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.
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 21st 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
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
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