Professor Angela O'Hagan:

I am not sure I captured all the points the Senator raised. I will try to answer all of them and I am sure she will keep me right. On taxation, one of the ways we have come at it, as the Scottish Women's Budget Group but also from the human rights perspective and the approach to human rights budgeting, is to focus on the Scottish approach to taxation and the principles put forward. That approach is based on the historic principles of Adam Smith but it is consistent with the Scottish Government's updated approach. The focus within that on ability to pay as a principle of taxation takes us into equalities analysis because people's ability to pay different types and levels of taxation is a consequence of where they are in regard to income tax and where they are in the labour market.

We know the majority of part-time workers are women and the reasons for that, including the absence or insufficiency of affordable, quality childcare. We know women work part time because they make up the majority of unpaid carers. We know women are part-time workers because of the combination of those caring responsibilities and a whole other set of structural issues, including the relationship between transport, the opening hours of public services, the opening hours in provision of publicly funded childcare and so on. There is a set of reasons that women predominate as part-time workers. Another factor is that the sectors in which they predominate tend to be lower-paid sectors.

By understanding the structure of the labour market through equalities characteristics and a gendered analysis of that, we can look at the ability to pay from a different perspective. We can look at the ability to tax income as also being about what kinds of jobs there are in the labour market and what Government intervention and other interventions are necessary to improve the offer of employment within the labour market and improve the opportunities women workers, and workers in general, can access.

As Senator Higgins said, the assumptions embedded in tax policy need to be unpicked. We need to understand what the barriers are to employment for women, disabled workers, black and minority ethnic workers and workers who are also unpaid carers and what structural adjustments and structural changes need to be made in order to improve access. We also need to understand that by improving or expanding tax policy and by increasing taxation, we are increasing revenue-raising and bringing revenue into public services. The two have to be seen together in respect of creating economic opportunities and using publicly generated public finance.

Professor Kathleen Lynch has given evidence to the committee. Her contribution was tremendous, not just to the committee but in general. She talked about the types of investment in care. We are doing work in Scotland on care, and there is the work the UK Women's Budget Group has led on recognising the importance of investment in care as a mechanism or a measure to advance gender equality. There are significant returns on investment in care for the economy in general through investments in the state and the expansion of the care workforce, which in turn increases the tax take from that workforce. It is about seeing the two together rather than seeing care as a drag on the economy and something that requires public spending and the taking of public spending away from somewhere else. It is a matter of seeing how taxation measures, tax policy and investment policy need to work together as mechanisms to eliminate some of the established gendered inequalities we are discussing.

Senator Higgins talked about spending on equality as distinct from mainstreaming. She used the phrase "the piloting phenomenon", which I have made a wee note of. I quite like that one. With a focus on pilots, the problem arises when the pilots become the ends in themselves. Pilots are a means of trialling processes and raising awareness internally within government departments, with officials being asked to do things differently, perhaps. However, the pilots need to be part of a process of learning and development, including the development of new processes and procedures. They need to be part of a process of working through what the issues are and piloting an approach to try to develop new systems or new processes. Then it is a question of how that learning is captured and then applied and amplified across government departments and processes like a budget process. The problem, however, is when they get stuck in the pilot phase and when the focus and the intention is on the pilot rather than on a process. That is where things get a bit stuck.

Senator Higgins referred to a range of initiatives. We have heard a lot over the years, in the context of gender budgeting and equalities budgeting, about initiative fatigue and that we are asking too much of officials. I have heard this recently described in response to officials being asked to run carbon budgeting, as the Senator said, well-being or wellness budgeting, children's rights budgeting and equality budgeting. Those were all described as additional and parallel asks that-----