Professor Angela O'Hagan:

-----not in respect of Ireland specifically but around the world. I have heard that there is a concern that we are asking too much by asking for all these different types of approach to the budget. I have heard it described as a cognitive overload on officials. While I have some sympathy with the need to build the competence and confidence of officials in working differently, there needs to be very clear political direction and sustained political and management direction that gender budgeting, equalities budgeting, carbon budgeting, well-being budgeting and children's rights budgeting all point in the same direction. They are all part of the same commitment to social and economic justice, however that is framed in whatever national performance frameworks individual countries work to. They are not additional or competing demands on officials; rather, they are analytical processes which should enable decision-making on policy, resource allocation and revenue-raising that equip governments and make it more possible to achieve the economic and social justice goals governments set for themselves.

The final point Senator Higgins raised was about the equality budget statement coming alongside the budget. We have a long way to go in Scotland with the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement to ensure that it is a reflection of the decision-making process. The old-fashioned phrase used in school with some of us with my hair colour was that we had to show our workings in the margin. This is about demonstrating one's analysis in how decisions have been made, the intent behind those decisions and why resources are allocated in a certain way. Equality budgeting needs to be more than a narrative accompaniment to the budget, which is one of the criticisms I have made over the years of the equality budget statement in Scotland. Where we have seen significant improvements in the equality budget statement, EBS, with apologies for another acronym, or, as it is now, the equality and fairer Scotland budget statement, has been in the introduction of a range of templates that portfolio departments are required to work through in their analysis of policy and spending priorities. There was the introduction in 2020 or 2019 - I cannot quite remember - of a list of the key risks that potentially undermine the pursuit of government priorities. It is a matter of focusing portfolio department attention on what needs to happen in order to alleviate and to avoid those risks and, maybe, to improve or to increase resourcing or intervention and attention in particular areas of policy. That helps focus the attention of the portfolio departments on government priorities and the national performance outcomes and helps focus the delivery and the implementation of commitments in the programme for government.

There is significant transparency and visibility by having the equality budget statement as part of the general budgetary documentation. That is a very important element. It is also an area where we are looking at continuous improvement in Scotland, particularly as to who uses the information in the equality budget statement, how it is used by parliamentarians in their scrutiny of the budgets throughout the budgetary cycle, rather than seeing it as a one-off event, and how evaluation of outcomes against the commitments in the budget and the analysis that informs them is then brought back in to inform amendments to iterations and development from budgetary commitments.