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That is a good question. As a teacher, I have taken an interest in the cost of the school day for a number of years. About 10 or 11 years ago, the school in which I was teaching took part in the pilot to assess the cost of the school day, and we saw that the effects that that cost can have on children and families, and on their experience in general, were quite remarkable. There were compounding factors for those with protected characteristics and those in households where they were experiencing domestic violence.

I take that issue really seriously, and I absolutely recognise the pressure that is placed on families, which is not helped by the cost of living crisis. We took action to create an emergency fund to address school meal debt, and that fund was increased from £1.5 million to £2.8 million in response to the demand from local authorities. A total of 30 local authorities applied for support through the fund, and we have taken steps to issue payments totalling £2.8 million, as I just referred to.

The member will be aware that local authorities are responsible for the management of school meal debt, and we expect them to use their powers to support families appropriately. COSLA has published good practice guidance; our expectation is that councils will follow that guidance, and 30 out of 32 have done that. I would be very interested to see what barriers prevented the council that the member mentioned from applying to the fund. We will continue to support dialogue with all local authorities, including West Dunbartonshire Council.

The Scottish Government received a letter from the DWP on 3 July last year, noting the receipt of the policy design specification and reiterating the complexity of the ask. The letter listed some of the challenges of delivering the policy, including the potential barriers, the cost of carrying out the impact assessment of the policy and the challenges in delivering it in the near future. The Scottish Government has acknowledged that letter.

The Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice met Sir Stephen Timms to discuss the review of universal credit. She highlighted the importance of the split payment policy and the need for the universal credit review to include a gendered analysis of it.

We remain committed to working with the DWP towards the delivery of split payments of universal credit.

I am happy to pass that question to the relevant people.

I can have a go. Where there is a lack of information and/or evidence explained in the financial eligibility form 2, SLAB can use its discretion to disregard income or capital where it considers it reasonable to do so in the circumstances or to provisionally assess financial eligibility based on the information that is available. Solicitors must explain those situations when making an application to ensure that SLAB is aware of why information might be missing and to avoid the application being rejected or abandoned. As a result of being in an abusive relationship, someone might have accumulated several debts. When calculating someone’s eligibility, SLAB will consider disposable income and debts such as loans, credit cards and store cards and it will make an allowance for the monthly payment towards those debts, but that is not unique to domestic abuse cases—

Absolutely. You are right to raise that issue.

That is a good question. There are two main strands to the work to increase accountability for human rights under the bill. The first involves establishing an approach that shares human rights leadership and responsibility among several bodies. We therefore propose expanding the powers and remits of a number of bodies, including the Scottish Human Rights Commission, the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman and other oversight bodies. Our hope is that that will strengthen their ability to provide accountability and support for human rights in Scotland.

The second strand of the work involves developing measures that will enable courts and tribunals to deliver effective and appropriate remedies when it is found that a duty bearer has failed in its duty under the bill regarding protected rights. Before the summer, we will publish a discussion paper that will set out in greater detail our approach to policy in the bill.

Thank you for that. I understand what you are getting at, and you have covered a lot of areas there.

To be very clear, the Scottish Government procures certain services from organisations, including in the third sector, and they are monitored. There is day-to-day funding governance through Inspiring Scotland, and third sector bodies are covered by the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, so there is thorough scrutiny and governance.

At this time, there are certain groups of people, including transgender people, who are feeling particularly vulnerable. I have had questions from you about some of those organisations before. For instance, we fund a suicide helpline; the funding is there to provide a service that people need in order to be able to deal with mental health issues regarding their protected characteristics. We procure specific services in that regard, so it is not a question of funding any particular type of ideology.

I will bring in Cat McMeeken to give a little bit of further detail.

To give you a specific answer and make sure that we get it technically correct, I will pass that on to Cat McMeeken.

I am not sure that I have the scope to do that. We have a robust process—there is an accountable officer involved and Inspiring Scotland are the people who do that impartially; they have that impartial judgment. Perhaps Cat McMeeken can explain how that actually works.

You said it very well. You will be fully aware that the plan will be all of those things, but the most important thing is embedding a human rights approach across everything. That is the cultural change that has to happen, which is why I talked about participation, consultation and collaboration, which are really important. It will involve not just the Scottish Government in that sense, but public bodies and a wide variety of stakeholders. It is important for that approach to be embedded from the get-go, so that that is the starting point. We need to take people with us in order to do that.

The tracker tool will be open and available to the committee and members of the general public. It will be able to track the progress that is being made across all the duty bearers. It will provide accountability, transparency and tracking, which is to be welcomed. It is not just a tool for us; we will not be marking our own homework. It is a tool that is available for everyone to use to hold us to account as well as everyone else who is responsible for the implementation of those rights.