A/HRC/41/54/Add.4 to inform policy and decision-making. Every year, alongside the Scottish Budget, the Scottish Government publishes an Equality Budget Statement that demonstrates how equality considerations influence spending plans. In line with Scottish Regulations, the Scottish Government Equality Outcomes and Mainstreaming Report 2019 provides a breakdown of the composition of its workforce and the recruitment, development and retention of employees with respect to relevant protected characteristics. The report also details progress in gathering and using that information to enable it to better perform the public sector equality duty. Under Regulation 5 of the Scottish-specific duties, listed public authorities, including the Scottish Government, are required to assess and review policies and practices, and in doing so to consider evidence relating to persons who share a relevant protected characteristic. The Scottish Government has adopted a mainstreaming approach to equality to deliver this obligation and to ensure that the impact of its policies, programmes and legislation on groups of people who share a protected characteristic are assessed by all areas and at all levels of government. In Scotland, equality impact assessments to consider the impact of different policies on people who share one or more of the protected characteristics remains a legal obligation. In January 2018, Scotland’s First Minister established an Advisory Group on Human Rights Leadership to examine the human rights impacts of UK withdrawal from the EU and how best to protect and promote all human rights across all potential scenarios. The First Minister endorsed the group’s overall vision of a new “Human Rights Framework” for Scotland, to be delivered by a new Act of the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government will work with partners to establish a National Task Force to take forward the group’s key recommendations. C. Racial Equality in the UK: Lived Experiences 14. Para 20-21 - In October 2018, the UK Government announced a series of measures to tackle the barriers facing ethnic minorities in the workplace including: a consultation on ethnicity pay reporting in response to the Race Disparity Audit’s (2017) Ethnicity facts and figures website data; and the new Race at Work Charter developed jointly by the Government and Business in the Community. 15. £1.2m from the £90m Dormant Accounts Youth funding was released by the Big Lottery Fund (BLF) under the banner of the Youth Capacity Fund, to develop the capacity of local, frontline grassroots organisations who help young people facing barriers to work. 16. The latest ethnic minority employment rate is 66.2% (4 quarter average to December 2018) - up 1.5 percentage points from the same point the previous year - the highest since the series began in 2001. 17. The employment rate gap (between the employment rates of the ethnic minority population and the overall population) has fallen by 0.9 percentage points on the year to 9.5 percentage points – a record low. 18. Ethnic minority employment has risen by 556,000 since 2015, taking us 84% of the way towards meeting our target of increasing ethnic minority employment by 20% by 2020. 19. While employment powers, including around flexible working, are reserved to the UK Government, the Scottish Government is funding the Family Friendly Working Scotland Partnership to support and promote the development of flexible and agile workplaces across Scotland. It is also funding a pilot project concerning the recognition of prior qualifications, skills and learning to help refugees and asylum seekers coming to Scotland. In March, the Scottish Government published a gender pay gap action plan to tackle the causes of gender inequality in the labour market, including that faced by minority ethnic women. Actions within the plan include investing £5 million over the next three years to support around 2,000 women to return to work. The Scottish Government’s Fair Work Action Plan aims to help employers embed fairer working practices. It will help deliver fair work to a diverse and inclusive workforce and embed fair work across government. In addition, Scotland’s Workplace Equality Fund provides funding to employers and their business partners to improve workplace practices and reduce employment inequalities, discrimination and barriers for people from minority ethnic communities. The Scottish Government has set in statute ambitious targets to reduce levels of child poverty through the Child Poverty 4