Drugs funding continues to taint Scotland's health awards and equality remains off the menu

Nicola Sturgeon - former
Cabinet Secretary for Health

Over a year ago I blogged on how Scotland's Cabinet Secretary for Health was planning to break bread at a dinner table with company which appeared to be less than squeaky clean.  In July this year I updated the blog with this :

In a story breaking on the BBC - GlaxoSmithKline [GSK] is to pay $3bn (£1.9bn) in the largest healthcare fraud settlement in US history.  The drug giant is to plead guilty to promoting two drugs for unapproved uses and failing to report safety data about a diabetes drug to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The settlement will cover criminal fines as well as civil settlements with the federal and state governments.  The case concerns 10 drugs, including Paxil, Wellbutrin, Avandia and Advair.  Deputy US Attorney General James Cole told a news conference in Washington DC that the settlement was "unprecedented in both size and scope".

If you follow this link you will find that the 2012 Scottish Health Awards featured a category of 'Doctors Award'.  Read along the line and you will find that it was sponsored by GSK.

Last August I drew attention to reports on Pfizer's questionable drug trials in Nigeria in 1996 and the prolonged efforts by Nigerian people to get restitution.  Pfizer sponsored the 'Care for Long Term Illness Award' in the 2012 Scottish Health Awards.  

Alex Neil - Cabinet Secretary
for Health

Just last week, the Independent newspaper carried a story on major companies who pay little or no tax in the UK.  You are ahead of me.  The company featured in detail by the Independent ?  Pfizer and its best selling drug Viagra.

We may have a new Cabinet Secretary for Health in Scotland.  The reluctance to do an ethics check on those companies government chooses to share a dinner table with remains unchanged.

I can also report that a couple of years ago an award for work in the NHS on equalities was allowed to slip of the menu.  It remains off the menu.

Tina Turner not being booked to sing at unveiling of new EHRC Scotland Director

As many of you will know, the Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] has been stumbling along these last few years, reeling from the many gratuitous and WASP'ish slaps, head-butts and knee-cappings administered by government, and more recently being forced to smile politely as budgets are butchered and its role publicly rogered as ministers play pass the parcel with the equalities brief in their red boxes.

Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve

Trevor Philips has been cast aside as Chairperson of the EHRC and replaced by Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve.  The appointment of someone unknown outside academe and cherry-picked from the crowded cross-benches of the unelected great & good who infest the woodwork in the House of Lords to lead the government's strategy on equality & human rights needs little analysis as to where it is going.

In the midst of this permanent chaos, the Scotland Office of the EHRC lost its leader, Director Roz Micklem.  Sources indicate the vacant post was offered to other senior managers across the re-organising and jobs-haemorrhaging EHRC.  None were willing to venture into the frozen north.  Perhaps no surprise when the Scottish government's track record on equalities is so abysmal.  Further attempts to recruit internally yielded a thunderclap of disinterest in the opportunity to work closely with such as Scotland's 'shovel ready' Alex Neil, Cabinet Secretary, who has to be reminded to put equalities on his web site list of responsibilities.

Faced with enormous upheaval, a butchered budget, barely 10 staff left in Scotland, and a UK government which thinks equality is 'red tape' and bad for business, one would have thought the EHRC would have advertised here and abroad for someone keen to tilt at those windmills of prejudice, inspire the diminished pool of beleaguered EHRC staff in Scotland with visions of real equality being possible, and to arm-wrestle some real action out of government and the public sector to show that Scotland's widespread and oft-denied culture of discrimination can be easily identified, exposed to daylight, and quickly eliminated.

Kaliani Lyle, EHRC
Scotland Commissioner

One would have thought.

With this scale of challenge on halting the growth of discrimination, the resurgence of prejudice and the frenzy of state-sponsored demonisation of those people in society who are simply different, one would have thought the EHRC, under the guidance of Scotland's EHRC Commissioner, Kaliani Lyle, would have demanded the best for Scotland.  Along with the great and good people on the EHRC's Scotland Committee who support Kaliani in her work [Alastair Pringle, Angela O'Hagan, Elaine Noad, Louise Falconer, Morag McLaughlin and Neelam Bakshi] one would have thought that there would be an aspiration that Scotland should seek to attract the finest the world has to offer.  That Scotland's diverse population deserved simply the best the world had to offer.  

One would have thought.

So what happened next ?

Sources indicated that the EHRC was made to follow perversely discriminatory civil service rules and advertise the vacancy widely amongst ..................... civil servants only.  Not the world, not Europe, not the UK, and not even Scotland itself.  At a time when unemployment is at obscene levels, the EHRC was made to recruit not from the biggest and best oceans of talent available, but instead is made to fish in a half-filled thimble of talent and one in which only those who are already employed are allowed to swim.

the EHRC ..........is made to fish in a half-filled thimble of talent and one in which only those who are already employed are allowed to swim.

Alastair Pringle,
EHRC Scotland Director

And just what has emerged from this opaque, constipated, and light years from good-practice, recruitment process to lead the EHRC in Scotland into the critical years ahead ?  None other than Alastair Pringle, until recently part of Scotland's civil service and, curiously, a member of the EHRC's Scotland Committee.  

Justice in Scotland needs to wear a hearing aid and drop the dodgy blindfold

Not that long ago I got one of those brown envelopes in the post from the Scottish Court Service [SCS].

In essence it advised me, in a tone straight out of Ealing Films where all but the heart-warming Cockney ruffians spoke with what used to be known as Received Pronunciation, that I had been called to serve on a jury in November and that I should attend unless I was dead or dying or I suppose about to become the President of the US.  A lengthy list of possible grounds for exemption were printed in what I think was probably 8 point typeface and crammed in a Scrooge-like squeeze onto several A4 sheets of paper.

Being hearing impaired, I contacted the SCS [no easy task] to ask how they would go about ensuring communication support [I use Electronic Notetakers when attending large meetings, conferences or interviews held in large rooms and where the panel sits several miles away from the candidates in order to intimidate them] would be available in the event that I was picked to serve on the jury.

Deaf awareness is obviously not mainstream to the SCS.  It took a little while for the extent of my hearing impairment and its consequences in the context of jury service to sink in.  Once it did, I was quickly advised that I would be excused duty.  I equally quickly expressed a strong desire to do my duty as a citizen and serve on a jury, with communication support following me from the court room into the jury room.  It was as if I had suggested rigging LIBOR or doing something rude to a dead sheep.  There was no way that any communication support worker would be allowed into the jury room with me.  It was the law.

"the law is a ass- a idiot. If that's
the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor;
and the worst I wish the law is, that
his eye may be opened by experience
- by experience."

Accepting that the SCS was but a cog in the machine of government, I resisted the strong temptation to re-enact that scene from Oliver Twist where Mr Bumble declares to Mr Brownlow "the law is a ass - a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience- by experience."  Instead, I contacted the Justice Secretary, Kenny McAskill, and pointed out the structural discrimination inherent in a law which prevented deaf and hearing impaired people from serving on a jury when they required to use communication support workers.  

I wrote about my exchange with the SCS :  

I was advised that as the law prevents anyone not a juror from being in the jury room that it would not be possible for me to serve on the jury.  This strikes me as being discriminatory and effectively removes deaf and hearing impaired people in Scotland from serving on any jury.

I would urge you and colleagues in government to amend the legislation around this aspect of the criminal justice system to allow communication support workers to enter jury rooms in support of their clients and so enable deaf and hearing impaired people to serve on Scotland’s jury service.

Kenny McAskill, Justice Secretary

As ever, Ministers devolve correspondence with mere citizens to their civil servants.  I got a response which said :

It is important that a person charged with a serious crime has their case decided by a jury of fellow citizens rather than a judge. In Scottish criminal trials, 15 jurors are empanelled.  As you say, legislation prevents an additional person from joining the 15 balloted jurors in the jury room. This is in no way intended to be discriminatory but is to ensure that an accused person, if convicted by a jury, is convicted entirely because those jurors have formed their own view of his/her guilt from the evidence heard in court uninfluenced by anything other than the judge’s direction.
I can assure you that wherever possible the Scottish Government and other bodies within the justice system will always endeavour to ensure that as many people as possible are able to perform the civic duty of jury service. Specifically in relation to those with a hearing impairment, courts in Scotland are generally sound enhanced and most are either fitted with Baker Sound Induction Loop (SIL) or Phonic Ear System to assist a person with hearing difficulties to participate as a juror.

I responded :

Thank you kindly for this response. In [my earlier] email I specifically suggested to the Justice Secretary, Mr MacAskill :

I would urge you and colleagues in government to amend the legislation around this aspect of the criminal justice system to allow communication support workers to enter jury rooms in support of their clients and so enable deaf and hearing impaired people to serve on Scotland's jury service.

Can I ask you to read your response and then tell me where in it you respond, on behalf of the Justice Secretary, to my call for amending the legislation ?

What came back was :

My sincere apologies, I can see that I have not answered you as directly as I should have. The Scottish Government has no current plans to amend legislation in this area.

Justice is often depicted as being blindfolded, to represent the need for justice to be dealt out objectively, fairly, without fear or favour.  The blindfold clearly has as much integrity as an Atos capacity assessment.  It has surely been woven from the discarded luxuriant tresses of the formerly hirsute Work & Pensions Secretary of State, Ian Duncan Smith, for it is able to see if communication support workers are about to enter the jury room in support of deaf jurors.

It is time we updated our concepts of justice.  What we cite as 'justice' must be able to 'hear' clearly.  In turn, 'justice' must ensure all citizens are heard and enabled to 'hear' in all of its processes.

No dialogue of equals with DWP

I have today written to the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions after being threatened, along with millions of others this week, with exile from the land of milk and honey that is jobseeker's allowance if I don't adhere strictly to the rules.

When I first read it I was shocked at the meanness of the letter, the lack of humanity, the complete absence of decency.  I realised that this style and form of communication is but a sample of the kind of thing which breaks the spirit of people and in some cases ends their will to live.  Read page 1 here and page 2 here.

Rather than let it go unchallenged, I decided to reply to the Secretary of State.  What follows is my letter to him.  I do not expect a reply from him but from one of his many staff.  I shall share it with you.  If that encourages you and those dear to you to write to Iain Duncan Smith in similar terms, we shall have achieved something.

some of the people reading this ‘letter’ may well
choose to die by their own hand than endure
much longer such a degrading and inhumane
culture as you have created

I ‘signed on’ again yesterday, 25^th October 2012, confirming to staff at the Dalkeith Job Centre + office that I was still actively looking for work, having become unemployed since April this year.  As part of my session with the member of JC+ staff, I was handed a double-sided paper and asked to sign confirming that I had received the ‘letter’ in question.   It was briefly explained that the ‘letter’ was about new sanctions which now apply should I fail to meet the conditions attached to receiving Jobseeker’s Allowance.

I asked if, once I had the space and time to read and absorb the ‘letter’, I would be able to respond to it.  Staff seemed unsure what the correct response to my question was, it seeming obvious that a meaningful 2-way dialogue between unemployed people and your Department of Work & Pensions is unusual to say the least.

I have now had the chance to read the ‘letter’, which I have presumed should have been signed by you.  For some reason it is unsigned.  Never a good indicator that a mature dialogue of equals is being encouraged or made available.  With the help of the internet I was able to establish your current address.

Your letter is not in fact a letter at all.  It is a crude proclamation of all sorts of dire consequences should people – do remember we are people, each and every one of us – ‘fail to meet the conditions attached to receiving Jobseeker’s Allowance’.  It is clearly inspired by the kind of thing the Sherriff of Nottingham was said to have had nailed up in public places to dissuade the local population from supporting that socialist Robin Hood.

It reminds me what I must do to qualify for Jobseeker’s Allowance.

It then lists errors or failures of mine which will lead to my losing benefit for 13 weeks, 26 weeks, or even 156 weeks, explaining that the length of exile from qualification for benefit will be based on whether I have committed theses errors or failures for the first, second or third time in the last 52 weeks.  In turn, this headline of threats is followed by the unfurling of even more detailed illustrations of wretched and depraved acts on my part which would lead to my exile from the benefit safety net for the various periods which you have decided will fit the crime I will be deemed to have committed.  Nothing in it offers any remote acceptance that I might be a decent human being doing the right thing.  Do MPs get this kind of brutalist communication from the office responsible for monitoring expense claims ?

It is a most despairing, heartless and mean epistle from a government minister and crudely disseminated to a considerable cohort of diverse people, the vast majority of whom would rather be in work.  It reflects badly on you and your government that on neither of the two sides of the ‘letter’ do you offer any hope, any articulation of decency, or any indication or trace of humanity, in that some of the people reading this ‘letter’ may well choose to die by their own hand than endure much longer such a degrading and inhumane culture as you have created and inspired in your department and which this latest ‘letter’ epitomises.

I acknowledge your ‘letter’ to me this week. 

In turn, I reply.

In future, I would ask that you and your staff treat me with a modicum of dignity and respect.  Even though I am unemployed, I remain a human being.  Leastways that was what it looked like when I looked in the mirror this morning.  In this particular instance, I would ask you to address letters to me properly, using my name and address.  The technology available to government requires minimal effort to achieve such a simple outcome.  The dividends from such an approach are immeasurable.

In future, I would ask that you or an appropriate staffer sign such letters and provide me and others with contact details, including email, which allow for responses and so create a culture of dialogue.  I presume you and your colleagues do not simply want to hector me and other unemployed people via the rather cowardly megaphone of unsigned letters.

In future, when you plan to issue further threats, warnings or proclamations which demonise me and other unemployed people, can I suggest that if you truly seek to reduce the number of unemployed people as opposed to throw more jerry cans of petrol on the flames of prejudice against unemployed people, your messages should include as much positive statements on real support, meaningful assistance and client-centred guidance as I and others may need to secure employment, as it does currently with negative hectoring and threatening ?  In this two page ‘letter’ there was nothing positive addressed at the circumstances of my particular case and which showed an awareness of the efforts I have been making to get back into work.  I am reduced to a cipher in your model of the world and in your style of communication.  I cannot and will not accept that.

I happily accept all of my responsibilities to be active in seeking work and to minimise the demands I make on the state to support me during this time.  I challenge you to accept that you too have responsibilities as well - to ensure that the culture and practices within your department need to undergo fundamental change to ensure that I and millions of others are treated with dignity and respect while accessing the services your department provides.

The Barber, the Baroness and the Philosopher Fish Fryer

Just when you start to think that just maybe things have bottomed out, that they can't get any worse, under this 'coalition' government they do.

The government has been taking an amphetamine-fuelled Sweeney Todd-like approach to the budget, the role and the staff of the Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC].  So deep and brutal are these cuts that some doubt the EHRC will be able to retain its Paris Principles status as a body recognised by the UN as a national institution for the protection and promotion of human rights.

At the same time and since coming to power in 2010, government has been tearing pages out of the Equality Act 2010, with the most recent provisions binned including the protection of workers from 3rd party harassment.  

Trevor Phillips

The Chairperson of the EHRC since 2006, Trevor Phillips, was allowed to leave his job in September 2012, with Home Secretary Theresa May in no way inclined to re-appoint him for another term.

Against this blood-spattered backcloth, who does Culture Secertary & Equalities Minister, Maria Miller, unveil as her preferred successor to Trevor ?  Onora O'Neill, Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve, has emerged to that inevitable chorus of 'Who ?' from those labouring in the parched vine-yards of equality.  A life peer, O'Neill was educated at the fee-paying St Paul's Girls' School in west London, before reading philosophy, psychology and physiology at Somerville College, Oxford. She also studied at Harvard University.  When one examines her various biographies, there is scant reference to activity in or major contributions to what might be recognised as practical work on equalities.

Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve

The decision to ask a Baroness to lead our equalities and human rights independent regulator was subject to pre-appointment scrutiny by the parliament's joint committee on human rights.  A transcript of that session can be found here.

It offers some insight into the insular world of politics and the sharing out of jobs for 'people like us'.  For instance, asked if she was expecting to continue with other work alongside being Chairperson of the EHRC, Baroness O'Neill said : 

"Certainly.  It is a two-day-a-week post and I have plenty of other fish to fry."

For a two-day week job the Baroness will pocket a rather tasty £56,000 a year.  She'll be able to buy shed-loads of chips to go with the fish she plans to fry during the rest of her working week.

When asked to identify the skills she would bring to the job, Baroness O'Neill said : 

"By trade, by training, I am a philosopher. I do a lot of political philosophy. I have written and thought about the arguments for various conceptions of human rights across some decades. I have also written on equality. I have the intellectual background."

First time I have ever heard a philosopher describe themselves as a tradesperson.  Something tells me we would have much more reason to hope for the future of the EHRC and of equalities and human rights if a Polish plumber was asked to lead the organisation.

Baroness O'Neill also went on to claim a practical background : 

"I have chaired a number of middle-sized organisations in the voluntary sector and on the cusp of public and private — in particular, Newnham College, Cambridge; the British Academy; and the Nuffield Foundation —with smaller budgets but not out of range, and I have a very strong commitment to good governance and good collegial relations."

So, practical as in chairing organisations.  No evidence of practice in eliminating discrimination, promoting equality of opportunity or in fostering good relations.  Not much to pick between her fitness in this role and that of the homeopathy loving Jeremy Hunt as Health Secretary.

When asked about the relationship between equalities and human rights, the Baroness, who had previously claimed to "communicate clearly", offered the following response :

"I am not sure I find it useful to talk about a right to equality.  Of course, it comes out as meaning a right to equal respect and equal opportunity, but it is not, so to speak, on a footing with other rights, and it is—what shall I say?—a context without which the very development of human rights would be impossible. My view is that some equalities are impossible: “Which of you by taking thought can add but one cubit to his stature?” Equality of height is not a possible aspiration. Equalities of other sorts are probably undesirable: if all our voices had the same timbre, imagine how difficult it would be for the people listening to this particular hearing.  Other equalities are possible but not very important.  Then there are important equalities, morally important equalities, of which I would put the right to equal respect for all persons absolutely at the top. So we have to distinguish among equalities.  It is why I will always try to talk about equalities in the plural, because it is not just one thing."  

Clear?  As mud.  And she now leads the EHRC.  

At no time does the Committee ask the Baroness how she would, for those people beyond the closed world of Westminster, explain what might be seen as a fundamental contradiction with the idea that a fish-frying member of the anachronism that is the House of Lords should be asked to lead the EHRC.

A Letter from Scotland - Bathgate no more, Linwood no more, Equality no more

Nicola Sturgeon - elected not
 to redeem the £280 + million
 equal pay IOU

In the last few months, Scottish government has tried to stir up the apathy on an independence referendum by re-shuffling the brat pack that is the cabinet.  It attracted slightly less media interest than did the buffoonish Mayor of London getting stuck on a zip wire at the Olympics.

Until the re-shuffle, Nicola Sturgeon, Cabinet Secretary for Health, had responsibility for equality tucked away in her jaggy tweed suit pockets.  Nicola's footnote in history will not be because of anything she did to eliminate discrimination or deliver such as equality of opportunity.  She will probably be remembered as the woman with the power to have made equal pay happen in Scotland's NHS, but who elected instead not to redeem the £280+ million equal pay IOU.

And who has been handed that IOU ?  None other than Scotland's own economics guru, the 'shovel ready' Alex Neil.  It was Alex who said, in a bad tempered evidence session in March 2011 with the Equal Opportunities Committee as he tried to bounce them into accepting poorly drafted specific equality duties for Scotland, on some of the criticisms of plans for impact assessments the Committee had heard :

'Shovel Ready' Alex Neil

I do not accept the criticism—quite the opposite. The criticism is ill founded.

For those who follow these things, the 'ill founded criticism' was heeded by the Committee, the draft specific equality duties thrown out, and Alex sent away empty handed.

Keen to see which of the new re-shuffled brat pack now had equalities in their bag, I checked the Scottish government web site.  In what is clearly a tribute to Stalin, equalities have been air-brushed out of the various portfolio splits.  Time to get the Proclaimers to revisit 'Letter from America'?  Bathgate no more, Linwood no more, Equality no more.

Bathgate no more, Linwood no more, Equality no more.

When I asked Scottish government why we were not asking ministers to build equalities any more in Scotland, I was told :

The portfolio responsibility for Equality remains with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Well-being.  I have contacted Mr Neil’s private office and they will ensure that the website is updated and that Equality is added.

the staff in the government's equalities
unit had not noticed they now had
no political master and were adrift and
abandoned on the high seas of
government's flotsam and jetsam

 It strikes me as odd that it should have been dropped in the first place.  One can only hope that other equally important responsibilities have not been left on the bus.  It does also make me wonder why the staff in the government's equalities unit had not noticed they now had no political master and were adrift and abandoned on the high seas of government’s flotsam and jetsam.

The response was dated 11th October.  The web site page remains unchanged.  Equality remains a low priority and is clearly unloved, unwanted and adrift in the high seas of discrimination and prejudice which pollute Scotland's public sector.

Scotland's closets overcrowded with people too scared to come out and reveal just who they are

As a result of recent research into equal pay audits on gender, race and disability, I have come to conclude that there is powerful evidence that discrimination remains structural, institutional and thriving in the workplace culture of today's public sector in Scotland.

The EHRC has reminded public bodies that discrimination exists in any number of ways in the workplace, and that it can be found in the pay systems public bodies use.  The EHRC’s draft Code of Practice on Equal Pay says, on page 9, paragraph 11 : 

Although this code relates to equal pay between women and men, pay systems may be open to challenge on grounds of race, age or other protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.

The research provides a timely reminder that there is another hugely important perspective to unearthing discrimination in pay systems other than the obvious one of conducting an equal pay audit.  I believe that there is more than a whiff of discrimination wafting through the corridors of public sector workplaces and their policies, practices and culture.  When great swathes of any public sector workforce are unable, unwilling or simply afraid to identify themselves by the commonly used equalities criteria, then that public sector employer gives safe haven and succour to prejudice, bigotry and discrimination.

My research reveals that in Scotland's councils and health boards, 21% [51,022 people] of council staff are unwilling to identify their ethnicity.  In health boards the proportion of staff unhappy about identifying ethnicity is at 32.36% or 46,270  people.  In other words, after more that 30 years of 'work' on race equality in the public sector, close to 100,000 people working in Scotland's public sector cannot be persuaded to positively identify their ethnicity to their employers.  

When it came to people being asked to identify if they had a disability, 26.21% of council staff [62,353 people] are unable, unwilling or afraid to positively identify in this way.  In health boards the proportion of staff afraid to positively identify rockets up to 61.98%, or 91,232 people.  Disability equality 'work' in the public sector goes even further back than the decades of 'work' on race equality, and yet in 2012 over 153,000 people can't be persuaded to identify their disability status to their employers.

For whatever reason, people working in the public sector are clearly not trusting their employer to know who they are in terms of mainstream equality criteria.  I believe it reflects not only a lack of trust, but also that this lack of trust is based on an observed failure to evidence equality of opportunity for all as a real lived experience for people in their workplaces.  It reflects an experience of discrimination for many people which is systemic across the major structures of public life.  Scotland's workplace closets are overcrowded with people who are too scared to come out and reveal to their employer just who they are.

The conclusions in my research on remedying this flaw in work being done by public bodies to meet their legal duties on equal pay are :

There would be merit in government considering the setting up of a centrally located additional support and advice resource for public bodies to ensure that they can win the positive support of their workforce in reducing the levels of ‘unknown’ counts to less than 10% by 2015, and to less than 5% by 2017.  This central resource could draw heavily on the good practice of those public bodies which currently have low level ‘unknown’ counts.

Alongside that, and for those public bodies with high ‘unknown’ counts, there would be practical merit in them using the requirement to set Equality Outcomes as a vehicle for demonstrating a high level organisation commitment to reducing the ‘unknown’ counts in workforce profiling.  This would provide stakeholders with a clear measurable target which can not only be tracked over time but also leads on to provide an evidence base of equality not only in such as equal pay but also in occupational segregation and career development.

Unequal pay in the NHS leaves women with nothing but a £280+million IOU from Nicola Sturgeon

Aneurin Bevan

Almost 3 years ago, Nicola Sturgeon was Scotland's government minister for, amongst other things, the NHS and for equalities.

At the time Nicola was explaining to the parliamentary Equal Opportunities Committee why women in Scotland's NHS would have to wait just a bit longer before their pay packets would find the same amount in them as the men working alongside them and doing the same or similar work.  In October 2009, Nicola [who appears to harbour serious delusions in encouraging those around her to make positive and complimentary comparisons between her and Aneurin Bevan] responded to a question from the Committee :

'It was indicated [at a previous Committee round-table discussion on equal pay reviews] that advice had been given to NHS boards not to perform equal pay reviews to ensure that agenda for change remains equal-pay-proofed. I want to clarify that that is not the case. There remains an issue about the extent to which such reviews can be carried out while agenda for change reviews are under way, but there is a clear expectation that all boards will get on and complete those reviews as quickly as they can, and that they will go beyond the letter of the law to ensure that they are exemplary employers that live up to all the duties required of them.' [6^th October 2009]

In recent months I have conducted research across all of Scotland's councils and health boards to clarify just what the equal pay gap is in Scotland's public sector currently.

Three years on from that very clear and unequivocal assurance given by Nicola Sturgeon to the Scottish Parliament, I have found that across the NHS in Scotland’s 22 Boards, just 2 [9.09%] of the Boards were able to provide data on the gender pay gap. This shows a gender pay gap of either 4.3% at NHS 24 or 12.9% at the NHS State Hospital. This means that just 1 Scottish NHS Board has a gender pay gap which comes within the 5% criteria set by the EHRC.

Remember what she said :

there is a clear expectation that all boards will get on and complete those reviews as quickly as they can, and that they will go beyond the letter of the law to ensure that they are exemplary employers that live up to all the duties required of them

One can but conclude that she was either misleading the Committee - and the citizens of Scotland - or she was not really able to make the 22 NHS Boards do her bidding.  Any other scenarios warmly welcomed, and I promise to publish the best ones.

Nicola Sturgeon - on the right

It is sad.  Making equal pay a reality for the 140,000+ women and men working in our NHS would have been a significant footnote to Nicola Sturgeon's term in office as Cabinet Secretary for Health.  Instead her monster of a footnote on leaving that office will be that she abandoned over 109,000+ women working in the NHS with pay systems which have still not been subject to an equal pay audit.

It is more than just the absence of equal pay audits.  The whole idea of equal pay legislation has been to put into the pay packets of women the money which has been systematically stolen from them for decades.  The scale of the theft involved is far from the proverbial peanuts.

If one uses data provided by the Office for National Statistics, this shows that the average weekly earnings across the UK are £539 a week.  In Scotland the figure [at April 2011]  was £517.50, for men.  For women in Scotland, the government reckons that the equal pay gap in 2011, based on average earnings, was 10.7%.

This translates to a difference, a pay theft, of £55.37 per week.  Apply that differential to the 109,000 women left behind by Nicola Sturgeon.  The 109,000 women whose pay systems have not been subject to equal pay audits.  The 109,000+ women in the NHS whose employers have certainly not evidenced getting near the letter of the law, never mind going beyond it.

109,000 women, each due on average £55.37 a week, roughly.  Let's make it easy.  Let's call it £50 a week.  For each woman, that would mean equal pay would give her an additional £2,600 a year in her pay packet.  Imagine the difference that would make to women, right now, in the middle of a massive recession.  Then times all of that by at least 109,000.  In any one year, using 2011 earnings data, women working in Scotland's NHS are having their earnings ripped off to the tune £283,400,000 a year.  

If my arithmetical dexterity strikes you as somewhat dodgy and reads more like the voodoo economics used way back by Ronald Reagan and now revived by George Osborne and John Swinney, you might want to check out a 2011 report published by the EHRC on equal pay.  Their arithmetic offers this illustration of the thievery going on : 

In a woman’s working career from age 18-59 it is estimated that she would lose approximately £361,000 in gross earnings compared to an equivalent male.

Using that indicator, the scale of theft visited on the women working in our NHS would amount to £39,349,000,000.

History tells us that Nye Bevan, the government minister with responsibility for the creation of the NHS, resigned in 1951 from government when the then Chancellor Hugh Gaitskell announced the introduction of prescription charges.  History will show that Nicola Sturgeon left her post as Cabinet Secretary for Health in Scotland knowing full well that over 109,000 women workers in the NHS were being cheated out of equal pay to the tune of over £280 million a year.

No longer safe to be different

The enforcer of equalities law in the UK, the Equality & Human Rights Commission, has been brought to its knees by the coalition government's butchering of its budgets.

As of today, the neutered EHRC's hands are being tied behind its back.  The helpline it used to operate across the UK has been shut down and replaced by a private sector company, SITEL, which has its home down with the good old boys in Nashville, in the US.  The UK branch office of the multi-national contact centre specialists is in Watford.  It would be.

SITEL knows bugger all about equality.  It knows a lot about telephone contact centres and making money.  They have managed to persuade a number of UK voluntary sector organisations to take some of their tainted money and advise them and the SITEL employees who answer the helpline on how to deal with callers needing advice on all matters under the fast fading sun of equalities and human rights in the UK.  In other words, SITEL doesn't do equalities.  It answers phones.  That speaks volumes for the criteria used by the coalition government to award the contract for the new helpline.

It will also come as no surprise to know that SITEL does not recognise trade unions.  Tennessee has a long and bloody history of never allowing trade unions to thrive, in any sector.

If you need help with an employer deciding that they can't be bothered doing an equal pay audit, call SITEL on 0800 444 205.  If they take too long to answer the phone, you can write to them at : FREEPOST Equality Advisory Support Service FPN4431.

If you need help with a service provider not being bothered to provide their service in a manner which suits your particular communication support needs, call SITEL.

If you find SITEL doesn't do what it says on the side of the re-cycled fried chicken carton in which your advice is eventually offered, don't bother phoning the EHRC.  By our silence and our inactions, we have allowed the coalition government to diminish the policing of equality in the UK to risible levels.  

It is no longer safe to be different in the UK.

Will equality rights in the UK survive the snuffing of the paralympic flame ?

I am keenly aware that for many people there are simply so many issues crowding for attention, and equalities has always been something hard to grapple with for the white, anglo-saxon, protestant chatterati who look forward to episodes of 'In the Thick of It' as a chance to look in the mirror and bray self-consciously.  

The 'double dip' for some of them is what you buy in Sainsbury's to go with the picnic hamper alongside the sun-dried tomatoes flown in specially from a village on the south facing slopes of a charming little farm in Tuscany.

For most people, the double dip recession has found the slow progress with eliminating discrimination halting and then slowly drifting back into the deeper waters of bigotry, prejudice, abuse and hatred.  At the same time, government's obsession with reducing the deficit through cuts in public sectior spending has meant the capacity and ability of the Equality & Human Rights Commission {EHRC] to protect the rights of people to being treated fairly and without discrimination is being squeezed until the protection available is as effective as using a kleenex as a condom.  At the same time as the reflected glory of the paralympics is milked by government, the grinding down of the EHRC resources continues.  It is now at a point where one can begin to question whether the EHRC will be fit for purpose.

The staff at the EHRC have written to one of the EHRC Commissioners with their concerns, and I believe their case deserves a much wider audience.  I can do no more than set out what they wrote and invite you to read and then act :

Margaret Prosser OBE

Chair EHRC Resources Committee

Equality and Human Rights Commission

3 More London

London

SE1 2RG

23 July 2012

Dear Margaret,

In June 2012 the EHRC Resources Committee, which you chair, approved proposals that would see the Equality and Human Rights Commission reduce its staff headcount to 150 from an original headcount of 525 in 2007, with more posts to disappear once a shared services review is complete.  Based on figures provided by the Commission, the proposed Organisational Design indicates that the 19 posts in the management team (Executive Directors, Directors and Deputy Directors) will cost £2.2 million, which represents an average cost of £100,000 for each post.  Such a large management team in such a small organisation is hugely disproportionate and inappropriate and mirrors no other organisation of similar size or function.   

In addition, it is proposed that 89 of the lowest paid posts (levels 1 – 3) will be deleted.  BME and disabled staff are particularly over-represented in these grades, as shown in the Commission’s Diversity Workforce Data Report 2010/11[i].  The deletion of these posts coupled with the planned closure of many offices will mean that virtually all the Commission’s BME and disabled staff will lose their jobs.  The newly appointed top layer of management is already exclusively white. The Commission also appears to have done virtually no equality analysis of the impact of losing these staff who are protected by the Equality Act 2010.  Like all listed authorities, the Commission has to demonstrate how it has paid due regard to the aims of the general equality duty in the Act which includes taking steps to meet the needs of protected groups and to mitigate adverse impacts it has identified, including the impact on staff and service users.  This has not been done and puts the Commission in breach of the very Act it enforces.  If implemented, these proposals  could create a future Commission composed of entirely white staff and almost no disabled staff.  We are also unaware of any plans to consult stakeholders and service users on these proposals.

In addition, it is proposed that Manchester, the Commission’s largest office, will close in 2014 and the Birmingham office will close this year, as well as all our regional hubs, including Guildford, Leeds, Newcastle and Cambridge. In addition, Edinburgh and Bangor are earmarked for closure. The rationale put forward is that the Commission will eventually locate its entire English operation on the edge of London ‘close to the majority of our key stakeholders’.  The logic behind this escapes us and we are sure the majority of our stakeholders will agree.  In addition, Scotland and Wales will see its headcount reduced to nine staff each; this is in addition to the recent announcement that the newly privatised Helpline service will have no presence in either Scotland or Wales.  This amounts to the near destruction of the Commission’s presence in these two nations, with the loss of crucial expertise and knowledge of devolved matters.

We are also confounded by the decision to limit the number of lawyers to eleven for the whole of Great Britain, given the fact that the Commission is a statutory body responsible for enforcing the Equality Act and promoting human rights.  It is difficult to see how the Commission will effectively carry out its core functions with such limited legal resources.

As you know all of the above proposals were prepared in the context of disproportionate cuts to the budget of the Commission and indeed the June 2012 Resource Committee papers indicate a further fall in 2014/15 with a forecasted budget of £18 million.  This is less than the 2006 budget of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) which was only responsible for enforcing the Race Relations Act, and several million less than the Disability Rights Commission (DRC).  The EHRC will have 45 fewer staff than the CRE and 66 less than the DRC.[ii]

In addition, the budget forecast for 2014/15 indicates staffing costs of £9.2 million but the newly published Organisational Design for 150 posts costs just over £8 million.  We are curious to see why forecasts approved by the committee you chair shows that the staffing budget will increase by over a half a million in a couple of years after you have spent in excess of £6 million to make staff redundant in the coming months.  An extra half a million pounds could help us retain up to 35 level 1 posts.  The proposed redundancy costs this year is in addition to the £3.84 million already spent on voluntary exits since 2011, hardly a prudent way to spend taxpayers money.  We also want to know why your committee believes that the budget will be reduced to £18 million in 2014/15 as the Government have made no announcement to this effect.

Clearly there are financial realities we must all face in the current economic climate but we do not accept that the proposals your committee approved are the right proposals.  Disproportionate expenditure on the management team and the loss of lawyers, caseworkers and advisers will mean that the victims of discrimination and human rights abuses will be badly served.  As you know the Government have also removed our grants funding which distributed £14 million since 2007 to voluntary bodies and law centres advising and representing victims of discrimination.  Meanwhile the Government plans  to cut £350 million from the legal aid budget next year. 

As an ex President of the TUC¸ and a former member of the Employment Appeals Tribunal, and Deputy General Secretary of the TGWU you will understand the impact of these decisions better than most.  It is vital that the Commission target the bulk of its resources on helping people at a time when the vulnerable need it most.  Indeed, we have already seen the number of legal actions the Commission has taken drop to 25 legal actions compared with 59 in the same period last year[iii], following the departure or skilled staff under two voluntary exit schemes. 

No doubt you will advise us that you are saving the Commission from closure and that we need to live in the 'real world'.  We have this to say to you, first this is not a rescue but the death knell for equalities and human rights. We believe that even our critics would prefer an independent commission which uses public money wisely on providing services to the public rather than on higher salaries for senior managers and consultants.'

Second, we are living in the real world. We are facing unemployment - possibly long term for BME and disabled staff - but we still have bills to pay and families to care for while the organisation is changed into one in which the majority of staff will have no place.

The proposals your committee approved are now subject to a statutory consultation with the trade union side under s188 of the Trade Unions and Labour Relations Act , with the bulk of redundancies planned for autumn this year.  We are writing to you as Chair of the Resources Committee to ask you to withdraw these proposals and to commence a meaningful consultation with staff, our trade unions and stakeholders so that together we can design a Commission fit for the 21^st Century. 

As Deputy Chair of the Commission and a member of the Board of Commissioners I'm sure you would not want the Board to repeat the mistakes identified in the 2010 report by the Public Accounts Committee[iv], which found that the Board failed in its duty to scrutinise and oversee the process of setting up the Commission which cost over £38.8m. 

Yours sincerely

Signatures

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[i] http://equalityhumanrights.com/about-us/equality-and-diversity/our-equality-progress-reports/

[ii] Legacy Commissions’ budgets and staffing in 2006 which the EHRC replaced:

                   Budget allocated in final financial year

EOC:       £  9.2      

DRC:        £21.2

CRE:         £19        

Total         £49.4 million

                    Staff numbers as reported in final annual accounts

EOC:                       165

DRC         216

CRE        195

Total       576

[iii] Resource, Performance and Risk Report Period 10, January 2012 http://equalityhumanrights.com/about-us/the-commissioners/board-meetings/39th-board-meeting-february-2012/

[iv] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmpubacc/124/12404.htm