Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group's recommendations: Scottish Government response

Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group

The Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group is a non-statutory advisory group, convened by the Scottish Government. Previously named the Equality Budget Advisory Group, the remit has been formally expanded and the name has been changed to recognise the increasing work on human rights budgeting. In 2022 we worked with the current members of the Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group to develop a refreshed model for the coming years. This work considered changes to the governance and running of the Group including: updating the Terms of Reference, and reviewing the membership and role of the independent chair. While the recommendations were issued prior to the change of name, we will refer to this body by the new name within this report.

The Group was initially organised to help shape the Scottish Government's equality approach to the Budget. The Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group does this by:

• supporting a process of equality and human rights analysis to ensure that the equality and human rights implications of the Scottish Government's policy processes inform budgetary decisions, and that corresponding information presented in the Scottish Budget documents is clear
• contributing to mapping the pathway between evidence, policy, and outcomes with the allocation and spend of public finance
• identifying linkages between the Draft Budget, the National Performance Framework, Economic Strategy and policy making in general and supporting scrutiny of outcomes in relation to budget commitments
• contributing to improved awareness of, and commitment to, mainstreaming equality and human rights analysis into policy and budget processes.

The Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group is chaired by Professor Angela O’Hagan of Glasgow Caledonian University. Membership consists of Scottish Government officials, COSLA, public bodies, and equality and human rights stakeholder organisations. Further details and the Group’s meeting minutes are available online.

Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group Recommendations

In their report ‘Recommendations for equality and human rights budgeting – 2021-2026 parliamentary session’, the Group set out 31 recommendations to the Scottish Government, which aim to further embed equality and human rights in the development of the Scottish Budget. The recommendations focus on four aspects of the Scottish Budget:

• The budget development process
• Internal and external budget communication
• Organisation and culture
• Knowledge and understanding of equality and human rights as it applies to the budget and wider decision making

Scottish Government response

The First Minister reaffirmed our commitment to embedding equality, inclusion and human rights into everything we do with the publication of ‘Equality, opportunity, community; New leadership – A fresh start’. As we stated within the Bute House Agreement, we remain committed to further embedding equality and human rights within all stages of the Scottish Government's Budget process to ensure that our spend advances equality and human rights for all of Scotland's people. As stated in the Scottish Government’s 2023 policy prospectus, we will protect people across Scotland, as far as possible, from the harm inflicted by UK Government policies and the ongoing cost of living crisis.

Last year was challenging for public finances, but throughout we ensured that there was a focus on analysing the implications of budget decisions on equality. In May 2022 we published an equality and fairer Scotland analysis of the Resource Spending Review and in November we published an equality and fairness evidence summary alongside the Emergency Budget Review. The forward-look fiscal position set out in the Medium Term Financial Strategy, published in May 2023, makes it likely that tough decisions will need to be taken in the Scottish Budget. We will continue to use equality and human rights analysis to ensure that our decisions support those most impacted and continue to advance equality.

For over a decade, the Scottish Government has published an equality statement alongside the Budget, demonstrating our ongoing commitment to set out how the Scottish Budget impacts on key sectors of Scotland's population. We will continue to improve this analysis, not least by further embedding human rights budgeting in the Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement and, critically, throughout the budget cycle . Taking a human rights-based approach to budgeting requires us to consider the impact of our approach to revenue raising, resource allocation and expenditure on progressing human rights. We believe that the actions we are taking will support progress against the three key principles of human rights budgeting. These are transparency, accountability and participation. These principles will form the backbone of our future work in this area.

Recent years have seen a number of recommendations and proposals relating to budget analysis being made to the Scottish Government, covering gender, human rights and children’s rights, as well as cross-cutting strategic issues such as climate change. Given this, it is vital that we make improvements in a structured and cohesive manner. We are therefore developing an action plan to achieve this. We recognise, as highlighted in the recommendations, that genuine improvements can only be achieved by collaborative working across the Scottish Government and by drawing on the Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group's expertise. We remain committed to a partnership approach.

This document sets out our response to each of the four groupings of recommendations from the Group’s report. We also set out the key actions that we will take, many in partnership with others. We recognise that the commitments we are making form only part of our journey of continuous improvement. In summary, we will:

• continue to make the budget process more transparent, including through the exploration of a Citizen’s Budget
• explore opportunities to improve public engagement with the budget process
• continue to improve equality and human rights leadership and accountability structures in the Scottish Government to drive progress and ensure that equality and human rights are embedded in cross-cutting priorities
• continue to make improvements to our approach to impact assessments, including equality impact assessments and develop a human rights impact assessment framework
• better demonstrate alignment with the Scottish Government’s Equality Outcomes and National Performance Framework
• build on current work to design and deliver a programme of knowledge and capacity building in equality and human rights in the Scottish Government
• retain the Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group with its enhanced remit to include Human Rights
• ensure appropriate resource is provided to support officials to undertake robust equality and human rights analysis of both policy and budgets
• work with the Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group to develop an action plan for the delivery of these actions and provide regular updates on their progress to the Group and others.