 F respectfully and welcome to the 27th meeting in 2022 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee with no apologies for the demonstrations this morning. The first item on our agenda today is to take evidence from the Minister for Equality and Older People on our pre-budget scrutiny, and I refer members to Ments previous questions to the Minster. Welcome to the meeting, Minster Christina McElvie, Minister for Equalities and Older People. She is supported by officials Aileen F Invanigan in reflection strategic lead for disability older people, BSL, Social Isolation and Loneliness,"ballsack anti LGBTQIA equality, and Rob Priestley in reflection head of mainstream and strategy unit in the Directorate for Equality Inclusion on Human Rights. You are all very welcome. Minister, would you like to make some brief opening remarks before we move to questions? Yes, I would convener. Thank you. And good morning everyone. I thank you so much for inviting me to your pre-budget scrutiny session during which I think the law agree is one of the most difficult budget rounds that we have had since devolution, certainly in my 15 years have been in this place firstly. I'm sure the committee must share my frustration that at this very late stage in terms of preparing our own budget, we are still playing a waiting game with Westminster and it's unnecessarily challenging to undertake business in this way when the goalposts keep changing. Even the dates for announcements are changing rapidly and it's quite hard to keep up with it sometimes. The reckless behaviour of successive Prime Ministers has left us in a situation of crippling inflation, which has reduced the Scottish Government budget by around £1.7 billion from when it was published just last December. The forthcoming budget is taking place in a context of impending recession with record levels of inflation affecting the Scottish budget funding base, decreasing the spending power of available funds, whilst the demand for spending increases and you'll have seen many of those demands in your budget scrutiny. That necessitates difficult decisions to be made so that we do not increase the pain felt by those most marginalised in our society and of course that's all the folks in my portfolio who I'm hoping we have better outcomes for. I am under no illusion as to the size of the task that lies ahead of us. The cost crisis is of a scale that we have not seen before. I want to make it clear that this Government understands that all budgetary decisions have an impact on equality and human rights, which is why we need to bake it into our processes. Taking an equality and human rights approach means looking holistically at our available resources and how we can further the realisation of human rights with what we have available. That is why we continue to focus on support for the most vulnerable, direct examples are our equality and human rights fund and delivering equally safe fund. Amongst a range of projects getting over £4 million to the front line, equality and human rights funds supported 38,000 people through one-to-one case work and health lines just in its first six months and we've published both those reports if the committee is interested in seeing that in much more detail. That support is increasingly dominated by responding to the cost crisis such as helping with benefits, housing and applying for home energy and food bank vouchers. The delivery equally safe fund, which targets support at eradicating and supporting survivors of violence against women and girls, has provided £9.5 million to 121 projects over its first six months as well and that report has been published too. Those projects give one-to-one emotional and practical support as well as refuge, legal and financial advice and other services. Many of the organisations also run training and outreach programmes aiming to prevent violence against women and girls and prevention is one of our key pillars and equally safe. I was very moved and inspired and hopefully you may have seen it, but if you didn't, please go and have a look at it by a recent visit that I did in the conversations that I had with women supported by the Saersher project, a project that I visited in Blantyre and if you're from that area, Blantyre, they will not forgive me for mispronouncing it. That project, directly supported by the delivery and equally safe fund, brings together specialist domestic abuse and substance use services to target the multiple complex issues that their service users face, helping them to rebuild their lives. The women that I spoke to were able to tell their story once, so that one door where they tell their story once and all the services click into place and that's what Saersher gave those women and the resultant access to support and tailored needs for the individuals who needed tailor interventions. They were empowered to shape the decisions about their support and what that looked like, which was incredibly important. This project represents a human rights approach to recovery with survivors right at its heart, a great example and one that, if you've not seen what they do, please have a look. That is just one example of the projects across Scotland offering lifelines to survivors of violence and abuse and seeking to tackle the root causes of the issue. I can truly say that it was absolutely awe-inspiring. The women that I met that day will be in the front of my mind every single time I make decisions on how we spend the money that we have. I'm incredibly committed to continuing support to such projects and our other third sector partners through these increasingly difficult times. As well as working with external partners, we continue to work across government to ensure equality and human rights are considered and the evidence-based policy making taking place in our portfolios. That is why Rob is here, because mainstreaming is a key part of all that. The Government is demonstrating that it is serious about supporting those who have been and continue to be hit hardest by a recession of crisis in Brexit, the pandemic and now the cost of living. The Government's Equality Data Improvement Programme, and I know that you've asked me about that in the past, so I can give you some update on that today, is building a stronger and more robust equality evidence base. This work is vital to ensuring that we have all the information available to make decisions that will support the needs of those most impacted by the cost crisis in Scotland. That's by taking an intersectional approach and ensuring that the areas where the deepest deprivation is or the deepest discrimination is that we can focus and tackle our resources appropriately in that. We are driving forward our work on the human rights bill, which will incorporate a number of international treaties into Scots law. Given the disability to people's rights, it is an incredibly important part of the work that I am doing in government right now. I've met stakeholders across Scotland to hear their views on this. They've been very motivated by this piece of work and all of the work that we are doing. On the draft budget for this year, that includes funding to ensure that the bill's consultation is accessible and inclusive. I know that that's of a big interest to this committee, so that diverse voices in communities can participate in the legislative process. We're working with the Scottish Learning Disability Association in the work that they're doing. They did a fantastic presentation on the incorporation of rights and what they mean from them. Again, if you've not had a chance to see that, have a look at the outcomes from the decisions that we take. I want to end my remarks by repeating my commitment to taking a quality and human rights-based approach to the budget. If we do not take seriously the prerequisite for detailed needs analysis and do not listen to the views of the most vulnerable in our society, then we will not address the crisis effect on our most vulnerable citizens. I committed to keep doing that and I look forward to hearing from the committee this morning. We'll now move to questions. When this committee was first formed and considered our budget process last year, we decided that we would, for the period of the Parliament, have a focus on human rights budgeting. We knew at that time that we were at the start of a process and that, whether it's this committee, the Parliament or the Government, we were all leading the way in terms of this workshop. It would be good to hear what that means for you. For us, one of the things that we did last year was to ask other committees to recognise that human rights isn't specifically just for this committee. I'm really pleased to see that a couple of the other parliamentary committees have specifically looked at human rights within their remit as part of their budget process, so that's been really good to see. One of the first things that we did as part of our budget process this year was to hear directly from a number of organisations around the round table, which in the public session last week, which no doubt you'll have seen a note of. We also heard directly from people first in our private session and it was really important for us to hear the lived experience of people in terms of what budgeting means for them. One of the things that we heard both from people first and from the wider panel was that, in order to be part of the budget process, they need to be able to understand and to be able to see it. That transparency and participation was a theme that came through last weekend, so a number of our committee members will focus on transparency and participation. One thing that was very clear point was around being able to access the budget documentation, so there was a call for all documentation and particularly the explainers that the parts of the budget documentation, which says what this means for you as an individual or for you as a group, should be in easy read and other formats, so BSL etc. I wonder what progress the Government is making in terms of not just making the main budget documents but the accompanying documents available so that people can participate. I heard those comments from people first last week. I was pleased to see that we are making real progress in this area. We recognise that accessibility is an important part of ensuring that key stakeholders see themselves within the work that we do as well. You will know that we have accessible communications legislation in place now anyway. As we move forward with our human rights bill, there will be a right within that to have access to documents in the format that you do, but we currently do quite a lot of that. We currently publish many of our documents, such as high-level documents. I suspect that people first and others are looking for the more detailed work that is on-going on that. We are currently exploring all the options on how to do that, not just in easy read but in other accessible formats. We have committed and we are now producing documents in plain text format, which we have direct feedback from stakeholders about how important that has been and why it has made it so much more accessible. I do not take any decisions in my portfolio at all without ensuring that I work very closely with stakeholders. That means actually producing what we produce in a format that is their preferred method of communication. We do a lot of that already, but as far as the deeper budget documents and the ask from people first, we are currently exploring how we can do more of that. I can give you that commitment and then update you when we have that review committee. It would be really appreciated if we could just get an update as that work progresses. Thank you for joining us and for your opening words, minister. I hear very strongly the commitment to human rights and equalities budgeting and embedding that mainstream across all processes. That holistic approach that you talk about and of course that is important if we are going to see genuine action around the prevention agenda across the elements that you highlighted. I am interested in how we make the connections between the assessments that we do, the equalities impact assessments that we do once budgets are determined and how we link those two outcomes. I think that so often equalities impact assessments, we go through a process, it seems to be a desktop process rather than it has meaning, but it is always looking back the way. I am wondering what is your assessment of how we are doing that as a continuous thing. As we start talking about the budget that we will be agreeing in the next few months, how are we doing the assessments around equalities, around inclusion and that kind of thing now so that we do not just have to look back at it when everything is done in February? Thank you very much. There are a number of legislative and non-legislative ways that we do that. We obviously have the fair up Scotland duty and we have our processes in EQIA development. Part of the work that I have been doing over the past few years is to look at EQIAs to find the gold standards and to ensure that they are used all the way through government. That is a big part of the mainstreaming team and the work that they are doing. We have offered a number of opportunities for other colleagues across the whole of government to take part in training and experiencing the way to do EQIAs. Detail the outcomes that we want to see, because that is the important part of this. It is not just about completing the document, it is about what does it actually do and then how can we measure progress against that. That is a few ways that we do that already. The most effective place for EQIAs is to throw out the cycle of the development so it is not something that you do at the end of the process or even just at the beginning of the process. It is something that has to be a living document so it always has to be going through all those processes. We do that so that it informs our decision making as we go a step at a time. Whether it is annual budget allocations, the help that we give to people or seeing those outcomes. I mentioned the searcher project and there are a number of others. I have a whole list of them in the back of this folder. I will give you some of them in a second. They will measure that against your national performance framework. What have we committed to making progress on in the national performance framework and how does that map across to what we are doing with an EQIA and then what that EQIA does to inform that policymaking and then create those better outcomes. We go all the way through that. Of course, we have committed to doing some work around about the emergency budget. We have done some work around the RSR. These are pretty exceptional times to do that. We have the fairer Scotland budget statement that comes along with that. Amongst all that is Angela Hagan and her team, who are now being renamed. I have just extended the remit of that group and extended Angela's contract with us to chair that group. They are now called the EHRBAG group. It used to be an airbag but it does not sound right so we are not using it. We have extended the influence that they have there. We have looked at many ways in which we can improve those processes. We have reviewed that. We have some draft work in place. We have now given that back to Angela to have a look at it and say, are we on the right track? Having that good critical friend, having that organisation that sits there, scrutinises the work that we do, analyzes the work that we do but gives us the recommendations back in which to do that. They have been very motivated in doing that. They have given us a bigger piece of work to look at which we are currently in draft format of how we respond to that too. I can give the committee updates when Angela comes back. I am meeting with her soon as well so we have a regular catch-ups to do that. Having those judicial processes, the things that we have to do, the further Scotland should be on that, having the other processes around what we must do to make sure that decisions are made effectively and create outcomes, and working with stakeholders and external organisations to be that critical eye and to give us some guidance, support and recommendations on how we move that forward. That is the process. What we then see is projects such as the SERSHA project, where we take an intersectional approach to the challenges that women who are victims of domestic violence who may also have a substance abuse or addiction issue get the right support in a one-stop shot. That is what makes the difference, seeing the outcomes for those women. No, thank you. That is really helpful. Part of my question is motivated by comments from service providers that are funded through different bits of Scottish Government funding around resource spending review. They are looking at some of the directions of travel that were laid out in that, and I know that things have moved on sometimes in the wrong direction for the reasons that you outlined in the intervening six months. I think that there is concern around decisions being taken without understanding the consequences in terms of material outcome. I know that others might want to pick up on that. You mentioned the national performance framework. I suppose that linking that to what we consider to be where we should be and how we see the national performance framework giving us the outcomes that we want. I think that Pam Duncan-Glancy will come in later on and talk about the issue of minimum call when we are dealing with those kinds of questions. It seems to me that we do not always understand the consequences of the decision that we take here. I am curious to know whether you think that we are moving in the right direction because I do not think that we have everything in place yet. Where are the pressure points that you see that we need a little bit more intervention to better understand the consequences of financial decisions? It is a good point and thanks for it. I was looking at Pam Duncan-Glancy and he said that he did not use steel mythunder. Sorry, Pam. I am sure that you can. When I said in my comments earlier about I do not make any decisions without having the people that I want to affect change for in the front of that, that is the reason why we use lived experience panels and stakeholder events. There are many other organisations to do a fantastic array of events. We attempt to work with all of those and we take feedback. That is the important part here. The two reports that we have done on the delivering equally safe fund and the equality human rights fund is peppered all the way through with the feedback from the people who both benefited and found some challenges and some resolutions, because they had some ideas on how to fix some of the challenges as well. That is peppered all the way through that piece of work. We can see who has been impacted, who is accessing the services, what they think of the services and how we take that forward. We also do that with the fund managers who are working with us. Your monitoring and auditing processes have been developed over the past wee while where it was maybe a straight morning of financial, did you spend your money on this and you have made this outcome. It is a bit deeper than that and a bit more soft in its benchmarking on it because there is outcomes that would not be caught in those more formal ways. Having those conversations and injecting those thoughts, feelings and experiences into all that work has allowed us to look at what we have done. That is why we did those six-month reviews because we wanted to see what difference has this made. We see that very clearly. A piece of work that came in via email from Scottish Women's Aid just a few months ago at the beginning of the cost crisis was from Joe Osgat, a Scottish Women's Aid who did a two-page document on how bad that is for women. We were able to use that piece of work, work with other colleagues in Government and work with other colleagues across the officials team with my team and finance and H checker to respond to that in a way that gave that sector some stability. It is only for six months right now, but it is some stability now and I felt that that was really important. That is a perfect example of how stakeholders and their experience can be injected straight into the decisions that we need to make and then those decisions given the outcomes that people want to see. Minister, last week the SWC suggested that women and girls were being overlooked in the current budgeting arrangements. I just wondered if you had an opinion after the First Minister's Women and Girls Advisory Council who want to see intersectional gender budget analysis integrated into the Scottish budget process. They want that to be put on a statutory footing. I wondered what your opinions were on the current arrangements for gathering disaggregated data. Would you agree that putting intersectional gender budgeting on a statutory footing would support policy making in terms of how women and girls are funded in the approach to childcare or social care? I absolutely accept the principle of integrating intersectional gender analysis in all of our policy making. I am an intersectional feminist that always has been so I have never looked at my characteristic of being just a woman. We are all different and we have a set of characteristics that brings us together. Where those characteristics cross over at those intersections for some women is where the deepest areas of deprivation, discrimination or lack of access to better outcomes manifest themselves. The pandemic certainly exposed that in a really stark way. We are very keen to make sure that that process of integrating intersectional budget process will allow us to take forward some of the work that we do in the wider equality and human rights budgeting. That is why I go back to the point that I made about always going back to stakeholders. All those women's organisations are stakeholders in the work that we do. We work very closely with them. We also work with the Scottish Women's Budget Group, which you will have seen some of the work that they do. They have been working with officials in our Government to train us in a number of those areas. We have been attending training and delivered by the Scottish Women's Budget Group to grow gender competence in that area. We hear a lot of that about where are women and where are minority ethnic people, where are Gypsy Travers and I hear that a lot. It has been able to pull all of that out and having that there. We will not be felt equally by some people and certainly by women. There will be a disproportionate impact on households and groups, including women. Those are households where 90 or 90 per cent of single-parent households in Scotland are the head of the household as a woman. Lots of those families are a carer or they have a disabled person within that family as well. We take all of that into account and we recognise that those are the people who would be affected the most. We are also exploring whether the public sector equality duty and the Scottish specific duties could be an appropriate vehicle in place to put that on a statutory footing. We are not saying no to a statutory footing, but we are still investigating whether that is the right way to go. There are different opinions around that from the sector. We have asked for stakeholder views on specifically that point, on the practicality and the feasibility of placing a duty on listed authorities to do that. We are awaiting that work coming back on that as well. Supporting those families, the child payment is a perfect example of the bridging payments being doubled and how that is now paid up to age of 16. It is a perfect example of how we understand where that impact affects women and families where we can then inject some of our resources to bring those inequalities up to a point where people are not discriminated against or dismarginalised because of their status in society, their values and the work that they do as mums and carers are valued too. I think that you are absolutely right. There are challenges, as has been highlighted by Fraser Allander and Joseph Rowntree Foundation on the gathering of that disaggregated data. We heard last week that there were issues around non-disclosure, GDPR, working within the parameters of the Equalities Act to ensure that all data for people with protected characteristics was gathered but not necessarily disaggregated. Therefore, it would be interesting how the Scottish Government takes that forward. I want to highlight that Audit Scotland has highlighted that there are data gaps in social care. That is much wider than in healthcare and how those data gaps are contributing is causing a huge challenge. It is how the Scottish Government works with local authorities and how they understand the national picture to work together. I wondered if you had any opinions on how the Scottish Government could improve that relationship where the data gathering on a national basis is not necessarily being done even though it is on a statutory footing and not shared with the local authorities, which does not allow the local authority then to provide the social care that it needs to. Data and the collection of disaggregation and the quality of the data that we collect is a huge piece of work that we are doing in government right now. Since my first outing on a committee 15 years ago in this place, we have been looking at both how we collect and how we use and how we disaggregate and how we share data to make the better outcomes. A big piece of work that is being on-going right now is around the quality data improvement projects. Over the summer, the chief statistician consulted on quality data improvement plans. Those are cut right across the whole of government. COSLA has its own approaches to that, so it might be worth having some evidence from COSLA. There is a new committee chair there. I am working very closely with her. I am meeting with her in the next few days to discuss some of this work and, among all the other things, where our jobs cross over. We obviously have the public sector quality data in place right now, but you have made the point about where there is a statistician and it is not being collected. They would maybe argue that it is, but maybe we do not see what we need in it. That is where we need to improve what we are doing right now. The application of the next equality evidence strategy, which will cover years 23 to 25, will be in spring 2023, so I can come back to committee at that point and let you know what that looks like. That will mark the conclusion of the first stage of EDIP, the equality data improvement project. That will mark the first stage of that. In autumn 2021, we had an internal network of lead analysts covering all ministerial portfolios. You picked up the point about social care and other data gaps across other parts of government, where it is not for me to respond to those Government ministers. That mainstreaming work has been done right across the whole of government. That was an order of equality data collected and published in key data sets and how that was then used to produce official and national statistics. Update the national performance framework because it is all linked to that and all of those indicators to inform significant ministerial decision making. What is interesting now is that we have this other piece of work that is going on, so we are reviewing the public sector equality duty, we are doing the equality data improvement project and we are also doing the mainstreaming work. They all work together to make all of those changes that we need to see. What I see now coming through in my four info folder, which is usually things that are happening across government, is a much more gender, human rights and equality budget and focus on all of that work. I am seeing that beginning to emerge through other parts of government on the issue of social care in particular. I will take that back to the minister responsible for that and get you some answers on that. As I said, we carried out a public consultation and in the summer, people would think that data and data collection and how we use it as a pretty dry subject. You should have been at the data curc event. I was at yesterday with a chief statistician who did a presentation on data and you could see people going, oh my goodness, this is going to... It was not uninteresting at all. It was incredibly interesting. He linked it to SIMDs and how SIMD data is collected and how we use that. The other piece of work that we are doing around data is how we collect data in regards to hate crime. I am leading on that piece of strategy as well. The equality evidence strategy ties into all those parts of government, too. Alongside that consultation, we carried out a serious stakeholder engagement event. We are going back to the people who are asking for this as an incredible interest in government data, how we commission it and how we use it. To help us to understand the practical steps, what do people need to see in order for them to make the right decisions? This is not just about the Government making decisions about organisations who deliver services, looking at that and saying, oh, here is an intersection where we might be an ad and pick that up. Let's focus on resources on it. Or there is some progress that we have made. Let's highlight that as an example of progress. There is all of that as well. Addressing the barriers to collecting data, some of it is about systems and how we develop systems. They are developing rapidly all the time. We are using all of that advance in technology to look at how we have drop-down menus. Simple ways of collecting as much data as possible. One of the criticisms that I had from some of the people who were at DataCurt yesterday—that was a black talent summit event—was that they said that people from mainly African heritage communities are just denoted as African. Yet there are so many more different ways in which they could be identified in that data set. That was one of the issues that the expert reference group in Covid necessity picked up during the pandemic. We were able to analyse that in a way with National Records of Scotland to look at what would be neat and how we would use that to affect life-changing decisions on people like, during the pandemic, access to vaccines and accessible information that allowed them to access vaccines and the support that they needed to have during that time. That is another example of how, if you have good data, you can use it to make a difference immediately. However, we are of the mind that it needs to improve all the time again. Another living document that needs to just keep working and improving the whole time that we are doing that. That was a very generous contribution that the minister made. I think that there are things that we can do right now, not necessarily leading to the future, to ensure that I urge you to look at the evidence that you probably have from last week, which was really fantastic from people with lived experience. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the minister and your official thanks for joining us. Some of my questions link on from what we have heard so far this morning. In particular, I want to touch on some of the stuff that we heard last week from people with learning disabilities. We heard one of the things that they asked was that the data would be disaggregated for learning disabilities because, obviously, when we collect data in the household survey, there is a question on disability, but it does not necessarily disaggregate that. We heard from learning disabled people that that can be problematic. Can you set out what your intentions are around data collection in the household survey and specifically on learning disabled people? On the same vein, I know what you said earlier about a commitment to inclusive communication and the points that you made around the human rights legislation, but those things are a bit further down the line. Would you be prepared to ask the Government to publish an easy-read version of the budget at this point in time? I will answer the last point first, Pam, because it is the easiest one. We are currently considering how we do that. We produce a number of documents in different formats—XXL, Moon, Easy Read and all that. Usually, it is the team at the Scottish Learning Disability Consortium that helps us with that. We are looking at ways to do that in Easy Read, so I will come back to you on that. On the minimum core outcomes that we want to see, we realise that everyone in our society who experiences them will be able to do that. Disadvantaged inequality and who lack power, which is usually the case when they face having a challenge and realise that they have a challenge. If you look at folks from the Gypsy Traveller community, for instance, from a community that has a disability, we realise that we are not in a position to do that. Disadvantaged inequality and who lack power, which is usually the case when they face having a challenge and realise that their human rights are a difficult way to go. If you look at folks from the Gypsy Traveller community, for instance, from people impacted by disability from minority ethnic communities, from LGBTI communities, you can see very clearly where there are areas of policy development where they would view it as lacking influence and power. I gave an example of Joe Osgust's paper on how that can influence what we do. A few weeks ago, I met the lived experience panel for the human rights bill from the learning disability sector. They did a superb presentation on what the treaties meant for them and what it meant for them to see that realised. I understand that that is a wee bit of time in the future and how we do that. What can we do now to ensure that people are engaged in all of that? The social renewal advisory board had all of those organisations around the table. The advisory board for the human rights bill had them. Any of the social security work that we do is lived experience panels that are involved in that as well. It is hearing those voices and making the time to hear those voices in a way. For me, I said to that group, you tell me what you need me to do and I will be there just what you need and this is what I've got a presentation, we want you to listen and we want to question with questions from that. I do a lot of that work because I say I don't make any of the decisions in my portfolio without having those folks at the front of my mind. My background is in learning disability and I used to run a project called Promoting Independence. Absolutely nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the independence of adults with learning disabilities. I have that sort of professional understanding of where that is as well but I also understand how impenetrable sometimes government and public authorities can be, especially if you've got a learning disability and your ways of communicating are not the mainstream. Therefore, it's us that have to change our approach to make sure that it's not for folks fitting into that. That's why I take that intersectional approach. For folks that are impacted the worst in all of this, I worry about some of the groups. There are gypsy traveller folks, for instance, the folk who have had a universal credit cut, families who have someone within the household as a carer or with a disability, or indeed our learning disability community in Scotland. I do worry about the impact on all of them. They're at the front of my mind when I make those decisions but they're also in the room when I hear what they need and how we use that to make those decisions. That's the way, informally, that I do as an individual minister and I know that other ministers across government do it that way as well. They've always got ideas on how we can do this better. I'm always open to those ideas on how we can do that better and how people can see themselves in the policy that's being developed and how they can see their influence within that policy too. I'm not more so than in the budget because you would tend to find that those families or individuals are people who are most reliant on services and if those services aren't there or don't work or are not flexible enough then people don't realise their own independence and their rights and all of that. If you've got ideas on how we do this, I'm sure you have, Pam, because you always have and it's always really helpful. I'm keen to hear that as well. I know that we have lots of events along the way to reinforce and underpin all of this with legislation but in the meantime how do we make sure those folks are in another room? I do that to the best of my ability but there's always ways to do it better and I'm happy to take them on board. I appreciate that and I thank the minister for the commitment on the publication of EZRID or at least coming back to the committee to explain to us your approach to that or the minister's approach that I appreciate. One of the issues that I think can happen quite a lot is this sort of interplay between the minister who has responsibility for the qualities and the rest of government and you've outlined the way that you do your business. I think that that or the minister has outlined the way that she does her business, sorry. I think that that's commendable but I do worry about how other areas of government are doing the same thing. Last week, and I'll quote this, people first told us, that for a long time people with a learning disability have been considered last if we're considered at all. That is true when it comes to budgeting decisions. It's true for pretty much any decision. We're not seen as important and our human rights are not protected as they are for other citizens. We're not expected or supported to live our life like other citizens. I found that really quite stark last week and some of the other evidence that people first gave us was too. Can the minister set out what our expectations of the cabinet secretary for finance are and other cabinet secretaries and ministers in relation to this to involving disabled people and others and touching on my colleague Rachel Hamilton's point about the Scottish Women's Convention in relation to how women feel they had been overlooked in the budget? Can the minister set out our expectations from the cabinet secretary for finance and other ministers in government on how they should be considering those issues as they go forward in developing the budget proposals? It's probably not for me to set out what other ministers or cabinet secretaries will want to do in this area, but it's certainly for me and the mainstreaming team to ensure that those proposals, ideas, resolutions to challenges are injected into the whole process. That's what we're doing. I'll bring Robin in a minute to give you an update on where we are with the mainstreaming strategy and how that ties into this work as well. I'm disappointed to hear that organisations felt as if they were not listened to or that they'll have to be listened to. I'll certainly take that on board and deal with that. I think that one of the big pieces of work that we did just before the pandemic and we know that the pandemic could have a disproportionate impact on some folks more than others and certainly learn and disabled people were very badly affected by the pandemic because they lost lots of other services. We had a programme developed at the time alongside COSLA, a joint programme called Keys to Life, which you probably know about. One of the things that I want to do now and on the back of the comments that you have just articulated to me, is to go back and have a look at that to speak to the minister responsible now and see maybe if that's something that we should be looking at and making sure that those organisations and the people that they represent, and more importantly the people who are the stakeholders within those organisations, get to hear their voices. I'll take that on board and take that back. Rob, if you want to give a wee update on mainstream, because mainstream is a pretty fast-moving feast right now and it's been working right across the whole of government but responding to emergency budget, responding to resource spending review and responding to a normal budget. If we ever will have a normal budget round, Rob can give you an update on that. I think it's important to highlight mainstream as an area that you exactly appointed cuts right across government and how do we put these decisions right across government. We're currently developing a quality human rights mainstream strategy, which will cut across Scottish government and the wider public sector. The initial work on that, we've conducted a number of deep dives with stakeholders, including areas around leavers and cultural incompetence. Then we're going through a current theme of further engagement just now. The themes that are coming out, which are likely to form the backbone of that strategy, are entirely relevant to the point. Key themes are in leadership and accountability. How do we ensure appropriate leadership and accountability for the quality and human rights? Culture and competence. There's a question there, which is how do we ensure that everybody who's working in this area is not down to a quality and human rights specialist, but everybody in government, wider public sector, has the appropriate level of competence in this area to embed in mainstream. The final area is around policy coherence, which is how do we align the policy decisions to meet in this area as well. That connects some of the points that we're making today. How do we connect the public sector quality duty and the review that we're doing currently? How do we connect the future worker and the human rights bill, as well as how do we get policy more generally into a quality and human rights? I appreciate that. Thank you very much. The minister spoke earlier on in an opening statement in relation to reaching out and helping violence against women and girls. My question is really around how do you reach those communities that are hard to reach for example the BAME communities? We heard last week that some of the communities out there are hesitant to let people in and answer any questions, give their details because sometimes they feel they're not heard and sometimes they feel that they don't know why they're giving the information for. It would be good to hear from the minister how the minister and the Government are going out to reach out to those communities. Do you provide any feedback to them after taking information from them? There's not to be surprised to hear a similar thing about how policy development and policy outcomes are incredibly important and they have to then be informed by that lived experience. How, if you take an intersectional approach to this, are the very women and folks that emerges as having multiple layers of both discrimination and equality issues. It's the work that we do across our portfolio with stakeholders that's incredibly important so me as a privileged white woman would not ever articulate or even speak for some of the women in our diverse or all of the women in our diverse minority ethnic communities in Scotland. Those stakeholder engagements are incredibly important so organisations like Aminat or Shakti have spent a good amount of time over the summer meeting with a number of those stakeholders and spent almost a full day at Shakti in Edinburgh. Hearing across different ways we were talking about disaggregated data so there was a number of women in there but then there was a number of women from the Chinese community who had different experiences of how they were experiencing domestic abuse and different for other women from different cultural backgrounds about honour based violence, FGM and a number of other issues that are particularly female women orientated problems. So just actually sitting with my mouth shut and my ears opened to hear some of those stories and some of the issues that those women had. The same with the Visit to the Searcher project, women there who may become from areas of multiple deprivation who are carers who are victims of domestic violence who also have addictions. All of those intersections is where we see the deepest inequality and it's those intersections where we're focusing the work that we do. So the criteria for organisations receiving delivering equally safe money in particular, we looked at partnership and we looked at intersectionality. Those had to be in there so that's why organisations like Shakti, Sahelia, Waverly Healthcare and a number of others who were all involved in delivering that work allow me as someone who would not experience those experiences to understand what happens, how it happens and how then we can use those experiences to both inform and improve our approaches to that. The training for some of the staff so a lot of these organisations do their training across lots of sectors so embedding across many sectors those intersectional approaches of when you have this particular individual walking through your door and they have these different types of characteristics, how do you tackle that and who are the experts in the field that can help you to tackle that. Shakti, Sahelia, others would say it's as please come and it will work with us and that's why the delivering equally safe fund had that key element of partnership in it because by the best will in the world someone walking through the door of an organisation and that organisation does not reflect them is a big step in the first place but actually then to get through that door and to be signposted to both organisations and support that much more culturally or religiously appropriate or whatever that person needs. Is the way to do that and certainly was a great example of that so that's really the way I do it and when we're mainstreaming across government we're looking at how does money get spent in order to tackle these issues you'll not be surprised I work very closely with justice colleagues and other colleagues across other parts of government whether it's in relation to our equally safe strategy, whether it's in health, whether it's in education, whether it's in access to services you know or access to justice or being available. We've worked with many organisations to do that, we continue to work with them and you know hopefully they will say we do feedback and again you know you've sparked an idea in my head about maybe we should look at how we create some feedback loops and ways to go back to that but I'll get an example of what we're doing right now with the EHRBAG group. The draft proposals that we have put in place to the recommendations that they gave us at the time we have given them the draft to say are we on the right road here so going back to the stakeholders to say right this is where we think this will work, does that work for you and you know just testing that and making sure that when it comes to its final publication it works and that person who walks through that door whether you know it's a minority ethnic women or other protected characteristics that they get the service they need in the desert. I thank the minister for being honest, obviously reaching out, we need to use all the organisations we have out there and also the partnerships to make sure that we reach out. The good news is obviously that my mother came back to me last week to ask one of the group, I think there's an exercise you're doing out there with probably one of the organisations and it was to do with this and said that should I go to this with her friends and I said certainly she should. So that was the first time it's reached out to my mum in that many years, it's never reached out and she's quite heavily involved with the community. So on that question I want to ask which is good news that it's reached out, do you sometimes think it's fantastic that the organisations and I talk to all these organisations you've mentioned are doing a great job but sometimes to get on the ground do you think there's more that the government can do to get out there to reach maybe in religious settings because everybody is going to do that. Maybe the congregations are massive in all the religious settings and maybe to reach out through that more an awareness first rather than just going data collecting. You know sometimes people need to know who you are, what you're doing, an introduction of what you're doing rather than going straight into using an organisation which is very helpful but sometimes people are missed because like I said and my mother only found out because somebody spoke about that organisation in the temple that's where she is all the time so basically. I was very pleased that the government is reaching out like that. So what's your views on that minister? I totally agree with you Pam. Please tell your mum to engage in that and I'm going to find out what exactly I've got. I think I've got an idea what it is but I'm going to find out and just find out how did we do that so that we can replicate that across the board. So from that point of view you make a really good point about faith communities so since the changing portfolios after the election last year faith communities came into my portfolio so I've spent the last six months or so building up relationships with faith communities. I've just a few weeks ago met with all the faith leaders and it's interesting there's few women around that table so we need a few more women around that table as well but I have to say the interaction with all of those faith leaders was incredibly positive. That particular meeting was around about hate crime but there was another few other issues that were brought up at that time. I've done a number of events over the summer, whether it's with Shabir Beg and the Arlabad association, whether it was attending the interfaith Scotland event at the Bahia temple in Edinburgh just at the end of June and their whole focus was about women and about women's gender inequality so I was able to take part in that and answer questions in that format. Of course the national advisory council for women and girls last piece of work was really focusing in on minority ethnic women in the work that they do and looking at faith communities when they do that as well but you make a point so it's something over the last six months that I've been getting up to speed with because it didn't sit in this portfolio before it sat in communities. So I've been doing a lot of work to build those relationships because when you build those relationships then you get good, frank and honest feedback as well because you build an element of trust and I'm hoping that the project that your mum hopefully is going to be involved in is just an example of the many ways in which we will do that but I want to go back and just have a wee look at how we did that bit and make sure that we can replicate it across the board. Thank the minister for that. Thank you and Karen. Thank you. Good morning minister. Really following on from what you were just discussing there with Pam in terms of that outreach you would find that the most marginalised feel, the most disenfranchised really from decision making in society and so I'm glad to hear there is those outreach processes on going. What can we do to ensure that it's not just at the end of the budgetary processes and that there is a system where they can input all through that from beginning to end? That's an ask from a number of forums and organisations. The National Advisory Council for Women and Girls was one of the recommendations but policy coherence, not just about the budget process but how we do that better and how does policy work together to get the better outcomes. The equality and fairer Scotland budget statement has the work being done to reverse that a bit for it not to be done at the end of the process but to be started at the beginning of the process and how this place does its budget scrutiny as an example of that as well. Your pre-budget scrutiny and all the questions you've asked me today about process, how you engage with process, how we get stakeholders voices heard in that process and how we do that much better. A number of the recommendations from the previous iteration of Angela O'Hagan's group, eBag, was around how we improve those processes. A number of recommendations, we are carefully considering them all. As I say, we have a draft response to that that has gone back to that group to make sure that we are on the right path and as soon as I have that feedback back and we come to conclusions on that can certainly give that to the committee for your consideration in the process. Much of that is about how do we ensure that we take an equality, a panel principles approach at the beginning of every policy development. Every policy development will have a financial impact on it so not looking at the budget at that point seems a bit myopic so that's some of the work that we are doing now. When I think about when we did budget scrutiny, when I first came to this place, I was on the education committee and we did a piece of work of trying to track a pound from government to the front line and it was impossible. Especially when it started to go through local authority and causal agreements and all of that, it was a bit more tricky. What we produce now gives us a clear understanding of how equality and human rights considerations can make budget processes and outcomes much fairer, much better and tackle the endemic and systemic inequality that we currently have. It's much better, I'm not saying it's perfect because it's not. That's why we're considering the recommendations from the EHRBAG group. That's great, thank you. Thank you very much, good morning to the minister and our colleagues. I had a few questions around accountability but a lot of it's been covered. The question that I do want to ask is on the back of my colleague Caryg Adams. I know that it's an area that the minister always highlights. That issue is very difficult for the public generally, where the Scottish Parliament might have a range of policies with human rights at its core and perhaps when they are implemented by local authorities or other public sector bodies, that doesn't always seem to be the case on the ground. I wonder if the minister could call me and I know in her response to Karen Ardern that she was talking about how we can follow the money to see if it's, or how difficult that is to follow the money to see if it's been implemented in that way, but I wonder if there's anything more broader we can do to make sure that all bodies are working together to implement these policies in a human rights way. I'll just say it as well for the committee to know that they might be interested in this because I've had a specific example of my constituency last week. Although I wasn't looking for a specific answer to that about my ability hub, I just wanted the committee and the minister to know that following raising that last week I had an email within about an hour, an hour and a half of committee advising me that indeed the campaign had been successful and that service is going to be saved. I don't know whether I was watching the committee session or not, but I think that the committee is a whole. You might be interested in that and I'd like to put my thanks on that. Thanks to the committee for allowing me to raise it, it was possible that it was a part in saving that service. I just wanted to put that on the record. Minister, my question is not about the mobility hub, which has now been saved. It was more about that general question about how good human rights policies and ideas and legislation of this Parliament can be implemented across the board. I know that there's difficulties with funding, et cetera. No, thanks for your comment. I'm glad to hear about the project and your constituency. It's always good when a campaign is successful in that way, but then you tend to think, why did we need a campaign in the first place if good decisions are made at the earliest stage? I think that there's a number of things in here that we do. Obviously, the quality human rights budget statement that comes along with budgets is an important tool that can be used in order to understand mainstream and influence. The other piece of work that is focusing on that is the fairer Scotland duties and the public sector equality duty. We are currently reviewing them alongside the work that we are doing on mainstreaming and on the new human rights act in order to make sure that they all work with each other and they all work well. We've had a lot of response back on the public sector equality duty review from stakeholders, asking us to go further and deeper. Many of the organisations in race equality contacted us in the summer to ask us to go further and deeper. We decided to take a bit more time to spend with stakeholders in order to influence and focus that process appropriately to meet their needs. That also includes working with our colleagues in COSLA and the work that they are doing. The new boards are literally just getting off the ground. I've met with Councillor Chambers, who's the new chair of the wellbeing board, where we're much of this portfolio sits. I've met her on a few individual events issues. I'm getting to know you and what the focus of the committee will be over the next few years, but also looking at where we can collaborate on work. Public sector equality duties, fairer Scotland duties and the general court duties on local authorities is an area where we will get into some work on that. I'm meeting with her in the next few weeks about our work with women in domestic abuse and gender discrimination and inequality. I'm also meeting with her in a few weeks on a specific point of our new human rights bill. That's working with local authorities and other public sector folks, but looking at how we can improve those processes is where the peace review is being done right now. Obviously, the equality data improvement project demands plans as well. If we're going to strengthen public sector equality duties, the data that's collected, used and disaggregated is incredibly important in all of that. That ties in to that work, too. How we use all that to influence is incredibly important. A human rights act for Scotland will incorporate four treaties, including equality clauses, because there are no UN treaties for older people in LGBTI. People are looking at how we incorporate equality clauses that allow the same judicial effect as the UN treaties would have in law. Part of that is about people not having their human rights and inequality issues realised by public authorities. It's a tough legislative tool to use. I would rather say that public authorities were upholding their fairer Scotland duties or their public sector equality duties in a way that people feel their rights are not being disrespected and they don't have to go to judicial remedies for that. That gives us another tool in the box in order to affect societal, organisational and institutional change. We know that that's what needs to happen. We've been working towards that for all of these years. We see progress now, but there is more to do. I'm always open to hearing ideas on how we do that. One example of where we spend money and where that makes a difference is that one of the organisations that is funded through our funds and is included in our six-monthly report is Just Right Scotland. They have launched a free, confidential, second-tier discrimination advice line. That aim is aimed at advisers and other front-line workers directly to support members of the public, ensuring that the people who are offering those services are trained in a way that responds to the needs of an individual to pick up the phone and say, this is not working for me and I need some support to tackle it and challenge it. That gives people that opportunity to do that. That's just another example of all the organisations that we fund to do that front-line work, where they are much more better placed to understand the needs, the wishes and the challenges that people in Scotland have, especially when their rights are not being realised. I'm conscious of the team, convener, so I will pass back to you a bit. I really appreciate that response. Okay, thanks. I'd say to Pam that if you want to come back in briefly. Thank you, convener. If it's possible, I'll move on to the issue of minimum core. We heard concerns in the Scottish Women's Budget group in various, in this committee, but also in other committees, that cuts to employability could, and I quote, remove poverty prevention measures and take targeted support away from disabled people, single parents and women. What conversations are you having with the Deputy First Minister on this? I was telling you about that inbox where I have my, for info, folder. There are lots of documents that come through that folder that have, for my interest, where those conversations are taking place and where those actions are taking place. Even now, when you sit down and talk to finance officials or other ministers, they're speaking in panel principles language. To hear that is really reassuring. What you need to do is then see it and the work that you're going to do. There's a public sector joint ministerial group that meets every few weeks, and there will not be a time where I will not have spoken up on behalf of the organisations, the groups and the stakeholders and the individuals who have maybe spoken to me over those last few weeks, always injecting those issues into that. The work that I said that Joe Oscar did on the effect to women, so that was one of the groups, is the same impact on unpaid carers, the same impact on family carers, what I'm hearing right now and being able to feed some of this back about what people are experiencing is around about adult disability payment and child disability payment and how different a process it is. I just heard from a family who had fought for years and years and got adult disability payment without having to go through all the assessments that they went through. When I see examples like that, that's where I inject at, because I'm putting a real human face on a policy. When I feed that back to the Deputy First Minister and other colleagues, demonstrates quite clearly the impact that the right decisions can make on people's lives. I will continue to do that, but as I said, I'm always open to hearing ways in which we can do that better, but I will use all of those avenues that I have in order to raise those issues as many times as I can. I appreciate that. Specifically on the employability cuts, have you made any representation to the Deputy First Minister about timescales given that a human rights-based approach would require any reduction in funding to be time limited? I know that you have obviously asked some questions on this in the last few weeks and I know that there is work being done by the minister that is responsible for that, so I will take that back to say that you have pushed us in getting that response back to you again. I know how important that employability work is. I know that we have managed to support about 9,000 parents, because some of that fits into the bright start, bright futures, the child poverty action plan, so some of that works in there with how parents can be supported in order to lift families out of poverty, and about 9,000 parents have been supported through that. We always need to review whether those things are working or not, but we are in a really difficult situation with our budget in areas where it has become incredibly difficult when we have to make decisions to cut things that are valuable. However, how can we fund some of the other things that we want to do to make sure that people do not fall deeper into poverty? We have always got those things up for review. We make the difficult—I do not envy the minister who had to make that decision at all. I have looked at some of the decisions that I have had to make and make sure that money is focused to the people and in the places where it needs to be focused the most, but it is not easy. The budget process has not been easy. It is the worst that I think I have ever experienced. I appreciate that and thank you for those comments. I guess it is just that in the portfolio that you have a lot of the difference that will be made for people's lives in terms of equality and human rights will actually be in other people's portfolios where funding is spent. I have not been reassured by the Deputy First Minister. I am not hearing about specific processes that you have been really clear on with other ministers about how they can, if they are going to cut budgets, the representation that you have made to them about the impact that that could have on equalities. If there is anything that you could do to make that clearer for them, I do worry about some of those funding areas. Health and Social Care is another example that we heard last week from people first saying that people are having to choose whether or not to go shopping for essential food, pay their bit, get help with bills or shower because of cuts to their packages. What sense of importance and urgency and processes are you putting in place to try and make sure that budget decisions in other portfolios take account of equality and human rights? That is where the equality and human rights budget group helps us to understand some of that, but also the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement. There are so many acronyms in my head that I have tried to remember them all and not use acronyms because sometimes I do not like acronyms anyway. That statement again becomes incredibly important in how we do what we do and the processes are transparent enough for people to understand where they see themselves. I will take back the comments that you make. I could not give you comments on how the minister who is responsible for social care is doing some of that work right now, but I will give you a commitment to go and look at that and come back with a more detailed response. I will look for that across the whole of government. The other thing that I will say, Pam, is that the work that we are doing with the mainstreaming team is incredibly important in making sure that those processes are done in that way, where people are reflected and real human stories are carried through those decision-making processes in order that we do not have the issues that we have with the comments that were made by stakeholders at your meeting last week. We take all of that very seriously. I inject all of that across the work that I am doing. I am not silent on any of that, as you could imagine, and neither are there ministers in the Government's committee to do this better. We will come back to you in a more detailed response. Thanks very much. Time is against us, but a huge thanks to the minister and to your officials for attending and giving evidence today. We will now move into private session.