 Good morning, and welcome to the 21st meeting of 2022 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. Our first item of business this morning is a declaration of interest from Graham Simpson, MSP, who joins the committee today, replacing Alexander Burnett. I would like to take this opportunity to place on record my thanks to Alexander Burnett for his work on the committee and wish him well in his new role. I am pleased to welcome Graham Simpson, who I know was a member of the economy committee in the previous session, and I invite him to declare any relevant interests. I have no interests to declare. Our next item of business is a decision to take item 6 and 7 in private. I will be content with that. Now we will move on to the evidence session on consumer Scotland transfer of functions regulations 2022. I refer members to paper 1 and welcome to the meeting. Tom Arthur, Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth, who is joined by Neil Ritchie, head of unit, Energy Services and Consumer Policy, and Susan Robb, who is with the Scottish Government. I invite the minister to make a short opening statement. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the committee. I am grateful for the opportunity here to speak to the draft consumer Scotland transfer of functions regulations 2022. Those regulations are, in effect, the final piece of the jigsaw in implementing the Consumer Scotland Act 2020. Elder sets of regulations have already been through Parliament as well as the UK Government order pertaining to reserved aspects. The Consumer Scotland transfer of functions regulations 2022, in its simplest form, will add Consumer Scotland or replace references to Citizens Advice Scotland with Consumer Scotland in Scottish Acts to allow the transferring or the sharing of functions between the two consumer bodies. That is a technical instrument that brings transparency around the transfer of functions and recognises Consumer Scotland as Scotland's independent consumer advocate. The functions transferred relate to the devolved policy responsibility of water. Without the transfer of functions from cast to Consumer Scotland in the areas of consumer advocacy and general advice, Consumer Scotland would not be able to carry out its duties. You may be wondering why we are not transferring all functions to Consumer Scotland. Consumer Scotland and CAS, although both consumer bodies have extremely different roles to play within the consumer landscape, will continue to provide advice via its network of bureaus and the extra help unit. Consumer Scotland, as part of its statutory functions, has the ability to provide advice, along with making proposals on consumer matters to Scottish ministers and public organisations in Scotland and to other organisations where needed. Consumer Scotland has now been up and running since July, carrying out a wide range of activities, influencing and adding value where it is needed most. For example, in relation to water policy, Consumer Scotland is already a key player campaigning for a fair deal for customers and assisting with policy development. As a member of strategic stakeholder groups, Consumer Scotland scrutinises the delivery of Scottish Waters investment programme to ensure that ministers' objectives are being delivered. I welcome that engagement as an assurance that customers and communities have high-quality representation. Consumer Scotland will also carry out its own research to identify the potential impact that future increases in water and sewerage charges may have on low-income households. That legislation is an opportunity for us to ensure that consumers have a voice, that their interests are represented and that their own capacity to drive change is harnessed. The situation that we find ourselves in now regarding the cost crisis has revealed how important it is that customers have access to the information that they need and are mindful of the impacts of their own behaviour. We began this process of establishing Consumer Scotland because we recognise that consumers are the lifeblood of our economy. In the months ahead, consumers will be vital for rebuilding our economy and supporting businesses. We will continue this process and one of the ways of doing this is for, I hope, for the committee to agree to recommend the approval of the draft regulations. On that, I will conclude and be happy to take any questions that the committee may have. Do I have indications of questions? I wonder if you could explain to us if citizens advice Scotland is losing functions and that it is transferring or is it just a copy? Is it a duplication? The role of Consumer Scotland is set out in the act, which was passed unanimously at stage 3. Its primary role is Scotland's independent consumer advocate, but citizens advice bureau will still be the first port of call for many people in providing advice. It sits within that broader landscape of consumer support, so there is Consumer Scotland's advice direct to Scotland, there is Casner and there are trading standards as well. However, the role of Consumer Scotland will be providing national advocacy as set out in the legislation and helping to work and co-ordinate a lot of activity that goes on in Scotland. If I as a consumer had an issue with Scottish water, I could still go to my local citizens advice bureau. That is a role around advocacy. I do not know if you want to explain some of the distinction between the two bodies. One of the things that we have been doing in helping Consumer Scotland set up is increasing transparency in terms of where the consumer goes if they need any support and help. There are other organisations out there who play a role, such as advice direct Scotland, as well as the minister's mentioned trading standards. Yes, they can still go to the bureau, they can go to advice direct Scotland or trading standards. It will probably depend which one they went to on the nature of the issue, but I am hoping that the work that we have done to simplify that consumer journey has helped. The other point that may be worth making is the staff who used to undertake the consumer advocacy functions in Caz, in which they would be transferred across to Consumer Scotland in May of this year. What is citizens advice? What is their view on that? They have been consulted. Yes, they have been consulted. As set out in the legislation, there was a requirement to consult with Consumer Scotland on citizens advice, and they have been consulted with. What was their view? Ultimately, that is about the implementation of the act that was passed by Parliament. They recognise that this is the decision that Parliament has taken to set up that an independent body, which is a non-ministerial office, would regard the Consumer Scotland. We have engaged carefully and listened and we have worked through that to be process to ensure that Consumer Scotland is now operational. As I said, that ultimately completes the journey. It is a technical instrument that is fundamentally about implementing the legislation that Parliament has passed. Good morning, minister. Thank you for what you have said so far, and I want to follow up on Graham's questions. I note what you say about the chipping over of staff from CAS to Consumer Scotland and the responsibilities that have shifted. In the consultation process, citizens advice Scotland identified any potential barriers or pitfalls that we should be aware of. Given the coming months, we know that CAS will be very busy. Are there potential pinch points or areas that we need to be alert to? No. We worked closely with CAS during the process, particularly with the Scotland Act orders. The minister mentioned the extra help unit that sits within CAS, which gives further support to vulnerable consumers in the energy and post space in particular. We had a lot of discussions with CAS to get that sorted properly so that they were shared responsibilities, particularly in terms of where the extra help unit needed powers. My team wrote to CAS on the instruments, and their chief exec confirmed that he was happy with them. There has also been a lot of change within this sector and area. When will the first performance review be of Consumer Scotland? I believe that that is set out in the legislation within five years, in terms of the review that Consumer Scotland will expect to undertake. There will also be regular discussions with officials and the minister to review how they are getting on. That is part of the joint working that I know the minister is keen for us to have going forward with all the public bodies. In terms of public or scrutiny by the committee, how will we be able to see the on-going review rather than the five years? Will we know by next year how there is an indication of how things are performing? The important requirements are set out in the legislation, but I would want to stress that that is set up as an NMO, so it is directly accountable to the Parliament. Indeed, as the lead committee in this area in Parliament, we can directly engage with Consumer Scotland on those matters. I am conscious that it has been an NMO now and to overstep my mark as a minister. You talked about user pathways and how there are a number of organisations out there, and there is potential, as has been suggested, the risk of duplication or some areas overlapping. How clear user pathways are and how clear information is and who to go to for advice be part of the reviews going forward? I would not want to get into the territory of commenting specifically on the work programme, the work that Consumer Scotland will undertake. Clearly, as Scotland's independent consumer advocacy body, it can play an important role in helping to work with other stakeholders and to work in partnership with others to maximise coherence and accessibility within the overall consumer support landscape. I do not know if there is anything that you want to add. Is there anything else that I would like to say? It is something that came up very strongly in the bill process about co-ordination cream consumer bodies. One of the things that we set up in the wake of the pandemic was the consumer network for Scotland, which was drawing a lot of those bodies together in one space. Now Consumer Scotland has been established. We have stepped back from that to allow them to take the leadership of that group. We set that group up when we did probably at least 18 months earlier than we expected, because we needed to capture that information coherently from consumer bodies to understand what the issues consumers were facing from spring 2020 onwards and feed that into policy decisions across Government and elsewhere. That has been really effective in helping a lot of the bodies to speak more clearly together. I now invite the minister to speak to and move the motion S6M-005257. I will put the question on the motion, which is that motion S6M-005257 be approved, are we all agreed? I thank the minister and his officials for joining us this morning, and I will briefly suspend the meeting while we change the panel of witnesses. Our next item of business this morning is an evidence session as part of committee's pre-budget scrutiny work. The purpose of this session is to inform the committee's pre-budget scrutiny with the aim of influencing the budget for spending priorities for the next financial year are set out. The focus of today's session is support for women in business. I refer members to papers 2 and 3, and I welcome Ruth Boyle, policy and parliamentary manager with closed the gap, and Carline Currie, chief executive of Women's Enterprise Scotland. As I said, this is about our pre-budget scrutiny. We did have a statement from the Government last week, two weeks ago, about proposed changes to the budget. We are expecting a more substantive statement after the recess. I might come to Ruth's first of all. I suppose that I have been interested in the views on decisions that were made. I do recognise her in a very tight financial situation. The Government chose to spend money in areas that will, in some cases, benefit women. The child payment went up, which is positive. There was also the £53 million cut to employability services. We got a letter from the minister that came to the committee just last week that describes the money that would be focused on support for parents. It would restrict employability services to bring it up to scale and to enhance the support that is available for parents this year. As I said, I recognise when I type financial situation, but do you have an understanding of what the impact of that might be? Where would you like to see focus in the employability services if we are looking at the statement that is going to come after recess? Thank you so much for inviting closed the gap to give evidence today. We are delighted that the committee is looking into women in the economy as part of the pre-budget scrutiny. That is a really good indication of where the committee's priorities lies. First, to cover the budget in general, we need to be mindful of that budget decisions are not neutral. When we are making decisions about how we are allocating resources, we have the opportunity to dismantle inequalities or to reinforce them. That is why it is important that we are doing gender budgeting analysis in terms of the budgetary decisions that we are making and also having that accompanying gender analysis in terms of being able to understand how different spend is impacting men and women differently based on their socioeconomic inequalities. The question that you asked raised some underlying issues in terms of the transparency of the budget, for example. We think about that £53 million cut to employability. It is difficult to completely understand what that means in terms of the delivery, because it is very difficult, as we know, to look at budgets across different years and understand how that spending has been made. In terms of employability in general, if the £53 million is coming from the delivery of the parental employability support fund, which I think that there has been some indication that there would be, that is a fund that closed the gap and looked at to try and understand what the outcomes have been for parents. It is actually very difficult to see how that money has been spent at the local level, so that money was given to local authorities to deliver in the different ways that they see fit, but because of that, and we have had a look at local authority budget lines, we cannot actually see how that money has been spent or how it has delivered outcomes for women. I think that we would be very interested to know what that will mean if that money is being cut. Is it actually delivering on the ground? I guess that would indicate how concerned we would be about that. In terms of employability in general, we know that generic employability programmes do not meet women's needs, because they do not take account of women's caring responsibilities, they do not take account of occupational segregation, which is the clustering of men and women into different types and levels of work. Often, when we look at job matching within employability, for example, those models are keen to funnel women into types and jobs of sectors that they are already dominant, and that reinforces women's low-paid work in the economy. We need to ensure that we have specialised programmes that deliver for women, particularly women with caring responsibilities and other marginalised groups of women, but that those mainstream delivery programmes are also taking account of women's needs. That, again, comes back to the point that I am sure we will be making a lot today around gender mainstreaming and having that data so that we can actually see how programmes are delivering for women. We know that the mainstream programmes around Fair Start Scotland have had some difficulties in terms of meeting women's needs. There has been a failure to meet the targets in terms of those groups that they really wanted to be able to engage with. If we are losing a specialised programme that was delivering for women and then relying on that mainstream engagement, we would be concerned about that because we know that that is not yet meeting women's needs. I think that it is really important as we move to the emergency budget review that we are having that robust gender analysis in terms of how we are spending that money. During times of economic crisis, it is really important that we are targeting those resources to get the most out of the spend that the Scottish Government is making, but we do not yet have the data about who is experiencing poverty and how we can tackle that in order to make sure that we are doing that effectively. Within the child poverty delivery plan, we have this priority group model, which we are really supportive of, because that allows that targeting of resources. However, when we look at the data that we have, we do not yet have the data to demonstrate how that spend is benefiting those groups. Indeed, on Scotland's report this week, I highlighted that an area where we are particularly lacking data is for families who fall into one or more priority groups. That, again, comes back to the intersectionality point, so understanding that different groups have different needs and that they might fall into multiple protected characteristics. I think that our takeaways would be better data, making sure that we are doing that gender analysis as we move into the next stage of the budget, particularly in this current economic context. I think that other members will focus more on this issue of data as we go through the session. However, as I said, we will have more information after the October recess. It is now over six months since we had the 10-year economic transformation strategy that was published, and we are waiting on the sectoral reports. They should have come within six months, so we are waiting on the sectoral reports. What are you looking for from the budget and how it will deliver on that 10-year economic strategy? At the time, there were some questions asked about, did it prioritise women enough, did it recognise women's businesses? Was there I think that there was some language around supporting women, but maybe a lack of, how is that actually going to happen? I do not know if you have had any discussions with Government around the six-month plans, what your expectation of that is, and how you think the budget is going to support that type of work. In terms of the budget and the opportunity before us, the current landscape is really clear, inequality is heightening, so women are getting a really raw deal, they got a raw deal through the pandemic and we are now in a costal living crisis. We are really concerned that inequality is accelerating. In fact, the point that Ruth made very eloquently around mainstreaming, mainstreaming is not changing the status quo. Arguably, it is accelerating inequality. On the economic strategy, we were really pleased to see the word women within the strategy. One of the issues that we have seen previously is a continued reference to inclusive growth, with no definition of what lies behind inclusive growth. Unless we start to dig into what do we mean by inclusive growth, there will be no change. We are not getting data on the subsections of inclusive growth in order to actually address it. In terms of women, what we need is the data that informs us of where we can invest wisely. We know, just talked already about budgets being cut, so we need to be really wise with where we are investing. To do that, we need data. We have a history of investing blind and expecting inequality to be addressed. We invest just expecting mainstream services to target women and all will be well. That is not working, so we really need to see targeted strategies, investment in women's needs and understanding of women's needs and designing and delivering services that are set up to address women's needs. Economically, that should not come as a surprise. It is the same for any sector of the economy. We have sectors to help food and drink—sorry, with strategies—for example, food and drink and other economic sectors. It is the same for women, but it has not yet happened. What do we want? We want those services and support that are specifically designed for women. We expect those services and support to be delivered by expert organisations, not by the mainstream. We also expect to see investment in the women's business centre commitment. We have just talked about a £53 million cut. It is interesting to understand where that money will be invested. From my perspective, I am looking for clear insight on where the £50 million and how the £50 million commitment will be invested in a women's business centre model. The problem, at the minute, with an economy that is in a state of flux, is that there is a lack of certainty. Businesses procrastinate. I would urge the Government not to procrastinate and to invest now, targetedly invest in what we know is needed and what we know works. We know this model works. We have got the international comparators. We know it is successful. We have got research in its swathes telling us and informing us. We need to act, and that is what I would like to see in this budget, action and strategic delivery for women's services. Too often, where women's services have been invested in, they are small, short-term programmes that do not join up. One example of the growing strategic need has been the increase of violence against women during the pandemic. Economic abuse is a key element of violence against women, but there is no sustainable strategy that is set up to help women to recover economically and to get on their feet and to develop. In that sense, having a strategy that helps women out of difficult times, helps them to rebalance, to regain their skills and to progress is incredibly valuable, but it is missing. We keep on giving crisis funding instead of looking at where we could be much more strategic. Starting up a business, starting up an enterprise is a valuable path out of poverty, out of difficulty and out of poor health situations. Since 2014, that was when the women's enterprise framework and action plan came, and that was refreshed in 2017. At the moment, we are waiting on the Anasture review into women in enterprise. Your senator knows what needs to be done, but at the moment we are waiting on another review. Have you had, as Anasture, engaged with you as an organisation? I think that the review is due quite soon. What would you want to see in that review that you think will make a difference? Do you think that that is a key document in terms of the Government's approach and understanding of this issue? I think that we have a good understanding of what the need in the issue is. We welcome reports. Reports give you another lens on a particular point in time. This report will undoubtedly do that and will be valuable. We need to see the report. My sense is that we need to take action if we are delaying action because the report is not out. Every day that we delay has an economic cost. That is the fact of productivity. We are relying on the status quo, which is not delivering. We really need to start to take action. I hope that the review will come out soon. As soon as possible, I would urge that, if that is the case, we have an economy and a state of flux. Women are not being well served currently. We are all agreed that we want to see equality. We want to see women and children and families, because they are linked, lifted out of poverty. Enterprise is a strong path to do that. It is imperative that we start to take action. We know pretty much what needs to be done. Our own consultations are pretty consistent. We have 10 years of research and data pointing to the same consistent challenges, access to finance, access to support that understands women and their ideas, that supports them to progress their ideas and gives them the confidence to go forward. Instead of the minute, our most recent consultation was absolutely clear that women are actively being disencouraged and their confidence is being eroded instead of being supported and progressed. I am now going to bring in Fiona Hyslop, followed by Michelle Thomson. We want to look at the pre-budget scrutiny, and we want to put women at the centre. Clearly, it is perhaps an understatement to say that there is volatility in the economy and the fiscal situation as we speak. Therefore, budgets will be tough. I hear what you are saying about mainstreaming. You want mainstreaming, but you also want targeting. I think that we need to be helpful to get you to unpack that. The other question is whether it will be the case that budgets will be tight. What is already there that you want to keep because it may be at risk, because everything is going to be looked at? Ideally, everybody wants more money, but that is going to be a challenge, but what would your priorities be? What has already happened is that you would say that that is a priority to keep, and could you explain that a wee bit more in that mainstreaming, but also targeting, because there is a bit of a contradiction there? We need to keep business start-up services. That is a priority. The gateway services that we have absolutely need to keep that. That is what I would refer to as mainstream, if you like. There is no cost to access it. It is available across Scotland. It is easily accessible. It is absolutely imperative that we keep that. That should not be confused with where we see the gaps in the mainstream service. Our research will tell us that there are gaps if you look at the end to end business support from pre-stage, when you are considering an idea, right the way through to scale and exit. Some of the services work okay for women. They are progressing. Others are extremely leaky. We would be looking to put in women-specific support at the very early stage of idea creation, because we know that that will then strengthen those ideas and will see businesses coming through in areas where there is no access to the economy and there is no economic contribution currently, and we have run programmes and pilots that have evidenced that. We would like to see that specific targeted support at that very early stage. We would also like to see some levels of support in the early stage start-up services. Gateway does a good job of getting over some of the basics, some of the information. We have got it all in one particular portal. The access is better than it used to be. The landscape is slightly less cluttered, but nonetheless for women it is absolutely imperative that they get the support that they need in an environment that makes them feel valued with their ideas and makes them feel confident about progressing. We would say that that is where a women's business centre model comes in. A place where women can go, where they can be together, where they can discuss their ideas with like-minded people, where they can gain the support and the extra skills and knowledge that they do not have as individuals to strengthen their business idea, to add resilience to that and to then go forward. In that start-up phase, it is a case of complementing some of the gateway services. We do that already. We have got the digital portal at womensbusinesscentre.com that worked well during the pandemic, but we need a physical place where women can go, where they can go to be together to network. I think that we all know that digital has its positives. It absolutely does, but there is nothing like getting together with your peers to discuss it or getting that one-on-one expert face support or coaching or mentoring that can make all the difference to strengthening your opportunities with your business and to you as an individual in feeling that you have the capability to actually do it. We look for support there. The other area that we see as a gap is the pipeline between business gateway and the enterprise agencies. That is incredibly difficult for women to come through. The agencies are looking at traditional economic sectors. As Ruth has already said, women tend not to be in the sectors that we may categorise as the growth sectors. The agencies operate on a growth sector model in terms of access, so we see a need to put in women-specific support there to ensure that businesses come through that pipeline, that they do not just establish and leak out. That is what the data tells us. The data tells us that we are seeing phenomenal rates of women starting up businesses, but they are leaking out. They are not coming through that pipeline to then continue to establish and grow. We see putting support in there as really very important, particularly support around leadership, strategic development, around assessing your first year or so in business and then looking at what you need to do from your learnings and your insight in order to sustain that growth and keep that momentum. There is intervention needed there, and we would urge that to be women-specific. That is extremely helpful. Would it be reasonable to say that what we need to be pressing the Government on is to get better value for the public purse, which is also in terms of women's contributions? That is a good economic argument because the benefits of having more women being successful will have a disproportionate impact on tackling inequality, so that, in a tight budget, that will provide value in itself from existing budgets. There is an argument that says that, in some cases, you will be transferring people who are reliant on the public purse to contribute to that public purse. There is a double benefit in there, and that is undoubtedly the case. I do not think that we have enough time today. There is a real issue with procurement. There is a real issue in terms of how services are invested in and procured. I have mentioned already mainstream delivery, the way that procurement works. Much of the service provision is delivered by large mainstreaming organisations who are good at mainstreaming. That is what they do. They mainstream their generalists. We are speaking here about the development of specialist services, the people best place to deliver that services are specialist organisations. That is where you get value from money, that is where you would expect an uplift. It is pretty much economic commonsense, I think, in that case, but we are not seeing that coming through. We are not seeing that being funded. We are not seeing that coming through the current procurement structures. There are many layers of structural inequality within procurement, and I would certainly urge the committee to address that. That is not just about where we invest, it is about how we invest and how we ensure that we deliver the impact that we all want to see coming through. That is very clear. You have already touched on so many different areas. I will ask one kind of open question just now, and I may want to come back in. We also had in gender, I am on the finance committee yesterday, and they gave evidence for the budget as well. They said concerns regarding the lack of attention, the Scottish budget process pays to structural gender equality. I suppose what my question is, I mean you have talked about data, you have talked about outcomes, you have given some specifics, but in terms of how does our Scottish budget process move beyond to having regard to systemic barriers for women and take the bold steps needed to affect real change? You are here today, so I suppose that the question is, have you been to every other committee to give similar evidence, aligned to them, given the cross-cutting issues that you have started to outline? Have you given evidence to every other committee? Have indeed you been invited to? What comment could you give about the actual process? That would be useful as well. I am happy to take that first. This is the only committee that Closugaf were given evidence on in terms of pre-budget scrutiny. I will be fair to the Parliament and say that we tend not to engage as vigorously on the budget as some other women's organisations. We would expect Scottish women's budget group and gender to appear at more committees in terms of giving that gendered evidence. For us in terms of the process, often equality organisations get very narrowly focused in terms of parliamentary engagement just with the Equalities Committee, but that needs to be mainstreamed across all of the committees. Also, when it comes to the budget scrutiny, it is seen as the priority for the equality committee to look at how the budget is delivering equality, but that should be a priority for every committee, including the finance committee. In terms of improving that budget process, we would point to the recommendations that came from the equality budgetary advisory group, eBag. Those actions could become a ready-made action plan in terms of how we improve that budget process, but it comes back to the point about leadership and prioritisation. It is down to all MSPs and all committees to prioritise that process in terms of thinking about how that spend is delivering for women. Until we get that collective responsibility for prioritising equality, we will be quite limited in how we are able to progress that. We know that that is a time when it is particularly important that we are thinking about those structural inequalities. If we look at the Covid crisis and the cost of living crisis, that really illuminated the fact that structural inequalities remain rife in Scotland and we have an opportunity to actually do something about that. I think as well just to pick up on the previous point about the way that we think about gender equality. Often, gender equality is seen as being a cost to the taxpayer or a cost to the purse, but that should be seen as an opportunity for economic growth. Analysis from Close The Gap found that, if we close the gender gap in employment, that is worth £17 billion to the Scottish economy. We know that there is increasing evidence base that gender equality is good for economic growth, but the reverse is not necessarily true. We cannot just presume that economic growth is going to solve those structural inequalities because we have decades of evidence that has shown that that is not the case. Similarly, in terms of thinking about the things that we need to maintain, we would be really adamant that an area where we still need investment is the childcare sector. There is a really strong return on investment from investing in childcare because it enables women to enter the labour market or to increase their working hours. We see during the cost of living crisis that there is a sense that individuals can just increase their working hours in order to increase their earnings, but that ignores those gendered barriers that women experience because they are more likely to be primary caregivers or to have wider caring responsibilities for older people or disabled people. There was research done by the Centre for Progressive Policy and it showed that, across the UK, if women had access to adequate childcare that enabled them to work the hours that they wanted, that could generate £28 billion in economic output. It is about shifting the way that we view gender equality and, rather than seeing it being something that we do when the times are good, it is something that needs to be embedded in every policy decision that we are undertaking, in every budget trade decision, because it is going to be good for the wider economy. Yes, I think that I will leave it there for now. Before I bring Caroline in, you are really, in essence, utterly reframing this as an economic problem to be solved rather than pigeonholed as an equality problem. That comes quite clearly. Caroline, you are in to add. Yes, I am sure you are. It is absolutely an economic problem to be solved and we are all good at wanting to see greater equality. We all want that to happen and we all talk about that and it is part of the economic strategy for transformation, rightly so, but where we are very poor is reminding ourselves that the same old processes therefore need to be changed and adapted. To answer your question, no, this is the only committee that I have been asked to give evidence. That, in itself, is a fairly damning indictment of the process itself. Although, in fairness, as an organisation, we struggle to resource as much engagement as we would like, one of the impacts for us during the pandemic was that we were fortunate enough to secure emergency funding so that we could transform our module and keep going and provide our support. However, the one element of our application that was declined was requests to support a policy manager role. We are now operating arguably at the greatest time of need to engage as inequality is heightening with one arm behind the other because I have no policy manager resource. Things like today are done pro bono monthly and that is what we are relying on. That is not good and that does not help anybody. We need to get better at the processes that we are implementing at holding ourselves to account at having dashboards and measures that make sure that we remind ourselves what is the equality impact with the policy and with the plans. To do that, processes need to be changed, dashboards and data and accounting systems that hold us to account and remind us are in place to ensure that that is what happens. I will ask one more question and then I will let other people in because I know that people want to come in. I suppose that conditionality is something that we have not talked much about yet but it leads naturally on from data collection. If there is one or a few things that you would recommend about conditionality, assuming that the data is in place, which is a whole separate discussion, what specifically would you recommend in terms of the budget around conditionality? You are top three because there is quite a lot, I suspect. If you are really going to affect change, you could say, for example, that no public body should award any grant funding unless it is entirely equitable. It is more complex than that because we know that women may not apply for grants, for example, and that is a cultural barrier. That is a very simple example. However, it is about really affecting change, which goes back to the point about systemic. If I were a budget holder, I might be inclined to do that, particularly for women in business, because tinkering thus far, while it is very well-meaning, because it is complex, I understand that, but maybe we need to be bolder. If you were in charge, what would you be doing about allocation of funding? I would leave it up to Cailin to talk about for women-led businesses, but with a focus thinking about women across the labour market, we know that procurement could and should be doing more in tackling the undervaluation of women's work. We procure a large amount of services in sectors such as childcare and social care for women's work is vastly undervalued and underpaid. Those were women who were critical to a successful pandemic response and we saw something of a societal shift in terms of how we talked about those roles, but in terms of the long-term tangible benefits to those women of that societal shift, we have not really seen anything yet because their work remains underpaid, undervalued and under protected. When we think about the fair work first criteria and thinking about that in the sense of procuring public services, there could be more in terms of paying the real living wage. The Scottish Government has committed to paying childcare staff who are delivering the 1140 hours, the living wage, and that is a really great start, but we would like to see that going further so that all childcare staff are being paid the living wage regardless of the hours that they are delivering. Similarly, when we think about the national care service, there will be real opportunities there to embed fair work in that system and in the procurement for those services. I think that there would definitely be things around procurement that we could be doing. If I am going to give you three, I would say around gender pay gap reporting for the organisations who are procuring services, but also making sure that it is not just about reporting that figure but that those organisations actually have to take change and make action to tackle that gender pay gap. We see that as the flaw with the UK Government's gender pay gap legislation. That pay transparency is a good start, but because it does not require organisations to take action on their gender pay gap, they are not bothering to do so. Gender pay gap reporting, the real living wage and also thinking about the security of the work as well, because we know that women's work in sectors where they are undervalued is becoming increasingly precarious, which has gendered implications in terms of their financial security, which reduces their financial resilience during times that we are currently seeing where we are in a period of economic crisis. That would be my long-winded way of getting to three. Well, I think that conditionality is a brilliant tool that is potentially underused. We have seen it used really well, for example in the field of fair work. If you are applying for a Government grant, conditionality in terms of fair work is one of those requirements. We have certainly seen that working well to drive change. We would certainly welcome greater use of conditionality to drive much greater equality. In terms of procurement itself, I would love to see conditionality and procurement where you are effectively procuring for expert services for women. That is a condition of that procurement that expert organisations are given the opportunity to apply and the system values their expertise. We do not end up simply procuring the lowest common denominator in support and then we are surprised that there is no impact in terms of the delivery. In terms of how procurement itself could have conditionality within it, we would certainly like to see where we are procuring for women that organisations that are taking that procurement have a fair and equal representation. It is very easy for organisations and procurement to say, look, here are some women in the organisation. That is good and that helps to drive gender balance teams. We know that that helps with driving innovation and productivity. We know that is good for the economy. That is a good step. It is only a good first step. What is really important if we want to see change is that we need to see organisations coming through that have a gender balanced leadership and ownership. Those are the two areas where I would really like to see conditionality applied. All too often we see organisations where we are saying, look, it is good that we have a bit of gender balance. There is a woman or two in the leadership. We need to see the people who have power that are taking their decisions. That is where we need to see the gender balance because that is where the change actually happens within those organisations. That is where they can take the decisions that will ensure that they are delivering top quality services and that they are pulling from the advantages of equality and diversity. They are having the diverse teams, the diverse ownership, the diverse thinking in terms of decision making that we know drives innovative thinking, the type that brings in new novel competitive ways of doing things and improves our economy. That is investing wisely because that is putting resilience into the delivery organisations and the delivery structure. We have to welcome that tomorrow, please. Thank you for what you have said so far. You have covered an awful lot. What we are trying to unpick here are decades of structural and systemic inequalities in all of our structures that you have mentioned, procurement. Even the way that we think about the economy as a whole, it is deeply embedded in inequalities. As Michelle said, you referred to expecting the same old to deliver change by just throwing money at it is blind. Given the context that we are in now facing a cost of living crisis, a cost of doing business crisis, if we compare or if we look at how we were able to respond and the benefits and problems that came with that to the Covid crisis a few years ago, there has been that cultural shift that you have referred to in how we have revalued some of women's work and some of the priorities that we give. Caroline, you talked about things like the digital portal working well, but during Covid a very, very clear increase in violence against women around economic abuse and control. What are the lessons that we can learn from both the policy and cultural responses to Covid to inform our decision making now? What are the consequences, what are the potential impacts on women in the workplace, women-owned businesses, if we get it wrong? I suppose that, specifically in the immediate budget, the longer-term economic strategies that we are talking about, I do not know which of you wants to go first. That is a really good question. I close the gap alongside and Gender had done a lot of thinking about how we facilitate a gender-sensitive economic recovery in the aftermath of Covid. Obviously, I did not expect to be hurling straight from that crisis directly into a cost-of-living crisis. There has almost not been enough time for the dust to settle in terms of learning those lessons, but you are right that during this period of crisis it is really important that we are looking at what happened during Covid and ensuring that we are doing things better. For us, when we look at the response to the Covid-19 crisis, it illuminated things that we knew already in terms of the lack of data and the lack of gender mainstreaming. Even Governments who have an express commitment to gender equality often deprioritise that during times of economic crisis because it is seen as secondary to that crisis response rather than something that you should be embedding. If we look back to the response to Covid, we see that the quality of equality impact assessments deteriorated even further, and that would be shocking for equalities organisations to think that that was possible because they were not done particularly well from the outset, but we saw them being completed to an increasingly poor standard, also significantly too late in the policy process. The point of an equality impact assessment is that you are doing that at the earliest possible point so that you can make changes to that policy. Often, there would be a policy passed, legislation passed in Parliament, and the equality impact assessment would arrive two weeks later, and that is far too late in the process to influence that policy. We definitely saw that deprioritisation of equalities work and we saw the impact of that in terms of the response to that crisis not being well-gendered. If we look at a UK Government example, for example, the introduction of the furlough scheme from the outset that did not meet women's needs because there was no clause that you could be furloughed for caring responsibilities, for example, and that came much later. Whereas, if you have done that equality impact assessment from the outset, that was something that you could have embedded in that policy. Learning the lessons that deprioritising gender equality means that your policies will not meet women's needs is really important. The other thing was around data. We did a lot of work on the impact of the pandemic on women's employment, but we were really hindered in that by the lack of data in terms of being able to demonstrate those things. There was some data around the furlough scheme, but that was not intersectional. There is still no way of determining, for example, how many black and minority ethnic women were furloughed or how disabled women experienced furlough. We cannot deprioritise the work on improving data. That is another important lesson that we have. If we get it wrong in the cost of living crisis and what the impact will be for women, we know that poverty in Scotland is gendered. Women are already more likely to be experiencing poverty, more likely to experience ingot poverty and find it harder to escape poverty. What we see both in Covid and in the cost of living crisis is that women are being disproportionately impacted because of their pre-existing inequality in society. We know in the cost of living crisis that women are the majority of low-paid workers and are already more likely to be experiencing poverty. As I mentioned, they face gendered barriers to increasing their working hours and earnings in order to respond to the crisis. Women also have lower levels of savings and wealth than men and are more likely to be in debt, which again reduces their financial resilience. Women are twice as likely to be reliant on social security. Women still function as poverty managers in the home, so it is often women's responsibility to make household budget stretch. That means that they feel the physical health and the mental health implications much more acutely during the cost of living crisis. Some forthcoming research from the Scottish women's budget group has shown that women are already skipping meals in order to feed their children. Even women with pre-existing health conditions for that will have a really detrimental effect to their long-term health. If we get this wrong, what we will be doing is further embedding women's inequality. We will be pushing women who are already under enormous financial pressure to the brink. Because of those inextricable links between women's poverty and child poverty, if we push women into further poverty as a result of the cost of living crisis, it is almost impossible to see how Scotland will meet their child poverty targets. We know that action to improve women's equality in the labour market, to increase their earnings, is critical if we are to address child poverty. I think the stakes are really high and it's really important. I think your question is a really great one because we do need to look back to that previous crisis in order to understand how we can do things better. Thanks Ruth, that's very clear. I think the response doesn't seem to be mobilising in the same way as it did around Covid for any of the next few months and I find that quite concerning. I think that it's extremely concerning. We are undoubtedly in a crisis of inequality. We're talking about a cost of living crisis. The debate that is not being had is the crisis of inequality that we're facing. In terms of what we can learn from Covid, when the pandemic first hit, we were part of the UK women's enterprise policy group. A group of UK organisations and we came together during the pandemic to lobby government together. What we said right at the start was that if you do not cast a gender lens over your policies and over the emergency support that is going out, then women are going to be coming off worse. You are not going to help equality. In fact, you're going to drive inequality. We said that right at the start. Get a gender lens over what you're doing as soon as you can. Be cognisant of the issue. That didn't happen. What we have seen is women's equality heightening exactly as we had feared. You may well remember when I gave evidence last year. We had just completed analysis of two of the Covid-19 business relief grant funds, two key funds that were put out there to help businesses during the pandemic. Our analysis showed that women-led companies received less than 11 per cent of those capital funds. Clear evidence that women are not receiving their fair share of support is concerning. When you think of the construct of women-owned businesses, they are much smaller than male-led businesses—there are about 44 per cent of the size of male-led businesses. They are highly vulnerable. They were in the pandemic. They were often among the first businesses to close and the last to reopen. They have been highly vulnerable and are hard-hit by the pandemic. We are now going into another crisis, and those businesses are worse off than they were before. It is impossible to believe, but there is even heightened vulnerability to the cost of living crisis that we are seeing. I am just looking. I have some statistics from research that we have done. In a 2021 survey that we ran, 89 per cent of respondents said that Covid had had a negative impact on them and their business. We did a follow-up survey in June of this year that 41 per cent reported that they and their business income were still negatively impacted by Covid, and almost 30 per cent said that their income was a lot lower. Ruth has mentioned that the serious health impacts—quickly, in terms of mental health from the survey that we ran this year—44 per cent are saying that Covid is still having a negative impact on their mental health, and 48 per cent are saying that it is still having a negative impact on their physical health. That is not a good foundation for economic growth and to nurture and to see women's business ownership and equality thrive. We desperately need to learn from what happened during the pandemic to get a gendered lens over our policies and to target women and women's enterprise support with the help and support that is needed to help these organisations boost their resilience and to get through the cost of living crisis. Otherwise, we are going to see what the statistics have already told us are happening. We'll see more women starting up in business because they have no other option and they're going to leak straight back out again. That in itself is a problem, but these are people who may never, never consider enterprise again. Their families may never, never consider enterprise again, and that is not good for our economy. We need to be supporting and nurturing that along through this crisis. I'll leave it there. Jamie Halcro Johnston has been followed by Gordon MacDonald. Thank you very much. Good morning. I wanted to ask a little bit about rurality in some remote areas, but as ever with these very interesting and concerning kind of sessions and evidence being given, there's lots else that comes up, so I just had a couple of other very quick questions if that's all right. If there was an annual report or a biannual report that looked at the areas of most concern to you, whether that's equality or access to gender support or access to procurement specific, you've talked a lot about the data. Would the data be there to produce that? Would it be accurate? Or are we simply in a situation that we just don't know the wider picture? It's not there. The data isn't there. It is astonishing that there is such a lack of data. In order for us to do the grant analysis, we had to buddy up with an external company who has those data feeds to get them from companies' house so we could do a gendered analysis, so the data is not there publicly available. That, to me, is utterly appalling because we mentioned back at the start the Women's Enterprise framework, the strategic framework, was refreshed in 2017. The key change there was to add in the need for gender disaggregated data. Five years on, the data remains pretty much the same and it is appalling. Now part of that is because of the feeds that come from UK Government, so it isn't just something that is under our control, but we are not investing in data production. That is a serious problem for our economy. If we have no data, we have no insight to inform us and make us confident about our investment choices, that they are choices that will ultimately drive change. We wouldn't be able to provide some report. I would welcome a report based on available data because it would show us what the status quo is, we could identify the gaps and we could work together to then build an improvement, but a report would give us a start point, we desperately need a start point and we desperately need to establish what data tells us and therefore where we can invest wisely currently and build on that picture for the future. Just before I come to you, Ruth, if that's all right, we've just seen the Scottish Government point and I'm a chief entrepreneurial officer, I'm a chief entrepreneur at a considerable remuneration. You're struggling to get somebody who does the policy side. Who is the person within the Scottish Government? Not a ministerial cabinet secretary level, but within the Scottish Government that is there to push women-led businesses, women-led businesses, women in the workplace. Who is the most senior person that is doing that? Is there somebody specific? No, there isn't. I really welcome the appointment of a chief entrepreneur. I'm delighted to see an economic strategy that is going to be founded on entrepreneurship. We all know that small businesses are the backbone of our communities and they are vital, particularly in a rural context, to economic regeneration. I would absolutely be delighted to see somebody appointed with that remit. In fact, it would be a great response to some of the issues that we've already talked about in terms of that lack of consistency across committees and ensuring that that lens is in sight. In fact, it is a well-used tactic. Many organisations at board level, I used to work for a large bank and at board level, I had a champion that was responsible for equality and for the initiative I ran, which was women in business. That ensured that there was an accountability and a laser light focus through the organisation. It's very successful. I will come on to the hand with Ruth. Just on the labour market data point, we know that there is more data that's just not being analysed. We can definitely, from pre-existing data-gathering, improve some of the data that relates to women's experiences of the labour market. The intersectionality point, that data is not currently being gathered, so that would be something that would have to be established. The Scottish Government is currently consulting on the equality evidence strategy. From a labour market perspective, we're disappointed in the draft strategy. There's no action within that to improve the range of gender-sensitive sex-disaggregated data that's being gathered. I think that's something that, in our response, we'll be calling for that to be strengthened. The other area of that strategy, where we see a key gap, is around skills. We really need to understand how our upskilling and reskilling initiatives are delivering for women, particularly at a time when we know that women's jobs are likely to decline in sectors such as retail because of things like automation and the rise of online retail. The jobs where roles are expected to increase, such as green sectors, we know that women are currently underrepresented. Ensuring that upskilling and reskilling is working for women is really critical. In order to do that, we need data. Within the draft equality evidence strategy, there's no reference to skills data at all. We know that Skills Development Scotland already gather more equalities data than they publish. We think that there's a clear ask from the Scottish Government to those delivery agencies to utilise the range of equalities data that they have at their fingertips. Again, the equality evidence strategy is very much aware of the resource context, but that would come at a very low cost, since a lot of that is already being done anyway. I think that there's a lot more work to be done in terms of us having the range of data that we would like to see on the labour market and skills. I better be very quick to my main point, which is about Highlands and Islands and remote rural areas. Skills will probably be part of that. What are the particular challenges that businesses face and people look to start-up businesses face within those areas? I don't want to focus on that because I know that others are going to talk about the business centre, but that would be a central location. How do we make sure that the experience and expertise there can be available to people across areas such as mine? One of the islands is interested in using one of its buildings as a potentially a women's business centre. We speak offline perhaps about that, but we are very cognisant that it shouldn't just be one central location. It should be a hub and spoke model to get the maximum impact. It's important to say that, not one central building, but just the start of a wider strategy. We have done a fair bit of work with women-based in remote rural locations. Enterprise, as you'll know, is a key route into employment because often people who have migrated there and are staying there have skills that don't match with the local economy, so starting up a business is really important. The issues that they face are crisis of confidence. Many people haven't started a business before. They don't know where to go. They don't know where to start. If you have a bad experience or if you feel that perhaps the official looking business gateway doesn't look like it's there for people like you, they're just not going to engage in the first place. That's really the point that I was trying to make about that pretty stark support. It is critical for rural areas to nurture those germs of entrepreneurship. Often women that have great ideas, that's what we saw coming through our programmes. We saw about 70 per cent of businesses that came through a 10-week start-up programme, sorry, 70 per cent of participants started a business when they came through just a short programme. It has given people the confidence and self-belief that they can do it. Our mainstream agencies are great. They just don't serve everybody's individual needs. Women, as a critical mass, justify economically an investment in their support. Particularly at start-up with confidence, but also with access perhaps to skills that they don't have. For example, building e-commerce platforms. Many people will know they can sell. They can maybe only sell limited amounts within their immediate area, but with an understanding of e-commerce and distribution, suddenly their product could have a much wider appeal. That is something that we have really worked on before. We have run some e-commerce training that was phenomenally well received. We have seen a bit of an uplift from that. We want to try to keep that going. That is one of the values of digital platform as well, because women engage digitally. They are much more digital-literate than they were at the start of the pandemic, and we could really harness it. It is crucial for rural economies. Again, it is an injection of diversity that suddenly sees that ecosystem and that landscape transform and have much more innovation capability, because the diverse thinking and experiences are being injected into it to strengthen it. To interrupt, we do have to make some progress. I have allowed members to ask a few questions, but if possible, I will move on to the next question. I mean, if we have time at the end, we can come back. Gordon MacDonald is followed by Colin Smyth. Can I ask members and witnesses to keep answers as short and concise as possible? I want to ask about grant funding. Caroline You carried out some research into the pandemic funding. You highlighted that the hospitality hardship fund was 16 per cent women-led businesses and the resilience fund was 10 per cent. Just for clarity, do you have the percentages for those two funds that relate to businesses equally led by men and women? We only pulled the data for a majority of women-led companies. Potentially, the data would be there and accessible, but it was a private company we worked with, their pro bono bit of support for us, if you like, their CSR strategy for which we were really grateful. The data is there, and it is possible to access it, but we only looked at that one feed. My next question is the percentages that you have highlighted about the pandemic funding. Is that reflective of the wider grant funding that is available for women-led businesses? I am thinking of a self-employed income support scheme or the grants that are issued by Scottish Enterprise. It goes back to where we can access the data. We know from some of the analysis of the self-employed income support scheme that more women were entitled to that support than actually received it. There was a disconnect. The percentages of men that were entitled to it and received it and applied for it were much higher than the percentages of women that were entitled to it and received it and applied it. We see that coming through with the businesses that we support. Many women simply did not know how to access that support. They did not know that it was for businesses like them. They had no awareness because a proportion of them are still not engaging with our formal enterprise support structure, and therefore they found themselves wholly disconnected. We did a lot of work in informing, reaching out and contacting women, so that data reflected our experiences on the ground. Was part of the problem the lack of targeting to areas where women substantially have businesses? Looking at UK numbers, a lot of female businesses are in health education or hospitality, but was there enough targeting of funding towards those areas? Was it the fact that you have just highlighted that a lot of women were not aware that the funding was available? I think that it is fair. It is mostly a lack of awareness that comes back to the fundamental issues and the way that the system operates. It does not engage with everybody. It does not engage with some people in the community. I was making a point about mainstreaming. Mainstreaming is what it is supposed to do. It works with a critical majority—in this case, the critical majority in business are men. It does not work so well for women, and therefore the leak out of that system hints our argument that we should have specific services that would stop that leakage and ensure that women are better able to access funding and grants like that. Ruth, do you have anything that you want to add? No, I do not think that we did. I was desperately trying to find my phone in my bag there to check a step, but I was unable to do so. We did some analysis during Covid on the access to the furlough scheme and the self-employed income support scheme. It highlighted the points that Carolyn has made today around the respective sizes of men and women's businesses. If we did an analysis of the amount of money that male-led businesses and female-led businesses were getting, we could see that men were getting the most valuable grants because that reflected the sizes of their businesses. Again, that scheme highlighted some of the pre-existing structural issues that we know exist around women's enterprise. I have one aside question that I want to ask and it relates to Jamie's questions about rurality. I was looking through the GEM report for Scotland. It highlighted that in Highlands and Islands, female start-ups were higher than men's start-ups. Was that because, as you made a point earlier, there was no alternative or is there something else happening in the Highlands and Islands that we have to reflect on? Traditionally, the Highlands and Islands are very entrepreneurial as communities. They are entrepreneurial out of necessity. There is an argument that says that part of that will be driven by a background in entrepreneurship, by knowing family members, by knowing people in your network that have successfully entered entrepreneurship as a source to make a living and as a career. However, what we know is, for all the reasons and statistics that I have talked about, that women turn to entrepreneurship out of sheer necessity. The problem is that we do not necessarily have the systems and support in place to ensure that they endure. The GEM report talks about that in the context of start-ups and early-stage activity, which is great to see. That is an important part of entrepreneurship, but where we are failing is to keep that momentum going because it is not translating—certainly not in GEM—into the evidence of established businesses and activity. Again, the statistics we would say that it drops off a cliff. We are just not seeing that early-stage desire to start a business in those dreams and aspirations transposing into establishing and then being able to make that economic contribution successfully. Colin Smyth, you are followed by Graham Simpson. Thank you, convener, and good morning to Ruth and Carlin. Can I briefly return to an issue that you both mentioned quite a few times. It was clearly an important issue, and that is obviously data. Anna Stewart said that she is committed to focusing on robust and resilient data, which can be used to benchmark in the coming years as part of the women's enterprise review. You have touched on a number of the gaps in the data already. What are the reasons why we do not gather that data at the moment? Is it just a case that I have never gathered it, or are there particular difficulties in gathering the data that you want to see? Are there any other gaps that you have not mentioned already? I think that it is partly it's I been. The system has always reported and used particular sets of data. I just do not think that there is a process and a lens in place that says where is the gender disaggregated reporting for this. As Ruth has already said, there are some quick wins potentially in the system where the data is there, but nobody is casting a gender disaggregated lens over that data to look at the insights from that perspective. There are other situations in which the data is just wholly absent because we are not collecting it in the first place. Where are those gaps in Carlin? You mentioned a couple already in reply to Jamie. Where would you see the gaps in that data? The gaps in data? We are relying on GEM, for example, to tell us where is the split, what are the start-up rates, where what regions are doing well, are they doing well out of necessity, what is happening behind that, for example. There is an example of where data and insight would be really helpful. Where are the organisations—sorry, where are the regions—where female entrepreneurship is thriving and where is it not? Which areas or sectors are seeing good start-up rates and are managing to sustain those start-up rates through to establish businesses? Is that happening in particular geographic areas? Is it happening in particular sectors? We could get valuable learnings and insights into best practice from that data that could then be applied out in the broader sense. I think that there is also an argument for saying that it would be really helpful to look at urban-based data versus rural-based data and again look at where are the successes within that and where are the best practices that could be applied. All of that would help us to invest wisely and to tease out the policies and the practices that are actually making a difference at the minute, but also to bin the policies and practices that are not working or that need to be adjusted and changed and to be able to identify that. Also, at the other end of the spectrum, I think, being able to find out where are the women that are just quietly getting on with establishing and delivering amazing businesses, but they're not on anybody's radar. They're not coming through. They're not visible to the enterprise agencies. Where is the data that shows us where women role models are doing amazing things? Again, we can harness their expertise. We can use them as sources of inspiration because inspiration is a crucial tool in times like this. We run a role model project. We have 70 women-owned businesses based in different sectors and different locations across Scotland. That makes a phenomenal difference. We try to get their stories into the media so that people are aware. Understanding where all those women are and promoting their stories is absolutely crucial to inspiring the next generation to come through and to help with mentoring and coaching. The committee has asked witnesses previously if they do gender disaggregation, whether it's large organisations or businesses, so that is another part of the picture. Do you find that that is happening to the extent that we'd want to see it happening, or how have organisations and businesses engaged with that agenda? Do you have a view on that? I don't think that they've been engaging with it to the extent that we would want them to. We do some analysis of the reporting under the public sector equality duty, and that requires public bodies to gather data, for example, on their employees. We see that that's done very poorly and it's not consistent. Even when it's a legal requirement, we don't see that being consistently done, which is testament to the fact that it's not being prioritised. There have been a couple of plans lately that have highlighted some actions around data, but we're not seeing those being prioritised. For example, in the gender pickup action plan, there was an action to improve the gender disaggregated data on beneficiaries to the flexible workforce development fund. There's no clarity in terms of how that's been progressed since that plan has been published. Similarly, the climate emergency skills action plan had an action to gather gender disaggregated data on beneficiaries of all skills programmes developed to support the transition to green jobs. Again, it's unclear how that's been progressed since that plan was published. Finally, the example that I would use is the tackling child poverty delivery plan. The previous plan highlighted an action to remove our reliance on household-level statistics to be able to measure women's poverty better. Again, there's not been much progress on that. Data is not being prioritised. Another issue that I would raise in terms of the way that public bodies and employers are responding to that is that we are increasingly seeing organisations using GDPR as a rationale for not gathering equalities data despite the fact that that could fall under legitimate use. That's something that we would urge the Scottish Government to provide clarity on, particularly for public bodies, so that that can no longer be used as an excuse. In particular, that's being utilised for not gathering data, for example, on caring responsibilities when you're doing skills programmes, despite the fact that that data is really critical to understanding women's experiences. Again, as part of that equality evidence strategy, it would be really positive if there was guidance around GDPR. It's been fascinating to listen to you and I'm really impressed by your enthusiasm for the subject. Caroline, you said that women are not visible to enterprise agencies. I think that that could equally apply to men. Just a lot of people are not visible to enterprise agencies because they don't necessarily go through them, so I think that the enterprise agencies don't necessarily capture everyone. You're absolutely right to say that when you find examples of successful women in this case, we should be highlighting it. I want to ask you a little bit about the idea of a woman's business centre. I think that I picked up earlier that there was a price tag of £50 million. Given that we're doing pre-budget scrutiny, perhaps you can explain to me why we need a woman's business centre when we have existing services that you admit are doing a good job. I know from my own patch that business support services are doing a good job and do, in many cases, target women. On your first point about visibility, there are a number of people who are not visible in terms of enterprise agencies. However, in the case of women, the data tells us that there is a heightened invisibility when you compare that to men coming through. That is the case for much of the evidence base in terms of a woman's business centre. Many of the issues that we highlight are faced by men, or they are common to people starting up in entrepreneurship, but it is the degree to which women face these issues that is different, and that is what the research points to. It is important to say that. In terms of a woman's business centre, yes, supporting services work well for the mainstream. They do not work well for women. We have 10 years of research and data of women's experiences with mainstream services, which simply are not meeting their needs. In terms of some of the specifics, our most recent consultation was just a few months ago in Edinburgh and East Lothian. There, women were telling us that they expected to get support, they expected to get insight, they expected to have their ideas supported and encouraged, and they did not. They left feeling less confident about their ideas. They did not get the assurances that they were looking for. They were directed to different places of information. In the words of one younger woman, it is daunting enough being a new mum and dealing with that. I did not want to be signposted to go there and find all that information and then pull it together. These are the types of examples where mainstream is doing its job. It is working for arguably the critical majority. It is not working for the considerable amount of women that are now seeking to use its services. My point is that we need to be smart, we need to leverage what we believe is working already within that infrastructure, but we absolutely need to change and adapt the bits that are not working well. We have experience from the Digital Women's Business Centre and we set that up at the height of the pandemic thanks to the private sector support. We were able to do that. We have seen thousands of businesses and we have just upgraded that portal because it was not designed for the amount of traffic that is coming through it. That might help to answer your question. From our perspective, we see that giving us a strong bed of information and engagement that we can lift into the physical model. As we all know, digital has been great, it is very effective and efficient, but there is nothing like face-to-face support. That is how we are going to set and design our Women's Business Centre on the back of those 10 years of research and data, but the most recent consultation from women is telling us where their needs are being met. It is important to say that, telling us where their needs are not being met and designing the centre to have the maximum impact. We work very closely—the first centre that I am talking about that we have consulted on is to be based at Queen Margaret University, just in East Lothian on the border of Edinburgh, and we work closely with business gateway services in there. In fact, business gateway in East Lothian is co-located within the university campus, and it is a really good model for bringing service providers together in one space to leverage the value out of each set of expertise to the benefit of business creation and the economy in Scotland. Is that not where the Scottish Government's Women's Business Centre is going to be? Well, I certainly hope that it is. I am going to be lobbying very hard, but it should be there. I was going to ask what stage we are at with that, given that they pledged to establish one. We await the insight in terms of how that is going to be applied, as I said in response to Jamie's question. It is really important that this is not seen as just a one centre that will deliver for everybody. No, we see that as a hub-and-spoke model. We are best practised from regional centres, which can be pulled into the centre, identified and therefore leveraged back out. We have that model that works so very well in an economic context, but it is able to be flexed according to the needs of each region and each place that it will serve. That would certainly be our vision in terms of how a Women's Business Centre model could make a significant impact to the economy in Scotland. How are we doing for time? I know that we are up against it. Let me move over to Colin Beattie, and if there is time, I will bring you back in. That is my understanding, commitment to a Women's Business Centre model, £50 million. That is what was the response to our manifesto, which called for a Women's Business Centre model to be set. Good morning. Coming in at the tail end, I have had the opportunity to listen to your very comprehensive replies, and I really must thank you for that. You have covered a lot of ground, but I would like to ask you just a couple of daft laddie questions. Since over, I can remember that we have been talking about this. We have been talking about support for women and helping them in the workplace and so on. It seems that, over the years, that has not been as successful as we might have hoped. I would like to ask you the daft laddie question. Why is that? When we are all talking about it, why has not something more happened? Is it because of lack of money? Is it a lack of anything? We seem to be talking about it all the time, but not actually making the progress that people would like to see. Maybe Ruth could give us the first thoughts on that. That is a fair question. It probably reflects the points that Carlin and I have made today around prioritisation, leadership and gender mainstreaming, so ensuring that you are embedding gender equality in all the policies that you are doing. We were pleased that, a few years ago, the Scottish Government published the gender pay gap action plan, which was the first gender pay gap action plan. That is a positive indication that the Scottish Government is taking tackling women's labour market inequality seriously. That plan highlights that the causes of the gender pay gap stretch beyond the workplace and highlights the diverse causes of the gender pay gap around childcare provision, transport, skills and economic development. We really need gender equality being prioritised across all those areas in order to make progress on women's inequality in the labour market. We cannot do that by just focusing on employment policy alone. I think that there still remains some barriers here, so often we hear that a key reason why we cannot tackle the gender pay gap in Scotland is because we do not have the devolution of employment law, but so many of the causes of the gender pay gap are not unlawful, so we need to sit outside employment law. Those are things such as part-time working, women's disproportionate responsibility for childcare and the need for more quality part-time work. Those are all things that we could be doing now, so it is about prioritisation. What we see in a lot of strategies and plans that have been published lately is that the gender pay gap action plan is having to do increasing heavy lifting in terms of directing action on women's labour market inequality. If we look at the national strategy for economic transformation, that is not well-gendered, so it does not have a gender analysis of women's experiences of the economy. It does not have any specific actions in terms of tackling women's inequality in the economy, but it points to the gender pay gap action plan. Similarly, one of our critiques of the retail strategy was that it does the same thing, so it is as though all the policy making that has to happen on the labour market is being done by the gender pay gap action plan, but what we would like to have seen is the actions and the analysis from Fairer Scotland for Women being mainstreamed throughout all of those strategies, so that it does not matter what stakeholder is taking forward the national strategy for economic transformation when they have that document in their hands. It is explicitly obvious to them that gender equality is something that they should be considering. We really welcome the Scottish Government's continued focus on fair work, and I think that that is particularly important in the current context because of all the reasons that we have outlined today, but we are clear that the fair work policy frameworks and the supporting tools need to be better gendered if they are to facilitate transformative change for women. Looking at the fair work action plan, for example, that is not well gendered and does not have enough specific actions that would allow us to progress on facilitating fair work for women. I will also say that there is a key role here for employers, so the Scottish Government obviously can have great policies on gender equality, but unless employers are actually taking those forward, then it is only going to be so effective. We know that employer complacency remains a key barrier to actually taking action on women's inequality in the labour market. Employers are not yet prioritising women's equality in the workplace, and that may be stems from a lack of understanding of the business case. All the things that we have put forward today in terms of why gender equality is good for economic growth are also good for your business in terms of being able to recruit from a wider talent pool, being more productive, more innovative, but we are not yet seeing employers prioritising that. I think that that has demonstrated in terms of equal pay, so we see that 94 per cent of employers have an equal pay policy, but only a third of employers have done an equal pay review, which is the methodology for uncovering unequal pay. Similarly, the point that I made about gender pay gap reporting, employers are seeing it as being sufficient to merely report their figure, rather than seeing that as something that they have to tackle. I think that it is the combination of gender equality not yet being prioritised across all policy areas that would enable a benefit to women's equality at work and that employers are not yet understanding why they should be prioritising gender equality. If I return to the fair work policy framework, because those supporting tools are not explicitly focused on gender equality, it is very hard to see how employers could operationalise fair work for women within their own workplace. Given that we are talking about budgets here and everything at the end of the day comes back to money, the money that has been put against gender equality, has that been well spent? That is a very difficult question. Sometimes, when we are funding projects to facilitate gender equality in the workplace, there are very small-scale projects that are very difficult to be scaled up. We were just discussing this before we came into the room that it often facilitates change in a very small area, be that geographically or on one particular issue, but the scalability of those projects is more difficult. For example, we see a lot of focus in terms of the gender pay gap on getting more young girls and women to study STEM-related subjects so that they can then move into STEM-related roles. However, if we look at the problems with the attrition rate, we see that only 30 per cent of women who have studied STEM actually work in a STEM-related industry, and what that points to instead is problems with employment practice. STEM-related industries do not have high rates of flexible working, for example, or male-dominated workplace cultures not being welcoming to women, which means that it is difficult for them to stay in those roles. When we are directing so much money into getting women to study STEM without tackling those structural issues that cement their inequality, perhaps that is the wrong focus. The money on gender equality to us is always well spent, but there is probably more that we could be doing across a range of areas. Caroline, do you have a view? I think that, as Ruth said in terms of the issue of why is it not happening because the action that we are taking is fragmented, it is not strategic and it is not joined up. You are getting the odd project over here, you are getting another odd project over here, they are not connected, the learnings are not coming through and it is not a strategic investment. That would be the first point. Where we are running programmes, we are not measuring them. We are not seeing data coming through in terms of the impact of the investment that we have made over here or over here in order that we can gain the learnings and the data and then review that and look at where we can leverage and where we can build from that. Therefore, if we do not have those insights and learnings, there is no change. We should not be surprised at that. We are not setting ourselves up for success, we are choosing to set ourselves up for failure. We are not investing strategically at all, it is strategic joined up investment that will deliver success in this field and in every other field. This is not anything new, this is how economic development works. It needs to be strategic and joined up, the more strategic and joined up it is, the more you can leverage it, the more you can change the economy. The other point that I want to make is that, as we mentioned earlier, having enterprise at the centre of the economic strategy, I welcomed that. One of the issues that we are currently facing is that enterprise organisations, such as others, are facing budget cuts. At the time when we want to catalyse entrepreneurship, support entrepreneurs and small businesses, other organisations that we work with are seeing their budgets cut and are struggling themselves to maintain that support in that operation. There is an issue there. There is an issue with trust and poor communication, trust is being eroded and trust in the enterprise community between the community and between government is absolutely vital. I just want to highlight that when I am here today, that is a serious issue. We are part of that wider ecosystem. We see the pain that some of those other organisations are going through. We are struggling ourselves as well. It is important to say that we really need to rebuild that ecosystem, that trust and that communication, so that we can then also capitalise on when the investment comes through. Thank you. I will ask a brief question at the end. I was having a look at the member's debate that my colleague Michelle Thomson held in May. The minister, in replying, talked about a project that was investing women angels working with SNP. SNP comes under the remit of this committee about bringing in investment. Caroline, do you have any knowledge of how that is progressing? I have no knowledge whatsoever, which in itself is not great. There was an announcement that there would be a women's fund, a women's fund of significant magnitude. It is, I guess, slightly unexpected, because normally, if you are going to announce a fund like that, the fund works on the basis of leverage, so you would have your methodology, if you like, or your partners or your investors all lined up when you make that announcement. We haven't heard anything. There's been an announcement made. Nothing has happened. We're not clear where that £12 million is coming from, who is going to be involved in leveraging that, and exactly where it's going to be targeted and what the aspirations are. I would certainly welcome much more insight, because potentially it could be transformative. That's helpful. I'd like to thank both the witnesses for giving their expertise and insights this morning. That's been much appreciated. I will now move the meeting into the private session.