Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group minutes: January 2024

Attendees and apologies

Chair

• Angela O'Hagan (AOH)

Attendees

• Joanne Briggs (JB)
• Emma Congreve (EC)
• 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)

Secretariat

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

Items and actions

Welcome

The Chair (AOH) welcomed the group, introducing Jackie Wilkins (JW) and Philippa Watkins (PW) as it is their first time attending an EHRBAG meeting.

2024 Work Plan

AOH highlighted that EHRBAG will be following a different format going forward. This was reflected in the 2024 Work Plan that had been shared with the Group in advance and incorporated a focus on the Group’s internal membership.

Directors and Deputy Directors now have some required attendance at certain EHRBAG meetings going forward and meetings will be categorised in one of the following themes: flagship, strategic and learning. Ministerial attendance at flagship meetings will also be encouraged with Ms Roddick attending in February and Deputy First Minister (DFM) in September.

AOH asked members if they have any comments on this new structure to share with the group, or alternatively they can feed these to the Secretariat team.

JW highlighted the cross-government event might be more beneficial being held slightly earlier in the year (May instead of June) as a way of being able to influence and improve the equalities assessment of early Programme for Government discussions. AOH asked the Secretariat team to look into bringing this forward.

Action – Secretariat team to review cross-government event for May

Rob Priestly (RP) commented that it is positive to see Ministerial engagement being built on and coming through in the 2024 Work Plan. Julia McCombie (JM) followed on from RP’s comment noting that progress is being made, although at times, this can be slow.

JM spoke briefly about the Ministerial Workshop ahead of last year’s Budget and noted some of the challenges in designing the workshop to ensure Officials could make the space as useful as possible for Ministers. The outcome was positive for Ministerial engagement and increasing the understanding of equality and human rights budgeting in these conversations. JM also acknowledged that Scottish Exchequer colleagues have an important role to partake in the mainstreaming of human rights and equality budgeting.

Discussion moved to the challenges that can be encountered when trying to get Ministers and Officials to engage and understand human rights and equality budgeting. In many cases, people need to reframe their known approach to budgeting, so data and analysis is critical in supporting these discussions. As statistics provide the basis for evidence informed conversations and decisions.

JW explained to the Group that for the Programme for Government, the team will be running workshops with portfolio leads to work on the mandate letters (which directly feeds into the budget) that were introduced as part of last year’s process. JW suggested it would be useful to pick up with RP to discuss how this work can link into the wider work of the Mainstreaming Unit.

Action – JW and RP to discuss mandate letters

Action Plan

Naomi Clark (NC) gave the Group an update on the progress of the action plan. Action owners are still being identified internally to enable further conversations on timescales and prioritisation of the work. The group will be updated as soon as this is known. The Secretariat are hoping to share a draft action plan with members before the February EHRBAG meeting.

NC shared slides with the group that had three questions and asked members to consider these questions in relation to the action plan:

1. Outcomes

How do you define success from the actions in the Scottish Government response?

2. Governance - (for internal colleagues to consider)

What are the minimum levels of accountability expected from individual actions and the plan as a whole? What internal functions already exist that we can make use of?

3. Strategy

What actions (if any) are the game changers?

The group picked a few actions from the action plan and attempted to answer each question in relation to the action. The discussion covered the importance of accountability in relation to the actions and how existing internal processes can be of benefit when trying to ensure the success of completing actions.

AOH suggested it would be useful group the actions along with headings such as action owners, timescales and priorities. AOH asked the group if they could go through the actions and think about the questions NC shared with the group, and then feed this back to the Secretariat. If any members have other comments such as the wording of any of the actions, these are also welcome.

The Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement (initial reflections to inform February meeting)

AOH commented that there have been new elements to the 24/25 EFSBS including a collection of case studies. However, noted that the case study approach focused on the ‘what’ rather than the ‘why’ certain policies were affecting certain protected characteristic groups. AOH agreed that the case studies were a good attempt to illustrating Budget decisions in a different format and noted the use of the questions that were used in the case studies, that were previously developed by the Group.

Emma Congreve (EC) highlighted that what was missing from the EFSBS was why certain spending had been cut in areas, e.g. housing, and that there is a need for more transparency in this area in particular when thinking about further improvements.

AOB

There was no AOB, AOH gave thanks to members for their inputs and closed the meeting.