Professor Angela O'Hagan:

I thank the Chair and colleagues for the invitation to appear before the committee to discuss the recommendations on equality budgeting from the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality. My comments are given in a personal capacity as a researcher on gender budgeting internationally, with insights from my role as the independent chair of the Scottish Government’s equality and budget advisory group, EBAG, and as a trustee of the UK Women’s Budget Group and the Scottish Women’s Budget Group. It seems to be a very exciting time in the progress of equality budgeting in Ireland. My observations will draw on recent comments made to this committee, the OECD Scan: Equality Budgeting in Ireland report of 2019, analysis by Professor Ann-Marie Gray of Ulster University, and my experience in seeking to advance gender equality in Scotland and internationally.

The Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality is an important initiative, and one that I would like to see replicated closer to home. The assembly specifically recommended legislating "for equality budgeting across all Government bodies including local authorities". This is a broad an ambitious recommendation, and one that replicates similar reach in other nations, including in Scotland since devolution in 1999-2000.

In Scotland, through the efforts of the Scottish Women’s Budget Group, individual campaigners and activists, and a series of actions by successive Governments, there have been some significant steps taken towards integrating gender analysis in the Scottish budget process as part of a framework of equality budgeting. These positive steps include the introduction of an equality budget statement since 2009, which has been entitled the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement since 2018, and the existence of EBAG, which is similar to the new structure in the Irish Government for the expert advisory group. EBAG has existed in several iterations in Scotland since 2000.

The equality budgets advisory group submitted a set of recommendations, most recently in 2021, to the Scottish Government. We are waiting for the Government to publish its response within the next few weeks. When it does so we will be happy to share that with the committee. The recommendations from EBAG also reflect some of the findings from the OECD scan report on Ireland. The recommendations fall into 4 categories: improving understanding of the budgetary processes; internal communication; organisational culture; and building knowledge and understanding of equalities and gender analysis.

EBAG's membership comprises of internal representation from across directorates including the economy, budgets, performance and strategy, equality and human rights, and external members include the Scottish Human Rights Commission, SHRC, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Audit Scotland, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Fraser of Allander Institute, and the Scottish Women’s Budget Group. The advisory group meets regularly and pursues a series of change processes to integrate equality, and now human rights analysis, in the budget process across Departments, and through policy specific reviews on key areas including social care, childcare, children’s rights, and economic policy. EBAG endeavours to ensure its deliberations and directions are aligned with the budget process. This has, however, proved problematic as the budget process has not been wholly consistent in recent years.

EBAG has increasingly engaged in expanding a human rights based approach to the Scottish budget, with a view to ensuring that spending and revenue policy decisions respect, protect and fulfil the State’s obligations to secure the realisation of rights. This approach should not be understood as being separate from or undermining a gender analysis or wider equality analysis within the budget process. Gender and equality analyses are essential elements of human rights budgeting and, as many others have said, good budgeting.

In 2018, the SHRC initiated a review of the Scottish budget process based on the criteria of the open budget project. Among the findings and recommendations was a focus on improving transparency in budget documentation and decision making at Scottish Government and local authority levels, offering some learning to the proposals before this committee. These findings reflect my analysis, and that of others, on which of the favourable conditions I suggest are necessary for gender budgeting. In a recent public lecture on gender budgeting, Professor Ann-Marie Gray of Ulster University suggested that in relation to this framework of favourable conditions, areas for further improvement in Ireland include responsiveness to external drivers, maximising political change and opportunity structures, improving the understanding of the budget process, and improving and bringing greater conceptual clarity to a framework for gender budgeting. Future improvements focus on improving gender analysis in Government processes and improving gender-aware budget documentation. The OECD recommendations for Ireland also highlighted the need for a clear conceptual understanding, which in turn was further acknowledged in the comments to this committee by Ms Caroline O’Loughlin on 30 June.

It seems that there are some shared learnings and common challenges between Scotland and Ireland. These include the need for a clear, conceptual understanding upon which to progress as equality budgeting is not always clear or consistent; understanding the challenge of an equality-budgeting approach in ensuring a focus on gender and other structural inequalities and how they manifest in different disadvantages and lived-effects for different groups. Understanding those differences, their causes and manifestations, requires extensive and quality equalities data and the analytical capacity to apply that understanding in policy analysis informing budgetary decisions.

The persistence of gendered inequalities is constantly reported in the excellent analysis of the women's budget groups and highlighted by the National Women's Council of Ireland. The recent submission to this committee from the NWCI reiterated the absence of gender analysis in economic policymaking in general and specifically in regard to Covid recovery - a situation that is not unique to Ireland but a global problem that all governments must take action to remedy. Gender analysis in an equality budgeting approach requires acknowledging and committing to eliminate gender inequality, eradicating established attitudes and assumptions that produce and reproduce inequalities, and committing to support improvement in analysis through political leadership and practical integration in budgetary processes. That means building capacity among officials, politicians and managers within government bodies to improve equality analysis and integration in policymaking and the budget process.