Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group minutes: June 2025

Attendees and apologies

 

• Emma Congreve, Fraser of Allander Institute (Interim Chair)
• Joanna Anderson, COSLA
• Sara Cowan, Scottish Women’s Budget Group
• David Holmes, DG General Economy, Unit Head of Wellbeing and Economy
• Ali Hosie, SHRC
• Tom Lamplugh, DG Communities, OCSPA
• Stephanie Griffin, EHRC
• Angela Nolte, Head of Exchequer Analysis
• Rob Priestley, Head of Mainstreaming Unit
• Mike Tighe, Exchequer Analysis
• Simon Wakefield, Exchequer Analysis 
• Philippa Watkin, Exchequer Analysis
• Kat White, Deputy Director for Fiscal Strategy and Analysis

EHRBAG Secretariat

• Gill McCrum, Mainstreaming Strategy Team Leader
• Sandra Malloy, Mainstreaming Strategy Manager
• Laura Graham, Mainstreaming Accountability Manager

Apologies

• Chris Birt, Joseph Rowntree Foundation
• Nick Bland, Deputy Director for Mainstreaming and Inclusion
• Fergus Boden, DG Strategy and External Affairs, Strategic Outcomes and Policy Delivery
• Mirren Kelly, COSLA
• Jillian Matthew, Audit Scotland

Items and actions

Welcome and meeting overview

The Chair welcomed Sandra Malloy who is stepping in as Secretariat over the next few months.

Apologies were noted and the Chair outlined the agenda and purpose of the meeting.

Previous meeting actions

The Chair directed attendees to ‘Paper 2: EHRBAG Meeting Action Tracker’ and invited Laura Graham to provide an overview of progress against outstanding actions:

• Members will discuss the development of a knowledge share event under agenda item 4 of today’s meeting.
• Colleagues in the Scottish Government continue to progress actions from the EHRBAG Action Plan and are considering how best to report impact in upcoming reporting meeting, including considering more focused reporting on specific topics if the hybrid proposal was adopted.
• Colleagues in the Mainstreaming Unit will engage with the NPF team soon to discuss progress on the review, and will feed back to this group so that links to NPF can be explored as part of development for longer term proposal for EHRBAG.

The Chair then invited Angela Nolte to provide readout of a recent meeting between the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Minister for Equalities, in which they discussed equality and human rights budgeting. Key points included:

• This was the second biannual meeting that the Cabinet Secretary and Minister have held, the aim of which is to progress their shared ambitions for further embedding equality and human rights into the Scottish Government’s budget process.
• They discussed a shared desire to provide the Minister for Equalities with a scrutiny role early in this year’s budget process. Officials are exploring how to facilitate this.
• They discussed the four projects planned to improve budget process over the next year. This included: budget tagging pilots, a pilot to build an equalities database, the potential use of an integrated impact assessment, and exploring a two-stage process for publishing equality analysis of budget decisions.
• The Cabinet Secretary also agreed to the prospect of a joint appearance at the Equality, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee’s budget scrutiny sessions.

EHRBAG remit and function

The Chair directed attendees to ‘Paper 3: Discussion Paper’ slides and invited Kat White to outline the proposal for changes to the group. Points included:

• There was great depth of feedback but no clear consensus on the options presented, so officials are proposing a hybrid approach, with an initial proposal for this year, and a longer-term plan for the next parliamentary term.
• Kat noted that some issues that were coming through from feedback were around frequency, accountability, ownership, membership and establishing a clear terms of reference.
• For this year, Exchequer propose a workplan for the group, which focuses on two processes and one key policy theme. The processes would include work towards developing an integrated impact assessment or the budget and work towards improving the transparency and accountability of budget information. The policy focus would be on child poverty as the team is carrying out a pilot on ‘gender budget tagging’ for the 2026-27 Budget. In the absence of gender goals, this will focus on a cross cutting area, such as child poverty.
• These processes align with some actions in the existing EHRBAG Action Plan, and SG would propose that these are prioritised, rather than trying to service all of the ongoing actions.
• Over the longer term, SG would work with the group to create a terms of reference that puts the group on a firmer footing, and would look to align the group’s workplan with a multi-year budget improvement plan that is currently in development.
• This would also be an opportunity to look at membership in more detail, revisit actions in the Action Plan, and establish a permanent chair.
• Kat also raised the potential for extending membership to a representative of the NACWG, if existing members felt that was necessary and appropriate.

Simon Wakefield provided an overview of the proposed budget tagging pilot:

• Colleagues are currently working on a proof-of-concept approach for tagging, or mapping, budget lines that have the most impact on child poverty.
• They are exploring how to identify those budget lines that are most significant, and where there is evidence to prove their impact.
• They will also consider how to use intersectional gender budgeting analysis as part of this, and explore how that analysis interacts with the overall budget process. 

EHRBAG members provided their views on the proposed approach:

• Members welcomed the proposed themes and there was agreement that focusing on a few key areas would be a beneficial approach.
• Some members shared concerns that creating a workplan that ends around the time of the upcoming parliamentary election may leave the group in a vulnerable position for the next parliamentary term. It was agreed that members and officials would work to ensure that new Ministers were informed of the work of the group and it’s critical importance to the budget process.
• Members supported the budget tagging pilot and encouraged the use of intersectional analysis and linking to NPF and other outcomes.
• SWBG offered their support on gender budgeting and tagging work.
• There was a recognition that colleagues have proposed a lot to discuss ahead of this year’s budget process, and it might be beneficial to have smaller sub-groups or 1-2-1s with members over the summer. Kat agreed to take this away to consider.
• COSLA noted that they can contribute information on where local authorities are already doing integrated impact assessments and the learning from that, as well as examples of good budget transparency. 
• There was agreement that more work should be done to set expectations around this group being a safe space for members to discuss challenges, particularly for Scottish Government members.
• Members felt it would be more appropriate to bring in new membership when the group has a clear terms of reference. It was suggested that the Scottish Government may wish to explore membership with the NACWG, but if they do not have capacity, SWBG could act as a conduit given their close links.

(Note; since this meeting SWBG have suggested that they would be content to act as a liaison for the initial period with NACWG, potentially inviting them to the September meeting, before revisiting membership fully next year)

Action: Sara Cowan to share a short piece that the SWBG created on budget tagging for the NACWG.

Action: Exchequer to consider how and when best to engage with members ahead of the September deep dive to enable a meaningful discussion and propose an approach in early summer.  

Action: The Chair asked external members to email the Secretariat (and the rest of the group) with information on their expertise or upcoming work that links to the proposed workplan.

EHRBAG Knowledge Share Event

The Chair handed over to Sandra Malloy who outlined some initial scoping for this event – this would be an online event, no longer than half a day, potentially held in August or September. Attendees could include international experts, budgeting officials from across the UK and Irish Administrations, and any similar advisory groups, experts and academics. Sandra invited members to share their views on the scope and format of this event:

• David Holmes noted that colleagues in OCEA will be interested in this event and have contacts in other governments through the Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGo) partnership.
• The SHRC will have an economist coming to discuss tagging and budgets in late September or October and offered to provide a contact as they may be interested in joining up.
• The SWBG have had international speakers on gender budgeting at various events and offered to share these contacts.
• It was noted that a smaller group of attendees may be beneficial to allow candid and transparent discussion.
• Attendees were in favour of a narrow focus, either on budget impact assessments, or budget tagging.
• It was suggested that late August/early September might not be the best timing for this. The Secretariat agreed to explore potential dates, including in October, and bring back to EHRBAG for agreement by correspondence.
• Members agreed that Scottish Government colleagues could decide on the theme and agenda without further consultation from the group.
• It was suggested that the Secretariat might want to convene a working group to plan this event.

Action: EHRBAG members to share contact details of those with interest/expertise with the Secretariat.

Action: Secretariat to create a proposal for the event with some options for dates and share with the group.

Any other business

Members shared upcoming work with the group:

• The SHRC are carrying out work on minimum core obligations in human rights budgeting. They are redrafting guidance documents and developing a toolkit which will outline practical steps for human rights budgeting. This is due to be finalised around September/October.
• The Fraser of Allander Institute will publish a piece of work towards the end of this summer on outturn expenditure related to child poverty spend. This will bring together publicly available information to increase transparency and show expenditure on a consistent basis over time.

The Office of the Chief Social Policy Advisor are publishing a report next week looking at 25 years of preventative interventions. This explores 15 case studies of intervention policy in Scotland since devolution.