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Much of it is designed in partnership. The convener will be aware that many of the recipients of funding in the equalities and inclusion and human rights budget line are long-term partners with whom we have developed good relationships and who can evidence that they are able to support us in delivering on our equality and community opportunities. Much of that budget is reactive to changing inequalities. The committee will be able to see in the budget line the over-time reactions to groups that have been under threat or that have particularly been able to highlight that they are the victims of systemic inequality.

Within the human rights and equalities lines, the committee will be able to see the strong partnerships that have been developed over time.

Those matters would be for education and finance colleagues to take decisions on.

A very clear expectation has been set that ministers—regardless of portfolio—should have a focus on tackling inequality. I doubt that there is a single minister who is unaware that the First Minister expects us to think about inequalities when we take all decisions, and to ensure, throughout our work, that our efforts to reduce inequality are evident. That instruction has been very clear, and the target of ending poverty and reducing inequality is absolutely clear to everyone.

As for my having a role, that is absolutely the case, and I hope that you can take reassurance from the fact that we are now in the week of stage 3 of this year’s budget, and I am already meeting the equality and human rights budget advisory group to talk about next year’s process and how we can improve things.

Of course, I appreciate that this year’s budget process has been the first one that I have been directly involved in, so I am not able to make a comparison with previous years; all I know is what we could have done differently this time. I have made it clear that I am willing to listen to the budget advisory group and to evidence that is given to this and other committees to ensure that we are continually progressing and improving.

I am not familiar enough with that decision to know whether an EQIA would have been helpful. I certainly doubt that it could have made a difference to the outcome, given the financial situation that we are in. Everybody wants to support people who face housing issues. It is a question of ensuring that cuts are reasonable, proportionate, time limited and necessary things that we have to do, and are not harmful to human rights.

That is a big question. I feel that we are at a very good point in relation to mainstreaming in general, because we have reached a stage at which there is general acceptance across Government that mainstreaming is the right thing to do and is beneficial to good decision making in every single portfolio, but it is not a given. There is a real opportunity in our being at a point at which everyone agrees that progress is a good thing and that mainstreaming is the right way to go about it. It has much potential, so I am happy with where we are.

I am excited about the improvements that are being made to the public sector equality duty and about the consultation that we will do on our mainstreaming strategy, because they will have an impact on absolutely everything: they will have an impact on how we engage with members of the public and how we offer opportunities to them and to stakeholders to feed into the process, and they will change the way that all ministers make decisions, by default. I think that the broader culture change will be as impactful as individual policy changes will be.

I do not recollect any current work in the portfolio that would involve those conversations, but if there is a particular need for input regarding mainstreaming or equalities and human rights budgeting, I am more than happy to have conversations with ministers.

Yes, I think that we are. There are opportunities for improving that in the review of the public sector equality duty and, importantly, in the conversations around and the introduction of the human rights bill, which will bring into Scots law not only economic but social and cultural rights and the right to a healthy environment. Having those conversations even before the bill’s introduction will undoubtedly have an impact on the culture of considering human rights and equality throughout Government and—I certainly hope—throughout the whole public sector. There will be work to be done to ensure that all duty bearers are aware of the duties that we are putting on them.

Once, as I hope, the bill passes, subject to the Parliament’s approval, we will see change on the ground for people in terms of their being aware of their economic, social and cultural human rights and their being able to challenge when those rights are not being realised.

Absolutely. That is why I talked a little bit in my opening statement about the work that the committee is doing to bring people with lived experience into the process of scrutiny. It is important that ministers speak with people with lived experience throughout the year, get feedback on policies that we introduce and listen to individuals and communities through consultation processes and by speaking face to face.

My portfolio is very people heavy. I speak to people every day because, with equality issues, we must, by default, think about people when making decisions. My challenge, and that of everybody who works on mainstreaming, is to ensure that other ministers feel that need as well, and that, throughout the year, their diaries and engagement processes on their bills and on the strategies that they are producing force them to speak to individuals who are directly impacted by the things that they are doing.

The committee’s use of citizens panels—specifically, when you are using them as a way of finding questions to put to ministers—is very helpful, because that does the same thing. That is not part of the process of Government—it is not what I am working on and trying to work into every minister’s routine—but it has the same outcome: people are more engaged with the process, and you can see the impact that people’s lived experience and the things that they are saying in evidence is having on what the Government is doing.

Thank you very much, convener. I congratulate you on your appointment as convener of the committee. I look forward to working with you and to your leading the scrutiny of work across my portfolio.

First of all, I want to emphasise the positive spend and the commitment to delivering equality and fairness in the budget. I point to the increased spend on the Scottish child payment, the reopening of the independent living fund, and the increase in the equality, inclusion and human rights budget.

We are committed to improving participation in the budget process, and we know that it is important to make sure that every consideration that should be taken is taken and that people can feel that the budget is relevant to them. It was very insightful to hear the committee’s previous budget scrutiny session. I was pleased to note the continued improvement that is reported every year in this area of work. There was shared recognition on the part of those who provided evidence of the significant changes that we made to the internal process for the budget last year. Those changes included our new case-study approach for the “Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement 2024-25” and the first ministerial workshop, which looked specifically at that statement.

We acknowledge that there is still a lot of work to do, but I want to remain mindful of the considerable progress that is being made along the way. We are providing accessible and inclusive forms of communication and documentation to support public understanding of the budget. I appreciate fully that more work needs to be done to increase public engagement in the budget and to support better understanding, and I know that the committee is also keen to ensure that.

The financial year is extremely challenging—it is the most challenging environment for a budget since devolution. On top of United Kingdom Government underinvestment for more than a decade, our Barnett funding, which is driven by UK Government spending choices, has fallen by 1.2 per cent in real terms since the 2022-23 budget was presented.

Because the UK Government did not inflation proof its capital budget, that has resulted in a real-terms fall of nearly 10 per cent in our capital funding over the medium term. UK Government decisions such as that to prioritise national insurance cuts rather than public service investment have made it difficult for us to deliver a budget that reflects our priorities, but that is what we have done. We have taken every opportunity that we have had to mitigate the worst impacts of those cuts.

We have invested in public services, we have put money where it will have the greatest impact on the delivery of our priorities of equality, opportunity and community, and we have put money directly into the pockets of those who are experiencing poverty. We have put money into the realisation of, and the upholding and protecting of, human rights, which is in stark contrast to the £240 million that the UK Government has spent down south on its policy of deportation to Rwanda and the further £50 million that it has already committed to doing the opposite and allowing human rights breaches.

We have funded human rights and tackling poverty regardless of who is responsible for the difficult situations that many people find themselves in. For example, we are looking at how we will spend money that is allocated to refugee integration in the light of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 and its potential impacts. We know that many people who are benefiting from our social security programme have had to turn to that programme only because of the cost of living crisis, which has been pushed on Scotland and the rest of the UK by economic mismanagement elsewhere.

Our approach to considering equalities in the budget has involved extensive engagement with experts and our stakeholders. We published our response to the equality and human rights budget advisory group, and I will join the group to discuss that further on Thursday. I was the first minister to attend a meeting of the group, and I plan to continue that engagement throughout the year. The Deputy First Minister will also join me at a meeting of the group later in the year.

I hope that the fact that improvements were made during the budget process has been evident to the committee through the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement. Alongside changes to the document itself, we held a ministerial workshop with a case-study approach, which involved challenging ministers across Government to show their working on decisions that they had used equalities and human rights budgeting to achieve.

We want to ensure that the wider mainstreaming agenda is reflected in everything that we do, and that the impact of the mainstreaming strategy, the public sector equality duty improvement activity and our forthcoming human rights bill can be seen throughout Government processes. I work closely with colleagues across Government to advance equality and the progressive realisation of rights for people in Scotland, thereby ensuring that that is a priority that can be seen in every portfolio.

I look forward to taking questions on the budget.

The increase in the human rights budget is a reflection of the activity that we are doing to invest in the progressive realisation of human rights. The 2 per cent change in the equalities budget is due to project delivery review—that is, things coming to an end and the timings of the delivery of particular projects being slightly different from what we had anticipated.