National Advisory Council on Women and Girls report: Scottish Government response

Leadership

The NACWG makes two recommendations to the Scottish Government under the theme of “Leadership”, calling on the Scottish Government to advocate for the devolution of equality to the Scottish Parliament and to integrate gender budgeting into the Scottish Budget process.

1. “We call for Scottish Government to advocate for the full devolution of Equality legislation and policy making to the Scottish Parliament.”

2. “We call on the Scottish Government to integrate intersectional Gender Budget Analysis into the Scottish Budget process, and to give this a statutory footing.”

Devolving equal opportunities

The NACWG calls for the Scottish Government “to advocate for the full devolution of Equality legislation and policy making to the Scottish Parliament” and says that “the Scottish Government must dedicate considerable effort to the devolution of equality through existing inter-governmental mechanisms”.

The NACWG sets out its view that only the full devolution of equality would allow the Scottish Parliament to make distinct equality law in Scotland and enable us to challenge entrenched inequality in new ways.

We accept the NACWG’s recommendation. While our position is that independence is the surest way to protect and enhance the powers of the Scottish Parliament, we will continue to press for additional powers for the Scottish Government and Parliament for as long as Scotland remains within the UK.

Under the current devolution framework, as set out in the Scotland Act 1998, as amended by the Scotland Act 2016, equal opportunities is a reserved matter. This means that equal opportunities is reserved to the Westminster Parliament and the Scottish Parliament cannot legislate on any matter which falls within the equal opportunities reservation.

There are a small number of exceptions to the general reservation of equal opportunities. In response to recommendations made by the Smith Commission following the Scottish Independence Referendum in 2014, the Scotland Act 2016 devolved additional powers to the Scottish Parliament, including two new exceptions to the general equal opportunities reservation.

These limited exceptions allow for the Scottish Parliament to legislate for the inclusion of persons with protected characteristics in non-executive posts on the boards of Scottish public authorities and equal opportunities in relation to the Scottish functions of Scottish public authorities. The first exception allowed the Scottish Parliament to pass the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018.

The Scottish Government is committed to promoting equality and upholding human rights, to the fullest extent possible within the current devolution framework. We will continue to take action where we can, including delivering our commitment to introduce a new Human Rights Bill for Scotland, in this parliamentary session, to give effect in Scots Law to a wide range of internationally recognised human rights, as far as possible within devolved competence.

This will include the incorporation of CEDAW, as was recommended by the NACWG in its 2018 Annual Report^[4]. The Bill will strengthen domestic legal protections by making these rights enforceable in Scots law, as far as possible within devolved competence.

The Bill is part of taking forward the 30 recommendations from the National Taskforce for Human Rights Leadership for a new human rights framework for Scotland, published on 12 March 2021^[5]. The Scottish Government has accepted all of these recommendations.

Collaboration with stakeholders, including rights-holders, will be essential in developing – and implementing – the Bill. As outlined in the 2021-22 Programme for Government, we will consult on the Bill in the coming year.

The Human Rights Bill exemplifies how the Scottish Government will utilise the powers at our disposal to advance equality and respect, protect and fulfil human rights. But the extent of our powers does not meet the extent of our ambition for equality in Scotland. The full devolution of equal opportunities to the Scottish Parliament would allow the Scottish Government to make choices about the use and extension of measures to advance equality, whilst guaranteeing the strength of existing equality legislation within Scotland.

How will we take this recommendation forward?

We will write to the UK Government to reassert our position that the full devolution of equal opportunities to the Scottish Parliament is in the best interests of the Scottish people.

In advance of doing so, we will work with equality organisations and other key stakeholders to continue to build consensus and establish an evidence-based rationale to support the devolution of equal opportunities to the Scottish Parliament. This rationale will be grounded in evidence and a clear understanding of how additional powers could be used in Scotland to tackle inequality and realise our vision for a fairer, more prosperous nation. We believe that this will afford us the best possible opportunity to make a strong and persuasive case to the UK Government for additional powers in this area.

We recognise, however, that the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament also have a duty to work within the legal framework, and to support cooperative working with the UK Government and other devolved administrations in equal partnership, and by consensus, to secure Scotland’s interests. We will raise with UK Government and the other devolved administrations, opportunities to strengthen four nations joint working in respect of measures to advance equality.

Integrating intersectional gender budget analysis into the Scottish Budget process

The NACWG calls on the Scottish Government to “integrate intersectional Gender Budget Analysis into the Scottish Budget process, and to give this a statutory footing”.

We accept the principle of the NACWG’s recommendation and will engage with the NACWG, the Equality Budget Advisory Group and others, to develop an approach to further integrate intersectional gender analysis into the Scottish Budget process as part of our wider work on equality and human rights budgeting. We will also consider giving this a statutory footing, including through our work to review the PSED as it operates in Scotland.

Gender budgeting, sometimes called gender-sensitive or gender-responsive budgeting, is a way of analysing the budget for its effect on gender equality^[6]. The NACWG defines it as “a means of preparing budgets or analysing them from a gender perspective”.

Gender budgeting does not mean that there should be separate budgets for women, or that money should be divided equally between women and men, but acknowledges that spending and taxation can affect women and men differently because of their different situations, needs and priorities, including how they experience paid and unpaid work, access education, and use services. Gender budgeting helps us to examine and restructure revenue and spending decisions in order to eliminate unequal outcomes between women and men^[7].

In its recommendation, the NACWG places emphasis on intersectional gender budgeting. In their 2020 Report and Recommendations, the NACWG define intersectionality as “a framework for understanding how multiple categories of identity (such as gender, race and class) interact in ways that create complex systems of oppression and power”. This means an approach to gender budgeting that recognises how multiple factors, such as gender, race and socio-economic status interact to produce different outcomes for some groups.

An intersectional gender budgeting approach would involve analysing budgets by more than one category, for example, examining not only how a spending proposal might impact women and girls compared to men and boys, but additionally, how that proposal might impact disabled women compared to non-disabled women and women of different socio-economic statuses. This should draw on analysis undertaken at the options scoping and appraisal stages of policy development, so that it is embedded in the decisions reflected in the budget.

In order to successfully implement an intersectional gender budgeting approach, we need good intersectional data and evidence to support analysis. Urgently addressing data gaps has been identified by the NACWG as a fundamental action required to support the implementation of its recommendations, and the Scottish Government is taking action to improve the availability and use of intersectional data by policy-makers. This work is described in greater detail in the following chapter.

Existing actions to analyse the Scottish budget from a gender and equality perspective.

We have committed to take steps to further embed equality and human rights in all stages of the Budget process in the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government 2021-22, and in the Scottish Government and Scottish Green Party Shared Policy Programme. However, we recognise that there is more to do in this area, and in particular to meet the NACWG’s ambitions for integrated intersectional gender budget analysis.

The Scottish Government already takes certain steps to analyse the Scottish budget from a gender and wider equality perspective and we have sought to continually improve how equality is embedded in the budget process over a number of years. A key part of our work is the publication of the Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement alongside the Scottish Budget. This statement assesses the impact of the Budget on groups of people who share protected characteristics and people experiencing socio-economic disadvantage and in more recent years additionally considers human rights.

The budget in this way is important because it helps the Scottish Government to make the best use of public money to deliver positive outcomes and help those who need it most. It also helps us to discharge our legal responsibilities under the PSED and the Fairer Scotland Duty, as set out in the Equality Act 2010.

In August 2019, Equality Budget Advisory Group (EBAG) and the Scottish Government produced informal guidance for policy-makers on equality and human rights budgeting^[8].

We recognise that in order to improve the integration of gender into budgeting both within the Scottish Government in the wider third sector and public sector, we need to build capacity and understanding of how this can be done in practice. We have awarded funding of £220K over three-years (2021-24) to the Scottish Women’s Budget Group to work with civil society groups and local authorities to raise awareness of, and build capacity in gender budgeting.

Using a combination of approaches, including mentoring support, the development of a toolkit, and training sessions, the Scottish Women’s Budget Group aims to improve the quality of equality impact assessments to ensure that decision-makers take into account how budget decisions could impact women and men differently and as a result either exacerbate or help to reduce gender inequality.

Other recommendations to improve equality and human rights budget analysis

Interest in understanding budgets from various perspectives has mounted in recent years and, in addition to the NACWG’s recommendation, a number of other recommendations and proposals relating to budgeting have been made to the Scottish Government. In its January 2021 report^[9] to the Scottish Government, the Social Renewal Advisory Board focused on the integration of equality and human rights budgeting into the Scottish Budget with a shift towards prevention and a greater use of participatory budgeting. Other recommendations have been made on wider equality, wellbeing^[10], children’s rights and human rights budgeting^[11].

In May 2021, the Equality Budget Advisory Group (EBAG) presented the Scottish Government with a comprehensive set of recommendations^[12] to enable further embedding of equality and human rights into the budget process. These were presented to the incoming administration in summer 2021 and work is being taken forward to consider the recommendations both to embed immediate improvements as well as in the context of longer term budget improvement work. We will respond to the EBAG recommendations in full in Spring 2022.

We recognise the importance of developing a coherent approach to respond to these recommendations, one that delivers practical improvements to the budget process which translate into better outcomes for Scotland’s communities, especially for those most marginalised.

How will we take this recommendation forward?

Integrating intersectional gender budget analysis

This work will be taken forward through wider work to improve equality and human rights budget analysis processes including responding to recommendations made by the Equality Budget Advisory Group (EBAG).

Recognising the complexities of what may be required to integrate intersectional gender budgeting, we have engaged with EBAG sharing the recommendations and seeking their advice on the best approaches. The group highlighted that alignment to other proposals was essential. Additionally, improvements to data collection including specifically intersectional data collection and analysis will be critical enablers of this work. Current progress in these areas are covered later in this response.

The process of integrating intersectional gender budget analysis into the budget approaches should, therefore, be considered alongside the recommendations from the Equality Budget Advisory Group (EBAG). These recommendations will enable overall equality and human rights budgetary improvements and will consequently positively impact on intersectional gender budget analysis. Likewise, the improvements to budgeting processes must be built upon underpinning improvements in data investment and policy option appraisal and evaluation.

The Scottish Government will, to ensure alignment, set out thinking on this specific Advisory Council recommendation, in spring 2022 alongside consideration of the EBAG recommendations.

Placing intersectional gender budgeting on a statutory footing

We will also consider giving this a statutory footing, including through our work to review the PSED as it operates in Scotland. In December this year, the Scottish Government published a consultation on reforming the operation of the PSED in Scotland. This seeks views from stakeholders on the merits and practical implications of placing intersectional gender budgeting on a statutory footing through PSED.

Following the consultation, we will carefully consider next steps before bringing forward, in mid-2022, regulations to reform the operation of the PSED in Scotland.