Equality and human rights mainstreaming action plan
Brings together 61 equality and human rights mainstreaming actions from across the Scottish Government in one accessible plan, supporting equality, diversity and inclusion in policy and practice.
Purpose of the Action Plan
The Scottish Government is committed to putting equality, inclusion, and human rights at the heart of everything we do. In the 2025/26 Programme for Government (PfG), we made the following commitment:
“Continuing our commitment to embed equality and human rights across the Scottish Government and the wider public sector we will publish our mainstreaming framework which will include an Action Plan and toolkit, setting out practical steps to achieve this ambition. This will be complemented by enhancing the effectiveness of the Public Sector Equality Duty as it operates in Scotland.”
This Action Plan doesn’t cover everything the Scottish Government is doing to advance equality and human rights, however it brings together for the first time, in one place, a wide range of mainstreaming actions from across the organisation.
Mainstreaming means putting equality and human rights at the core of your business. Instead of treating equality and human rights as separate tasks, mainstreaming aims to make them part of how organisations plan and deliver services. A mainstreaming approach acknowledges that equality and human rights affect everything an organisation does.
For the Scottish Government and wider public sector, mainstreaming involves taking steps to remove systemic barriers and to change how decisions are made. It also involves establishing a culture and practice that ensure policy and service delivery focus permanently on equality and human rights.
The full scope of what is and what isn’t included in this Action Plan is explained in more detail on page 7. The actions are focused on embedding equality and human rights in how we make and deliver decisions. By publishing them together, we aim to increase transparency and accountability by setting out clearly what has been committed to, and how progress will be measured and reported.
This Action Plan focuses on Scottish Government actions, so we can lead by example and drive meaningful progress. By doing this ourselves, we aim to demonstrate how a systematic approach to mainstreaming can drive change across government and society.
This approach also aligns with Scotland’s National Performance Framework (NPF). The NPF is currently being updated, but it still guides everything we do as a Government. By putting equality, inclusion and human rights at the core, the actions in this plan aims to help Scotland move towards its national outcomes.
The Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) requires the Scottish Government to pay due regard to three needs, which in short are to:
- eliminate discrimination harassment and victimisation
- advance equality of opportunity
- foster good relations
Meeting this duty is a minimum requirement for the government. The purpose and actions in this Action Plan aim to go much further than what we are legally required to do through the PSED to help meet the Government’s ambitions to achieve better outcomes and to tackle the systemic inequality experienced in Scotland.