Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group minutes: November 2022

Attendees and apologies

Chair

• Angela O'Hagan (AOH)

Speakers

• Caroline O’Loughlin, Assistant Principal Higher, Department of Public Expenditure and Reform
• Scherie Nichol, Gender Budgeting lead, OECD
• Yelda Yucel, Associate Professor of Economics, Istanbul Bilgi University

Secretariat

• Joe Chalmers (JC)
• Naomi Clark (NC)

Attendees

• Rob Priestley (RP)
• Tom Lamplugh (SG)
• David Holmes (DH)
• Joanne Briggs (JB)
• Simon Wakefield (SW)
• Alison Hosie (AH)
• Kenny Stewart (KS)
• Sara Cowan (SC)
• Joanna Anderson (JA)
• Chris Birt (CB)

Observers

• Julia McCombie (JMc), Scottish Government
• Eilidh Dickson (ED), Scottish Human Rights Commission
• Aidan Flegg (AF), Scottish Government
• Kavita Chetty (KC), Scottish Government
• Amy Rodger (AR), Scottish Government
• Rona Stewart (RS), Scottish Government
• Alison Byrne (AB), Scottish Government

Apologies

• Elisabeth Campbell (ECa)

• Emma Congreve (EC)
• Jillian Matthew (JM)
• Ben Walsh (BW)
• Tom Russon (TR)
• Fiona Page (FP)
• Jillian Matthew, Audit Scotland
• Jacqueline Farmer (JF), Audit Scotland

Items and actions

Welcome and introductions 

AOH welcomed the group and gave a brief introduction to the session and the guest speakers joining from Ireland, France, and Turkey.

Speakers panel

The invited speakers reflected on the various developments and challenges they had experienced to equality and gender budgeting in their respective jurisdictions. This was intended to provide discussion points for the Group and to ultimately build skills, knowledge, and capabilities within Scottish Government.

Main points included:

• the impact of ownership and clear guidance in relation to strengthening the processes of gender budgeting
• the three pillars of an approach to gender budgeting which are strategic framework, tools for implementation, and producing an enabling environment
• the increase to 61% of OECD countries doing gender budgeting

Questions

Questions covered areas such as, budget tagging, the role of regulators in relation to gender budgeting and, facilitating change so impact can drive policy decisions about budget prioritisation.

Next steps

AOH thanked the guest speakers for the contributions at the season today. She noted that it would be a great opportunity to ask the speakers to come back in a years time to reflect on what has gone ahead, and a chance for group members to reflect what they have done.

Any other business and priority updates

RP provided an update on the preparations for the Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement which was due to be published alongside the main Scottish Government Budget document in mid-December. It was noted that guidance would be included in the document and that there would be the reintroduction of the additional column in portfolios overviews to highlight how increases or decreases in funding would impact policy. The group welcomed this being reintroduced.

The next meeting for the Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group will be the Deep Dive on Drug Deaths and is scheduled for 8 December 2022.