EQUALITY PROOFING BUDGET AND POLICY ADVISORY GROUP
Minutes of meeting held on 20 November 2003
The Capita Centre, St Andrew's Square, Edinburgh
Present:
Yvonne Strachan, Equality Unit, Scottish Executive (Chair)
John Aldridge, PFO, Scottish Executive
Helen Mansbridge, Finance Department, Scottish Executive
Ewa Hibbert, Equality Unit, Scottish Executive
Ailsa McKay, Scottish Women's Budget Group
Kay Simpson, Scottish Women's Budget Group
Tim Hopkins, Equality Network
Professor Arthur Midwinter, Adviser to the Scottish Parliament (Observer)
Apologies:
Rona Fitzgerald, Equal Opportunities Commission
Mick Conboy, Commission for Racial Equality
Minutes of meeting held on 9 September
1. Ailsa pointed out that she was not present at the meeting and that Rona had conveyed some points on her behalf. Everyone was otherwise content with the minutes.
Action points from previous meetings
Sports pilot proposal
2. Ailsa said that she was still keen to do this, but there were resource issues and she was waiting to see the outputs of a similar piece of work in Wales before proceeding further.
Seminar for Equal Opportunities Committee
3. Ewa said she was waiting to hear from the committee clerks about the offer to hold a briefing session for the Committee about the Group's work. Yvonne mentioned that since the last such session the composition of the Committee had changed and Ailsa added that this meant that former members of the Equal Opportunities Committee were now members of other committees which might raise the profile of equal opportunities in those other committees.
Update on Equal Opportunities Committee's report to the Finance Committee on the draft budget 2004-05
4. A copy of the report was tabled. Most of the members of the group had given evidence to the Equal Opportunities Committee. Most people had warmly welcomed the way in which specific equality projects had been highlighted in the draft budget documents. Helen said that it was easier to identify "positive action" spending; it would be much harder to pinpoint the extent to which mainstream spending contributes to reducing inequalities and promotes social justice, especially once equality considerations have themselves been mainstreamed into mainstream policy and expenditure. Tim said there was a need to analyse mainstream policy and expenditure for such contributions. He appreciated that this might make the draft budget unworkably long and so in the longer term consideration should be given to presenting such information electronically, using drop down menus or links to other documents, rather than in hard copy. Helen said that there would be serious resource issues about producing all of this information as discussed at the last meeting, but improvements could be made in providing more links to other existing sources of information. The following further points were made in discussion:
- John and Arthur: MSPs were beginning to recognise that the budget documents cannot contain all the information about the Executive's policies and the impact of all expenditure; the specific role of the budget documents - to control expenditure - had to be preserved;
- Arthur: going from identifying zero to £400m of expenditure on equalities work in the draft budget documents was a welcome step forward;
- Tim: agreed that the equalities section in the main document were the best of the cross-cutting entries, but it was a pity that the summary draft budget document did not contain the equalities sections. It could have given a small number of examples and there should be more consistency between the closing the opportunity gap and equalities sections
- Yvonne: people do sometimes struggle to distinguish between closing the opportunity gap and equalities work and many projects do contribute to both, but we will continue to discuss how to improve consistency and presentation in the future
- Ewa: the Committee's report again raised the issue of making the budget documents available in alternative formats. The Executive were ready to provide the summary document in alternative formats but had received only one enquiry about its position and no actual requests. Ailsa suggested that the documents should contain explicit statements that they are available in alternative formats on demand;
- Tim, Kay: it could be difficult to get a hard copy of the documents;
Update on HM Treasury project
5. Helen and Ewa reported that they had attended a seminar to discus the initial results of the work done in the Department of Work and Pensions and the Department of Trade and Industry. Ailsa said that the final report had not yet been circulated because HMT officials were busy on preparations for the budget and was not expected until after Christmas. They made the following further comments:
- Ailsa: reluctance to be involved had been a problem initially, staff turnover had been a problem throughout and the work had been rushed because of the spending review. Departmental analytical services officials had ended up doing most of the work with little input from policy or HMT officials. Insufficient time and resources had been set aside for this work
- Helen: it had only looked at very small areas of expenditure and seemed to work best in areas where there was already some awareness of equality issues
- Ewa: it had brought to light that there were large gender differences for some schemes even though they are supposed to be open to everyone;
- Ailsa: the main positive outcomes were awareness of gender in some areas for the first time, better identification of and linkage between different barriers to access and that tackling them was the responsibility of more than one government department, and increased recognition of the need to share and use data and to know target groups and actual beneficiaries. However there was no sense that high level policy would be changes as a result of the analysis. The guidance developed could be used in other pilot studies
Update on smoking cessation pilot
6. Ewa tabled the draft list of ten questions to be considered in the pilot and said she would be discussing them with the relevant officials in early December. Ailsa passed on some guidance on how to answer the questions.
Action point: Ailsa to rewrite the guidance to tailor it to answering the ten questions.
Next spending review and next year's budget documents
7. Helen outlined the timetable for 2004: the AER will come out in March and the information in it will hopefully be more useful and transparent. The AER will be different from the autumn draft budget documents. Helen said she would come back to the group with further information about the AER at the next meeting.
Action point: Helen to distribute the 2004 timeline for the budget documents.
8. Helen said that the Spending Review guidance was still being discussed with Ministers, including what cross-cutting themes should be included. Officials were not expecting the same level of recent increases in funding; the focus would be on achieving more efficiency and re-directing expenditure. For 2004 it was unlikely that there would be separate Building a Better Scotland documents on sustainable development and closing the opportunity gap but that they would probably be included in the SR publication either as separate chapters or as entries in each departmental chapter. The different options for presenting this information was discussed with the Group's preference being for it to be embedded through out the document rather than in a separate chapter with an over-arching reference in the introduction. Ailsa pointed out that the research had highlighted the importance of the SR. Helen responded that although consultation time after the publication of the SR could not be increased, more pre-publication consultation was being done this year, e.g. with the Group and with COSLA. Arthur added that the Finance Committee would be responding soon with their views on this.
9. John said that the draft and final budget documents in 2004 would be similar to those produced in 2003 but that as higher level documents the SR publication and the AER would not be as detailed as the draft budget document. The various documents in the budget cycle did not have to treat equalities issues in the same way but they should all be clear about their contents and their place in the cycle.
Proposal for an expert seminar next August
10. Ailsa said that Scotland was internationally recognised for being a leader in this area of work and that it would be fitting to hold an expert seminar in August 2004 to coincide with a UK meeting of the feminist economic network and to also mark the tenth anniversary of the Beijing platform and the fifth anniversary of the Scottish Parliament. John noted that Ministers and Committees would be either extremely busy in August or on holiday and probably not available to attend. The Group discussed the pros and cons of the proposal; the main con being the timing and the main pro being the opportunity to tap into the visiting experts' expertise. The Group concluded:
- It will arrange a meeting with the visiting experts but not hold a seminar in August; and
- To consider holding an event in 2005 to coincide with the meeting of the Commonwealth Finance Ministers in Scotland
Best Value in the wider public sector draft guidance document (out for consultation until 28 November)
11. A short paper was tabled for this item. Tim said that the Best Value in the wider public sector draft guidance document to Accountable Officers had been mentioned during evidence giving to the equal Opportunities Committee. He was aware that there are two elements to equal opportunities in the recent new Local Government in Scotland Act and its accompanying guidance: a Best Value duty to comply with the equal opportunities requirements and a duty to encourage equal opportunities more widely. Tim had asked if the same applied to the regime for Best Value in the wider public sector, through the guidance to Accountable Officers.
12. Yvonne explained that although Accountable Officers had been given, through administrative action, an explicit Best Value duty to comply with the equal opportunities requirements (i.e. the existing statutory requirements not to discriminate in certain situations on certain grounds), it was not possible to give them a duty to encourage equal opportunities more widely because no such duty exists in statute. Helen added that the options for imposing this second duty had been thoroughly explored, and that it is the Executive's intention to create such a duty in the future but for the time being the Best Value duty was signalling a culture change for Accountable Officers. The draft guidance also encourages them to adopt a broad approach to encouraging equal opportunities.
13. Tim mentioned that some NDPBs have had a duty to encourage equal opportunities conferred on them through other legislation relating to them (e.g. some parts of the NHS, the Care Commission) and suggested that this could be included in the draft guidance for completeness.
AOB
14. There was no other business
Date and venue for next meeting
15. Everyone agreed that meeting dates for 2004 should be arranged as soon as possible for January/February, early May, end September/early October and early December. Everyone was happy to use the same venue.
Action point: Ewa to trawl for dates for meetings in 2004.
Equality Unit
January 2004