EQUALITY PROOFING BUDGET AND POLICY ADVISORY GROUP
Minutes of meeting held on 26 February 2004
The Capita Centre, St Andrew's Square, Edinburgh
Present:
Ewa Hibbert, Equality Unit, Scottish Executive (Chair)
Helen Mansbridge, Finance Department, Scottish Executive
Richard Wilkins, Finance Department, Scottish Executive
Ailsa McKay, Scottish Women's Budget Group
Kay Simpson, Scottish Women's Budget Group
Professor Arthur Midwinter, Adviser to the Scottish Parliament (observer)
Apologies:
Yvonne Strachan, Equality Unit, Scottish Executive
John Aldridge, PFO, Scottish Executive
Rona Fitzgerald, Equal Opportunities Commission
Tim Hopkins, Equality Network
Mick Conboy, Commission for Racial Equality
Minutes of meeting held on 20 November 2003
1. Ailsa asked for a change at paragraph 10 to record that the Group will arrange a meeting with the visiting experts in August and said she would speak later about the action point attributed to her at paragraph 6 (smoking cessation pilot). Everyone was otherwise content with the minutes.
Action points from previous meetings
Seminar for Equal Opportunities Committee
2. Ewa said that in discussion with the committee clerks, Tuesday 16 March had been identified as a possible date for a briefing session for the Committee about the Group's work, but she was waiting for confirmation of the date from the clerks. The Group were content for the briefing to be given by 3 members of the Group (one person from the SE Equality Unit, one from SE Finance Department and Rona).
Action point: Ewa to confirm the date asap.
Update on HM Treasury project
3. Helen said she had spoken to Ann Taggart at HMT: the report required further work and had not yet been cleared by Ministers so it was unlikely to be finalised before the end of March. Ailsa said that she had been told earlier this month that work on the report had been passed to the Sian Owen at the Women & Equality Unit at DTI. Ailsa thought that it would be helpful for the report to be published but in any case it should be considered by the Group.
Update on smoking cessation pilot
4. Ewa said that she had discussed with Joyce Whytock, smoking cessation action manager in the SE Health Department, the 10 questions which will form the basis of the pilot study to see what data exists or can be accessed. Joyce will discuss this further with colleagues in her own Analytical Services division and with ASH Scotland but is hopeful of finding information for use in answering most of the questions. However, she will be very busy dealing with two statutory instruments until May and cannot therefore devote much time to the study until then. In response to a question from Arthur, Ewa said she hoped that the pilot would be carried out by the end of this year.
5. Ailsa said that she would speak separately to Ewa about the work she has done to re-write the guidance used in the HMT project for use in this pilot study.
Pan Island Gender budgets Conference
6. Kay handed out leaflets for the conference to be held in Glasgow on 24 March, explained the purpose of the event and outlined the programme.
Sports pilot
7. Kay mentioned on behalf of herself and Ailsa that the work being done on sport, particularly in Wales, was discussed at the last meeting of the UK Women's Budget Group. After further discussion with experts at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU), Kay said she intends to submit a proposal to the Group on sport by the end of April for further consideration at the Group's meeting in May. The proposal would be for the GCU team to engage in a pilot study with the purpose of making explicit the link between policy and spend.
Spending review and budget documents
Spending Review 2004
8. Helen handed out some slides on the Spending Review (SR) and made the following points:
- Guidance on the SR was sent out at the end of January to and seminars have been held about the current SR for all Departments;
- The last two SRs were generous but this SR is expected to be much tighter;
- The 2005/06 baseline is the first year for SR 2004; as part of SR 2004, new plans will only be set from 2006/07 onwards;
- SR 2004 will focus on delivering the objectives and targets in the Partnership Agreement and given the tighter of the likely settlement this will require re-prioritisation and re-allocation of existing planned expenditure;
- There will be further shift in emphasis on outcomes and outputs;
- SR 2004 will have 4 overall priorities and 3 cross-cutting themes; growing the economy is both a priority and a cross-cutting theme - see slides;
- Progress since the last SR on the other 2 cross-cutting themes, sustainable development and closing the opportunity gap (CTOG)/equality, will be reported. Departments have been asked to focus on both positive action work and mainstream CTOG/equality work.
- The key change with this SR to getting Cabinet and Management Group (MG) to think more corporately about the whole of the Executive's expenditure. MG is looking to identify lower priorities in accordance with the 'deprioritisation criteria' - see slide;
- The key documents are the same as for the last SR and build on the last set of budget targets but also take account of the Partnership Agreement commitments;
- There is more focus in the SR Assessment on the evidence that justifies decisions and the contribution that each activity makes towards the priorities and crosscutting themes;
- To comply with HM Treasury rules plans for resource and capital have to be separate;
- A new element for this SR is the Pre-Expenditure Assessment (PEA), implementing the Partnership Agreement to assess all major new proposals for value for money and economic, social (including the impact on equality groups) and environmental impact; colleagues in Analytical Services Division have put together an operational note to provide further information about how to carry out these assessments. The PEAs will be reviewed after SR 2004;
- Ministers have also been doing more consultation over SR2004 with, for example, COSLA, the STUC, business organisations, the Group and Parliamentary Committees; and
- The outcome of SR 2004 will be published in September (in a similar format to Building a Better Scotland (BABS)). A statement on the Executive's Investment Strategy will be published following the Spending Review. Technical notes, to explain the targets, will be published on the Executive website.
9. Helen said she hoped to give an update on SR2004 at the next meeting. Richard added that because of SR2004 the draft budget will be published this year in October rather than in September.
10. Kay said that, as before, she would have preferred to see equality treated as a separate cross-cutting theme rather than as part of a closing the opportunity gap/equality theme. Ewa and Helen said that there had been pressure to have only two and at most three cross-cutting themes and so keeping equality as a cross-cutting theme had been a success and Arthur added that the Finance Committee had said that it wanted to see fewer priorities and themes this year. Ailsa asked about the change in terminology and Helen said that former "cross-cutting priorities" were now "cross-cutting themes".
Budget documents and new format of AER
11. Richard handed out a briefing note about the new format of the AER and said that work would be done this year, as the Group were already aware, to remove duplication from the budget documents. Arthur confirmed that the Finance Committee had commented that there was too much duplication between the AER and the Draft Budget and a lack of ability for people to hold the Executive to account for its targets.
12. In response to these comments, changes were going to be made to the AER to make it a higher level document and for it to focus on assessing performance, leaving the detail of future spending plans to the Draft Budget. It may well be renamed. As set out in the briefing note, the new AER would include an introductory chapter, chapters on the Executive's strategy and priorities for the 2005-06 budget and on the prospects for SR 2004 (although due to the timing of the Budget, this may have to be produced later). Then for each portfolio there would be a report on progress against the BABS targets 2004-05 and Level 3 spending plan tables for 2005-06 (about which textual comments will be included in the Draft Budget). Most of the targets will be reported as being on course for delivery in 2006. Explanations will be provided for significant changes to plans since the Draft Budget. This should remove a great deal of the duplication between the old AER and the Draft Budget, but will result in the new AER containing less information on equality and the other cross-cutting themes than was provided in the 2004-05 Draft Budget.
13. Richard said that after the SR had been concluded the Executive would produce a more detailed Draft Budget, similar to last year's Draft Budget, i.e. with information on each cross-cutting theme, including closing the opportunity gap/equality, in each portfolio chapter. The AER will again, as the Stage 1 document in the budget process, be a consultation document.
14. The Group discussed the points made by Richard. One option for the AER's new name was "Annual Evaluation Report" and, in response to a question from Ailsa, Richard said it would be published as soon as possible after 31 March. Ailsa said that she welcomed the changes but stressed the need to allow sufficient time for consultation on the AER. Arthur said that everyone will find deprioritisation difficult.
AOB
15. Arthur brought to the attention of all group members the recently published budget review conducted by the Greater London Assembly.
Date and venue for next meeting
16. The next meeting has been arranged for 11 am, Wednesday 5 May at the same venue.
Equality Unit
March 2004