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

Annex A - The NACWG’s 2020 Recommendations

The following table sets out a summary of the NACWG’s 2020 recommendations, under the NACWG’s three themes of Leadership, Accountability and Creating Conditions.

Leadership

We call for Scottish Government to advocate for the full devolution of equality legislation and policy-making to the Scottish Parliament.

We call on the Scottish Government to integrate intersectional gender budget analysis into the Scottish Budget process, and to give this a statutory footing.

Accountability

We call for an equality-focused review body to be established in the Scottish Parliament that will provide an equality-focused accountability mechanism which has an independent authority to scrutinise and analyse Parliament’s business.

We call on the Scottish Government as part of the current review of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) regulations in Scotland to place additional specific duties on listed Public Bodies to:

• Gather and use intersectional data, including employment and service-user data, to advance equality between protected groups, including men and women;
• Integrate intersectional gender budget analysis into their budget setting procedures.

Creating Conditions

We call on the Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) to appoint a Commissioner tasked specifically with promotion and protection of Women’s Rights. This Commissioner would lead work to realise rights for all women and girls as set out in CEDAW, the Istanbul Convention and other international instruments.

We also call for the expansion of the mandate of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, with sufficient resourcing to allow it to take on cases on behalf of individuals.

Beyond the SHRC, we also call on the Scottish Government to ensure that the mandates of all Scottish regulators, ombudspersons and oversight bodies are required to advance equality and rights.