Thank you, Angela, and thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation to speak to you today.
I want to say a little bit more about some of the other activity that's been happening in Scotland around gender budget analysis that perhaps isn't directly to do with the activities of the Scottish Women's Budget Group, although indirectly it is.
I'll start off being a bit pessimistic, saying that, yes, after nine years of sustained activity, which Angela has eloquently detailed, and evidence of political will in Scotland to progress with a gender budget initiative, no gender sensitive budget is yet in place in Scotland. In fact, we can find no evidence of any concrete policy shifts arising from our activity over the past nine years. However, that's as pessimistic as I want to be. I would now like to be optimistic.
In Scotland we do have a gender budget initiative, and that gender budget initiative is ongoing. I'll take the next five to 10 minutes to say how and why I think that is. Angela has covered the work of the Scottish Women's Budget Group, and suffice it to say, I think that activity is sustained and it's ongoing. All I can say is, watch this space with regard to future activity.
The second aspect I'd like to cover, which may be of particular interest to the committee and its members, is the more recent activity at a parliamentary level in Scotland. As you may be aware, we had an election last May, and that brought about significant political change for us here in Scotland. We have a new minority government. We have a whole set of new committees and we have a significant number of new members of Parliament following that election.
As a direct result of the lobbying conducted by the Scottish Women's Budget Group, our new equal opportunities committee—we previously had an equal opportunities committee—following the election took the decision to appoint a specialist advisor with reference to the budget process. Although the committee had the capacity to appoint an advisor previously, they had never availed themselves of that opportunity. This year they took the opportunity to appoint an advisor, I think directly due to the lobbying activities of the Scottish Women's Budget Group.
The budget process this year in Scotland was truncated. It took place over a period of eight weeks. That was because of a delayed announcement of the spending review at the U.K. level because of the U.K. elections and the change of prime minister. So we had to wait until we knew how much money we were getting from the U.K. before we could conduct our own budget. It meant our budget process took place over a period of eight to 10 weeks.
Bearing in mind what I said about a new government, a new committee, and new members, my feeling is the committee felt better placed to appoint an advisor to assist them with the scrutiny process, given the newness of the situation and the very short time period available to them.
The advisor was appointed on the basis of open competition. A few names were put into the hat and I was subsequently appointed as advisor for that period, November, December, and early January. My subsequent remit was advise on prospective witnesses the committee may want to call to give evidence with regard to the contents of the Scottish budget; to provide the committee members with guidance on the appropriate line of questioning of those witnesses; to brief the committee members on the contents of the budget with a specific focus on where equality considerations were evident or, in many situations, where equality considerations were not evident; and, finally, to have input into the equal opportunities committee's written response to the finance committee of the Scottish Parliament, which is part of the formal scrutiny process.
We went on to have two evidence sessions. One involved the minister with the remit for equalities, and we also had a meeting of all the advisors for all the committees across the Scottish Parliament. My understanding is this was the first year that every single parliamentary committee of the Scottish Parliament appointed a budget advisor. Previously, only a handful of committees had appointed budget advisors, and the finance committee has been the only committee that's had a regular advisor throughout the lifetime of the Scottish Parliament.
The outputs from my role as advisor with the committee were the briefing on the budget with a focus on equalities, and the final report, which was submitted to the finance committee. I believe those outputs contributed to the scrutiny process in a very positive way by bringing gender concerns and broader equality concerns to the fore, albeit, I would say with a word of caution, at a marginal level. I don't think any significant change happened. However, I think there was a significant amount of awareness raising amongst committee members with regard to making the link between their equalities remit and the budget.
So for me the experience of working with the committee indicated the value of a specialist advisor. It may have been the first time in Scotland, but I firmly believe that it won't be the last. I think all members and the committee collectively recognized the value added of appointing a specialist budget advisor and will continue to do so in the future. In fact, we have a meeting scheduled for April 18 of all the specialist advisors to all the committees to consider how effective the process actually was.
The second main issue I'd like to raise with regard to the activity that's not directly associated with the Scottish Women's Budget Group is where I put on my academic hat and talk specifically about how we can relate our gender budget activity to the academic work in the field of feminist economics. In Scotland we've been acutely aware of the lack of understanding of gender budget analysis, in fact of gender as a concept within the resource allocation process, or rather its limited significance within the resource allocation process. In recognition of this, in 2004, with funding from the Equal Opportunities Commission, I and a number of colleagues initiated a pilot study, which we called Economics For Equality—not economics of equality. The focus was on understanding the economics of the gender pay gap, and we invited a number of community activists to a number of sessions to explore the economists' understanding of the gender pay gap and the policy responses that followed from that.
That pilot was pretty successful, and we've since secured funding from Oxfam to run a subsequent pilot with a focus on the national budget process. The purpose of this next stage of this program of work is twofold. One is to engage local community activists with the budget, but also, second, to engage policy makers with the equality and gender issues as they relate to the budget. So what we're trying to do with this pilot is bring feminist economic analysis out of the classroom, in an applied sense, and to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
Now the Scottish Women's Budget Group has been heavily involved in these pilots in informing the work through their outputs and also participating in the work.
Finally, I'd like to say that this combination of activity represents for us a really well-thought-out response to the challenges we identified way back in 1999 about how we would progress with a gender budget analysis in Scotland. Those challenges remain for us nine years later, and I'd just like to briefly say what they are.
First is political change. I think we're all very aware of the significance of political change and the subsequent dynamics of the budget process and how we can keep abreast of that. I think we have done that in Scotland through the sustained activities of the Scottish Women's Budget Group and through our Parliament work. Our relationship with the equal opportunities committee of Parliament has been crucial in that.
Second, our biggest challenge I think has been the lack of understanding of gender and where gender sits within the policy process. I think our most recent activity in terms of the work I've been doing with the parliamentary committee has been crucial in raising awareness of that.
Thirdly, a significant challenge has been to try to ensure buy-in from across the wider community with regard to the concept of gender budgeting. I think we're getting somewhere in Scotland with that, with our economics for equality program.
I'd like to finish there and open it up to any questions the committee might have for Angela and me.
Thank you.