Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group minutes: March 2024

Attendees and apologies

Chair

• Angela O'Hagan (AOH)

Speakers

• Scherie Nicol, OECD (SN)

Attendees

• Joanne Briggs (JB)
• David Holmes (DH)
• Ali Hosie (AH)
• Stephanie Griffin (SG)
• Tom Lamplugh (TL)
• Carmen Martinez (CM)
• Jillian Matthew (JM)
• Julia McCombie (JMcC)
• Rob Priestley (RP)
• Simon Wakefield (SW)
• Philippa Watkin (PW)

Guests

• Lesley Cunningham (LC)
• Eileen Flanagan (EF)
• Annie Milović (AM)

Apologies

• Emma Congreve

Secretariat

• Niamh Cannon (NC)
• Laura Graham (LG)
• Julia McCombie (JMc)

Items and actions

Welcome

The Chair (AOH) welcomed the group and ran through the apologies. AOH went on to introduce Scherie Nicol (SN) who is the Gender Budgeting Lead from the OECD and who will be presenting to the group today.

AOH started off by giving some reflections on the National Advisory Council for Women and Girls (NACWG) Accountability Day. The day focused on gendered analysis and data, including intersectional approaches, and how this can be used in policy making and resources allocation. There was representation from senior civil servants across Scottish Government in attendance including: local government, housing, child poverty and Scottish exchequer.

OECD Presentation

SN introduced herself to the group. SN is carrying out Gender Budgeting work for the Scottish Government. The presentation covered the following points:

• Findings collected from internal stakeholder engagement interviews.
• Key strengths and challenges within the Scottish Government in relation to gender budgeting.
• Main recommendations from OECD in order for Scottish Government to implement a gender budgeting strategy. These recommendations were:
  • Identify gender goals and key policy measures needed to close gaps.
  • Strengthen gender mainstreaming to ensure inequalities are removed from all budget policies.
  • Recast equality budget statement.

Following the presentation, AOH opened to the group for any questions or discussion. Eileen Flanagan (EF) asked SN what a gender strategy might look like in real terms and would this be under total ownership of the Government? SN highlighted that the key aim is for gender goals to be set out in a document- it wouldn’t necessarily have to be a strategy or called such.

AH commented that it was interesting to see that Nation Performance Framework (NPF) is considered externally useful and that NPF should be harnessed more.

Lesley Cunnigham (LC) asked SN if other OECD countries have gender goals been drawn from treaties or political will? SN responded that it is typical to see five or six goals that are the same or very similar in every OECD country, whether they come from treaties or political will. Having these goals is a quick win.

SN gave examples of how other OECD countries work with spending cuts and their gender goals:

• Colombia- any measure linked to the gender strategy is not allowed to be cut.
• Austrailia- new budget measures have to show where the money is coming from and do an impact assessment on how this affects gender goals- for new money and for cuts.

SN shared some reflections on the Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement (EFSBS). She noted that when work of impact is being carried out, the statement should write itself, it should not be onerous. More gender mainstreaming and clear gender goals that are driving policy development need to me implemented and then the statement becomes a report on these and a less onerous task.

Simon Wakefield (SW) gave brief updates on where the gender budget Pilots with OECD are at.  Following SN’s report, in April and May they will be working with two policy areas, Justice and Economy, and look at setting some gender goals. There will be a training session and a workshop session where the portfolios will choose their gender goals and look into the analysis behind these and how they could be implemented. After this there will be a feedback session on how the portfolios found this exercise.

Action: AOH suggested that members look at the OECD recommendations for Scottish Government and see how these can link up with the EHRBAG action plan.

Tracking/Tagging Spends

AOH shared some reflections on tracking and tagging and how these can be used for following the money. Tagging can be ineffective in actually following the money and showing the impact on inequalities- it can’t be used as a stand alone measure.

SN states that the ‘big picture stuff’ is what is missing from the Scottish budget process at the minute- tagging could be used to support this, however the main concern with tagging is that it can become a vacuum for energy that could be otherwise used for more strategic tasks in this space. Tagging should be used cautiously to be effective.

NACWG Accountability Day

The day went well- it was felt that the ‘real meat’ of the event was at the very end. LC commented it was useful for civil servants to hear other people’s contributions to discussions, however it would have also been valuable to have more smaller table discussions to gain some more in-depth dialogue on certain topics.

DH thought that the morning of the event was extremely valuable and especially with senior civil servants in attendance to hear about intersectional impact and the cumulative impact of policy on individual people.

RP reflected that hearing about the actions that Scottish Government are taking in working towards gender equality was valuable, however there was focus on how this all fits together as coherent whole.

AOB

Action: AOH asked members to reflect on what SN shared today in her presentation and the group can circle back to thoughts and reflections in the next EHRBAG meeting.

AOH thanked members for their time and input and closed the meeting.