 I'm ready everyone! And welcome to the 20th meeting of the Equality & Human Rights Committee in 2018. Can we please ensure that all electronic devices are on silent mode. I've received apologies this morning from Christina McKelvey and Alex Cole-Hamelton, as neither of the convener nor of the deputy convener is present today. I am chairing in this part of the meeting as the oldest member present. Under rule 12.1, the standing order required that the committee must choose a temporary convener for the meeting. ond rwy'n gwneud tiant ar y cófurar rhywrsiau – eu pen soy, gway i mi Scripture—a ni oedd ein mydd. Rhaon t Wrong. Unrhyw g Everywhere ac Oedden, rwy'n theref. As well as our budget strategy phase 2019-20 is an evidence session on the budget strategy on behalf of us, Caroline Gardner, Auditor General for Scotland and Mark Taylor, Assistant Director for Audit Scotland. I understand, Auditor General, that you wish to make a brief opening statement. Thank you, convener. I'll make it brief. We're very pleased to be with the committee today to discuss the changes that are being made to the budget process and what they might mean for the scrutiny of equality ond yr adegau ymgyrchu, ac i'n gweithio i'ch cael cysylltu i'r gael. As yw'r dyma, Gwladd yn cyfnodd yn cyd-dwylliant i gweithio bwyllt ar gyfer morch, ymgyrch o'r gweithio'r rhai dweud ac ymgyrchio'r ymgyrchio i 11 oesau ymgyrchai i'r gweithio ar 3 billion pound. Gweithio'r cyfrifau ar y parlywol oedd ychydig yn bwysig gan gweithio ar gyfer gweithio a dweud ei gweithio'r cyfnodd, yn cyrchydigau, yn cyrchydigau ac yn cydweithio. Though it is now much greater link with the economic performance of Scotlandin relation with the rest of the UK Those changes to the public finance mean that there is a need to transform the budget process The Parliament now needs to be able to scrutinise whether the new tax and spending powers are being used in a way that is sustainable, inclusive and makes the best use of resources in achieving the Government's policy goals As Audetegenteral, I support Parliamentary scrutiny by providing evidence based on objective information onpublic spending and performance. I was also a member of the Budget Process Review Group and I fully support its recommendations. I am pleased that those have been welcomed by Parliament and Government and work to implement the new approach that the next budget cycle 2019-20 is already well and away. The recommendations of the Budget Process Review Group build on what a number of committees are already doing. The committee's own budget report last year was a good example of how a device around reassessor cycles might work. Gwbomod, mae amddai ein gwaith o'r mgwylwch yn achos a chyfnodau ymddoweniad, i gyd yn ymddangas iawn o gychwyn sydd penlwag o'r cyhoi ffordd yw'r hynnyau i'r cyflwyno sydd i'ch cyfèl i'r cyflwyno i'r cyflwyno i'r Ysgolll Penthau. Gwbomod ystyried cyflwyno'n tuolaid ar gyfer y ddych yn ymgyrch a'u yn gweithio ar eu bodgylch yn amlachol cyflwyno'n masbyg. Mae'r gyflwyno yw'r cyflwyno ar gyfer y gwrdd ffordd y cyllid cyflwyno As the new budget process develops, we will make sure that our work programme continues to support parliamentary scrutiny against a backdrop of increasingly shared responsibilities between the Scottish Government and the UK Government in areas like tax and social security. Changing the budget process also means changes to culture and to ways of working. We have always known that it will take time to be delivered in full with some big challenges and opportunities to work through. We are looking forward to exploring with the committee what that might mean for the work that we all do. Mark Taylor and I will do our best to answer your questions. Thank you very much for that opening statement. Can I start by asking you about scrutiny? One of the things that we have questioned different witnesses about when they have come to committee is how we follow a budget line across spend. That can be very difficult to follow the line through to see the outcome. It is something that you pick up in paragraphs 14 and 16 of your report about scrutiny and evaluation. Given that equalities in human rights covers all the portfolio areas and every committee has an element of human rights inequalities in it, how can we ensure that the scrutiny work that we do on this committee—when we take that longer-term, broader approach to scrutiny—is matched on the subject committees? You are absolutely right, convener, that there is no way that that will work if equalities in human rights are seen as a business of this committee. It has to play through the whole budget and the scrutiny work of all the subject committees in the Parliament. There are a couple of areas that we can see where this committee can play a particular role. The first is encouraging the Government to provide its budget documentation and its financial reporting as outcomes of what it has achieved in ways that provide more information on the breakdown of how it will affect on particular equalities, characteristic groups and how it will improve outcomes around human rights. The national performance framework and the new national outcomes is a starting point on that, but there is lots of work to do to work through what that means in practice with the decisions that are being proposed for how money is used and what the policy goals are. The second is probably to help the other committees to think through what good practice looks like in relation to their areas of responsibility, health and social care or the economy or whatever it might be in terms of thinking about it through inequalities in human rights lens. Guidance for them questions that you are interested in having answered your ability to join up the dots across different portfolios where that is what is going to make a difference to equalities in human rights. The breakdown is probably the most important aspect of it, because quite often you see the top line and there will be a one-letter description of what the budget spend is, but the underlying figures beneath that, the breakdown of those figures will pick out the human rights. Is that the most important aspect of it? I think that that is one important aspect and I will ask Mark to talk about that in a moment. I think that the other one is probably the broader equalities dimension, particularly when we are talking about tax and social security powers, that the Government has made a good start on its proposals around income tax on setting out the impact that it expects its proposals to have on people who are less well off, people who are better off, but there is more to do in terms of things like distributional analysis to look at the impact of tax changes, council tax changes, all of those sorts of things. Areas of policy on equalities in terms of income and poverty, rather than the protected characteristics? Mark, do you want to pick up the other part of the question? On information in the budget itself and individual budget lines, as the committee will be aware, there are, of course, a small number of budget lines that are directly linked to activity and qualities in human rights areas. There is an area for inquiry about that, but the vast bulk of impact, the vast bulk of the way in which the budget has an effect on those areas, is through all of the budget lines. As the shift to the new approach to scrutiny widens out perspectives, there is something that, rather than looking more narrowly at the information on individual lines, there is a broader look taken about, in particular, policy areas and, overall, what is the overall impact on outcomes and what is the overall impact on some of the main initiatives and programmes within the Government's spending programme. I think that one of the things that the budget process review group recommended that we would hope to see some progress on in an early course is that, when the Government comes with an initiative or new programme that is able to articulate more clearly what the implications for a range of outcomes are in that particular programme. Therefore, in those new programmes, we would expect part of that to be about equalities in human rights and articulating what the impact in those areas is. That provides a locus for individual committees and for yourself to get more of a sense of where is the money going and what is it buying us and what is the impact and likely implications of that. That might be quite a wide-ranging question, but what do you think that we are getting right at the moment in terms of equalities in human rights budgeting? One of the biggest things going for us is the national performance framework and the outcomes approach. That is a really good framework for taking that longer-term view. The longer-term view is absolutely central to the recommendations that the budget process review group made. It provides a good starting point for saying that if our aims are about making Scotland a great place for children and young people to grow up and a key policy is to increase the amount of early learning and childcare that we provide, which are the groups within that matter the most? Is our priority about helping more parents back to work, particularly more mothers? Is it about giving an extra helping hand to children from the most deprived families and then thinking through how we are going to allocate the money to reflect that and how we will know that it is happening? My sense is that having the outcomes is a really good starting point. Beyond that, I think that the challenge is about getting the information in place to be able to tell what progress we are making rather than having to wait 10 years or a generation to be able to see the outcome. The outcome is what matters, but we cannot wait 20 years to know if we are moving in the right direction or not. Having a bit more of that information and making it more possible for all of the committees of Parliament to look at next year's budget proposals in the context of what we are trying to achieve and whether we are heading in the right direction would be a really good next step to make. On the process side, the other strength of the arrangements that we have at the moment is the role that the Equalities and Budgeting Advisory Group plays. As an advisor to government, it gives a locust a centre of expertise, can't do all the work, unable to do all the work itself but is able to work both with government and, indeed, previously with the committee around what are the issues here and help to explore those issues. I think that the role that that group plays is really an important role in moving forward the information requirements and how to address those information requirements. I think that the information that comes with the budget at the moment is a good quality analysis, is an early step and there is so much more to do there. I think that the work that the group does with government and the work done in government to widen out the range of analysis around qualities and the effect on different groups is an important part of where we need to go next. Auditor General, you've obviously got a locust to look at the public bodies and where the public spend is going. From our point of view, if we're going to follow the public pound, as Mary Fee mentioned, a lot of that money goes to local authorities and then they have free, well, sort of free rate to spend it, how they think is best. How do we make sure that they're fulfilling their equalities and human rights in regards to budgeting? It's a really good question and I think it's related to the one that the convener kicked off with about the difficulty of understanding what's happening below the sort of high level lines in the budget. It's clearly the case that local authorities are directly elected bodies in their own right. They've got statutory powers and a general wellbeing power, so their ability to act in ways that they believe will further the needs of their community is very important, and they're doing that within the overall framework of the national performance framework and the national outcomes. They all produce local outcome improvement plans, which set out what the needs of their area are and how they're planning to improve them over time. I think there is scope for local authorities to get sharper at the way they're engaging with people about that and then communicating the progress they're making. The role of audit, though, is very much a bit of the evidence that's available to the Parliament and to this committee about the way they're picking up equalities, as well as the annual audit, which happens for all public bodies in Scotland, under the auspices of the Accounts Commission. Local authorities also undergo a review of the progress that they're making on best value, the best value that they have. One of the characteristics of best value at the moment in the statutory guidance is equalities. The auditors look at, first of all, what the councils say they're doing and, secondly, the progress that they're making in doing that and come to a judgment about whether it is based on a proper understanding of the needs of the local people and whether they're doing the right things from there. I'm thinking through a couple of the best value audits that have happened so far. In Glasgow, for example, the council had made a real focus on transport as a priority, on the basis that transport was very important for people from outlying areas of Glasgow, potentially more deprived areas to be able to get to work, to education, to the other things the city has to offer and was doing that in a way that was very much focused on equalities and human rights. Renfrewshire was very much focused on poverty as being one of the things that it felt it needed to address to meet the needs of the people in the area. It's picked up in that way rather than what you're doing about equalities. Do you understand what promoting equalities would look like in your area and can you show us that you're making progress towards that? Just a follow-up point on that last question that Gail Ross asked, because we have some information from local authorities on how they assess the work that they are doing on equalities and human rights. Some specifically mention human rights and equalities in the budget work that they do. Some say that they are community based, so they automatically do human rights and equalities work. Is there a role somewhere for COSLA to have more of an influence or a supporting role in how local authorities carry out the scrutiny work and make sure that the spend goes in the right direction? I start with the caveat that local authorities aren't within my area of responsibility, but my personal view is that I think probably COSLA can be doing more to help each local authority around Scotland think about how they apply the broad duty that applies to them, as it does to all public bodies, to their particular circumstances. Moving on from the sense that, yes, of course, if you're focusing on your community, you're going to pick up equalities and human rights to some extent, but I think it's very easy for all of us to take that for granted and not be thinking about the people who are less visible or less vocal and whose interests are therefore easier to miss when you're thinking about the most important things in your area. Something about guidance, something about applying the same principles that are now being built into the Scottish Government's budget, about understanding the impact of your budget decisions on the different groups locally and thinking through all of your policy decisions through an equality and human rights lens. What does our housing policy mean for human rights for equalities? What about our support for the local economy? Those sorts of questions are all the way that I'd expect people to be explicitly considering equalities and human rights duties. I want to start by asking about money that is received by third sector organisations who play a vital role in delivering a number of services, particularly when it comes to promoting equalities and human rights. Do you put any focus into analysing whether that money delivers best value and what sort of analysis do you do? A lot of that question relates to local authorities rather than to the bodies that are directly in my remit, given the scale of third sector funding that local authorities provide. To interrupt, you're just interested in money in particular that is received directly by organisations from the Scottish Government. They tend to come into the audit remit as part of our look at a particular policy. We've looked recently at self-directed support and looking at the way in which the Government, as well as the other public bodies involved in that policy, are engaging with third sector organisations, first of all, to understand some of the views of the people who are affected by or depend on that service, and then the way in which that's shaping the Government's policy decisions about how money is spent. That's the first thing. The second thing goes back to the point that Mark was making about planning for outcomes. Within the budget, if a particular policy area is focused on, it will require to be delivered in partnership with third sector organisations, or indeed private sector providers, to be very clear about that, to be clear about the sort of relationship that is needed to do it, about the flow of funds and back to the point of knowing what progress is being made, what's working and what's not. It tends to be through looking through the direction of an individual policy rather than relationship with third sector bodies overall, but where it's rather than yes, we look at it. That's helpful. I was interested in the comments that you made about looking at outcomes. Do you feel—and I know that all Governments naturally look for the positive outcomes in policies— that enough focus is given to setting out the relevant data in relation to possible alternatives, but also unintended consequences of policies? It's a really important question. The answer is the same one that was asked to Ms Ross earlier. Unless we've got very clear measures and milestones that we expect to see on the way to improving an outcome over time, it's very hard to know what's working and what's not. If you don't know what's not working, you can't decide to stop doing that and instead invest the money in doing something else instead. At the moment I think it's difficult politically to stop doing things, but beyond that I think it's also difficult to see which are the things that are not working as well and therefore you should consider doing less of so that you can do more of the things that are working. I think that there are all things that you need to be doing well before you get to the point where you would expect to see an improvement in the overall outcome that you're looking to achieve. Do you think specifically that the Governments set out enough information on the alternatives that they've considered as part of the policy making process to allow proper scrutiny? I would say that's patchy. I'll refer back, for example, to the work that we published earlier this year on early learning and childcare. We found that back in 2014 when the original decision to expand the entitlement was made, the Government wasn't clear about what options it had considered and why it chose the one that it had done. That meant that it wasn't possible to demonstrate which was the outcome that you thought you were going to achieve, whether it was helping more parents into employment or helping to reduce inequality between children from the poorest families and the rest. In that case, we felt that the Government hadn't done enough certainly to set out the things that it had considered and decided not to do. In other instances, I think that there's more evidence of that, so it's patchy, but there's room for improvement. On how to get at that question, one of the things that we're quite clear about is that, in measuring outcomes, there's something about it not just being a single figure for the whole of the population. That's the reference point. It's something about the ability to understand what the outcomes are for different people and different groups within the population. It's really pleased to see the Government's commitment within its new national performance framework to, as far as possible, break down those outcomes data to enable a geographic analysis, to enable an analysis amongst different interest groups. There's a lot of work to do for that to actually happen, but in assessing outcomes it's not just the aggregate number that matters, it's that granularity and that sense of what they impact on different people across the country are, which will be really important. That leads me nicely on to my final question, which is just about distributional analysis and how policies affect individuals. Do you think that that's something that's done at the start of the process, or do you think that my perception certainly is that sometimes it's a add-on at the end that's used to justify a policy position that's already been arrived at? Do you think that the Governments start with the analysis, or do you think that they start with a policy intention and work backwards? I think that there's a variety of practice and that's part of the issue. I think that what's clear is that approach to distributional analysis needs to be much more rigorous, systematic and built in across the piece. I don't think that it's a straightforward thing to do. I think that there's a lot of work that's required to enable Government to get there and to be able to do that and to enable other public bodies, councils to be able to begin to do that. I think that the approach is to pick some areas where there's a greater understanding already there and build on that. More generally, as information needs are addressed and information requirements are improved, there's better data. There's something about the nature of that being an incremental process. There's not a magic bullet to suddenly create a whole basket of information but there's a need to quicken the pace of change, a need to quicken the ability to do that more routinely as part of the policy making process and critically as part of the budget scrutiny process to support the budget scrutiny about an assessment of what impact is public spending and public revenue raising having. Where you say pick areas, what areas would you identify with that are currently a strength? I'd hesitate to identify specific areas that I felt were a strength. I think that there are areas where the thinking is more advanced around gender, for example, and those areas provide a good starting point. I think that I'd struggle to identify areas where there's comprehensive information available currently. Just before I bring in Annie Wells, I wanted to ask an additional question to Mark Taylor about the national performance framework. When you spoke about measuring the outcomes and broadening them out to get a broader look at how we're doing, we measured the NPF through indicators. Is the crucial piece of work to be done is to develop and expand the indicators to be almost quite specific in what they're looking for to prove that we're fulfilling the obligations and meeting targets? The commitment from Government, as I understand it, is to take that new indicator set, which has just recently been agreed, and look to try and break them down. The individual headline indicators to look to try and break them down in both a geographic manner and across particular aspects of the community. They've identified some priorities for doing that. That's a commitment. I think that there's a lot of work still to be done to make that the case. Do you know if they will break it down into all the different equality bits of the budget, or will it be a broad range when they look at that? I think that so far we know the commitment. I think that we wait to see the detail of that. I would expect it to be different for different outcomes, so that some are going to be relevant to the protected characteristics, some will be relevant by age, others will be much more relevant by geography, but it may not be the same set for every outcome, I would guess. I've got a couple of questions. It's just about the public engagement that you've mentioned in your submission. Obviously, public engagement is a huge thing. As a committee, we try to go out there and be with the general public people that are hard to reach. How can other committees, and how can we, as a Parliament, make sure that we're engaging the public in this budget process, especially when we look at the equality impact assessments that we know should and do happen, but we have been told by local authorities that sometimes they maybe aren't as effective as they could be. It's basically a tick box exercise. How do we encourage the public to believe that we are doing scrutiny properly when we've got local authorities there saying that it's not always the case? The first thing I'd say is that, although I think that Parliament's got a really important role in that, the primary responsibility should sit with government and with local authorities to be engaging themselves with people about what matters to them, within that, what works and what doesn't, what their preferences are. We know that the Community Empowerment Act gives specific responsibilities to local authorities to do that. The Accounts Commission's best value work has shown a range of approaches to going about it, but it's hard to say so far that it's having a fundamental effect on the way that local authorities decide how to spend the budgets that they have every year. I think that if that consultation about what the budget proposals look like is done well, it's much easier for committees of the Parliament to be hearing from people about whether that's effective or not, whether they feel their voices are being heard, whether they see changes to the services that are being provided or the way that's being done. You might want to think about doing a bit of a dual-focusing of listening to people about what matters to them, but then asking the Government and COSLA or councils how they're responding to that, what they're doing about it. You said Glasgow had done a really good piece when it looked at transport, but we've seen recently as well that with the early years information and the sort of a rise in costs, to me it doesn't look as if we're putting the equality impact assessment right on everything. We are looking at a human rights-based approach to everything, so how can we disseminate that to the councils to say that this is what we are trying to do and be guarantors, and how can we not tell the councils what to do but show best practice? I think that two things bring to mind for me and Mark may have something to add. First of all, I think that the convener's question about COSLA is a really important one. I think that the more that the committee and COSLA together are saying this is what good looks like, the easier councils will find it to get to grips with something which can be quite complex and people can be not sure where to start, so I think that's really important. The second is that I think that all of the committees of Parliament have got a really important role in acting as a sort of amplifier for the concerns that you all hear as MSPs from your constituents and the people in your regions. If you're hearing that a particular policy is not working well for people in your patch, your ability to play that through the parliamentary scrutiny process and increasingly the budget process, I think has got a lot of influence on what the government has done. It may not be, in the case of councils, a direct line of saying that we expect you to do this particular thing, but it is a way of saying that we expect you to be taking your equalities and human rights duties seriously, and here is what we think that would look like. That's quite a general question, just wondering how you would consider budget scrutiny in terms of human rights levers, where there may be major policy differences between Governments. I think that the example that you gave at the start was what prompted my question, if you look at welfare, where the UK Government may be taking one approach and the Scottish Government another, generally speaking, but at the end of the day it's the same folk. I think that this is one of the areas that we're focusing on most in terms of our own work at the moment, until quite recently, under the devolution settlement, it was pretty straightforward that if a matter wasn't reserved to the UK Government, it was a matter for the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, and we audited what was therefore devolved. What we're now seeing with the devolution of income tax powers, social security and coming along soon VAT is a much more wavy line between the responsibilities of the UK Parliament and the Scottish Parliament, and we're working hard with our colleagues in the national audit office to think about how we can do our work in a way that's proportionate that doesn't lead to loads of duplication, but does satisfy both Parliaments that their interests are being protected and they're getting the assurance that they need about the way public money is being spent. If we stick with social security as an example, there's no question that the national audit office will continue to audit the DWP as a UK public body, and there's no question that the Scottish Parliament has got a real interest in some aspects of what DWP does because it will be providing elements of the devolved social security benefits to people in Scotland, at least for the foreseeable future. We're working through what that means. We're also looking at the way the Scottish Government is handling the transfer of those powers to Scotland to make sure that it's doing it in a way that manages the risks to some of the most vulnerable people in Scotland, that is letting it use its powers in the way that it intends to, and that is ensuring a smooth landing that provides a basis for the next level of powers and the freedom to introduce new benefits that comes on stream at the same time. We are still working our way through it, but I expect it to be a matter of continuing interest to Parliament. Obviously, the equality and human rights dimension of that is something that we take seriously, as I know that you do. It's a no-one-going area for you. Sure, and a complicated one. Gil, do you have a supplementary on that? Yes, I do. Thanks, convener. It just follows on from Fulton's question. In your evidence at the very end, you raised some concerns about the draft audit and accountability framework. Is that specifically in relation to the social security and tax powers, or is that overall? It is. It's being framed in a way that would cover anything else that ends up being devolved or shared in that way, but it's specifically driven at the moment around the tax and the social security powers that are the ones that we're implementing at the moment. What specifically are the concerns that you have, and how can we address those concerns? Just to give you one example, under the legislation, income tax is almost fully devolved to the Scottish Parliament in terms of the rates and the bans, but it has to be collected by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. That's not a choice that the Scottish Government has in the way that it is for social security. It's baked into the legislation. HMRC is audited by my colleagues in the National Audit Office, and they've done that for a very long time. It's a big complex audit, and there are particular safeguards around it to protect taxpayer confidentiality. I've got no access to HMRC at all, but we know that income tax revenues will be about £12 billion this year. They will be a big chunk of Scotland's revenues, the amount of money that it's got to spend in future. I think that it's entirely appropriate for the Scottish Parliament to have an interest, not just that the amounts of money being recorded and therefore transferred to Scotland are right, but that Scottish taxpayers are being treated to the same standards of customer care as UK taxpayers on the whole are, that tax evasion and fraud in relation to Scotland is being tackled seriously so that losses are minimised. Yet at the moment I can't provide any direct assurance to Parliament about that. The draft framework is about working through how the existing audit arrangements are maintained and protected, while still giving me enough access to provide that assurance to the Scottish Parliament that its interests are being looked after and that, if there are any problems, it knows that and can follow them up. That's a tricky thing. Oliver, did you have another question? Yes, it was just a brief question. Obviously we're talking of an expanding remit and lots of hard work on going to change the current budgetary process. Do you think that enough resource and priority is being given to enable that work? I think that so far the early signs are positive. Certainly in Audit Scotland we were very pleased to see the medium-term financial strategy published last month, that's the first time that's happened in Scotland, contained a lot of information about the revenue side, room for more development on the expenditure side, but a great first step. We have got the written agreement now between Parliament and Government and we have the expectation that that will come into play for the 2019-20 budget. We've always known that this was something that would have to evolve over time. You can't do a big bang and make it work. For me, the challenge is keeping the momentum up so that we see some of the developments that we've been talking about this morning, like having more information in the budget about the links expenditure proposals to outcomes that breaks it down by different equalities groups, for example, or by the people who are expected to be particularly affected by our policy proposal. All of that will take time, at a time when people are already very busy and resources are tight. I'm committed to keeping on playing our part in that, but also reporting to Parliament about what I think the progress has been in doing it and highlighting any particular concerns that feel as though we might be at risk of losing some of the potential that's there. We did a piece of work earlier in the year around progress with implementing the whole range of Scotland Act powers and one of the findings in that piece of work was around the capacity challenges that the Government has got. It is a whole new set of responsibilities in addition to the Government's continuing responsibilities and other current issues at the moment. It's a real stretch for Government to be able to respond to that and we highlighted some issues around that in our last report. The sense is that the initial changes have been well resourced, particularly around social security, and there's been some good initial progress around that, but there's a massive job ahead and those capacity changes have the risk of beginning to bite as the work continues. Can I perhaps come back to some of the points that you make on your submission? I'm thinking about the basket of evidence when you talk about the availability of quality data. It's something that comes up time and time again when we take evidence and it comes out in evidence across other committees that, one, the lack of reliable data and the lack of the use of the data that's available. What can be done to ensure that data is used across all of the committees and across all of the work that Government does to help us to measure outcomes? I'll start by talking about what we can do with the data that's already there and then maybe ask Mark to pick up the question of the gaps that we know exist and that they're becoming increasingly important. I think in some ways it comes back to this idea that if you're taking an outcomes approach, everything that every public body does should be aiming towards those and they should all know what contribution they're expecting to make. That's not to say it will always work as planned, which is why you need to be measuring progress and shifting, but you should know why you're doing something and how you'll know whether it's working or not. At the moment, it can be quite hard for us, for you, for anyone to join the dots if we think about something like sustainable economic growths. We reported on the economy agencies, if you like, a year or so ago and found that, while the economic strategy was clear about the things that it wanted to achieve, it was much harder to see what Scottish Enterprise and High and Skills Development Scotland and the other bodies involved were doing themselves. It was making a difference there. I think that's part of the reasoning behind the new strategic enterprise and skills board, but there's a real job of work to do for government and its public bodies to start with, of helping you to see how they expect all of those things to be working together and how money is following those plans year by year to get there. All of the public bodies, as well as the Government themselves, produce a plan as an annual report. There's room for those to do much more, to tell you about what they're trying to achieve in the context of the outcomes and then to close the loop by telling you what progress they're making. Audit reports can be part of that. We report on each individual body each year, as well as the planned programme of performance audit works, which comes through the Public Audit Committee to Parliament and do look at specific issues. Some of those are very specifically about equalities or human rights issues, like the work on self-directed support. We're planning some work on housing, on children and young people's mental health services. They can help to pull that picture together and show you how it's working. Your own clerks and the people-in-spice are increasingly skilled in helping you to pull the picture together from what's already there. We know that there are still some gaps, but I think that doing that, pulling together, is a good first step. I'd observe that the shift to the new budget process is one of those opportunities to find how to encourage people to make more use of the data that's already there. That's at the heart of the budget process recommendations. Giving Parliament the time and space, but also giving public bodies and the Government more of an opportunity to articulate what they're doing and to find a home for that within the budget process as an on-going process, building up information over time. The shift to the budget process helps. There is a real responsibility, as the Auditor General said, on the Government and public bodies to articulate better their plans, what difference those plans will make and how they expect to have a difference and how they are delivering against those plans and what policies they're making in practice. There's a real opportunity within annual reporting to be clearer about the difference that individual components of the public sector are making to outcomes. Again, there's a commitment within the budget process to review the recommendations and acceptances of recommendations that there's stronger guidance from Government to public bodies about their ability to do that. I think that builds up the information base and builds up the dialogue between people who are delivering public services and the Parliament about the difference that that's making and the shift to the new budget process is a really important part of that. Beyond that, there's specific equalities in human rights data and with the data strategy that's in place and the opportunity to build on what they are but to continue to look for how those improvements in particular datasets can be made. Of course, as I've mentioned before, the commitment under the national performance framework to have that more granular information. There's the will, the ambition to have much better data. It's not a case that we go from not having good data to flicking a switch and obviously having perfect data. It's about the continued effort to be able to do that, a prioritised, focused effort. I suppose that two things have occurred to me following on from what you said. One is how we join all of that together. Given all of that's there, we need to find a way to join it together and to continue to keep it joined together so that we can properly interrogate budget. The other thing is that there is a role across committees when they are scrutinising budget to perhaps look at it through a different lens. I'm not saying that we tend to ask the same questions all the time when we scrutinise budget but there is a element of we'll ask this, we'll ask this and we'll ask that but maybe committees need to be a bit more focused on the questions that they're asking to get the answer that they require. I think that the essence of the shift in the new budget process is to enable all committees to take a broader look at how public money in their area is being used and raised and what difference that's making. Within that, there's an opportunity for committees to decide what their priorities are and to select some particular areas of focus to be able to explore that. One of the challenges for all committees and for this committee is how to ensure that that focus includes an examination of equalities and human rights as part of that focus. Clearly, all committees can't do everything and there's something about how that is one of the lenses to use the language in order to general that committees are using when they're thinking about particular policy areas. Rather than focusing on budget lines or focusing on particular sets of data and individual questions, it's an opportunity for committees to say, in our area, we need to focus on this particular thing, city deals perhaps. We focus on this particular thing. What's difference are city deals making? What are the implications of the city deals investment? What are the implications for equalities and human rights of the city deals investment and use that kind of general policy inquiry, budget inquiry around a spend, in that case, city deals and what the different outcomes to consider are as a result of that particular area. I think that that's the thinking behind the shift to the new budget process until opportunities, more opportunities for committees to do that and more opportunities for committees to hear from people in interest groups about what it means for them in particular, investment areas in particular policy areas. Sorry, convener. The only thing I was going to add to what Mark has said is that the shift to doing that on a year-round basis provides the chance to be more planned and thoughtful about what are the particular areas that each committee is interested in. And for the conveners and clients to consult with other committees about what matters. For example, if the economy committee was looking at city deals as a key theme in their budget scrutiny, they've got time to plan that over the year, rather than just six weeks around Christmas when the budget process has formally been under way. And to talk to this committee about if we're doing that, what are the equality aspects that we might be interested in? What questions would you like us to follow through? You can think of other examples for all the committees, but it allows that step back rather than the whistle being blown at the end of November and then a hard stop date in February, which is where we've all been so far. You've pre-empted the question that I was about to ask, because my question was, is there then a role for this committee to be almost quite specific and sane to other committees? We want you to look at a particular aspect. I absolutely think so. I think that this committee is the one that builds up that expertise and understanding of what equalities and human rights mean in practical terms, in terms of the choices that are being made about where the money is spent and how you'll know what the effect is there. You will have views from your own roles on other committees and as MSPs about where that might be working well, but where there are real questions to ask. You've talked today about early learning and childcare and other things. And to find a mechanism through the convener's group, through the finance committee's role, through the clerks to be playing that in early to shape what other committees do, I think has got the potential to lift the whole parliamentary budget scrutiny to a new level. The other thing that I wanted to pick up on was the point that you made in your submission about reviewing the focus and coverage of the equality budget statement. I know that you've particularly, Mark Taylor, spoken a lot about how we expand it, how we expand the indicators that we use, how we join everything together. Is what you've described this morning what you want to see when the renew the focus on the equality budget statement? Broadly, yes. Part of that is, again, with a shift to the whole-year approach, taking the narrowness of the focus of the draft budget and the equality budget statement being attached entirely to that and trying to open up opportunities to have more reporting throughout the year, earlier reporting on some of the distributional effects and some of the analysis that's under development. Rather than all being focused in a single document at a single time, it's part of an on-going effort to have data and have information. Auditor General, in your written submission—oh, sorry, it's something else. Can you tell us a bit about the internal diversity and equality steering group that you have in Audit Scotland? Yes. Like all public bodies, we're covered by the diversity and equality duties. We've got a diversity and equality steering group, as you say, that's chaired by one of our assistant directors, one of Mark's close colleagues, that brings together people from across Audit Scotland, the people delivering financial audit, performance audit and our corporate services, to look at our two equalities outcomes, which are, first of all, about the way we address equalities and human rights through all of our audit work, and secondly, how, as an employer and an organisation, we meet our own responsibilities. It has set out a number of actions, an action plan for how we go about that, which are really to do with, in terms of our audit work, making sure that we're consulting widely with stakeholders with an interest in these issues on the overall approach that we take to our work, and, as part of that, we have our own equalities and human rights advisory group that the chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission sits on, that when we are developing the planned work programme that we, again, are consulting very widely on that, and once we've selected a piece of work looking at something like housing or children, young people's mental health, we're consulting directly or as directly as we can with the people affected by those services. We've got continuing strands of work, like working with young Scots, to hear from young people themselves about what matters to them to inform that work programme. When we're carrying out the audit work, we engage with people to get their views through focus groups and through surveys, through social media, those sorts of things, and then when we're reporting it, we think quite hard about the particular audience that this piece of work we want to be of interest to and how we can reach them. For the work on early learning and childcare, we put together a very short video that let parents know about their entitlements and pointed them towards a checklist of things that they should be asking when they're considering what's the right solution for their child. We try to do that for every piece of work where it makes sense, and it's our diversity and inequalities group that oversees that. We also produce an annual report on diversity that fulfills our duties under the act and that covers the broad way in which we go about that. It was a submission to our human rights inquiry that you put in in April. It says that you're currently exploring how you might extend the remit to include consideration of human rights and social, economic inequality. How far along is that piece of work? It's in progress still. Like you, we find human rights a bit trickier to get to grips with inequalities, if you think of them as two different things. One of our newly qualified auditors has got a legal background and a very strong interest in human rights, and she's working with the diversity group to think about how we take that forward. We think probably that the starting point will be about specific pieces of work rather than trying to apply it to everything in the same fashion. A good example is the work that we're planning over the next couple of years on housing, where there's obviously a very big human rights dimension to that and thinking about how we pick it up. Mark, do you want to add to that? I think the only thing that I would add to that. The Auditor General talked about the consultation that we do, and we have our own group set up about equalities in human rights advisory group, which is around 20 organisations across the range of equalities interests, and human rights has been an important part of that advisory group. One of the early actions that we've taken is to build in that aspect to that advisory group. Is that steering group specifically looking at the issue of gender in relation to unpaid care? There is huge disparity in the amount of women and men who are unpaid carers and lose out on all sorts of things because they are carers. It's the sort of thing that we would be picking up through the advisory group that Mark talked about and then say, okay, if that's an issue, how does it apply to the particular pieces of work that we're planning at the moment? If I think through the work that we've done recently, probably the closest to that has been the early learning and childcare one, but it's easy to think of other pieces of work where that could be a very important driver. The way in which the Government is picking up its plans to stimulate the economy to make the use of the tax powers is going to be a very big dimension of it as well as the broader work that we have under way about care of older people. Will the steering group take account of the universal periodic review and take on board some of the recommendations from that? Will it also look at the concluding observations? I would say yes in principle. I can't put my hand on my heart and say that we're on that at the moment. It's one of the things that plays in from the advisory group with those 20-odd organisations into our own work planning and the way we run the organisation, but I think it's an action point for us to take away to make sure that we've got that covered. Thank you. Are there any other questions from members? In that case, I thank both of you for coming along this morning and giving us your evidence. I think that it's been a very useful and interesting session for all of us. I'm now going to suspend the meeting for five minutes for a brief comfort break before we move into private session.