 Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 26th meeting of the Equalities and Human Rights Committee of 2017. Can I remind everybody to turn phones to silent mode? I start by offering the apologies of our convener, Christina McKelvie, and moving straight on to our first agenda item one, which is continuation of our draft budget scrutiny for the 2018-19 Scottish Parliamentary Budget. I like to start by welcoming our panel today, and we have Danny Boyle from the parliamentary officer from Bemis, Shari Bose, who is the research adviser from the Scottish Women's Convention, Emma Rich, who is chief executive of agenda, and Rebecca Marwick, who is policy in parliamentary officer, the Commission for Racial Equality, CREERER. You are all very welcome. Please don't press the microphone buttons when it's your turn to speak. That will be done for you. I think I'd like to start by, first of all, thanking you all for your extensive submissions on our inquiry here. Clearly, you've got some very strong views on that, and that's welcome. Starting with Rebecca and working down the panel, I think I'd like you just to give us what you would like us to take away most from your written submissions and our work in the draft budget scrutiny. Sure. Good morning. Thanks very much for inviting CREER along. I think what we would like to put across from a race equality perspective is that while we certainly welcome the publication of the quality budget statement and all the work that goes into that, we think a lot more detail needs to be given on mainstreaming of race equality initiatives. At the moment, it's somewhat restricted to the community social security and equality section, especially the equality budget, but with the publication of the race equality framework for Scotland in 2016, we sort of want to see more of a push towards mainstreaming race equality across various portfolios and discussion in those portfolios about where discrepancies lie for minority ethnic communities and how action and funding can be taken to address those discrepancies. One of the issues with that is that there's a bit of a bit of a dearth of robust evidence around equality, especially race equality, as detailed in the government's equality evidence strategy. So we'd also like to see some initiatives for gathering more evidence to detail further where those discrepancies lie and also some commitment towards evaluating projects and initiatives that go to try to eliminate some of those discrepancies and discrimination to make sure that we're putting funding in the right place and that the approach that we're taking to address those issues is as effective as possible. So we've been consulting with women for the past year on a number of things that are causing them concern. One of the main ones that's coming out, we understand that mental health. We did welcome last year the £150 million for five years over the mental health portfolio, but we would like to see more explicit, gendered, especially for younger women, over mental health concerns. Also, the new social security bill, whilst it's only 15 per cent of that that's getting devolved, we would like to see further study going into equality, especially around social security that's still reserved to Westminster, the likes of universal credit. We know that the Scottish Government is making strides and they've done a number of initiatives to split payments twice and pay payments directly to landlords, but there's still arguments coming out that are going towards women from job centres around the fact that universal credit is getting women into work when it's really leaving them without top-up benefits and leaving a lot of in-work poverty, so that and also education. There's still a lot needing to be done around especially sexual education and consent for young women and that really needs to be looked at, we think, within the portfolios. Great, thank you. Emma. Thanks very much and thanks for inviting and gender to give evidence on this. In our written submission, we concentrated on a couple of examples, which we think underline our very broad point, which we've been making before this committee for some years, that gender budget analysis does need to be integrated into the Scottish budget process. I think the budget review group in its final report made some really useful suggestions about the way that equality evidence might be incorporated into the budget process and considered and contemplated by all of the committee's undertaking scrutiny. We, along with CRER and other equality organisations, very much welcome the equality budget statement and the work that goes into that. However, we've identified in our written evidence over a number of years that this is now really a post hoc list of areas of equality spend rather than a systematic consideration of the equality impact of portfolio spending and is not driving decision making and budget setting so much as describing what has happened at the end of that process. That is useful for creating visibility around equality spend, but, as we set out in our submission, that tends to be concentrated in a couple of portfolios and we don't see systematic consideration of specific equality ambitions across the portfolios. Our two examples of women's enterprise funding for that is still largely concentrated in the central equality budget, which is a £20.3 million fund for strategic intermediaries and other demand-led projects and violence against women, which again is concentrated within that central equality budget and also the subject of ad hoc pieces of funding, such as the extremely welcome £20 million in the justice portfolio that has been dispersed over the past couple of years. However, our concern is that the systematic ambitions of Scottish Government, as set out in Equally Safe, the violence against women strategy, is not reflected in spending commitments and does not resonate across the various portfolios. Our point is that gender budget analysis across the whole budget would connect the allocation of resources to strategic priorities. I think that that plays into the outcomes-based scrutiny intentions that were surfaced during the budget review process. Good morning, committee. Thank you very much for inviting us along this morning to give evidence. I would like to apologise on behalf of women that we didn't submit any written evidence. That doesn't reflect the importance within which we place this conversation, but probably is more rather connected to the significant workload to which we have at the moment. However, having read the submissions that were received by the committee from my colleagues here, I would reiterate probably somewhat what Rebecca has already outlined from a race equality perspective. We went through the last couple of years, the process of developing a race equality framework for Scotland. We are now moving into the next stage of that, where we will have the independent advisers action plan or the independent advisers review of that and the Scottish Government's action plan to take it forward. What we have reiterated to colleagues within the equality unit primarily, who are a touchstone within government, and I think that this is shared, certainly going by what has been said this morning, is that organisations as much as within the draft budget statement, we welcome the maintenance of the equality in third sector and human rights aspect of the budget. That, in itself, is not an appropriate level of funding in order to tackle the systematic issues that we are aware of, which exist across multiple policy areas. We have said it until we are blown in the face that BEMIS, CREAR, SEMVO and other colleagues within the race equality sector and the Scottish Government's equality unit specifically do not have the power dynamics in order to change some of the long-term systematic issues. Funding for our organisations is naturally incredibly welcome, but we are the tip of the iceberg in relation to what is actually required to change some of those issues. Rebecca touched upon mainstreaming and ensuring that different government departments take actual substantive measures to amend some of the real issues that are going on here. Just to touch on some of the aspects that are outlined within the draft budget statement, we talk about inclusive growth, city deals and housing. We are aware that we see these things as being interconnected. The first time that we were invited to talk to the Equality and Human Rights Committee, just after it was set up, we talked about procurement and issues such as that being race equality issues. That is coming more to the fore now. When we talk about 50,000 new houses being built in the tendering process and that linked into the city dealing and inclusive growth, if we get those aspects right, we will amend or begin to tackle some of the issues or inequalities that exist in employment and low pay, overcrowding and housing and so on and so forth, which are easily identifiable within multiple ethnic and cultural minority communities. We know what has to be done. We know the power players who have to come in in order to make those amendments, and we want to see and would hope that that draft scrutiny is not just a philosophical conversation about what we want to do next. We would like to see people who are in charge of inclusive growth or city deals or housing given analysis or overview of how their budget will be spent in the coming period to respond to some of these long-term issues. I have a couple of supplementals just from what you said before I opened to the wider committee. It seems to me that what you are telling us is that there are two layers of this budgetary process in respect of the groups or communities that you represent. First, there is the direct corollary between budget lines and gender, for example, where you can go through in terms of a general analysis of the budget, which particular budget lines speak to women's issues in particular and are delineated or siloed exactly for the furtherment of issues affecting women. There is the slightly lower tier, which is more general if we invest in this because either our communities from ethnic minority backgrounds are adversely and disproportionately impacted by a lack of spending in that area previously, then we can help that community more by investing in those areas. There are the direct budget lines, and the more diffuse investment in this area will improve something that has traditionally been an area that has affected this community more. We can only do so much as the Scottish Parliament passing a budget because, obviously, with the presumption against ring fencing, a lot of public spend happens at local authority level. How much would you say that local authority budgets marry your aspirations in this regard? Again, perhaps if we go in reverse order this time and start with Danny? The general point is still the same, but it is national government budgets or local authority budgets. There is not that required mainstreaming or cognizance of the need to have a much more strategic approach to amending those issues. If we look at the city deals, which is obviously a partnership between local authorities and national government, then that is quite a clear example of a lack. I do not want to seem to be overly critical of the good work that is being done. There is a propensity sometimes when we are approaching local authorities in order to try and amend some of their practices that they approach race equality with a trepidation or a fear. What we are trying to change is the recognition that this should be a positive process in terms of as has been recognised in terms of inclusive growth. If we get it right, it is beneficial as a domino effect across a number of areas. Again, just reiterate the key point. There is not enough of a focus on getting the best out of the investments that we are making. Now, within this, it talks about procurement. Within the draft budget, Rarratt talks about curing, which is also relevant to the city deals. It makes a point about embedding within the procurement process issues around about equal pay and so on and so forth. What we said when we first came to this committee about a year ago or so is that those strategic conversations have to be happening in relation to procurement, house building, local authorities and, for example, as part of that tender and process, how many modern apprenticeships will be offered by company X, Y and Z over the coming period? What is our strategy going to be in order to ensure that those opportunities are open to as many people as possible and that we use the positive action measures that are inherent within the Equality Act to try and amend that? We do not see at the moment a strategic momentum in that regard. If I can tack on a second question as part of that basket, are there good examples of good practice within Scotland's 32 local authorities to which you could point? The question about budget process, are any of the local authorities doing gender mainstreaming as part of their budget process? I think that the short answer to that is no. We have, as Engender and the Scottish Women's Budget group, similarly focused on the national budget process, in part because the international evidence for how that might be done and what impact that that may have is strongest. Our theory of change is that should that change be realised and evident in the national budget, that would set an example of practice for local authorities working within their own budget processes. I am not, therefore, aware of any examples of good practice across the 32 local authorities. I think that Dany makes a good subsidiary point about programmes of spend and the way that those are a quality impact assessed. This committee will, of course, be aware that the public sector equality duty requires all public bodies, including Scottish Government and all those said 32 local authorities, to look at the impact on significant pieces of policy. That includes programmes of spend and programmes of delivery. We are similarly concerned about the failure to get a bit of a grip on procurement, which is subject to its own specific duty in Scotland. Public authorities must procure with an eye on the equality outcomes of that. We are seeing a clash between the European Procurement Directive and the ambition in which the procurement directive seems to be emerging the victor, despite European cases from across the current member states of instances where that is not happening. We can see areas to progress across the national budget, across local authority budget processes and also across procurement on the part of all public bodies. I echo both Dany and I. We focus on gender on the national budget, but we are also seeing, when it comes to local authorities, a bit of a lack of gender mainstreaming just because, as Dany says, there seems to be this sort of fear around it. It should be really seen as a positive thing. In terms of best practice, the only thing that I can give is in relation to Miles Briggs' bill that he has put forward, the member's bill on free personal care. I am pretty sure that it is Fife Council. It is the only council in Scotland, as far as I am aware, that provides some sort of free care for under-65s, which affects women a lot more than it does men. That would probably be the only example of good practice that I can think of off the top of my head right now. I would also like to support what my colleagues have said. The issues that we outlined in terms of the national budget are maybe even more severe when we look at local budgets, especially in terms of quality evidence and quality evidence around race in particular. I think we are very supportive of evidence-based policy and making budget decisions based on what the evidence tells you, but with such a lack of race equality specific evidence at a local level, it is very hard to say where spending should be focused, so I think the first step is to look a bit further into that and evaluate programs that are in place at a local level. The point about quality impact assessments has been well made, and I think we would agree that if those were done better and in more detail at a local level and a national level, we'd be a lot further on in our aspiration to make Scotland a very equal country. We were very supportive of amendments that were put through yesterday with the child poverty bill that required consideration for impact protected characteristics might have at a local level as well, because I think we find sometimes that even if there's a national directive out there to consider equality, it doesn't always demonstrate itself at a local authority level, so again, same problems, but perhaps a bit amplified. Thank you, Rebecca. Mary. Thank you. My question is about funding for race inequality, so my question is aimed specifically at Rebecca, but I'd also be interested in hearing what Danny has to say, because from reading your evidence, Rebecca, when you talk about fully understanding the inequalities faced by BME communities, particularly in relation to employment and poverty, should be a high priority for the Scottish Government. While my main question is about how we make sure that funding is specifically aimed at reducing inequality, unless we do an assessment to fully understand what that inequality is, it doesn't matter where the money is put, it's never going to tackle the inequality, so how do we accurately assess the inequalities, because I know across budget portfolios that look at inequality in housing, inequality in employment, training and different opportunities, but do you think that there's not enough in-depth work done to look underneath the figures to look at race? So, earlier this year, the Scottish Government's equality evidence strategy was published, and that was one of the things that was called for in their race equality framework. It outlines a lot of missing pieces of evidence for race equality. Some of those, in terms of employment include, sorry, workforce data from public sector organizations, data on the ethnicity pay gap, procurement data in relation to employment, social security take-up by ethnic group, the effect of positive action schemes aimed at addressing disadvantage, intersectional analysis, so I think the gaps have been identified with the quality evidence strategy did not do was put in place the means to sort of address those gaps. It kind of laid out general principles for how gathering this evidence would be prioritized. I think there's a hesitation maybe to invest in kind of new surveys or new initiatives to gather evidence because it's quite a cost-forward thing more so than just publishing evidence that's maybe collected but hasn't been disaggregated or published in that way before. I think we would argue in terms of employment and poverty especially, we know there's such a particular impact on minority ethnic groups that we need the evidence to speak to better in order to make our arguments more strengthen our arguments further so I definitely would argue that there needs to be kind of that investment in gathering that evidence and then once that evidence is gathered putting in place actions to address the gaps that have been identified and as important as gathering the evidence is putting in place funding that's allocated to projects and initiatives that evaluates how well those projects and initiatives are tackling discrimination and advancing equality and furthering of relations. There's very little detail about those three in particular in the equality budget statement so I think there just needs to be putting money towards equality is good and it's always welcome but I think we want to make sure it's going where the disadvantage is the sharpest and that we're making the greatest impact that's possible as a result. Did that answer you? Yeah that's helpful Danny I don't know if you want you to comment on that. Thanks very much. There's variations across different sectors in relation to employment where we could some solutions are going to be easier than others so maybe ponder on to. The problem generally with stats, with the census, with the equality evidence finder a lot of which is based upon data which will pulled out of the census is that it's telling us the issue and the story of something or the outcome of an inequality and the inequality occurred to maybe five or ten years ago so we've already got to the end of the process in terms of lack of representation of employment of ethnic minorities within the public sector for example where there's quite clearly a large under representation. Now what we can do is spend the next five years try to retrospectively amend a problem that's already changed and that's where the concern is. This is what this committee specifically offers the opportunity to do differently. It's about our initial point or general point about ensuring there's a strategic approach across portfolios in national and local government or any statutory body to actually ensure that when we're spending money that we get the best bang for our buck not only in terms of building a bridge but who built the bridge, what communities did they come from, was it representative, were all of the opportunities which came as part of the tendering process to build Capital Infrastructure Project X analysed from the get-go to the end point to ensure that we raise employment, raise opportunity, raise our local and national economy. There's no simple answer to it. It's also not an issue of just taking some cutting 8 per cent of the national population or from ethnic and cultural minority communities. Okay, every budget across a portfolio you've got to direct 8 per cent of your funding or 8 per cent of your Capital Infrastructure finance to ensure that there's equal representation. It's not going to work like that because there's variations as I said across different sectors so you have to have a strategic approach to it. The data that we have available, if I take, for example, employment within the Scottish Government, we saw from the race disparity audit that came from the UK Government that within the civil service of the Scottish Government the representation of ethnic minorities is 1.2 to 1.4 per cent. It's incredibly low. Within that very specific sector what could we do to amend it? That's not a case of throwing money at it. That's a case of raising awareness of the opportunities when they come around and the system of how you apply for those opportunities and how you go through the application process. When it comes to changing something as endemic as under representation within the public sector, we're about to enter into a period of public sector recruitment freeze, which has been maintained. I can't see necessarily where we're going to make wholesale changes in that regard, but I'll go back to the Scottish Government example. It's a systematic issue. Where are we spending money? We're spending money on modern apprenticeships. We're spending money on capital investment. We're spending money on areas such as this, but we don't have any strategic focus on how that money, in reference to race equality and potentially other protected characteristics, is making a positive impact both in terms of employment, but local and national economy. Inclusive growth, we need a more strategic overview of that. So how do we fix it? One of the things I would point to would be the report that last session's Equal Opportunities Committee did on removing barriers, rape, ethnicity and employment. There are several actions outlined there that the Scottish Government, local authorities, public bodies could take forward to address, not really a deficit-based model, but look towards where discrimination and disadvantages present and respond to those needs in particular. I think in that regard, there's a lot of evidence. There's been a lot of research. There's been very welcomed specific recommendations put forward. What's needed now is acceptance of those recommendations and investment to see them through. That would be one area where I would point the committee towards what could be done. I'm back to Dany, because I can have constant frustration of mine, and I know that it's a frustration of other members of this committee, is that we produce guidance, we do evaluations, we do reviews, we do more guidance, we do more reviews. It always seems to me as if it's another book that sits on a shelf somewhere and gathers dust, or another policy that's reviewed after two years. Rather than doing a full, in-depth assessment of what went wrong with the policy, we bring another one out. I don't know if you both share that view and how we can change that. From the basic quality perspective, over the next couple of weeks, we'll see the publication of the independent advisers analysis of the basic quality framework and how she would envisage taking things forward. We'll see the Scottish Government's race equality action plan about actually amending and putting these identified issues into practice. I'm returning to the same point over and over again. This needs to be embedded strategically and having an awareness that can be measured across relevant power dynamics and portfolios. The evaluation of it is the critical factor. Well, I continue evaluation of it. The race framework is 2016-2030. I can't come back in 2030 and just have the same conversation again. There has to be targets and measures throughout. It's not targets and measures that have to be set and put on the door of the equality unit, or BEMIS, or CREAR, or SEMVO, or the equality officer at Glasgow City Council, or the equality officer at any local authority across Scotland. There is still a propensity whenever it comes to strategic management or not strategic management retrospective asking a question about why something is not working and going to consult someone and find out what we are going to do about it, tick box exercise, and what we are not doing is embedding even the first aspects of a strategic conversation about how we are going to use our budget to amend some key and substantial inequalities in Scottish society. That is where the fear aspect comes in, because when you place that collaborative challenge at the door of any director of any department, they are instantaneously potentially going to see it as an additional responsibility or a concern that they have to take forward. Whereas what we are saying is that it should be an empowering experience for us all collectively as a society. I do not mean that to sound like philosophical gobbledygook, but it is really the only coherent way forward that we can see. That is helpful. Thank you. Rebecca, did you want to comment? CREAR did a lot of background research when we were working on the race equality framework for Scotland. We produced evidence papers looking at community cohesion, justice, participation in public life, employment, equality, education, health, housing. Aside from the things we identified in the equality evidence strategy where evidence is still lacking, and again a lot of those are around employment and poverty, there is a good body of evidence and that body of evidence went towards designing the framework which is cross portfolio at outlines which should be priorities for various government departments. I think in terms of race equality we have identified where action needs to be taken. What would be great to see would be a reflection of not just a commitment to funding the implementation of the race equality framework within the funding for the equality unit, but see that mainstreamed across departments and see that commitment reflected in the portfolios and made more explicit in the budget statement and equality impact assessments that come from the projects and initiatives that the statement references. I want to come back to the issue of ring fencing that I touched on briefly at the start. It strikes me in my background as in children's rights, so I don't have as much experience of fewer areas of the equality agenda, but certainly there was a frustration about the fundamental disconnect that existed between the very laudable policies passed by this Parliament, the act of Parliament and their implementation on the ground, particularly through budgeting. We live in a more enlightened time, so happily this Parliament continually pushes the boundaries of the equality agenda, but that falls down most often when there are no resources on the ground to make that real. I think, for example, part one of the Children and Young People Act, which was about children's rights and imposing duties on local authorities to bring forward that agenda. However, that was not met with any kind of budgetary line because of the presumption against ring fencing, and it happened in that same year that we saw the number of children's rights officers in Scottish local authorities have, despite the intent of that bill. Do you think that it's time for this Parliament and this Government to review the presumption against ring fencing in the equality agenda, so that if this Parliament passes legislation that has a demonstrable need to implement at a local authority level that we need to start having a direct line of sight to where that budget is coming from and how it is spent? I think perhaps if we can hear from Emma and Sherry first because we heard quite a lot from the others in the last question. I don't know if Engender has a clear view on ring fencing or not ring fencing, but I think we share the views of the strategic budget review group, that there does need to be a closer connection between the strategic priorities of the Scottish Government and the legislation that the Parliament passes and the budget, which at the moment are disconnected. Ring fencing is one way that can be achieved, and certainly we advocated with violence against women organisations for the maintenance of a kind of ring fencing in the form of the Violence Against Women Fund and the Rape Crisis Specific Fund in 2010, when the idea was that the spend on rape crisis and women's aid services would be devolved to local government. That was considered to represent an existential threat to those organisations. We're certainly not opposed to it in principle nor blanket for it in principle, but I think you have put your finger on the thing that we are all asking for in a sense, which is a connection between the ambitions for equality and the realisation of rights and spending across the portfolios. I think our evidence identifies a slight problem with ring fencing equality money to some degree in that we have this £20.3 million in this central equality budget. Very welcome funds, I think, all of our organisations to some degree or another, but cannot possibly bring about equality in Scotland. For that to happen, there needs to be spend in the health budget, and there is spend in the health budget on equality. There needs to be spend in justice, there needs to be spend right across the portfolios contained within the budget. The question is how do we do that and how do we make that visible and how do we make those connections? Our strong pitch is that gender budget analysis is internationally demonstrated to achieve that. I think what my colleagues from the race sector are calling for is for race equality to be integrated into that equality budgeting process, which I think is also the ambition of the equality budget statement. The question is how could that be improved in order to achieve what we seem to be wanting it to achieve, which is that the impact of spending on different protected groups should drive the allocation of resources and its visibility within the budget. The Scottish budget, if you read it from cover to cover, is not just a list of numbers, as the committee will know, but a list of commitments and a narrative about what is important to the nation of Scotland. Our strong call is for equality and rights to be reflected more strongly in that narrative that we tell ourselves and the narrative of where we want to put our resources in order to achieve the best thing for the people of Scotland. In gender, our organisation does not have a particular stance for or against ring ffencing. There are many arguments of the pros and cons. I think that you have put your finger on it, although just ring ffencing and giving a commitment does not arguably always mean that that commitment is seen through. A really big example that women come to us with, which we have put in our submissions time and time again is childcare. For example, the Scottish Government keeps putting more money towards childcare, which is so welcome, but the problem is that a lot of that is still in the typical nine-to-five routine. Now, for a lot of women, especially going back to work, they are either going into the likes of the hospitality sector, which is anti-social hours, or they are in returners programmes, which they get in night classes, which again is not included in childcare, leaving them out of pocket because they are having to go and buy their own private ones, which is even more money after hours. I think that it is after six o'clock. It goes up exponentially. Even though the Scottish Government is committing money, and we welcome that so much, it is how this money is getting spent and how it is getting committed to achieve the outcomes for our quality. Can I just ask on that? I take it that your organisation would support the recommendations on the McLean commission into the future of publicly funded childcare, which suggested the introduction of childcare accounts, which would give people almost a self-directed support reality to their childcare commissioning, whereby they could commission out-of-virus childcare, and they could engage perhaps more casual arrangements for that occasional requirement for childcare, which perhaps the nine-to-five model does not fit. Is that fair? Yes, because the nine-to-five model is just not working for women. Women keep coming to us time and time again and telling us this, because it is just not feasible. Women disproportionately do not work these hours, especially in this day and age. That is good to hear. I bring in our colleagues from the race equality organisations, Rebecca. I would echo a lot of what Emma has put forward, where there is kind of a danger with the quality budget does equality, and that means the rest of us don't have to. I think there needs to be kind of a move towards mainstreaming and integrating equality more thoroughly throughout portfolios. I guess what I'll say to the point of ring fencing, because CRER also doesn't particularly have an organisational opinion on it, is that equality doesn't work when it's put in as an afterthought. That doesn't work when we put together a program, and then after the policy has been set, consider how it's going to affect different equality groups in different ways. It doesn't work for policies, and I don't think it works for budgeting either. It shouldn't be an afterthought before a policy is written and put in place. There needs to be an impact assessment done to consider the different disparities that might come from it, how we might mitigate inequalities that are related to it. I guess that's related to your point on ring fencing. Quality shouldn't be an afterthought if we want it to be implemented further and make more progress than there needs to be dedicated funding that's been well evidenced and will be well evaluated. Finally, Danny, is there anything that you'd like to add? I'll maybe give a specific example, because I thought Emma covered perfectly and succinctly from the agenda and from the race equality perspective in terms of embedding it within the equality analysis. Radical ideas exist already in the public domain about how, if we were coherently part of that process or strategically part of that process, we might use our budgetary mechanisms in order to progress some substantive change. I'll give a very specific example with regard to the social security budget. As already has been alluded to, it is around about £2.7 billion, and 15 per cent of the national spend in Scotland will now be spent via the new devolved mechanism that came via the Smith commission. As an add-on to that, we have the capacity to create new benefits as part of that particular devolution of power. There was a great piece of research done by the child poverty action group and the social policy research unit, which found that where the Scottish Government increased child benefit by £5 per child per week, 30,000 children would be lifted out of poverty after housing costs. If the increase was £10 per child per week, 59,000 would be lifted out of poverty. The cost of these increases would be between £256 million and £512 million, respectively. From a race equality perspective, this is where we come into the intersectionality between devolved and reserved powers. Many of the communities, or a good number of the communities, we work with children who do not have access to the £5, never mind the £10 due to their immigration status. Our policy proposal to the Social Security Bill in the Scottish Government was to look constructively at potential ways to extend that provision to ensure that children from ethnic and cultural minority communities' virtue of their immigration status can also receive in some relevant way a discretionary payment that would enable them to access that, taking into account that we would not want to aggravate whatever the rules on immigration are. However, that is an example of how we would have been involved in that particular process if we could have tried to tease that out. That is a really helpful example. Can I just ask you—when you say immigration stages, you mean those who have no recourse to public funds? No recourse to public funds. That is very helpful. I am happy to share the policy position with the committee because there was a raft of questions attached to it, which would have given us much more clarity about what that number may have been, and then, obviously, we have the legal aspects of that not aggravating their immigration status. That is very helpful. Thank you. I believe that Jamie Greene has a supplementary question. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I just wanted to expand the school of thought. I think perhaps that Danny mentioned around Government capital spend and procurement processes. Something that I have been looking at carefully recently is how we can modernise and redesign public procurement across the board and across all Government agencies to ensure that it is more inclusive regionally, for example, but also to ensure that Scottish businesses are able to participate to the best levels that they can, especially SMEs. How do you think that this could work in practical terms? I hear what you are saying around ensuring that, for example, the building of a new bridge, which will be over a billion pounds, or the development of a new train line, or more public housing being built, etc. How do you actually put into the process mechanisms that ensure that the public money is given to developers or constructors who will take into account more protected characteristic inclusion in the workforce, or that the building of that project will achieve any of the aims that you are seeking to achieve? I am struggling to make the direct link in practical terms. There is already precedent in terms of the tendering process or procurement process, where there are already elements that have to be adhered to or are classified in a hierarchical way in terms of who is going to receive a particular contract to do a particular job, and that is around about, for example, the living wage or working conditions and so on and so forth. Our only rationale is to embed, additionally, in that process something that is similar to the EQIA process in order to assure that, when companies are coming forward to take on potential significant public spending contracts, companies—I am happy again to share this report. It is a report being instead on poverty and ethnicity, which was released in January 2016. This was directly in relation to the housing provision and potential forthcoming development of 50,000 new homes. It should be subject to an EQIA with all facets of their development to maximise potential in both location, allocation, sustainability and procurement. I think that this is the crux of what you are asking. Companies with accessible and transparent evidence of the qualities training represented the workforce targets and commitment to positive action and apprenticeships targets and employment as part of the tendering process. So embedding that within the tendering process where there is already an element of aspiring to other equalities dimensions. Just to apologize, if I could develop it just once more. Are you saying therefore in a scenario where companies have failed to demonstrate that they are able to meet the criteria, this additional criteria, that in that situation they should not be given public funds? If there are two competing tenders, for example, that the preference by default should be given to the one that will help to meet more inclusive objectives? The whole premise of inclusive national growth would predicate that that would be the much more sensible option to take. It is not for me to place that particular legal duty on anything, but certainly from an equalities perspective it would make sense. That is exactly what we are talking about here. When we say that we get the best bang for our buck, it is not just the physical infrastructure of what is built. It is actually everything else that happens around about it and the economy that is developed as part of it. Ensuring that if we spend 10 pounds, that that 10 pounds is also not only building whatever we have built but is also enabling more people to get into employment who might not actually be or might be part of a group that is underemployed, that would seem logical. As I am saying, it is just building into already equalities aspects that exist within the tendering process. I have a final question. Just about something that has come up several times. Oh, sorry, Emma, did you want to come in on that question? Can I just follow up on that point? Women in Scotland's economy research centre at Glasgow College of Indian University has done quite a lot of work on procurement and equality, so I will be glad to share with you the summary of the available research. I would note a couple of things. Firstly, it is already a requirement on public bodies to take an equality approach in their procurement, the specific duties of the Scottish public sector equality duty require it. Secondly, it is complicated to implement. I think that we have not got a myriad of examples of good practice. The Olympic delivery authority is cited often as one of them, but in a Scottish context, I think we are emerging good practice rather than having lots of examples to share, but the equality and human rights commission is doing a piece of work around city deals to work with the city deal local authority leads to try and work out how best it can support them to deliver on their public sector equality duty requirements, but also to think creatively about how this may work to enable and encourage businesses to act in an equality-minded way and to succeed because of that, because there is a very strong evidence base that those businesses, including SMEs, that engage with equality's agendas benefit from that in terms of creativity, productivity, morale, all of these things improve, so I think it is an aspiration for Scottish businesses, as well as for Scottish public sector and Scottish communities. I want to go back with quite a pointed question about what we were talking about local authority equality impacts assessments. If in a budget line a local authority decided to cut money for its cleaning contracts for skills, knowing that those jobs were mostly taken by women, is that an equality issue? You could argue that anything really is an equality issue when it comes to local authority, because it has a completely different effect on women than how it has on men, so in your example, yes, I would say that it is an equality issue because women tend to be clustered in these roles, the likes of cleaning and clerical work, so yes, definitely I would say that the likes of that, but how it is monitored is a completely different aspect and angle and it's how to get that monitored in an equality's way. There were some really good examples that we've started to get out about how budget lines can affect equalities such as flexible childcare or the child benefit or tax credit add-ons. Emma, you mentioned that there are already some equalities in the health budget that we already addressed. Could you maybe give us an example of something that we already do well? I may need to come back to you on that. What I was thinking about when I was talking about that is that we do target a lot of differentiated spend within the health budget on ensuring that women and men who have separate needs for health services have those needs met, so in terms of national screening programmes, maternity-specific healthcare, and perhaps specifically within Scotland some of the gender identity healthcare provision that is provided to support the equality and rights of trans young people and people, so I can add to that list, but all of those things are invisible within the current budget articulation and so our ambition is to see that brought to the surface much more because, as Danny said, it's not about gender budget analysis, it's not about 50 per cent for men and 50 per cent for women, it's about ensuring that our spend as a nation meets the needs of the citizens and so this is one way of doing that because men and women still in Scotland live quite different lives and have quite different needs when it comes to public services. I'd also like to touch on the budget group and I think that it was mentioned, the budget advisory group. How do we go about getting more people with protected characteristics actually giving advice on how the decisions are made for their particular groups? I think at the moment there's not a representative on the group who has a specific expertise in race equality. This predates my time at CRER, but I believe the issue was raised several years ago and I think there was maybe an attitude that if there was general equalities expertise that kind of fit the bill I think we would disagree with that and say that you don't know what you're missing, you don't know kind of the disadvantages you're not aware of, you don't know the differential impact unless you have those voices in the room and if it's not possible to appoint a representative from each protected characteristic group on the group itself, then I think there needs to be much more consultation done with groups who have expertise in that area, directions towards resources where kind of discrepancies can be identified further and just kind of a more conversation approach to it. I think it's similar to equality impact assessments. It doesn't work so well if you kind of look at the finished product and then comment on it, it works much better if you're thinking about equality from the get-go and thinking about differential impacts from the start. Thanks, Rebecca. I know Danny wants to see coming on that as well. Yeah, maybe just to build on that very slightly and then respond to your first question which was regards to the cleaning contract and is that an equality issue because we had a very similar situation in another sector which we regarded as an equality issue but we kind of hit a brick wall with it. I would agree with what Rebecca is saying but again it goes back to her initial point about it's not just about the communities articulating the variations and circumstances which they face, it's also about that strategic direction when we can quite clearly evidence inequalities within a particular policy area that that's part of the analysis of the people who hold the power dynamics with regards to it. So I'll give an example where there's a cross-cutting issue about low pay and overcrowding in housing so we know from the census stats that people from Polish and African communities are significantly more likely to live in poverty and significantly more likely to live in overcrowding. Now after we looked at that we also looked at okay well where are these people employed and it was quite clear from that quite simple analysis that under the guise of the agricultural wages board there was significant numbers anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 people from Poland or A2A migrants who work in this particular sector and also suffer or live in particular social and economic disadvantage. Now the interesting thing about the agricultural wages board is that it's a trilateral partnership between four independent commissioners who are appointed by Scottish ministers, representatives of the farmers unions and representatives of the trade unions and this is included in the poverty and poverty report that I'll share. Now we argued and this is relevant to the human rights aspect and to give due regard to or promote that the Scottish living wage across all sectors within which the Scottish Government has influenced. Now as I've said the mandatory payment of the living wage which exists across all across Scottish Government and public authorities over which it has control as mandatory but within the under the guise of the agricultural wages board it's not mandatory so it's less than the living wage. Now we argued that that was an equalities issue because we can quite clearly see that a community which has validity under the Equalities Act which we can quite easily identify suffers some severe form of social and economic disadvantage are clustered in a sector which doesn't pay the living wage. Now when we argued that people listened but then we were told down off, you do that, you're going to collapse the soft-root sector in Scotland so you can't do that. That's an example of an identified issue, a potential solution and I was actually not really getting anywhere with it. The local authority, did you want to come back in on that specifically? No, no, no, I'm giving you, so you're asking is it an equalities issue if a local authority cuts a contract? Arguably yes but it's also an equalities issue. There's other examples of those equalities issues according to where the power dynamic is held by a different group. I was just wondering because at the bottom of some council papers you get are there any equalities issues with that and if it's a you know how far do they have to look into it then to say yes or no and it's it can be very complicated for them I think for us looking in it it's not so complicated. Thank you Gail and that nicely brings us up against the time that we have today. I'd like to thank each of you for your very fulsome testimony and your written responses. As ever, if there are additional points you'd like to raise with us, this dialogue is always open and we'd be absolutely delighted to hear from you. So I suspend this meeting to go into private session and thank the panel for their involvement.