Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - gender budgeting pilots: evaluation report

Summary of Pilot Area Assessments

Each pilot area produced detailed assessments demonstrating how they have considered portfolio activity against their identified overarching gender goal. A review of these assessments and pilot participants’ feedback has informed overviews below for each pilot area, which summarise the experiences of the pilot areas.

This section finishes with conclusions on some of the key issues arising.

Deputy First Minister, Economy and Gaelic Pilot

Portfolio Purpose and Context

The Deputy First Minister, Economy and Gaelic (DFMEG) portfolio is central to delivering investment and economic growth that is providing prosperity right across the country. From regenerating local areas to investing in the industries of the future, the portfolio invests in the places, people and businesses of Scotland. The portfolio budget helps to address inequalities, reduce poverty, and allow people across communities to benefit from a fair, green, growing economy. This includes through Employability services and promotion of Fair Work, as well as initiatives that increase entrepreneurship opportunities for women and other under-represented groups.

The Scottish Government is constrained in its approaches to tackle the gender pay gap and support women more widely whilst employment legislation remains reserved to Westminster. Nevertheless, within the powers available, the Government delivers a range of activity that supports women, including through the application of Fair Work First criteria to public sector spend across all portfolios.

Relevance of Draft Gender Goal

Reducing the gender pay gap is listed as the first objective under the Canadian gender goal for “equal and full participation in the workforce”. Given this, and the Scottish Government’s commitment to reduce the gender pay gap in Scotland, the Economy pilot focused on this objective.

Economy pilot participants considered that the Canadian gender goals were broadly applicable to the Scottish context. They did note though that Scottish goals would be more beneficial as these could take into account the impact of reserved and devolved matters. Furthermore, given the wide-ranging drivers of the gender pay gap and having considered specifically Economy portfolio activity that might help to address the objective, pilot colleagues decided to focus their approach on a further sub-objective, where policy initiatives could be more clearly identified within the remit of the Economy portfolio. If implementing cross government strategic goals, this may not have been necessary, but would require cross portfolio collaboration.

Categorising Budget Lines

The Economy pilot identified several important policy activities that would contribute towards achieving the selected objective. Due to the envelope based nature of the Scottish budget – whereby funding is allocated to portfolio ‘pots’ and then distributed to portfolio programmes – it was challenging to clearly attribute specific budget lines within the Economy budget which contribute to achieving the goal. For example, funding for an identified activity could be only a small part of a budget line; sit across budget lines; or be delivered through activity that not only supports the gender goal. The ability to categorise budget lines was also limited by the short timescale of the pilot due to the complexity involved.

Justice and Home Affairs Pilot

Portfolio Purpose and Context

The Justice and Home Affairs portfolio keeps Scotland’s communities safe and secure, and resilient and also has responsibility for the civil, criminal and administrative justice systems.

The Justice Vision, published in February 2022, sets out Scottish Government’s vision to deliver a just, safe and resilient Scotland. This will see the people of Scotland living in safer, more tolerant and inclusive communities, free from inequality and hate. The Vision covers five aims which span the full journey of criminal, civil and administrative justice, with a focus on creating safer communities, reducing and preventing crime and reoffending, and shifting societal attitudes and circumstances which perpetuate crime and harm. The vision is built on the four principles of equality and human rights, evidence-based, embedding person-centred and trauma informed practices, and collaboration and partnership.

The Justice and Home Affairs budget supports a range of activity, with a large proportion being allocated to Justice Partners, such as the Scottish Police Authority, Community Justice Services, The Scottish Prison Service, and the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service.

Relevance of Draft Gender Goal

The portfolio is committed to advancing equality and addressing the causes of inequality, including tackling gender inequality and preventing violence against women and girls. The pilot therefore considered the draft Canadian gender goal of “eliminating gender-based violence and harassment, and promoting security of the person and access to justice”.

Justice pilot participants felt that the draft goal was broadly applicable to the Scottish context. However, if strategic equality goals were implemented for the Scottish Government, participants felt that aligning a government wide gender based justice goal to the Justice Vision would be beneficial. Incorporating existing commitments on tackling violence against women and girls, such as the Equally Safe Strategy, would also be beneficial.

Categorising Budget Lines

The Justice pilot participants identified a range of policy interventions that would be relevant for achieving the strategic goal. However, as with the Economy pilot, the Scottish Budget is allocated to the Justice portfolio in envelopes rather than as individual programmes, and so the pilot area found challenges in categorising Level 3 and 4 budget lines against the goal within the timescales of the pilot, as the identified policy activity sat in a range of budget lines, at different levels, including in other portfolios, and as part of larger budget pots.

Combined Pilot Feedback on Challenges and Opportunities

Challenges

Both pilot areas reported that there were a number of challenges to implementing the OECD’s recommended approach. These challenges were mostly found in relation to identifying an appropriate goal that could be tackled through activity within the portfolios remit and control, and categorising Level 3 and 4 budget lines that helped achieve the goal due to the current portfolio envelope based budgeting system.

Justice pilot participants reported, for example, that while following the OECD’s recommended approach to aligning activity with strategic gender goals could be beneficial, this was particularly challenging for the portoflio given the proportion of funding that is allocated to justice partners.

In addition, participants noted that the OECD suggestion to help achieve the strategic gender goals by placing additional reporting requirements for equality data/actions on to funding would require discussion between Scottish Government and justice partners.

Opportunities

The pilot teams reported that an approach focused on delivering and adapting policy and programmes around overarching goals could have a number of benefits. This included raising the profile of issues, in areas that have not traditionally considered these issues to be relevant in their portfolio, but where changes could be made that would contribute to equality goals. In addition, participants felt that an approach that supported, and importantly encouraged, refocusing of activity and redirecting of funds to address equality gaps, might provide a new avenue for Scottish Government to tackle persistent inequalities without the need for new spending.

Participants did suggest that should the budget be categorised against strategic goals, this could help to drive cross-cutting activity, particularly if this would enable new proposals to be brought forward to help tackle persistent inequalities.

Finally, pilot areas reported that an approach to budgeting focused on cross-cutting strategic goals, as tested in the pilot, could provide a potential opportunity to identify overlaps in activity and spend across the Scottish Government.