Hierarchy of Equality ?

Your NHS in Scotland employs 131,340 people across 22 health boards and in 2010/11 spent £10,358million in revenue expenditure. 

Each of those 22 health boards has a legal duty to do all sorts of work around delivering equality and eliminating discrimination.  In other areas of this blog you will find, if you choose to browse, that one of the many areas in which our health service is failing is in delivering equal pay for women who work in our NHS. 

As citizens we are able to expect health boards to publish information on what they are doing [or even what they are not doing] on delivering equality and eliminating discrimination.  We should be able to find out, say, just how many black minority ethnic people are employed on senior salary bands across our NHS and, by comparing data year on, find out just how quickly or slowly racial discrimination in employment in our NHS is being eliminated.  The idea is that by making things transparent, you and I can hold health boards to account.  It is a long haul.  People who work in government and in health boards [all of whom tell you they have a best friend who is gay/black, or a neighbour who is deaf/Jewish] don’t really like being held to account, and make it hard for you to know what they have done and what they have still to do in delivering equality and eliminating discrimination.

Compare and contrast.

What is known as the ‘third sector’ [charities and voluntary organisations] is, according to the Scottish Council for VoluntaryOrganisations [SCVO], a bigger employer than our NHS, with 137,000 people employed in it.  The sector raises and spends £4,400 million each year.

Do they have a legal duty to deliver equality and eliminate discrimination?  No.

Bigger employers than our NHS and yet no legal duty to show that black minority ethnic people are employed on senior salary bands across the sector and, by comparing data year on, find out just how quickly or slowly racial discrimination in employment in our ‘third sector’ is being eliminated?

Is it because they are intrinsically ‘good’ employers and the public sector bad employers?  No, no and again, no.  I have blogged before about with an anonymised story about someone I know who has been bullied out of her job by a ‘third sector’ organisation which works for disabled people. 

Don’t just take my word for the failings of the sector.  A report by the Young Foundation [he of ‘Big Issue’ fame] ‘concluded that most of the literature on social innovation in the voluntary sector points to a sector that is ‘better at believing they are innovative than being innovative’.  Or in the words of Bernard Bailey, ‘When science discovers the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to find they are not it.’

when is she going to stop drooling
and dribbling over the pandas

The Young Foundation report [Mapping the Third Sector] said, in relation to equality, ‘Reducing inequality and enhancing diversity: Despite valuing social justice, there are significant gender and ethnic inequalities in the [third sector] workforce.  Female chief executives receive £11,000 less per year than their male counterparts and there are very few chief executives from ethnic minority backgrounds, particularly in larger charities.  The voluntary sector has been good at advancing social justice issues up the external agenda but organisations need to reflect on these same issues internally.’

In other words, the third sector is talking the talk, but not walking the walk, on equality.

We need to be able to expect, and demand, more from our ‘third sector’. 

If you want more out of the third sector, drop an email to Nicola Sturgeon, government minister with the equality portfolio, asking her when she is going to stop drooling and dribbling over the pandas and instead use her power as minister to get the third sector in Scotland to do the right thing on delivering equality and eliminating discrimination.

Martin Sime

You can also email Martin Sime, Chief Executive of SCVO and ask him why he has not driven change in the third sector in Scotland to ensure equality is visible and evidenced and any hierarchy of equalities is dismantled.