Welcome everyone to the 27th meeting of the Equalities, Human Rights Committee for 2017. Can I remind everyone to turn phones to silent mode? Apologies from our convener, Christina McKelvie. Moving straight to gender item 1, we have moved back to the draft budget scrutiny for 2018-19, and our first item of business is to continue that process, looking at the Government's draft budget for next year with a panel of witnesses today. I am very pleased to welcome Judith Robertson, chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, Safia Ali, race equality mainstreaming officer for the Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector Organisations Scotland, Chris Oswald, who is a member of the equality and budget advisory group, and the head of policy of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, and Dr Angelo O'Hagan, who is a member of the equality and budget advisory group, lecturer and the wise research centre.  Our audio tech guys will catch you when you wish to speak. I should also at this point declare an interest in that I was previously on the leadership panel of the Scottish National Action Plan on human rights. I'd like to start by asking the panel just a general opening question about the view of yourself and your organisations as to how we currently do as a country in terms of getting equalities and human rights into our budgeting process. Who would like to start? Please, Judith. So, basically, at the moment, our budget would not be deemed to be delivering in relation to human rights international law in that it does not take into account the norms and standards of international human rights law explicitly in its processes. It is not analysed with that in mind. It does not come from that analysis and understanding in terms of its actual either process in terms of its formulation or what it is actually less what it is actually seeking to achieve. There are aspects in terms of both process and what it is doing, where, yes, you would say that that talks to delivery in relation to progressive realisation of human rights, but currently it would not firmly sit within that context. Who would like to come in next? Yes, Angela. Okay. To follow on from Judith, it is about the starting point, really. The extent to which equality and human rights are central as a starting point for how we allocate public resources and how we raise public revenue, and those frames are not yet dominant. I think that we have seen Scotland being in a position of being a pioneer over the years, then it has been a bit of a laggard, and it could pick up again. There is a lot of good work going on behind the scenes, as it were. There are developments in the equality evidence finder and analytical developments. There is the inclusive growth drive and the narrative and discourse around that. Over many years, we have seen some very encouraging statements included in the equality budget statement, for example, that have recognised the limitations of the kind of modelling that is used in our public finance management, but we need to move beyond that. I think that what we consistently see is a disconnect between some of that very positive discourse, some of the very positive work going on behind the scenes, and then it being fully implemented in the spending departments. That is where, I think, successively we can see where we are let down. The equality impact assessments and human rights impact assessment processes are not effectively used. The budget, while there is very good work going on in trying to bring the budget into thinking about it as part of the mainstream policy process—that has been increasingly evident over the iteration of the budget process in Scotland—we are not seeing the portfolio departments keep up with that, and we have seen some big omissions in the last year or so, and we can maybe talk about them as well. I think that, comparatively, looking across Europe, we have led the field in many ways. The nature of our political structures in Scotland mean that there are these types of opportunities to encourage parliamentarians and the policy departments in government to think about equality and human rights. That is an aspect for which, where we are envied internationally, we have openness and access and we can have those conversations, but we need to move from having the conversations to seeing the application and implementation of the analysis that is there and that we have sought to develop the competence in across the piece. There is lots more to say about where we are in terms of our European neighbours. Some countries have taken an approach to underpin equality and gender budgeting or human rights budgeting to give it a legal underpinning. We have not taken that step yet in Scotland, but we have lots of other levers that could be applied to reinforce that as Judith is outlining. I very much agree with Judith and Angela that the progress in Scotland is encouraging, but it is, although we may be ahead of other countries, sufficient for Scotland, and I would say at the moment that no. I very much agree with Judith that human rights analysis is largely absent from the budget. There is a quality analysis of it, but the issue is whether or not the budget drives policy or policy drives the budget. As Angela is saying, if the component parts of spend from departments have not been viewed appropriately through the lens of the public sector equality duty or through the Human Rights Act, then what you get as a result is a bag of unanalyzed things. Things like the equality budget statement become a post-hoc analysis. Rather than equality driving the budget or driving elements of spend, it tends to be a more reactive statement and saying that these are positive things that are happening for women, rather than the position of women or ethnic minorities or disabled people driving the budget itself. I will give one example just now. If you look at the affordable housing programme where we are aiming to build 50,000 houses, we have 15,000 wheelchair users in Scotland inappropriately housed. We know that ethnic minorities are four times more likely to be overcrowded. We could resolve those issues potentially through that if we choose to do so, but we do not see that type of driver coming through from the department to then feed into the budget. I agree with everybody, as I said. That is the benefit of coming saying last, so I can agree with everyone, but just what Chris's point is exactly on the housing. Ethnic minority communities contribute a huge asset to Scotland. I think that Scotland is a driving force at the moment when it comes to race equality, but we lag behind when we are looking at a good equality process. We have mentioned it in our submissions to you in the practice. Unless it is pre-planned, it is a reactive one at the end of the budget to include that we have not done anything for ethnic minorities, so we will include them in so that we have done everything. Instead of pre-planning it, that is one of our huge concerns. Even though we are driving forward and doing well, there are lots of things that are not pre-planned, and that is our biggest concern. Unless black public bodies have it pre-planned within their budgets and they are taking that on, we will be addressing ethnic minority issues and race equality issues specifically, we will then put it as a reactive at the end. That is our main concern. Thank you. Before I open to my other colleagues on the committee, I would like to explore the issue of the disconnect between political rhetoric in this place and in others, and the actual reality of spend on the ground. The example that I always come back to is the 2014 Children and Young People Act, which passed in part 1 some very lofty ambitions around children's rights and making children's rights real. Only to have the next year, the total number of children's rights officers across Scotland's 32 local authorities cut by half, and that struck me as a perfect example of how rhetoric is not matched by budgeting reality on the ground. For what reason do you think that it exists? Is that about the presumption against ring fencing, or is it about just the fact that we are very good at and talk is cheap, and yet we have other priorities and we are living in quite a hostile budgeting environment? What is the reason for that disconnect? Who would like to go first? Judith? I suspect that I would say that there are many reasons for that, that is a complex picture. From the perspective of this conversation in relation to human rights budgeting, I would say that two things principally. One is where the policy is set up front, so the policy work that is done, the thinking that is done and the analysis that is done in terms of both at all levels of government, whether that be national government, Scottish Government, local authority processes, how you would look at that, look at budgeting processes and decision making processes from a human rights perspective would tend to not lead you down that route. If those processes were aligned throughout our systems within Scotland, then we could have a systematic analysis and understanding, which is one of the strengths of the human rights framework, is that it actually provides standards, norms, language and a framework for looking at processes that incorporate non-discrimination and equalities analysis, which would then help you potentially not lead to that kind of outcome. That is one way of looking at it. We have another issue, which is a genuine one, which is about understanding the implications of the legislation that we pass and effectively resourcing the processes in which that legislation is intended to deliver. The community empowerment legislation would potentially be a case in point. The SDS, the self-directed support legislation, would be another example, where very good rights-based legislation is intended to advance people's rights and progress people's rights, but the budget allocation that is necessary to ensure that that piece of legislation is effectively delivered on the ground is either outwith the gift of the Scottish Government who has made the decision, or it is within a context where effective delivery is at the very least threatened by the lack of resources, or the comprehension of that policy-making process through local authorities is not effectively carried out to the end of the day. There is a disconnect, and I would say that it is a reasonably big job to tackle that disconnect. I would pick another example, which I know is dear to the committee's heart, which is around gypsy travellers, where the Scottish Government has set aside money in the past for site development, but because of the Concordat, the loosening of ring fencing, those aims are not achievable unless you have the full consent and buy-in of the local authorities around the table. We see that across a whole range of different public policy issues, so I don't think that it's unique to the budget. It's something that is a consequence of the purposeful relationship between Government and local government in that sense. Angela Russell, would you like to add that? I just wanted to add that sometimes when you've got ring fenced budgets, it's a really positive impact because then you know that that will go to that designated. If we take, for example, ethnic minorities when we had positive action in race equality, where you knew that in a certain workforce there weren't going to be enough ethnic minorities even coming for those posts, you ring fenced it, you made sure that you had positive action in place for employment, but the problem that we had later on was that this was all removed. Our dilemma is how do we then make sure that one of my other roles is mainstreaming? When I'm sitting there looking at mainstreaming, procurement, policies, procedures, interviewing, I can see all the gaps, I can see where they're going wrong, especially where they're advertising. You can't keep advertising in one paper and expect everybody to be reading that one paper, so it's like getting round the table and saying, we need to engage with communities, but unless you have that ring fenced and it's positively then proceeded towards that, for ourselves or our ethnic minority communities, it's not going to target them, it's not going to target them, you're going to leave them out, so it has to be thought through like my first question before, it has to be thought through, you don't just do it as a reactive issue. Finally Angela, would you like to add anything? I think, I mean, what's left to add really from colleagues excellent contributions. The idea of mainstreaming to my mind should mean that budgeting, equalities and human rights budgeting should activate mainstreaming, because that's bringing a completion to the whole policy process where spending allocations and revenue decisions are entirely integral. It is partly a question about following the money, so our resource is being allocated in such a way that the policy intentions behind either policy or legislative intervention are going to be realised. For committees in scrutiny roles, for policymakers in their roles of formulating and putting forward proposals, to ask us the starting point, will this policy, will this legal intervention advance equality and the realisation of rights, and if not, let's think again? Are we allocating our resources in such a way that we will realise those shared and common objectives? That means, as Judith has rightly said, that there are many reasons for this and it's a very complex picture, but I think that we have some very powerful levers in Scotland, the public sector equality duty, our commitment politically to human rights, the human rights legislation itself, but we see, I think, some weaknesses in the linking across, again, the very progressive ideas of the national performance framework, the discourse around social contract and inclusive growth as part of our economic strategy. We need to be a lot better at making those linkages across and using equality and human rights impact assessment in a much more rigorous and much more robust way than we currently do across public authorities, not just within government. Chris, do you want us to come in on that point? Yeah, just given the mention of the public sector equality duty, I think the commission's sense is that, and this is not unique to the Scottish Government, it's across local government and other public bodies as well, is that there are three parts to the public sector duty, the illumination of discrimination, the advancement of equality of opportunity, the fostering of good community relations. I think that most public bodies get the first bit, are we doing things that are bad, unless we assure ourselves that we are not doing things that are bad, but then they tend to stop. Particularly the issues that I think are germane to this discussion about how do we advance equality, how do we advance human rights, the analysis has stopped at that point and I think that you can look at areas where perhaps around apprenticeships or city deals, where policies appear to be neutral, where policy could have a very major impact on advancing equality of opportunity for groups who are being held back over time, but the analysis hasn't been there and then the monitoring when it becomes apparent that they're not, doesn't kickstart any revision of policy or approach. Thank you, I'd like to now open it up to my wider committee members and Mary, starting with you. Thank you convener and good morning panel. My question follows on nicely from the line of questioning that we've been looking at and it's quite a straightforward question but I suspect the answer will not be and it is how do we follow that money because often a figure will appear in a budget. How do we actually assess that the money that's put aside delivers the outcome that we're looking for because it can be very difficult to follow a budget figure through because government tends to be quite good at being very opaque about where the money goes and the comment that you made Angela about, you know, asking the question about is it going to deliver, I suspect in any portfolio if you question any government minister about are you delivering, you've allocated x amount of money are you delivering, the answer will be yes. So, how do we actually follow the money to assess its delivering? The example that we would use is modern apprenticeships in Scotland where, again, we have a very successful programme, 25,000 young people in employment or in employment training, as a result of it. We have known for many years at the ratios of occupational segregation, which have largely not moved. We published research from the Equals and Human Rights Commission in 2014, I think it was, which for the first time uncovered that less than 2% of apprenticeships were from ethnic minorities, which is at least half of what we would expect it to be on a level playing field, and that remarkably there were 75 disabled people out of the 25,000 modern apprenticeships, which were in place across Scotland. Now, to be fair, Schools Development Scotland have taken ownership of that, and they have moved forward, certainly on the disability issue, but they appeared to be blind at that point. They were not focusing on this. So, again, I think it's the issue of scrutiny, it's the issue of using data and monitoring. Clearly a policy which was intended to benefit all young people was significantly failing disabled people and young ethnic minority people. Nobody set out to exclude them, but equally nobody set out to include them. It's a really useful example of trying to analyse what went wrong. Nobody set out to exclude disabled people from this, but as I said, nobody equally set out to include them. I think it's that element of advancing equality of inclusion, which is missing from a number of these programmes. I would therefore think that it's an area of significant scrutiny. On the issue of collection of data, is there not enough in-depth collection done, or is there not enough focus put on what they should be collecting? I'm sure that, in this case, there was no analysis of data that was collected, and that, to me, is extremely disturbing. In other areas, yes, it is more difficult to collect data.  Yes, we accept that it is not always going to be complete. Generally, data around disability, race and gender and age are usually quite complete, so where agencies aren't using the information that they themselves are generating and using that to inform future policy, we have a serious... This is where we end up in these situations. Okay, that's helpful. Is there anyone else who wants to? How do we follow the money, Mary? In part, as Chris has outlined, there are questions around building the knowledge, building the competence of our policy makers across the piece. The starting point is the assumption of neutrality. Spending allocations are not actually about real people and are not going to have an effect, either, that reinforces existing inequalities, whether they are structural inequalities or the outcomes of other people's actions. We have to absolutely challenge that notion of neutrality, build the knowledge and competence in using the data that is there in analysis and applying that to policy development. Generically, we are not very good at anywhere, is evaluation and looking at implementation and how effective implementation has been. It is with all those considerations in mind, as well as the challenge of devising a new budget process, that the budget review group made the recommendations that it did. I declare an interest, as a member of the budget review group, so forgive me for bumping up our recommendations. There were some very positive recommendations in that report that has been accepted by the Parliament and the Government in terms of opening up to multiple entry points for equalities analysis in the budget process. The emphasis on outcomes and the emphasis on pre-budget scrutiny so that we have a year-round process that looks at what are we spending, what are the consequences and outcomes and results of that spending, and is that shift in the needle? Are we seeing progression against where we want to be in terms of very quality outcomes and, if not, do we need to reorientate? As well as those multiple entry points for that analysis in the revised budgetary process, there are also recommendations for the committees to be much more engaged across the piece, but to draw on a much wider range of information that includes the equality outcomes in mainstreaming reports of public authorities, which I think would help to bring the public sector equality duty mechanisms into closer scrutiny and may improve performance in that regard as well. That helps with the following the money. I know that Judith Scott has a comment on this, and I know that, Linda, you have a supplementary, but I will just come to… I am happy to take your supplementary. Oh, Linda, do you want to come in here then? I am trying to formulate it in my own head, as I am listening to everything that you are all saying. I think that what is striking me is that that was mentioned at the beginning, that difference between the theory and the implementation, and then the linking together all those who have an interest in it. I think that what I am finding quite difficult is to understand and work out how you can have, from central government, very good policy. We talk about monitoring it, we talk about gathering the data and analysing it, but if you have not got the very, very basic way of working at a public authority or local authority level, that becomes very difficult. How do you join up that gap? Is it something as simple as ensuring proper staff training on a regular basis as to how they do these things, or is it a much deeper analysis of the practice on the ground? Do you want to cover the area that you want to cover? Yes, it is definitely similar. To be honest, it is not a different point. There are a number of things. Under international human rights law, all public authorities, including Government and public authorities across any state, have an obligation to deliver against the laws that have been signed up to them. In Scotland, we are signed up to all the treaties that the UK signed up to, so that would include the international covenant, civil liberties, political rights and international covenant, and economic and social and cultural rights. That is the suite of the international human rights framework. Ideally, and in fact, they are obligated to, all our public authorities in Scotland should be able to articulate, understand and deliver against those international standards. The treaties are high-level instruments, but underneath those instruments are very clear and considered and thought through processes and standards and norms, which support states and all the different actors within states to be able to look at whether we are delivering against those international treaties. They are non-political because they have been signed up to as state actors. Apart from delivering on the obligations and being built on a framework of recognising that they are intrinsic to society, some people will do worse and some people will do better. The people who are going to do worse are vulnerable and need additional inputs and supports, and we know as society who those people are. We know early doors and up front, and we have an obligation as a state to ensure that those people's lives are improved. That is true of all states. Clearly, that happens to greater or lesser extent in different states. Having that common language and understanding enshrined in the analysis and the way that public authorities and Government are looking at policy development, and understanding that if we do it well for the people who are most vulnerable, everybody else will benefit. That is the rationale on which those international standards are established. We are a long way from that. What I am saying is that it feels quite idealistic. It feels almost like, why are you saying that, because we are so far away from that. The standards are very clear. They provide a framework. For example, we talk endlessly, as a commission, to be honest, in my view, and we have to, about what we call the panel principles. Participation, accountability, non-discrimination, empowerment and legality. They are fundamental principles of international human rights law. They are cross-cutting of all the treaties. If we incorporated our thinking and analysis, our perspective in the generation of policy, the example that Chris used there about the modern apprenticeships would have been completely different. We would still have had modern apprenticeships. It is a very good and supportive idea in terms of supporting those who need that support. However, the whole basis in which the policy would have been developed would have been developed with that analysis in train. It would have actually monitored the data. It would have had an accountability process built into it. It would have understood that, in order to actually target people who are currently being discriminated against, we need to do X, Y and Z, because we would have asked those people. We would have known upfront what it was that their needs were and what was the best route to actually get to them. Safia has outlined—Safia will know exactly what it is going to take to get into those communities, to get people who are not accessing those markets into those processes. Why is that not happening? That, for me, is not neither rocket science nor science. It is not built into our processes in a systematic way. I have seen myriad, many, very good and well-intentioned policies, laws and so on, coming from the Scottish Government and Parliament. I think that things are improving. We are on an improving trend. We are also being deeply undermined by some policies and practices that are coming from the UK Government. I am absolutely clear on that. That places an addition or responsibility on the Scottish Government to respond to the needs of its population. It is a bit of a moving feast, but in terms of human rights budgeting, because the budgeting is not the beginning of a process. In fact, it is cyclical. I feel that if we had that common language, if we integrated human rights standards and norms, analysis, understanding and processes into our delivery through our public authority processes, we would be having a different kind of conversation at the moment. That language would be much better understood. When we said something, it would be understood right down the line, as opposed to being something in which we are all coming at it with our different priorities and our different places and our different processes. The Equalities Framework gives us a huge amount in that. It goes a long way to—but what it does not do is that there are bits missing within the Equalities Framework that do not effectively deliver some of the human rights standards. We can have that conversation if you want. We are not nowhere. I do not want to say that, but we have a long way to go. I thank Judith. That is quite a comprehensive information. I know that you have sparked something here because Chris and Angela and Mary wanted to come in on something. Who else? Antaphia. Just to add on Judith's analysis, if you think about something like the Convention of the Rights of Disabled People and the commitment in that that the UKE has signed up to on independent living, what we would expect to see is that that would have a full expression in terms of self-directed support. We would expect to see it reflected in housing policy. We would expect to see it reflected in transport and our digital infrastructure areas where we know that there are significant barriers for disabled people's full participation in society. We have a Government framework around disabled people's rights and independent living, but it is entirely predicated on local authority, health and other agencies' delivery, who are rightly independent of Government, but there is no checking. As I come back to the point that I made at the start, the 50,000 affordable houses that we are seeking to build in Scotland could make a significant impact on people's right to live at home in dignified situations, but it will only happen if we purposefully approach it. I think that what is missing from Government at the moment is a sense of setting the pace, whether it is about apprenticeships. How many disabled people would we expect to be in apprenticeships, rather than just saying, we will just leave it to chance? How many houses that we are going to build will be fully accessible? How many buses that when we look at franchising or approving tenders, what is the commitment in that to fully accessible transport? Unless we build these things up, it is lovely to have the statement, but it is dependent on other actors, and that is the problem where we see a lot of what we aspire to falling down. Angela Constance's question is about deeper analysis and practice on the ground, or is it about training? It is about all those things, and it is about building the competence that can result in the purposeful approach that Chris has talked about. As colleagues have said quite rightly, there are many positive levers, and we have a positive disposition in Scotland from this Government and this Parliament towards advancing equaliseas and human rights, but it is making the crossover, making those linkages much stronger. While there is very good policy that can come out, we also see an inconsistency there. Two quick examples. The Scottish National Investment Bank, great, very interesting idea. The consultation has no reference to equalities and human rights, whereas we should be talking about our investment in the wellbeing of our country and taking a much more expansive view of investment than being about bridges and roads and things that we can point at and count. Certainly, the expansion of childcare that we have seen in the last few years is enormously welcome, as it is, and has started from a different discursive place, a different conceptual place, about expanding seeing childcare, investment in the physical facility and the childcare in the estate, as being about capital investment, but that bigger investment in early years, that bigger investment in labour market participation and that investment in our tax base. We have seen an argument in the round there. We have not always managed to hold it in that space, but we have not seen that read across at the start of a conversation about the National Investment Bank. Scottish Women's Budget Group engender closed the gap, and others have come up with some principles that the committee will no doubt see when it looks at the consultation responses on the National Investment Bank. It is about seeing the frameworks and the concepts that we are talking about as enabling rather than compliance mechanisms. I think that that is a big part of the issue in terms of public authorities' implementation of all of those proposals. I am seeing it at the moment in the evaluation that I am doing on participatory budgeting, where the public sector equality duty in all its components is not seen as an enabling platform for participatory budgeting. There are many examples. We have a new debate, a positively initiated debate on tax and the role of tax. Again, there is a very good, well-informed discussion paper from the Scottish Government, but it is framed around a set of assumptions. One needs to question the extent to which assumptions are within that are considered to be neutral rather than looking at all the intersecting implications of those assumptions. I could go on, but I will not. I will leave you with city deals. I want to give some examples. I like the question of how we follow the money. The money is there, and when the money is given, that is the problem of a lot of public bodies and a lot of grants. It is the consistency of the data. There is not enough data. It is not accurate. When we ask for data, we ask for them to come back to us, because it will not have the statistics. It will not be broken down. What is not broken down into ethnic minorities? If it is broken down into ethnic minorities, all protected characteristics are all lumped into one, which is not very helpful if we are trying to break it down even more and see how diverse their workforce is. One of the things that we had is when we did partnership with Keep Scotland Beautiful—I do not know if you have heard of KSP—and they had to meet race equality targets. The CCF tender ensured that KSP sought a partnership with Sembro Scotland, because they wanted to make sure that they had the increased ethnic minority access to CCF. The thing was that they had to make sure, and they were told in many ways to do that and to assure that, that is why they really came to us. If we want the money there, and we need the money to be used to look at a diverse workforce and diverse communities, is that when we do the tender processes, it may be putting the implications in there in the beginning. They have to come around the table and they have to come to certain organisations and groups and make them accessible. The problem that we are having is that we are not enforcing that. Just like Judith and everybody in the panel have emphasised, we have the legislation, but it has not been implemented down-bottom. It is at the top and it is nicely filtered down to certain levels and managers. I do training. Training is really important. You have a workforce that does not understand its communities, it does not understand them. We have this huge implementation of the financial inclusion programmes now that is going to come, because Scotland is going to get some of it, some social security benefits from Westminster. Ethnic minority communities, a lot of them do not understand how this is going to impact on them. We have a financial inclusion programme that Sembro Scotland delivers, specifically targeting and helping small communities and also through other organisations. We are helping already through established organisations and helping them to understand the whole system and helping them to understand their communities. Mary, do you still want to come in with your panel? Yes, I do. It is just a very brief question. Quite often, Governments will say by year, whenever, 10, 15, 20 years from hence, we will have achieved X and we will spend X in the budget. Is there enough of a connect between the rhetoric of in 20 years we will have and what is in the budget on an annual basis? Do the two constantly match up and are they constantly assessed or should there be more analysis done into? We have said this but is this amount of money going to achieve that? Anyone want to come in on that? Just very briefly to refer back to the proposals in the budget review group for the revised budget process that is pushing the scrutiny process to being year round and within a multi-annual financial framework as well. All of which to address some of the questions that you have raised there, Mary, about being able to look across the spending period to see what changes have been delivered, to look at it on that longitudinal basis but also on an incremental basis year on year. Is it achieving? Of course, one of the things that happens in a political process is that the political parties want to expose and engage with one another in a very political way, but policy change and implementation takes time and sometimes that implementation is a bit out of sync with the politics of the situation. By having longer scrutiny and longer periods of scrutiny but also more continuous monitoring, you can see the extent to which the changes that are desired are happening or not but over a reasonable timeframe. Judith MacDonald, do you want to come in on that? Just in relation to how that would be seen to be and be delivering in international human rights terms, that commitment to both understanding whether we are achieving progressive realisation, so are we making progress, is something that does need to be constantly monitored, that's one of the standards of the treaty on economic and social cultural rights, but also no regression, so are we going back? It's not just to measure progress, it's to measure that we're not actually going back. We have a state obligation for no regression and so if we are going back on key areas then that would need remedial action and immediate remedial action in order to change that. That's a key issue in terms of money being extracted from public sector delivery on the ground in communities. For local authorities, we're not in a position to do that kind of detailed budget analysis but I would imagine that at the moment in Scotland local authorities are experiencing a context where they are regressing in terms of their delivery in relation to international human rights standards and that language of accountability in relation to those standards is not used, we're not thinking in that way and seeing the outcome of our activities and our decisions in that kind of way and that means that when we actually do the analysis down the line we're not saying well what are the impact on the communities that we know will experience more acutely the impact of those spending decisions. This is a whole system picture. The budgetary process is a really important part of that and I'm glad Angela brought up the issue of taxation because again we're not in isolation from the means by which we raise revenue. If there is regression we need to factor in that revenue-raising capacity that we have as a Scottish Government and Parliament but also hold to account of the UK Government and Parliament in relation to those issues. We have a duty to ensure that we're making progress. We can put terms on what that progress is we can say we can do it in this time frame but in order to say that we need to be able to measure and check and know that that is what we're doing. We would support all the recommendations of the budgetary review group in terms of better contributing to what ultimately down the line would deliver a human rights-based analysis. It doesn't go the whole way because human rights are not explicitly in it but it goes a long way to help Government and Parliament to do that. Can I just ask on that point specifically about the idea that local authorities may be regressing because of their very constrained budgetary realities and the rest of it? Is part of that in that Scotland is signed up, as you rightly said, to a number of human rights treaties which make up that broader rights framework but in a lot of cases we've not incorporated those obligations into law as such there is no access to justice and therefore no penalty to local authorities who allow rights to be impinged or denied or don't take sufficient steps to ensure that they're there. Is that the X factor? Is incorporation of, for example, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which would give access to justice to children the X factor which will make local authorities take this seriously and realise that if they don't take it seriously they could end up in court? It's certainly the backstop of protection, absolutely. If we did incorporate our economic, social and cultural rights or did it through the Convention of the Rights of the Child or many of the other treaties, the CRPD, we would put ourselves in a position where legally we were bound, and this is the impact of incorporation from my perspective, isn't just about the backstop of protection in the courts, it's what it would do in the policy-generating process. We are already, as a commission, brought into conversations where our duties around the Human Rights Act, because it incorporates civil and political rights, will we have to comply with that? Yes, you do. We will help you to understand what the analysis is to comply with that, although, to be honest, it would be much better if you could do that yourself. I'm not talking just in this room, I'm talking in many other rooms. That's a very good thing, so it means that people are having to think, oh right, okay, I've got the Human Rights Act at my back, I don't want to be subject to some kind of judicial review or legal process at the end of the day. Up front they make the policy that delivers against the obligations of the Human Rights Act. Exactly the same if we were to incorporate economic and social cultural rights. We would then be required to have those things. Are we meeting the standards and norms of the treaties? Is our provision accessible, available, adequate and of a good enough quality to ensure that people's rights are being met? If we are not, we have to think up the line that that would be the case. For me, the justiciability or the incorporation of the treaties does something not just about having a court action at the end of the day, it does it because it makes people think about it upstream and that's actually the most important implication. We don't want to get to court, we want to be better up front. Okay, thank you. Linda, can I just check? Did you ask the question that you had of mine because you're still on my list about race? No, no, not yet, maybe later. Okay, I know Jamie, you wanted to come in. Oh, yes please, thank you. We don't have a lot of time, so we can just keep answers succinct. Can I just pick up on something in the wise submission to this? It's just really to clarify the terminology used. You say that wise research reaffirms arguments on the importance of developing tax policy based on gender analysis that highlights differentials and ability to pay and different economic status of women and therefore we consider progressive taxation as a result of that analysis. What does that mean? It means that tax design, what kind of tax system we set up affects women and men differently because women and men have different sources of income, have different lived experiences, their different sources of income and the inequalities in those different sources of income have an impact on the ability to pay and the extent to which tax is a proportion of income. The formulation of words is a consequence of having to be very succinct in evidence, but it's again about removing the assumption of neutrality in tax systems that tax systems have a very highly gendered dimension. When we look at the very positive paper that has come out from the Scottish Government in the last couple of weeks on the role of tax in the budget process and the options that are set out there in and the beginnings of exploring those impacts, the paper very usefully highlights different occupations to give it an idea, to help people orientate and see themselves in there, but behind all those different job clusters, you know, childminder or police officer or solicitor or the other examples that are given, I see big occupationally gendered groups of workers and I'm reminded as well that there are 300,000 fewer women taxpayers in Scotland, so we also need to look across that what is the impact of taxation on incomes and those different income sources, and then we look at the budget and we see that 1% of the current budget expenditure is on employment skills and fair work, so we've got a big issue there in terms of using public money to foment and advance attachment to participation in the labour market that allows people to pay tax, but we also are looking at what's coming down the line from the UK Government and Judith's already alluded to the damaging consequences of UK Government actions and colleagues at the UK women's budget group and the running me trust just yesterday produced some horrendous data that shows the horrendous impact of cumulative cuts and changes in benefits to women, particularly black women, £5,000 a year income loss to those women, so we need to look at those intersections of the characteristics of women and men, but those intersections in terms of sources of income and how tax design will affect people's incomes. Okay, maybe I could be more specific. Is your statement there advocating differential tax rates for men and women or for different groups of employment? Nope, the statement is about ensuring that there is effective robust gendered analysis of whatever tax design proposals are put forward. Okay, thanks. You want us to come in? Yeah, because there needs to be a practical and positive example of how this might play out, as both Andrew and I are members of EBAG, a wonderfully named EBAG, Equality Budget Advisory Group. They looked at the introduction of stamp duty, which in effect is that that's neutral, and they looked at it through a range of different lenses from age, gender, race. To be fair, there wasn't a huge amount of data, but we're looking at how often you will bump up against stamp duty by who's most active in the housing market. Clearly, it confirmed that younger people were going to do that, so knowing being conscious of the impact of your decisions enables you to take mitigated reaction or enables you to say, well, that's acceptable or it's not acceptable. In a very simple way, that starts to uncover the consequences of the path that we choose to take. I think that that is being for our Government to be conscious of what it's doing, rather than unconscious around the ripple effect of policy. Okay, thank you very much. I'm afraid we'll have to stop it there, but your answer has been excellent, very thorough. As ever, if there are things that you would have liked to have said—and I know there were questions that I didn't have time to invite colleagues to ask—but if there's additional information, please do supply that to us in writing. We'll keep this dialogue open, so thank you very much for your time today. Moved to private session, so thank you very much indeed.