Public bodies and Scottish government trashing accountability

For some years now [since 2013] public bodies in Scotland have been required to report every two years on what they have been doing to deliver equality, as defined by the Equality Act 2010, both as service providers as well as employers.  A critical part of this process is that the public bodies should publish all their reports in a manner that is 'accessible' to the public.

In the Regulations telling public bodies what to report and when, an 'Executive Note' explained that the Regulations would:

'allow the wider community to monitor (and where appropriate challenge) the performance of public authorities in relation to the public sector equality duty.'

Recent research used Freedom of Information requests to explore whether NHS Boards in Scotland were meeting their legal duties under the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 to publish equality-related reports in a manner accessible to the public.  Despite the legislative aim of fostering transparency, accountability, and public engagement, the findings reveal widespread shortcomings.  The bulk of Scotland’s NHS Boards do not systematically collect or report data on whether the public are accessing downloads of the key reports—such as Mainstreaming Equality, Gender Pay Gap, and Workforce Monitoring reports—and all of the Boards had no records of requests from the public for paper or alternative formats of the reports.  Where data on downloads was provided, the number of downloads was strikingly low and highly concentrated in a small number of Boards, suggesting minimal public reach.

As a benchmark to the performance of Boards, the same questions were asked of Scottish Government, a public body in its own right.  Surprisingly, the government was unable to provide any of the data requested, and was unable to evidence that it was meeting the aims of the Regulations when it published reports on what it was delivering on equality.

The research report concludes that accountability is largely illusory: NHS Boards [and government] fail to promote their reports to the public, websites are difficult to navigate, and there are no linked and traceable mechanisms to encourage feedback, challenge, or dialogue and so construct a virtuous circle to the accountability concept inherent in the legislation.  This culture of passive compliance undermines the original policy objectives of the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012, leaving both NHS Boards and the Scottish Government open to criticism for failing to demonstrate leadership or embed accessibility and accountability in what is being done to deliver equality.  In reality, the public sector in Scotland is still rooted in a out-of-date culture which does things TO people and continues to fail to do things WITH the people who are supposed to gain from what is being done by public bodies. 

To address these failures, the report recommends systemic reforms, including the creation of a centralised, Audit Scotland–hosted database of all equality reports published by the public sector; automatic compliance monitoring for the Equality & Human Rights Commission; mandatory Plain English standards; and requirements for Boards to actively promote their reports, track readership, and respond to public feedback.  Without such measures, Scotland’s NHS, government and the rest of the public sector cannot credibly claim to be accountable to the communities it serves in advancing equality for those communities.

Accountability between the public and the system of government in Scotland

 

The never-ending omnishambles of Ferguson Marine and the contract to build two ferries serves as a metaphor for the failings of government, as well as marking the complete disappearance of accountability between the general public and those who control the many levers of power in the too many layers of government in Scotland.

Two of the biggest players in the public sector in Scotland are the NHS and Councils, with combined expenditure in 2023 of over £42 billion and employing across both sectors just short of 500,000 people.  When the Cabinet Secretary for Health was asked about the accountability of Health Boards to the public they serve, we were told that public attendance at meetings of Boards helps:

‘ensure transparency and accountability around the decisions that are made by the Board’

 The Cabinet Secretary for Local Government answered a similar question around Councils and the public with:

 ‘Public attendance at council meetings is permitted to ensure councils are transparent and accountable to their local communities. Although members of the public cannot actively contribute or ask questions at council meetings, attendance at meetings means the public can gain an understanding of local issues and how decisions are made.’

That did not appear to be the case at Edinburgh Council when in 2014 the first Edinburgh tram line opened 5 years behind schedule and £400 million over-budget.

It was decided to examine the extent to which members of the public can in fact hold the public sector to account.  It was also decided to examine just how accessible was the ‘right’ of the public to attend meetings of any of the NHS Boards or any full Council meetings.  An FoI request was issued to all Health Boards and Councils at the start of the year.  The full research report is available here.

Information on ’Right’ to attend

As is the case with all ‘rights’ available to the public, they are only ‘rights’ if people are aware of them, are regularly reminded of them, and are fully aware of how to claim their ‘rights’ at any time. NHS Boards and Councils were asked to provide information on how they communicated with the public about their ‘right’ to attend meetings and hold Boards and Councils to account, and when this form of communication had last been reviewed.  Many of the responses from Boards and Councils referred to notices posted on their websites. Many of these were short, focusing on the practicalities of how to arrange attendance with very few offering a wider context of why members of the public were being encouraged to attend and what all involved – the public and the organisation – gained from their attendance.

Those public bodies offering only a web-based invitation to attend meetings are discriminating against those parts of the population who do not routinely have access to the internet.  Alongside this, there appears to be a distinct lack of active and positive encouragement on offer across all Scotland’s Councils and Health Boards in their efforts to persuade members of the public to attend meetings.  An invitation to attend meetings which is buried in a corporate website cannot be described as being reflective of a pro-active approach to building a strong and recurring public presence at the peak decision-making process of any public body.

If the right to attend Council and NHS Board meetings is indeed to be seen as part of the overall dynamic which enables the public to hold NHS Boards and Councils to account, then it would not be unreasonable for Scottish government to set a range of key performance indicators covering this area, such as requiring remedial action by the public body when two consecutive meetings of any Board or Council record that no members of the public were in attendance.

Attendance data

NHS Boards and Councils were asked to provide data on how many meetings [of the Board and the full Council] had been held in the last three calendar years and how many people had asked to attend the meetings. There appears to be no discernible pattern as to how often there are meetings of full Councils or Health Boards each year. From the FoI responses, a total of 1,057 full Council and Health Board meetings were held over the last 3 years.

Some Councils took the view that as Council chambers had public galleries and that members of the public were not required to notify them of attending, there was no established practice of counting any member of the public attending. This was also the case where meetings were streamed on-line, with Councils choosing not to require signing-in to the streaming and so not enabling a count of who was ‘attending’ other than elected members.

The reality is that most Councils and Health Boards between them held 1,057 meetings over the last three calendar years [2022, 2023 and 2024] at which members of the public had the right to attend. During that time, 393 people were recorded as having attended in-person and 58 as having attended virtually, with 232 [59% of all] of these accounted for at meetings held by one of the Health Boards. 

Unsurprisingly, the majority of decision-making meetings in Councils and Health Boards take place without members of the public being recorded as present. This also means that the decisions being made at these meetings are not being held to account by the public. One of the obvious changes required in this aspect of meetings is to require public bodies to formally record the number of people in attendance, both in-person and virtually. In addition, they should be required to gather data on the protected characteristics of those people who choose to attend.

 

Barrier-free access to meetings

Boards and Councils were also asked how many requests had been made to attend meetings where particular needs to enable access had been identified.

Of the 1,057 full Council and Board meetings held during the last 3 calendar years, just two people are recorded as having advised of having particular needs to be able to access and attend the meetings. In addition to the general lack of people attending meetings of Councils and Boards, it is also evident that the failures in this form of ‘accountability’ go deeper, and that there is embedded discrimination present in how the systems are failing to attract the attendance of disabled people with particular needs. It is also probable that people sharing other protected characteristics are also being failed by the system. Given the lack of data being gathered on the protected characteristics of those people who are attending meetings, it is simply not possible to quantify the extent of discrimination in how the system operates.

It is also important to note that where meetings are made open to the public through live-streaming that captions generated through such as Microsoft Teams have an accuracy of 85-90% and are not typically considered accurate enough for professional or critical situations where complete comprehension is necessary for deaf or hard of hearing users, In light of this, public bodies using live-streaming of meetings should be required to use electronic notetakers to provide more accurate captions for the meetings.

Equality & Diversity Impact Assessment [EQIA]

Boards and Councils were invited to indicate when the question of accessibility of their meetings to the public had last been checked with a formal assessment [EQIA], including a check on how public bodies ensured the public knew of their right to attend meetings.

5 [out of 64] Councils and Health Boards indicated an EQIA had been undertaken of the practices and cultures of holding meetings and their arrangements for the public to attend and hold Councils and Boards to account. Given meetings of the full Councils and of the Health Boards are the place where the primary decision-making takes place, these do seem to be prime candidates for an EQIA being carried out to test practices and cultures and ensure that no discrimination is allowed to exist and that full accessibility is available to all. The Equality & Human Rights Commission in Scotland needs to remind public bodies of their obligation to carry out EQIAs.

 

Unfit for 21^st century

For over 50 years, the general public has had the right to attend meetings of Health Boards and full Councils and so, according to Scottish government, hold them to account. This research, with a particular angle on examining the accessibility of the concept, finds that the right to attend is a rather stale, and somewhat tired concept, is unfit for the 21st century, lacks any visible or tangible evidence of public bodies being ‘held to account’, and is more an act of faith than a practical or meaningful reality.

The reality of members of the public holding public bodies to account is, from Scottish government’s perspective, achieved by simply attending meetings of any NHS Board or full Council and observing proceedings, saying nothing. Relying on such a simple belief that people mutely attending meetings will serve as a robust check on the public sector going rogue or act as a bulwark against further £multi-million performance errors in the public sector, is an act of faith which is a not-so-distant cousin to that at the heart of the apocryphal tale of Canute imploring the waves to desist from their tidal meanderings.

The role of the public in holding public bodies to account requires urgent and fundamental reform. One possible change could help retain credibility in the concept and give rise to visible accountability. Requiring Health Boards and Councils to hold one additional public meeting a year at which a general progress report is offered for the previous 12 months – written in plain language – and that the public in attendance can both speak to the report presented as well as vote to accept or reject the report.  Doing the same for another 70 years and getting the same [non] results is not an option.

The Pride Badge in NHS Scotland - a symbol of unity or division ?

In 2020, while the UK was engulfed with the Covid pandemic, the NHS in Scotland was stretched to breaking point and people were dying, often alone, a working group of NHS staff was established in early 2020. Their purpose ?  To develop a new badge for staff.  The 'Pride Badge'.

 

During 2020 and into 2021, as the pandemic raged, it seems work on developing and planning the ‘Pride Badge’ project was considered so important that NHS staff time could be diverted away from the NHS response to the pandemic.  The then Cabinet Secretary for Health, Humza Yousaf, formally approved development and promotion of the ‘Pride Badge’ project.  Fortunately for us this record of his approval was not deleted from his WhatsApp messages.

 

The ’Pride Badge’ was formally launched in June 2021.  The real purpose, the measurable impact, of the ‘Pride Badge’, was never made clear by Scottish government, and no SMART goals were set for it.  It was only later, in 2022, when government surveyed ‘Pride Badge’ wearers, that a sense of what was being reached for was revealed in a question:

Do you think the NHS Scotland Pride Badge initiative has helped to reduce instances of homophobia, biphobia, transphobia in the NHS Scotland?

Quite why the work on the project development during 2020-2021 did not include establishing a baseline of current levels of homophobia etc. in the NHS Scotland against which progress [or lack of progress] could be measured is never explained.  It is as if success or failure of the ‘Pride Badge’ project was not even entertained as a concept.

 

The Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] has long made it clear that all activities of public bodies should be subject to an equality impact assessment [EQIA], stressing that any EQIA must be done before implementing projects and equally stressing that the EQIA cannot be retrospective.  In essence the EQIA approach helps public bodies to check that even if they think what they plan to do will be positive, that it is thoroughly checked against bringing in any adverse or negative impact on people with other protected characteristics.

 

Scottish government said the pressures of the pandemic meant they had no time to do an EQIA but that they “are currently looking into preparing an EQIA for that initiative retrospectively”.  Even though the EHRC guidance says that a retrospective EQIA is not permitted.  It is as if government thinks the ‘Pride Badge’ project is somehow exempt from all constraints, good practice or legal duties.

 

The 22 Scottish Health Boards who all opted-in to the ‘Pride Badge’ project all confirmed they too had not conducted an EQIA of what they rolled out in their workplaces and services.  Some of them believed government had  carried one out.  Most of them offered the excuse for not doing an EQIA that it was a ‘national initiative’.  The reality is that each Health Board is legally responsible for what happens in their workforce and their services, no matter who sets policy or strategy at national level.  By not doing an EQIA, all Scotland’s Health Boards failed their workforce and failed their service users.

 

When asked if anyone had evaluated what the Health Boards had rolled out in their workplaces and services, again not one of the 22 Health Boards had done this, claiming again that government had evaluated the ‘Pride Badge’ project.  In 2022 government carried out a survey of 1,489 self-selecting ‘Pride Badge’ wearing employees [out of a workforce of 171,726].  No health service users from across the spectrum of sexual orientations were involved and asked for their experiences during the project. No ‘gender critical’ employees were asked for their views and no employees who were not badge wearers were asked for their experiences and perceptions during the project. In other words the survey did not gather views which reflected a 360 degree examination of the project, instead looking through the eyes only of those who shared the beliefs inherent in the ‘Pride Badge’ project.

 

Given the very poor design and delivery of the ‘Pride Badge’ project to date, it comes as no surprise that when asked ‘Do you think the NHS Scotland Pride Badge initiative has helped to reduce instances of homophobia/biphobia/transphobia in the NHS Scotland?’, the 1,489 employees said:

 

Yes – 18%; No – 25%; Unsure – 57%

 

It is as if the ‘Pride Badge’ project was set up, developed and delivered with failure as the primary outcome. 

 

In yet another illustration of the omnishambles that passes for project development, planning, delivery and evaluation in NHS Scotland, all Health Boards and government were asked what mitigations had been built into the project to take account of the views and beliefs of people who hold ‘gender critical’ beliefs, that sex is immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity ?  Every Health Board and government advised that no mitigations had been built in and that they were not necessary.  And yet, at the time [June 2021] the ‘Pride Badge’ project was being launched the Employment Appeal Tribunal [EAT] Forstater case was decided, where the EAT considered her belief that sex is immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity.  Yet there is no evidence that Scottish government in the detailed design of the ‘Pride Badge’ project, or in the project guidance issued to Boards, took account of the case or the judgment.  Likewise there is no evidence offered by NHS Boards that the ‘Pride Badge’ project, as rolled out in their Board, took account of the judgment. 

 

It is highly unlikely that Scottish government and NHS Scotland senior staff, including Equality managers, were unaware of the Forstater case [which evolved between 2018-21] as they developed the ‘Pride Badge’ project.  The only reasonable conclusion is that the implications of Forstater for the design of the ‘Pride Badge’ project and its impact on people who hold ‘gender critical’  views were deliberately ignored or overlooked.  Inevitably, the flawed ‘Pride Badge’ project can be seen as an emblem not of unity but of division in and across the NHS workforce.

 

The 'Pride Badge' continues to run in NHS Scotland, with no end-date to the project.  Government has advised that there is no formal end date planned for the project but that monitoring of its impact concluded with the evaluation survey.  In other words a project which government's own ‘evaluation’ found was ineffective continues to run across the NHS in Scotland and no further monitoring for its effectiveness [or failure and even adverse impact] will take place.

 

If the ‘Pride Badge’ project is typical of how the NHS in Scotland goes about designing, planning and delivering projects generally, then it can no real surprise as to why the NHS is seriously underperforming and why no extra funding appears to generate the urgently required improvements.

 

The full research report into the 'Pride Badge' project can be read here.

Scotland's Councils miss equality targets in employment of BME people - no officials or elected members resign

For some years now, Equality Here, Now has waded through 32 Council Mainstreaming Equality reports to find out just how far Councils, as employers, have managed to eliminate discrimination.  The latest audit of the performance of Councils on delivering employment equality, the 5th since 2010, looked at reports published by Councils in 2021.  The full detail of the 2022 research findings can be read here.

Using data published by Councils themselves, at 2021 the total workforce of Councils across Scotland was 265,030 employees. Of these, 4,017 [1.52%] identified as people from a Black Minority Ethnic [BME] background, 187,315 [70.68%] identified as non-BME and 73,698 [27.81%] did not reveal their ethnicity status. The latest population data from ScottishGovernment’s Equality Evidence Finder is that 4.6% of all adults were from a BME background [as at 2018]. 

Most Councils indicated that their goal was to have a workforce profile which reflected the profile of the population served by the Council.  The research constructed a league table using Census 2011 data and the workforce data published by Councils.  This is reproduced below.

This reveals that there are over 5,800 people from a BME background missing from all of Scotland's Council workforces, over 100% more than is currently employed.  The City of Glasgow Council is the worst offender, with 2,385 people from a BME background missing.

At the present rate of progress in increasing the number of people employed who are from a BME background, Councils in Scotland will, collectively, take over 50 years to reach a level of employment of people from BME backgrounds which matches the level [today] of people from BME backgrounds living in their communities. Given population projections are predicting an increase in Scotland’s BME population to 7%71 in 2031, it is likely the goal of achieving race equality in employment in Councils [based on headcount alone] will take considerably longer than 50 years. 

Reaching such a benchmark will not, however, ensure that employment equality [by headcount] will be delivered for people who identify as Asian, or African or Caribbean, or Black, or from a mixed ethnic group. Councils have yet to start work on gathering and using data to help perform the general equality duty which treats each cohort separately, and not create an artificial aggregate of convenience which simply serves to prolong racial discrimination in employment.

The research and findings, including the actual performance against benchmark as shown in the table above, was shared with Chief Executives and Leaders of Councils.  A small minority of the Chief Executive or Leaders responded, with most recognising that their performance in eliminating employment discrimination is poor but failing to offer any bold, radical or new initiatives which will close the equality gaps for people from BME backgrounds in their Councils.

It is interesting to note that even in the face of the sustained failure of Councils to deliver employment equality for people from BME backgrounds, not one official and not one elected member has taken responsibility for it and resigned.  Which perhaps offers a compelling illustration of a fundamental flaw in the law on eliminating discrimination.  Not one person is required to resign, voluntarily or by collective corporate action, when failure on the scale of Glasgow City Council is revealed.  The sense is clear that corporate and cultural responsibility for delivering equality rests all-too lightly on the shoulders of senior figures in Scotland's public sector.  

Scotland's Councils miss equality targets in employment of disabled people - no officials or elected members resign

 As has been done several times since the Equality Act took effect in 2010 and Scotland put in place regulations on how public bodies should comply with the Act, Equality Here, Now has waded through 32 Council reports to find out just how far Councils, as employers, have managed to eliminate discrimination.  This latest audit, the 5th since 2010, looked at Council Mainstreaming Equality reports published in 2021.  The fine detail of the 2022 research findings can be read here.

Using data published by Councils themselves, at 2021 the total workforce of Councils across Scotland was 265,030 employees. Of these, 6,347 [2.39%] identified as disabled, 147,573 [55.68%] identified as non-disabled and 111,110 [41.92%] did not reveal their disability status. The latest population data from Scottish Government’s Equality Evidence Finder is that 32% of all adults were disabled [as at 2017].  

Most Councils indicated that their goal was to have a workforce profile which reflected the profile of the population served by the Council.  The research constructed a league table using Census 2011 data and the workforce data published by Councils.  This is reproduced below.

This reveals that there are over 45,000 disabled people missing from all of Scotland's Council workforces, almost 7 times the actual total currently employed.  The City of Glasgow Council is the worst offender, with 5,603 disabled people missing.

At the present rate of progress in increasing the number of disabled people employed, Councils in Scotland will, collectively, take over 470 years to reach a level of employment of disabled people which matches the level of disabled people living in their communities. 

Reaching such a milestone will not, however, ensure that employment equality [by headcount] will be delivered for people who identify as having visual impairment and blindness, or hearing impairment and deafness, or physical disabilities such as congenital conditions, or long-term injuries caused by accidents, or progressive neuromuscular diseases, or respiratory conditions or immunological conditions, or neurological conditions and brain injuries. That would require Councils to gather and use employment data on each of these particular cohorts of disabled people in their approach to better performing the general equality duty. None of Scotland’s 32 Councils has started to do that.

The research and findings, including the actual performance against benchmark as shown in the table above, was shared with Chief Executives and Leaders of Councils.  A small minority of the Chief Executive or Leaders responded, with most recognising that their performance in eliminating employment discrimination is poor but failing to offer any bold, radical or new initiatives which will close the equality gaps for disabled people in their Councils.

It is interesting to note that even in the face of the sustained failure of Councils to deliver employment equality for disabled people, not one official and not one elected member has taken responsibility for it and resigned.  Which perhaps offers a compelling illustration of a fundamental flaw in the law on eliminating discrimination.  Not one person is required to resign, voluntarily or by collective corporate action, when failure on the scale of Glasgow City Council is revealed.  The sense is clear that corporate and cultural responsibility for delivering equality rests all-too lightly on the shoulders of senior figures in Scotland's public sector.  

WASP privilege indulged by Scottish government and Equality & Human Rights Commission in the running of local government

Scotland's Councils have had almost 11 years now to meet the legal duties they were given under the Equality Act 2010 and change how they go about their daily business and eliminate discrimination as employers and service providers.

Rather than embrace the challenges and shoot for the Equality Moon, Scotland's Councils have managed to demonstrate that the law can be stuffed into the drawer marked 'too difficult' and know that the enforcers of the law, the Equality & Human Rights Commission in Scotland, will do nothing, or as close to nothing as is possible to get without appearing utterly useless or corrupt.

As employers, Scotland's Councils in 2019 managed to count up that of they employed 258,680 workers and that just 5,592 of them [2.16%] identified as disabled people.  Scotland's adult population has 32% of people identifying as disabled.  Not even close to evidencing that discrimination has been eliminated against disabled people.  Woefully short.

As employers, Scotland's Councils struggle to find the evidence that they have eliminated discrimination against Black Minority Ethnic [BME] people.  Just 3,337 workers identified as BME out of the 258,680 Council workers across Scotland.  That is 1.29% of the total.  Estimates for the BME population of Scotland at 2020 suggest the figure is at 5% of the population.  Once more, Scotland's Councils are failing to show that discrimination, this time against BME people, is being eliminated.

Looking at the data for Scottish Council workers identifying as Lesbian, Gay or Bi-sexual [LGB], shows Scotland's Councils are not particular about who they discriminate against.  Just 1,789 workers identify as LGB.  That represents just 0.69% of the whole Council workforce across Scotland.  This at a time when the government itself reckons that 2% of the adult population identifies as LGB as at 2017.  

Another cohort of people who have experienced discrimination in Scotland for decades, if not longer, are Catholic people.  All of Scotland's Councils managed to find 16,907 workers who identified as Catholic.  Just 6.54% of the whole workforce.  The government's own Equality Evidence Finder shows that 14.3% of the adult population in Scotland identifies as Catholic.

In their role as service providers, Scotland's Council were given a chance late in 2020 to provide evidence that they were gathering data on their service users by protected characteristic [as they do with employees] and so demonstrate clearly that their services are equally accessible to all, that the experience in using services was equally useful to all, and that outcomes from using those services was equally available to all.  Thousands of pages of evidence were received.  Those thousands of pages showed all too clearly that Councils across Scotland are unable to evidence that their services are in fact equally accessible to all.  The consequences of this corporate laziness mean structural discrimination in the key functions of the bulk of Scotland’s Councils is going untraced, unchallenged and unchanged.

The basic numbers on employment and the complete lack of numbers in service provision reveal all too clearly that Scotland’s Councils have barely bothered to scratch the surface of discrimination in their functions as employers and as service providers.  Given there are no obvious reasons why this should be the case, applying Occam’s razor would suggest the most likely reason for the failure is that there is a marked lack of appetite in local government for changing a status quo in a Scotland which is largely run by and for WASP [White Anglo Saxon Protestant] privilege. For Scottish government and the Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] to be aware of this and not to actively intervene and drive the real change required, suggests WASP privilege is similarly indulged by government and the EHRC.

Structural discrimination in the key functions of Scotland’s Councils is going untraced, unchallenged and unchanged

 

It is now over ten years since Gordon Brown rushed through the House of Commons part of his legacy in the shape of the Equality Act 2010.  There was little which was radically new in the Act.  Much of the focus of the Act was in tidying up equality legislation dating back several decades and ensuring a coherent framework within which the different experiences of discrimination people with protected characteristics encountered could be placed.

 

The Equality & Human Rights Commission published a guide for public sector bodies in Scotland in 2016, ‘Evidence and the Public Sector Equality Duty’, and which was intended to “help authorities subject to the public sector equality duty to implement the duty as it relates to evidence”.  On page 19, the guidance explains:

 

After reviewing the existing evidence base, you are likely to identify things that you do, or protected groups that access your services, for which you do not have equality evidence. This could be because you have good information but it is not disaggregated for all protected characteristics, or because you do not routinely collect information in relation to particular functions.  Think about whether you have enough evidence, and the right type of evidence, to enable you to give rigorous consideration to the needs of the general equality duty across all your functions.

 

You will not be able to do everything at once, and it may take some time to develop relevant evidence across all of your functions. But a lack of evidence is not a valid excuse for inaction on the duty. It is important that you start to take action based on the evidence you have, while also taking steps to develop evidence in other areas.

 Late in 2020, Equality Here, Now investigated the extent to which Scotland’s 32 Councils had managed to examine how they were delivering services and use data gathering on service users to help them identify if discrimination was present in how those services were being delivered.  This would allow them to design out discrimination and so evidence that all people could have equal access to services, equality of experience when in them and equality of outcome achieved from using them.

 While there are any number of approaches to gathering data which could form the basis of evidence that equality of access to Council services is being achieved, there are some basic features which would need to be present.

 The first of these is that data needs to be gathered on who is using a Council service.  For instance, people using a Council library service could be profiled by protected characteristic when they first apply to be a member of their library.  This would then allow a Council to track actual use of library services and cross-reference/analysis made to Council population demographic data to identify if there is a comparative under-use by, say, people identifying as Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual [LGB] as against those identifying as heterosexual.  This would enable a Council to conduct focused research to establish reasons for comparative under-use found from data gathering and identify if systemic discrimination was a factor and put in place actions to eliminate that discrimination.

 On experience of services once accessed, it should not be beyond the capacity of Councils to undertake regular sample surveys of service users, profiled by protected characteristic, to establish, say, the satisfaction levels of people identifying as Black Minority Ethnic [BME] with the Council’s planning system and compare this with the levels of satisfaction returned by the surveys from people identifying as non-BME.  Over time, this would provide a Council with evidence of whether or not BME and non-BME people were achieving the same satisfaction in the quality of service from the planning system.  Any disparities revealed should be researched to identify the causes and identify remedial action required where discrimination was found to be a factor.

 In terms of outcomes achieved from access to and experience of Council services, gathering data would be determined to an extent by the core outcome to be achieved by anyone accessing a particular service.  In Council housing applications, it should be possible to tweak existing systems to track progress from application to outcome for people who are disabled and people who are not disabled, thereby determining whether disabled people and non-disabled people are on waiting lists for similar time frames.  With further tweaks, it should also be possible to gather data on whether the outcomes aimed for by applicants [reduction of overcrowding, homelessness, accessible housing amongst others] are actually achieved to the applicant’s satisfaction or if the housing offered is in fact a temporary solution before the preferred housing outcome is achieved by the applicant.  This and similar forms of data gathering would allow Councils to establish an evidence base on whether systemic discrimination was built into their housing systems and processes and to identify where changes would be required to eliminate discrimination against people identifying with any of the protected characteristics.

 Councils were asked to provide examples of using data gathered on service users to evidence that discrimination in the provision of services had been eliminated.  To make it easy for Councils, the data asked for just some of the protected characteristics.

 After reading through thousands of pages of reports where we were assured the data could be found [but without specific page/para referencing] the depressing but unsurprising conclusion was that Councils had been economical with the truth in their responses.

 Not one of Scotland’s 32 Councils was able to provide access to data it has gathered on service users, suitably anonymised and aggregated, to evidence that equality of access to, experience in and achieving outcomes from their services, is being delivered for BME people, disabled people, LGB people and people who identify as Catholic.

 Highland Council offered in evidence a Mainstreaming Equality Report and Citizens’ Panel Performance and Attitudes Survey.  The reports lack data on people accessing services by protected characteristic, instead offering data sets on satisfaction surveys.  From these, the reader can learn that:

 

·        People with disabilities are less satisfied with burials and cremation services

 

What the report lacks is the actual data, by protected characteristic, of people using the burials and cremation services, so enabling comparisons between BME people accessing the services and non-BME people using the services.  The report also fails to reveal exactly how Highland Council had managed to establish contact with disabled people who had died to establish their lack of satisfaction with their burials or cremations.

 Dundee Council offered 2 Mainstreaming Equality reports covering 2015-17 and 2017-19, totalling 116 pages, and advised that ‘the answers to your questions are contained in the attached’.

 In search of the answers, a reading of the Mainstreaming Equality report for 2017-19 revealed that Equality Outcome 1 [on page 13] was to –

 

Increase the level of disclosure of equality information

 The focus of this Outcome is all on employees and the Council’s function as an employer.  No work appears to be getting done by Dundee Council on gathering data by protected characteristics of service users, the focus of the FoI request.

 Edinburgh Council was late in responding to the FOI – 8^th December 2020.

In essence, the Council claimed the data requested could be found in the Council’s Equality Diversity and Rights Framework progress report 2019 and in Impact Assessments such as that for the Adaptation and Renewal Programme.  The Council also referred to other papers submitted to Scottish Government as statutory reports.  These were discounted as they did not fit the terms of the request made in the FoI.

 Equality Outcome 1 in the Equality Diversity and Rights Framework Progress Report 2019, on page 13, aims to deliver:

 

Improved accessibility of council services, housing and buildings

 It is noted that the aim is not to deliver equality of access to council services, but to deliver ‘improved accessibility’.  It is possible to argue that the aim fails the meet the duty to eliminate discrimination in the delivery of services. 

 The report lists some of the achievements made with delivering ‘improved accessibility’.  On page 13 the report lists:

 Edinburgh Leisure manages and develops sport and leisure services on behalf of the Council and the Active Communities team deliver projects to people who face the greatest barriers and tend to be much less active: women and girls, people with disabilities, older adults, minority ethnic groups and those with low incomes

 There is no offering of evidence on how this achievement is being measured, no evidence of a benchmark from which progress can be gauged, and no cross-reference to data gathering on service users by, for example, ethnicity.  This leaves Edinburgh Council unable to evidence that equality of access to, experience in and outcomes gained from using Edinburgh Leisure services is available to BME people as it is to non-BME people.

 More generally, there is a laziness in how Scotland’s Councils have responded to the data requested in this research.  Instead of collating specific reports or sections of reports which come even close to providing evidence that data on equality of access to services is being gathered and used, the majority of Councils made assumptions that if there was any evidence it must be in the Mainstreaming Equalities reports they already provide to elected members and publish on their web sites.  Given that none of these reports have contained any such evidence, the consequences of this corporate laziness mean structural discrimination in the key functions of Scotland’s Councils is going untraced, unchallenged and unchanged.

 Radical and refreshed approaches to enforcement of the Equality Act 2010, or variations on them are required to help concentrate the currently poorly focused minds of those running the public sector and untap the energy needed to accelerate the arrival of equality of access to, experience in and outcome from the use of Scotland’s public services for people sharing any of the protected characteristics.  Just as importantly, a new approach would enable hundreds of thousands of people to live the fullest possible lives, both in potential and in quality.