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Thank you, Matthew. That is helpful.

Minister, you mentioned the relationship between the budget planning work, national outcomes and human rights principles. What role does the equality data improvement programme have in supporting the direct read-through to national outcomes and sustainable development goals, which open up the human rights space a little bit more broadly than the national outcomes do?

When we debated the original statutory instruments last autumn, I moved a motion to annul them all, because of the barriers that Citizens Advice Scotland and others said that increased fees would create. Given that the order will amend one of those instruments and my motion to annul clearly did not go anywhere, I am not going to challenge it at this point.

I will leave it there, convener.

Good morning to the minister and her officials. Thank you for joining us this morning and for your comments so far.

I will follow on from Marie McNair’s questions on mainstreaming and ensuring that equalities and human rights are everybody’s business. The Scottish Human Rights Commission chair was clear that they should not be only in the remit of this committee. You have described the work that you have done with Government colleagues. I am interested in exploring how we can ensure that equalities issues, perhaps specifically in relation to autism and neurodivergence, are taken seriously by portfolios across Government and public bodies that the Scottish Government funds.

We have probably all heard too many stories of autistic people being fobbed off, not listened to, misdiagnosed and given treatments that do not work and could cause further harm. We have also heard about autistic people being arrested or being made homeless. All that costs the taxpayer and departments across both central and local government much more money. That is before we even consider the life-changing impact and detriment to those individuals and their families. It is even more galling that when those harms are brought to light, public bodies close ranks and do not take the human rights and equalities agenda seriously.

Minister, how have you worked with colleagues to try to ensure that that kind of waste of resource and human potential does not happen? How can we minimise that, and how can we get away from the stress and the detriment that it causes? I have a follow-up question on the issue, but I am interested in your comments on those points first.

Thank you, minister—that is helpful. In your opening remarks, you talked about the competence and capability training that is happening. At the heart of what we are talking about here is prevention—that goes back to Campbell Christie’s principles of prevention, which are now more than 10 years old but which still require a lot of work to be implemented.

You also talked about the need for cultural and behaviour change. I suppose that there are some challenges in that regard because when people are at a point of crisis, and they are being made increasingly ill, homeless or worse, there is not always a mechanism for saying, “We can see exactly what we need to do—how do we do that?” That is not necessarily about resource but about transparency and accountability, which you also talked about in your opening comments.

Maybe we can pick the subject up after the meeting. There are some specific questions that it is not appropriate for me to ask here, but I would be interested to pick some of them up with you after the meeting.

Thanks. Can I have a final question, convener?

This will be the last one from me. Given what you have said about the value of quantitative and qualitative data and lived experience, can you explain why engagement and participation were largely absent from this year’s budget process?

I thank the minister for the engagement that we have had on my amendments 539 and 540 in this group. The substantive amendment is 540, and amendment 539 would enable it to happen. I also thank the consumer panel and the SLCC for their correspondence on the issue, and I note their strong support for the amendments.

The consumer panel remains concerned that there is not always clarity about what would be sufficient resourcing, and it is looking to similar panels elsewhere that have funding and where there is administrative and secretariat support. There needs to be an on-going conversation between the SLCC and the consumer panel to ensure that there is a shared understanding on that. I would welcome hearing the minister’s view on that in her closing speech.

Amendments 539 and 540 will help to ensure that there is funding for the consumer panel to do the work that it needs to do. We need to ensure that the funding is sufficient and transparent. The panel is concerned that it might be seen as optional and discretionary, so we need a clear statement on that this morning. We have heard from the minister that it is the Scottish Government’s intent that the panel be adequately funded to do the job that it needs to do, and that is the committee’s intent, too.

I ask colleagues to support the two amendments in my name. I will support the other amendments in the group, which are in the name of the minister.

I thank the minister for lodging her amendments in the group. I support them all. However, I put on the record the comments that we have all received from the SSDT. It welcomes the changes and acknowledges that they are a product of many positive conversations, but it has pointed out that, because the changes are being made at this stage, some people may not have been able to fully assess the impact of the amendments.

Will the minister agree to have conversations about that with the SSDT and the committee before stage 3? I suggest that, once we have the bill as amended at stage 2, the committee ensures that all stakeholders that are affected by the amendments have had time to explore them in advance of stage 3, because we are making some significant changes.

I understand what the minister is saying about the complexities and potential challenges that could be produced if the register were made mandatory. However, she said that, with a voluntary register, consumers would have choice in selecting a provider from that register. How should the existence of that register be communicated to consumers so that they are aware that there is a kitemark? I do not see that as an automatic consequence of having a voluntary register.