Scottish Budget 2023-24: equality and Fairer Scotland statement

What is the Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement?

The Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement looks at the impact that the Scottish Budget might have on people in Scotland.

It assesses what the Scottish Government is proposing to spend public money on and how this is changing. It considers if these decisions are likely to benefit some types of people more than others, and how it might help reduce inequality between different groups of people.

The Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement is published alongside the Scottish Budget every year.

What is inequality?

Equality is about ensuring everyone has equal status, rights and opportunity. It is also the belief that no one should have fewer or poorer chances in life due to:

• protected characteristics
• the resources they or their family have.

We know in Scotland this is not always the case and we want to use the money allocated by the budget to address inequality.

Inequality means that for some groups of people parts of their lives are harder or worse than for other groups of people due to the barriers they face in trying to improve their circumstances. This could involve their access to health, education or income.

For example, certain groups of people, may find it harder to gain employment, be more likely to attain lower exam scores in school or be more likely to be victims of crime compared to other groups. They also may not see themselves represented in positions of power or may be discriminated against.

What groups of people are we talking about?

We have laws that say we must consider these differences between people according to certain characteristics. These are:

• Age (e.g. children, older people)
• Disability (disabled people)
• Gender reassignment (trans people)
• Pregnancy and maternity (mothers)
• Race (e.g. Black Scottish, White Gypsy/Traveller)
• Religion or belief (e.g. Christians, Muslims, Sikhs)
• Sex (men, women)
• Sexual orientation (e.g. lesbian, gay and bisexual people)
• Socio-economic disadvantage (e.g. people with low incomes or wealth, people who live in a deprived area)

We have a duty to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it. We also have a duty to reduce inequality for adults and children who experience poverty.

These duties also mean we must consider how inequalities are compounded for people with more than one of these characteristics. For example, a minority ethnic disabled renter on income-related benefits, an asylum seeking woman, or a rural low income, lone parent family headed by a mother with caring responsibilities.

We recognise for these groups of individuals that the intersection of disadvantage compounds structural inequality and this is especially evident in this cost of living crisis. This year, Scottish Government developed its approach to intersectional policy making and analysis including publishing revised approaches.

More Detailed Information

This document provides a summary of the impacts. More information can be found in the annexes:

• Annex A: Equality, Human Rights and Fairer Scotland Budgeting
• Annex B: Social and Economic Context
• Annex C: Equality and Fairer Scotland and the Resource Spending Review
• Annex D: Detailed analysis of equalities and Fairer Scotland issues by portfolio