Scottish Government high level action plan in response to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

2: General observations

Thematic tags

Incorporation; Access to Justice; Human Rights Bill; Available resources; Human rights budgeting

Concluding Observations 3, 7a and 7c

3: The Committee is concerned about the geographical disparities in the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights due to the varying financial and administrative capacities of the devolved governments.

7a: To undertake an independent review of the legal and policy framework for economic, social and cultural rights, along with the devolved governments […] to ensure that the rights in the Covenant are given full legal effect and that victims of violations of those rights have full access to effective judicial and non-judicial remedies.

7c: To make progress on the legislative framework to incorporate economic, social and cultural rights in Scotland.

Context

We have a longstanding commitment to advancing the incorporation and justiciability of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) within Scots law. Building on the recommendations of the First Minister’s National Taskforce on Human Rights Leadership (2021), we have been developing legislative proposals to give domestic legal effect to ICESCR rights, within the limits of devolved competence.

The proposed Human Rights Bill would place statutory duties on devolved public service providers to progressively realise the economic, social and cultural rights enshrined in ICESCR, including meeting minimum core obligations. The bill proposes to include an interpretative provision enabling courts, and tribunals to take into account certain international sources including the UN Committee’s General Comments and Concluding Observations.

Accountability would be strengthened through a combination of judicial and non-judicial mechanisms, ensuring that rights holders can seek redress and that duty bearers are held to account. Further detail on proposed remedies is set out in the Human Rights Bill Discussion Paper, published in July 2025. Oversight of the incorporation and implementation process is being led by the Incorporation and Implementation Oversight Board, chaired by the Minister for Equalities, and will continue through to March 2026.

Scotland continues to take a distinct approach on human rights planning and delivery. We were the first nation in the UK to publish a National Human Rights Action Plan (SNAP) in 2013. Our second plan, SNAP2, launched in 2023 and running until 2030, sets out 54 actions to promote awareness and embed human rights across public bodies, civil society, and communities. The SNAP2 Leadership Panel has prioritised 28 of these actions for focused delivery by duty bearers and partners.

We are also committed to increasingly embed equality and human rights across policymaking and public service delivery. Our forthcoming mainstreaming framework will include a practical action plan and toolkit to support implementation. Following public consultation on the draft Equality and Human Rights Mainstreaming Strategy, which took place between October 2024 and February 2025, we have worked closely with key stakeholders to refine the strategy and will continue this collaborative approach as we finalise the strategy. This is complemented by our work supporting public bodies, in particular local government and health services, to better understand economic, social and cultural rights and how they can be understood in practice through our capability building work.

Our commitment to human rights budgeting remains central to our approach. We continue to embed the principles of transparency, accountability, and participation in our budget process. Since 2009, we have published an equality statement alongside the budget. The most recent Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement reflects improvements in how evidence informs budget decisions and how key decisions are communicated to the public.

Key Actions

We are proposing to incorporate the ICESCR rights alongside other treaties into Scots law. We published a Discussion Paper setting out bill proposals and areas for further development. This is being used to test and refine proposals with stakeholders in advance of a bill potentially being introduced in the next parliamentary session, subject to the outcome of the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections.

We are funding NHS Education for Scotland and Improvement Service to strengthen public sector knowledge and awareness of the rights proposed for incorporation.

We are also taking forward targeted activities to strengthen human rights knowledge and awareness in the third sector, working with organisations funded through our Equality and Human Rights Fund.

We have established a Capability Building Working Group to inform and review the delivery of human rights capability building activities and to help inform future capability building work beyond March 2026.

We will publish a mainstreaming strategy, action plan and toolkit by April 2026. The action plan will bring together actions that we are taking to mainstream equality and human rights, including a wide range of cross-cutting mainstreaming actions that have already been committed to, such as in response to recommendations of the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls (NACWG) or our Mainstreaming Report published in April 2025. The toolkit will be an online platform containing information, training, materials, and best practice examples to support us and the wider Scottish public sector, to evaluate and strengthen mainstreaming activity.

We continue to work with the Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group (EHRBAG), to take stock of and deliver on the group’s 2021 recommendations and agreed priority actions for this year.