Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget statement – national priorities: easy read

About the National Priorities

There are 4 different places where we have put our National Priorities.

1. The 3 Missions

Missions mean aims or goals that we want to happen.

Humza Yousaf is the First Minister for the Scottish Government.

In April 2023 he made a document called Vision for Scotland.

A vision is what we want to see happen.

The Vision for Scotland has 3 missions.

1. To make Scotland fairer and safer with fewer people not having enough money for basic things like food, clothes and heating.

2. To make our economy:

• fairer
• stronger
• better for the climate crisis

Economy means the way a whole country:

• makes goods to sell
• buys goods
• makes money
• spends money

Climate crisis means the way that our planet is heating up too fast.

This means our weather patterns and water levels are changing very fast.

3. To help our communities by having very good public services – like hospitals, police and schools.

2. Programme for Government

The Programme for Government is the Government’s goals for the year ahead.

Money is given to work towards these goals.

The new Programme for Government will go from 2024 to 2025.

We have made a stronger way to check that everything works better for equality.

Equality means treating people fairly and giving people the same chances and choices.

Some groups of people have fewer chances and choices than other sorts of people.

We have looked at how life is even harder for someone who is in more than one of these groups.

3. National Performance Framework

Scotland has a wellbeing plan.

Wellbeing means how happy and healthy we feel.

The wellbeing plan is called the National Performance Framework.

It has 11 aims – called National Outcomes.

The aims say what wellbeing could be like in Scotland.

There will be a close look at the 11 National Outcomes in 2024.

This will let us see how the work is going.

4. Human Rights

Human rights are the basic rights and freedoms that belong to everyone.

Some of our rights are about how we take part in our communities and our country.

Some of our rights are about jobs and day to day life.

We think human rights are very important in our budget work.

The Equality and Human Rights Advisory Group made a long list of actions that need to happen to make human rights better.

We can show where human rights are an important part of budget decisions.