supplementary on that. In a previous session, Susan McKellar spoke about the Scottish Women's Convention being involved in the budget, talked with the finance minister. She revealed that the women's organisations has asked to be involved in more depth and we're told no because of the time constraints and around the budget timetable. Are you satisfied that women were heard and included in the budget setting process? Obviously, I know that you've talked about the gender stuff, but do you think that women were actually heard through the budget setting process? I think that there's a huge area of participation that needs to be addressed. We have one of the most open budget processes in the world, but it's hidden in plain sight. I have said that many times to this committee and others. There is a responsibility for Parliament and for Government to be more inclusive and much more proactive about who's involved, how consultative, how inclusive it is, but that goes back to what I said earlier on about participation. For participation to be meaningful, there needs to be a better understanding, but there also needs to be a lot more proactive effort to engage not just in formal consultation processes but in a combination of knowledge building and information sharing that incorporates feedback from a lived experience perspective, which can only improve budget setting and other policy mechanisms. Have women been heard on the budget? No, but who is heard on the budget? As I said, there's a role for Parliament and for Government. For public organisations as well, local authorities running online consultations on what community members think should be cut from budgets is not informed consultation or participation, so there's a role right across work elective action on that area. Thank you very much, Angela. I don't know, Chair. Does anybody else want to come in? There's lots of other folk coming in. That's okay. I'm going to have to move on a little bit. Rachel has been trying to get in for a little well, and I think that the last area is really good. It's just going right back to a couple of answers from Clare Gallagher. I just wondered how you believed that the Scottish Government could achieve a better understanding of the link between the evidence that suggests a cut in Scottish Government funding to third sector organisations' impacts outcomes such as the example that you gave, which was the gender pay gap. I think that that was for clear. Thank you. I think that the Scottish Government could improve their understanding and evidence. I think that I talked a lot more about data, and I think that there needs to be a lot more cross-cutting across all directorates in public bodies around one, initially, capacity building about the importance of data. I think that a lot of people see it as I'm just doing it for judgment and not that it's going to be actionable or anything of that, and that's certainly something that we've came across in our work. On that point— What could be improved? The point that you made was about the budget. The intersectional data that you're talking about, do you hope that that would include the financial link between a budget and an outcome? It links into what was just discussed there. We need to remember that the outcomes and what we're talking about when we're talking about outcomes and budget decisions are things that affect people and people's lives. There should be an intersectional part of that. We talk about intersectionality all the time in committees and in public bodies everywhere we talk about it, but I think that we need to go back and think, what are we talking about when we're talking about intersectionality? I think that we need to improve that across the whole board. Without that, we'll end up siloed different committees. I think that intersectionals should have a focus on disability and the underpinning of protected characteristics. Another committee might think that it's gender, and I would always advocate that it's the human rights part. It's talking about the human rights that it impacts, and then we can assess whether we use that as our baseline, and that can be a starting point. I'm going to jump a little bit to Fulton MacGregor, just to make sure that everybody's getting time to come in. We're approaching the limit of everyone's availability. Fulton MacGregor, you've already covered quite a bit of the panel, so I'll be... I've only got a short question. I wanted to ask a bit about the emergency budget review. I know that some of you have touched on that a bit, but I wanted to ask if you feel that any equalities in human rights concerns have risen specifically out of the emergency budget review and how you think that the budget might have addressed those concerns? I've not got a particular preference for order, convener, but if you want me to say it, maybe go to Alison first. Thanks for the question. I think that there's no doubt that the emergency budget review had to make some very difficult decisions, and ultimately there weren't going to be many winners in this situation. For me, the concerns are raised in relation to the process. For all of the focus today on progress around transparency, participation and accountability, that was notably absent in the emergency budget review. There was a lack of evidence as to how the decisions were reached that they took. Without knowing what lay behind those decisions, we have no way of knowing whether there was a considerate opinion or the choices that were made, whether they had an impact on human rights inequalities or not being very eloquent. I think that taking an example, the prioritising of wage increases over spending on employability was discussed in pre-budget scrutiny by one of the other committees, in order to assess that from my perspective to ensure that it's not a retrogressive step because neither choice, neither cut was ideal. I'd want to know when to the envisage to employability spending being reinstated, who's going to be affected by it, the cut on one hand and the wage enhancement on the other, who benefits most from the different types of spend? Is it women, parents, lone parents, people with disabilities? There are considerations there that may well have been taken, but it wasn't apparent in the documenting of the decision making. Employability cuts are a good example of a time when there was a real sudden reconfiguration of our labour market coming out of lockdown and now to the economic instability that we are facing. Employment programmes to have been in the firing line at that point didn't really chime with issues around economic recovery plans or the national strategy for economic transformation for me. The budget document that we have in front of us notes that 1.8 million adults in Scotland of working age do not earn enough money to pay tax. That shouts out that we are a really low-paid economy and people are in need of employability support, so cutting employability to me didn't make sense at that time. Those are the kind of discussions that I think were missing for me from the evidence around the decisions that were made in the emergency budget. I'm not sure that I can improve on what Allie has said, many of the comments are what I would have said and it is the read across. I said earlier on, in some ways, we were lucky. It was a stressful time and there was a possibility that inequalities and analysis of the EBR would not go ahead given the resource capacity within government. That is indicative of the need to further embed this whole approach and that it becomes an equality and human rights approach to the budget. It is not a parallel process, it needs to be absolutely integral to the budget formulation. I wasn't clear if your question was about process or about specific decisions. On process and presentation, again, as Allie has said, there needs to be greater consistency in the portfolios between allocation and greater flow. Again, in terms of accessibility, there were improvements that could be made in relation to the connection between some of the narrative and some of the graphics around the portfolio and maintaining the narrative in the links to specific human rights throughout. As we have said earlier, we are showing the alignment between proposed actions and allocation in relation to the national performance framework and the recommendations of which there are multiple from different advisory groups and parliamentary inquiries. There is an awful lot to juggle and condense in terms of the presentation. In terms of policy decisions and decision making, it goes back to a long-standing narrative that colleagues have covered very eloquently today in relation to the alignment between policy problems, as they are understood and evidenced. The actions taken and the appropriateness of those actions, the extent to which they are properly informed and how they are then evaluated in relation to the outcomes, is what was intended being achieved? Is the money being allocated in a way that was intended and having the desired outcomes? That is what we need to get better at finding out and what we need to get better at articulating. The finding out is partly parliamentary scrutiny and greater, wider scrutiny, and it is partly better processes in government. Thanks very much, Angela. I know that you have a hard deadline, and that is why I pulled you in, perhaps unexpectedly, to answer that question before you have to go. Huge thank you, and we will let you go off to your other meeting before we move on to further folk to answer that question, but thank you for taking the time and giving us extra time there. Rob, please. First thing to say on the emergency budget review is that I do not be surprised if there is another one this year. We had an emergency review because of the impact of high inflation eroding the value of the budget and particularly the consequences for public sector pay. We needed to balance the budget without being able to change tax rates in year. The inevitable consequence was that spending would need to be reprofiled. I would stress the word emergency budget review. I do not think that anyone would accept that it is an ideal situation to be in because the risk is that once you are that long through the year, the areas where you can reprofile spending are narrowed because you have already legally committed to spending lots of money. That means that there is a risk that whatever is easiest to Salami slice gets rather than considering the impact of those decisions on wider strategic objectives such as human rights. It looks like that is why employability was reduced because it was money that was planned to be spent that was not spent at that time. I was going to make the same point exactly, but it is just worth stressing that employability is absolutely related to human rights. It is an integral part of tackling child poverty action plan. When you think about a lot of the users of employability services, many people rely on them to obtain equal access to the labour market, which is also a human right. The last point is that, for what this budget does about that, employability spending is budgeted to increase quite dramatically up to where we expected it to be in this year. There is a big question about the Government having published a public sector pay policy alongside the budget because of the on-going uncertainty. Is it a danger that we end up in this scenario again? Thank you, Rob. Just to alert our guests that we have an issue with the chat function so that we cannot see if anybody is wanting to come in. A few folk still have questions that they want to ask if members can direct it to a specific person. I hope that we can small number. Karen, do you have something further that you want to come in on? A quick question, if that is okay. It was just pulling on from the question of outcomes. A few of my questions had been answered there in terms of participation. One of the key points that was raised was the outreach to the public and informing them in the same way that we are starting with outcomes and tracing the money backwards. How do we inform and ensure that the outcomes that we are looking at are representative? Clare, you spoke about how we had a demographic, for example, of a particular race that was interlinked with religion, but that was not necessarily so. How can we ensure that the outcomes for that group that are not interlinked with religion are being met? What can we do there in terms of improving the feeding of information from the outcomes? Do you think that the Scottish Government can do anything more in that regard? I will come to Clare on that. I think that I have just to, when I mentioned before, about the race and the religion part. It was a specific portfolio that put a nationality, put Pakistan under religion and about efforts around Pakistan's schooling for young girls, which is a welcomed commitment within a budget process, but it was just in the wrong section of an impact assessment. For us, what we want to see to improve on that would be a more strategic approach. Those who are in charge of impact assessments, those who are in charge of participation and engagement with the public, their learning and development is paramount on issues that relate to that demographic of people. We have to make sure that we are up to speed on what anti-racism looks like within participation, what are things that we need to consider in terms of maybe we need a BSL interpreter, what are issues relating to white privilege, what are the barriers that people face participation. We cannot go forward unless we get those things in place and their structure there to improve and put those things in place. It is just that actionable part. In summary, we have mentioned that before about implementing the implementation gap. To me, that is where an implementation gap is in. There is a lot within decisions and the equality and fairness statement about how things are and there is not a lot about why or what we are going to do about it. I have said that that is a huge crux in the matter for outcomes. I agree with what has been said by the panellists about outcomes. I think that we just need to do that capacity building. We have our national performance framework, we have programme governance and we have our budget, but we need to increase the awareness and understanding of human rights and that our outcomes are realisation of human rights and improve that and realise that human rights are not political, they are legal obligations with or without the incorporation bill. The incorporation bill, in my mind, improves accountability and develops that minimum core that we were talking about. Regardless of that, we still have legal obligations. I think that it runs the risk a lot of times that we see that human rights become a political pawn and that that is not going to improve outcomes for our country or for the people in it. Thank you, Claire. It is really helpful. Thanks very much. Thanks to everyone. I think that we are going to wrap up there. There was maybe one or two other areas that we might have liked to have covered, but I think that we have done pretty well. Thanks to all three of you for staying so much beyond the hour that we had originally anticipated. It has been a really useful session and lots for us to think about. The committee will now discuss our next steps in our private session. That concludes our formal business this morning. We will move into private to consider other items of our agenda.