Equality Data Improvement Programme (EDIP) Project Board minutes: February 2024

Attendees and apologies

Scottish Government (SG)

• Audrey MacDougall (AMacD), Chief Social Researcher (Chair)
• Alastair McAlpine, Chief Statistician 
• Jonathan Wright, Senior Principal Researcher, Equality & Social Justice Analysis, Communities Analysis Division
• Beth Cocker, Principal Researcher – Equality Analysis Team, Communities Analysis Division
• Molly Halligan (MH), Senior Social Researcher – Equality Analysis Team, Communities Analysis Division
• David Holmes, Head of EPCD: Coordination and Briefing, Directorate for Economic Strategy and Fair Work
• Kirsty Yule (KY), National Performance Framework
• Simon Wakefield (SW), Public Spending Analysis

External

• Nick Cassidy, Improvement Service (deputising for Emily Lynch)
• Jordon Gorevan, Non-Departmental Public Bodies Equality Forum (NDPB Equality Forum)
• Rishma Maini, Public Health Scotland (PHS)
• Hannah Telling, Equality and Human Rights (EHRC)
• Brianna Fletcher, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA)
• Alison Hoise, Scottish Human Rights Commission

Apologies

• Gill McCrum/Julie McCrombie, Strategic Development and Organisational Capability Lead, Mainstreaming, Directorate for Equality, Inclusion and Human Rights
• Naomi Clark, Mainstreaming (deputising for Rob Priestley), Scottish Government
• Lesley Crozier, Scottish Council’s Equality Network
• Rob Priestley, Mainstreaming, Scottish Government
• Catherine McMeeken, Deputy Director Equalities, Directorate for Equality, Inclusion & Human Rights
• Shruti Jain, Public Health Scotland
• Simon Cameron, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA)

Items and actions

Welcome and introductions

AMacD welcomed attendees to the meeting and invited introductions.

Following introductions, AMacD provided a staffing update. Molly Halligan has replaced Maisy Best as the Senior Social Researcher in the Equality Analysis team.

AMacD summarised the agenda for the meeting - to provide an update on progress against the actions in the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025; to provide focused updates on the Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget and the National Performance Framework; and to share updates from external Project Board members.

AMacD highlighted that updated Terms of Reference and minutes from the November meeting have been published.

MH provided an overview of the Highlight Report (Paper 1).

AMacD asked for clarity around reasons for ‘delayed’ and/or ‘not yet started’ actions. MH reported that delays do not appear to be permanent and that some actions marked as ‘not yet started’ have plans to progress work in the near future.

Attendees asked if the Minority Ethnic Women’s report (Equality Analysis Team) will have any health data available to share. MH to share materials that may be of use.

Attendees asked if the HACE survey could be shared with the EDIP Board members once published. MH agreed to share the link.

AMacD invited SW to provide an overview of the Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement. Specifically, the government-wide challenge of assessing the impacts of the budget on equalities and how the team are aiming to improve the approach in the future.

This included:

• Milestones in 2024/2025 to the Budget Bill introduced 21 December
• The impact of early consideration of stakeholder views on budget decisions
• The use and exploration of case studies in relation to equality analysis and socio-economic impacts
• Guidance for policy makers using 6 key questions to make more informed equality and human rights budget decisions
• Improving future approaches through a pilot review process drawing from international examples

Attendees asked if resources and learning from the EFSBS impacts on equalities can be shared as a form of best practice? Attendees would find this useful to allow for more informed budget decisions without disproportionately impacting those with key protected equalities as well as reducing unintended consequences.

Attendees stressed a need for on-going capacity building to ensure rights based analysis is undertaken and highlighted a need to consider the impact of where money is not spent.

SW advised that they were happy to share (or receive) learnings and connect with attendees interested in developing best practice guidelines for budget decision making. Attendees agreed that a having a common approach across public sector could be beneficial.

AMcA invited RH to provide an update on progress made by JAS against actions in the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025.

AMacD invited KY to provide an overview of the National Performance Framework and equalities work happening across the team.

This included:

• Timeline of events
• Collaboration with the National Advisory Council of Women and Girls (NACWG) to produce a thematic gender review of the NPF. This work is due to be finalised at the end of March 2024.
• The relaunch of the NPF website allowing users to explore equality data breakdowns available against each NPF indicators.
• Collaboration with the SG Equality Analysis Team on an intersectionality series: Minority Ethnic Women (in progress), disability and women (next).

Attendees asked how the NPF links and collaborates with other reported equality data and outcomes?

KY advised that the long term goal will be to link with other resources collecting equality and performance data as well as the wider data landscape beyond Scotland (for example, the Sustainable Development Goals, Scotland’s Equality Evidence Finder, and the Equality Human Rights Commission)

The following attendees provided an update:

• Hannah Telling (EHRC) – noting that EHRC had produced a series of fact sheets as supplementary data products alongside the ‘Is Britian /Scotland Fairer’ report, and will soon launch their data explorer tool.

No AOB was raised.

AMacD thanked all for attending and for their input in the meeting.

• MH to share resources with HT on Minority Ethnic women

• MH to share link to the live HACE survey results when published