Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group minutes: February 2024

Attendees and apologies

Chair

• Angela O'Hagan (AOH)

Speakers

• Ms Emma Roddick. Minister for Equalities, Migration and Refugees (MEMR)

Attendees

• Joanne Briggs (JB)
• David Holmes (DH)
• Ali Hosie (AH)
• Stephanie Griffin (SG)
• Tom Lamplugh (TL)
• Carmen Martinez (CM)
• Jillian Matthew (JM)
• Rob Priestley (RP)
• Simon Wakefield (SW)
• Philippa Watkin (PW)
• Jackie Wilkins (JW)
• Lisa McGuinness (LM)

Apologies

• Emma Congreve

Secretariat

• Naomi Clark (NC)
• Niamh Cannon (NCa)
• Julia McCombie (JMc)

Items and actions

Welcome and Intros

The Chair (AOH) welcomed the group, outlined the agenda and ran through the apologies. She welcomed the Minister for Equalities, Migration and Refugees (MEMR) to this EHRBAG meeting and thanked her for joining. AOH then went on to give some brief reflections on the NACWG Accountability Day stating that it was a very impactful day and brought to life a lot of conversations that are had at EHRBAG each month.

24/25 EFSBS- Ministerial Slot

AOH invited the MEMR to give her reflections on the EFSBS publication process that occurred at the end of 2024.

MEMR shared the following thoughts and reflections with the group:

• Highlighted that this was her first EFSBS process as Minister and was grateful for the EHRBAG’s support in the process.
• MEMR would like the Ministerial Workshop to take place earlier in the year to better inform the budget process as a whole and lend to the EFSBS process.
• MEMR also welcomed any suggestions from the group where there may be room for improvement.

AOH agreed that it would be beneficial for the Ministerial Workshop to take place earlier in the budget process- she went on to emphasise that timing is very important to the EFSBS process. Rob Priestly (RP) flagged that the Deputy First Minister (DFM) will be attending the September EHRBAG meeting- it would be useful for the Ministerial Workshop to take place ahead of this.

AOH then asked JW to give any reflections she may have on PfG and how this could be better aligned with EFSBS. JW shared her thoughts with the group:

• Looking to strengthen the alignment between PfG and the budget.
• A set of proposals will be put through to the Executive Team and then onto Cabinet for the end of March.
• Formal and systematic approach being proposed for PfG- this includes earlier impact assessments.

AOH thanked JW for her updates and stated that she was pleased to hear that work was being done to look at moving impact assessments earlier in the process.

Nick Bland (NB) noted that the DFM is taking on a more explicit oversight role in relation to the delivery of action to tackle women’s inequality- one of the actions from this will be a new Ministerial group that will focus on the Government’s priorities

AOH spoke on the importance of processes, how information is analysed and shared, how it is accessed and by who. She also highlighted that the use of case studies in the EFSBS publication were a useful tool but there is still room for improvement. AOH invited Simon Wakefield (SW) to share his thoughts on the EFSBS process as he was heavily involved.

SW gave the following reflections:

• The 6 key questions that the EHRBAG group came up with were a simple yet effective tool in gathering data from different portfolio areas for the publication.
• One of the challenges was that there was a very short window after the budget to write and publish the EFSBS- if there was a slightly bigger time frame here then more useful information could be included and more analysis. It was difficult to highlight the impact of the budget in the short space of time.

AOH agreed with SW’s points and added that further promotion of the EFSBS annex would make it a useful resource. AOH suggested that the EFSBS should be made of two documents- one that looks at the budget year just passed and the other that looks at the coming budget year.

SW also flagged that there is ongoing with the OECD on Gender Budgeting. There will be a couple of capacity building sessions held early next week and after that there will be piloting of approaches to gender budgeting in one or two portfolio areas.

Lisa McGuinness (LM) spoke on the usefulness of an evaluation piece within a process like EFSBS. Sometimes key messages get lost in the noise and it is just as important to look at what was de-prioritised.

Stephanie Griffin (SG) noted that the Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) were pleased with the improvements that went into the EFSBS this year.

JM flagged that Audit Scotland are publishing a briefing later this year on making the most of public money and would find it useful to get in touch with EHRBAG members on this.

AOH invited MEMR to share her final comments with the group. MEMR stated that she would be reflecting on transparency throughout the year. She highlighted that the DFM will be joining the EHRBAG meeting in September and that this will be a positive for the budget process. MEMR welcomed any feedback on what is most helpful and most effective in better joining up the budget process.

Action Plan

Action: AOH asked members if they could submit any comments to the Secretariat for the action plan column ‘what does success look like’. This could be in relation to processes, product, relationship in achieving the actions in the action plan.

NB gave reflections on the Action Plan. DGSE are going through a re-structure and therefore there is a slight delay in claiming actions until new teams are established. The Secretariat will take ownership of coorindating the Action Plan.

The next Action Plan update to the group, where a formal report will be given on progress, will take place during the May EHRBAG meeting.

Discussion took place on the substance of the actions- JM suggested that behind the top lines of each action there needs to be some sort of mapping to track output and process to ensure that everything is being joined up.

NB asked the group to please submit any returns/reflections on ‘what does success look like’ to the Secretariat if not done so already. NB shared that a formal and regular way to report the delivery on the Action Plan is being discussed and that members will be kept informed on this.

Carmen Martinez (CM) noted that the Scottish Women’s Budget Group has already sent an email to the Secretariat on what success would look like. SWBG would like to see publicly available EQIAS for the budget cycle. It would also be helpful as well as seeing the impact spending funding has, to see the impact that not spending funding would have.

AOB

No AOB.  AOH thanked the group for their contributions and closed the meeting.