Budget cuts in the public sector – deepening the grip of discrimination ?

Equality Impact Assessments [EQIAs] have become ever more crucial in these last few years of deepening recession and year-on cuts in public sector budgets and services.  In 2007-08, an organisation called Southall Black Sisters [SBS] faced funding cuts from Ealing Council in London.  This would have meant the complete closure of its operations.  Ealing Council argued that specialist groups were no longer necessary and pushed its own interpretation of ‘Social Cohesion’.  SBS users challenged Ealing Council and won a landmark victory at the High Court, deeming Ealing Council’s action as unlawful and contravening the Race Relations Act.  Part of the ruling included a clear indication that the courts expected public bodies to have formal written evidence that they had showed due regard to the equalities implications of their decisions and that EQIAs were recognised as good practice models of such evidence.  

The Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] produced and published guidance on the need to compile evidence that due regard was given to equalities, particularly in financial decision making, and disseminated this widely.  The EHRC clearly favoured EQIA as the tool for this work, while recognising that it was not the only tool to achieve the end result – compiling evidence that decisions in budget setting had paid due regard to the 3 elements of the general equality duty.

With that history, it seemed a good time to research just how well public bodies in Scotland are doing in following the EHRC guidance on impact assessing their budget plans for financial year 2013/14. Given the vast amounts of money spent by both councils and health boards, it is essential that it is checked for evidence of discrimination and, where found, for that to be designed out.  In 2011, councils spent around £21 billion [£11.5 million in government grants], employed about 240,000 full-time equivalent staff and used buildings and other assets with a value of about £35 billion.  Health Boards are expected to spend around £11.6 billion in government grants during 2012-13.  That level of financial spend suggests enormous scope for identifying and eliminating discrimination which too many people still encounter on a daily basis in Scotland.

The research reveals overwhelming evidence, submitted directly by public bodies themselves, that the legislative framework on equalities is being routinely ignored.  Most councils and health boards seem to have taken their lead from the Rhett Butler style of management, effectively telling Baroness O'Neill, part-time fish-fryer of the EHRC, that 'frankly my dear I don't give a damn ... about equality'.

Alongside this, it is also clear that the tactical strategy of the EHRC – to encourage public bodies to deliver equality through guidance and support rather than enforcement – is unfit for purpose and is failing to secure the elimination of the discrimination which blights the lives of people when using public services.  

In the particular context of this research, it has become obvious that the default cultural mind set in the public sector is to deny that there is any real depth or extent to discrimination within the sector.  The discourse within budget EQIAs is not on ‘cuts’, but almost always on ‘savings’.  The narrative within EQIAs rarely references discrimination, as if by airbrushing the word out of the public sector lexicon it can, in some parody of ‘Animal Farm’, demonstrate that all are already equal and indeed that some are more equal than others.

Without the radical changes recommended in the research, the structural and institutional discrimination which is inherent in the setting of public sector budgets will continue to flourish unchecked and will in turn continue to present a major barrier to all other work on eliminating discrimination and providing equality of opportunity.