Scottish Budget 2026-27, Spending Review and Infrastructure Delivery Pipeline: strategic integrated impact assessment

2. Purpose, Scope and Methodology

2.1 Purpose

The Strategic Integrated Impact Assessment (SIIA) is a new approach to assessing and better understanding the equality, fairness and other impacts of the Scottish Government’s key tax and spending decisions at strategic fiscal events, such as the Budget. Instead of separate assessments, the SIIA brings them together in a single process and publication, providing a more complete picture of the combined impacts of budget decisions on people in Scotland.

This integrated assessment approach also aims to ensure that impact evidence informs the Scottish Government’s budget choices earlier and more effectively in the decision-making process, while maintaining compliance with our statutory duties. This responds to calls from stakeholders for more timely assessments to meaningfully influence decisions. The approach also aims to improve transparency by making it easier for people to see the full picture.

2.2 Scope

The SIIA brings together the Scottish Government's statutory obligations across five legal duties into a single, integrated, strategic assessment process:

1. Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) (and the related Scottish specific duties)

2. Fairer Scotland Duty

3. Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment (CRWIA)

4. Consumer Duty

5. Island Communities Impact Assessment (ICIA)

This year we have embedded an integrated assessment approach at the core of a fiscal programme that included the ‘Scottish Budget 2026 to 2027’, the ‘Scottish Spending Review 2026’ (SSR) and the ‘Infrastructure Delivery Pipeline 2026’ (IDP). The Strategic Overview of the Budget 2026-27, Spending Review and Infrastructure Delivery Pipeline section of this SIIA sets out the overall impacts of tax, spending and investment choices for each of these fiscal publications. The Impacts of Key Decisions by Government Priority section provides a more detailed assessment of the impacts of key decisions by the Government’s Four Priorities: Eradicating Child Poverty, Growing the Economy, Tackling the Climate Emergency and High Quality and Sustainable Public Services.

While the SIIA provides a strategic assessment of the impacts of the Scottish Budget 2026-27, the SSR and the IDP, it does not replace the requirement for individual impact assessments for specific policies or programmes to be carried out by policy areas. It also does not replace the legal duty to prepare and publish a CRWIA for decisions of a strategic nature relating to the rights and wellbeing of children, which is included at Annex A.

2.3 Methodology

This SIIA is underpinned by an integrated approach to analysing equality, socio-economic, children’s rights, consumer and islands impacts. In practice this involved a three-phase process of evidence gathering from 11 government portfolios. It included a structured programme of evidence collection, quality assurance and analysis between August and December 2025, which brought together multiple sources of evidence generated through the 2026-27 Budget, SSR and IDP processes. Further detail on this process can be found in the Evidence Used section of this SIIA.

This approach is supported by strengthened analytical tools, including enhanced distributional analysis, budget tagging pilot studies and intersectional analysis focused on minority ethnic women. These improvements aim to integrate evidence earlier and more effectively into decision-making. Further details on these pilot studies can be found in the annexes.

For the third year running, a cross-ministerial pre-budget workshop was held to assess impacts of emerging decisions on relevant protected characteristics, socio-economic disadvantage and children’s rights and wellbeing. The Minister for Equalities then provided subsequent advice to support decision-making as part of the process.

This is a new approach that we want to build on. It has been informed by international best practice and engagement with key stakeholders, such as the Welsh Government, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls (NACWG) and the Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group (EHRBAG). We will evaluate the approach and publish the results before the end of 2026 and will continue to work with key stakeholders and international experts to understand how it can be developed further.