Those who read this blog regularly will be aware that I expect more from the Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] than it currently delivers on eliminating discrimination. A LOT more. The most recent blog queried whether the EHRC in Scotland had become part of the problem in being seemingly unable to find much wrong with the work of the public sector on equality. One of their most recent EHRC reports on checking the performance of public bodies in meeting the specific equality duties seemed content to note that most of them had published something by the required date, and yet in the same breath acknowledged that there was no check on the quality of the content of what had been published. In other words publish a crap set of data on your workforce or a crap set of plans which will do bugger all to eliminate discrimination, and the EHRC will still give you 5 stars, just for publishing your crap.
The EHRC in Scotland has published a second report which examines what public bodies have published on workforce equality data and their role as employers. The idea is to check if they are looking at how they operate as employers and gathering and using data to check if institutional discrimination is being identified and eliminated. The duty itself is clear. Gather data on your workforce, analyse it, and use what it tells you to change how you recruit, train, develop and retain a diverse workforce. Simples, no ?
Wait for it. There are 8 protected characteristics. Recent research, shared with the EHRC in Scotland, found that there was evidence that sectarianism was present in sectors across Scotland. To reach this conclusion requires that public bodies gather data on all the protected characteristics, including religion and, in that context, the numbers of Catholics and Protestants employed. The research found that the quality of data being gathered on workforce profiling was poor and in some cases non-existent.
So. When one reads the EHRC report on how well Scotland's public bodies have profiled their workforce, you would expect the scrutiny to pick up on the gaps and for the EHRC to move quickly to lean on the public bodies to up their game ? No ? Read it yourself, here.
Once more the EHRC in Scotland has set the performance bar so low, public bodies would need to work hard at not getting another 5 gold stars. As the report itself says :
The review found that 93% of the 184 listed authorities reviewed had published information about the composition of their staff, broken down by protected characteristic. In this review authorities were assessed as reporting on the composition of their workforce if they reported on any of the eight relevant protected characteristics.
Looked at through the eyes of the EHRC, the performance of the 11 Scottish universities who did not publish data on Catholics employed by them is judged to be compliant with the law. 9 of the universities did not publish data on the sexual orientation of their workforce, but not a problem for the EHRC as they published data on such as gender so they can be given the 5 gold stars for performance.
The EHRC is creating a monitoring culture on equality which betrays the futures of the very people it is supposed to protect.
In March 2011, a very small number of people had the courage to warn the Scottish Parliament that work on equality would betray people encountering discrimination on a daily basis if the Scottish government's proposed specific equality duties were approved. Despite an hysterical last-minute intervention from the Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] who predicted the end of the equality world as we know it if the draft specific equality duties were not approved, the Equal Opportunities Committee in the Scottish Parliament rejected government's proposals.
In May 2012, a set of improved, stronger, specific equality duties were approved, quietly, with no great fanfare, no handbag-smuggled flag-waving, no oxy-acetylene torch-bearing welding apprentices, and no media interest.
April 2013 brought a deluge of papers and data published by public bodies in their attempt to meet the requirement of the duties.
Looking at the area of data in employment equality and how well public bodies were meeting the specific equality duties, research found that for the protected characteristics of disability, race, LGB, and religion, the public sector was performing poorly and has no plans to do anything about that poor performance. Other research also found poor performance across the public sector in the duty to publish equal pay gap data.
All of this research was shared with the EHRC in Scotland. Their response to getting access to all of this evidence, free of charge ? :
The Commission is
conducting its own assessment both of compliance with the duties – have
organisations published what they are required to – and a deeper assessment of
the contents of the reports, which we aim to publish over the course of the next
six months. As this work is being
carried out to our own specification, whilst your information is helpful it will
not be considered as part of our own assessment.
Given their lack of interest, you would think that the findings published by the EHRC from their research would be stunning material, bringing light to the darkness of lost opportunities and offering hope to those unable to get past the institutional discrimination which infects everyday life in the public sector. You would think.
Read for yourself. This is the report published by the EHRC on whether public bodies complied with the duty to publish, amongst other things, a profile of their workforce. The Commission finds :
Overall the findings of this first phase have been positive ....... Scottish public authorities have performed well in terms of basic compliance with the requirements to publish their information in a transparent and accessible manner .....
Barely pausing for breath, the report goes on to say :
This report only provides headline information about whether or not relevant information has been published. What has yet to be determined is the quality and focus of what public authorities have produced .....
To translate, the EHRC has used scarce funding to commission research which finds that most public bodies have published something which meets the duty to publish something. The EHRC then admits on the same page that there is no qualitative analysis of what has been published ........... but in the preceding sentences claims that what has been published is "transparent and accessible". By this stage, most readers are a tad giddy from spinning around to catch up with the EHRC's shape-shifting on what the research shows.
It just keeps getting better. Still on the same page, the report offers the insight that :
The impact of the work they [public bodies] carry out to meet their outcomes and to use their employee information will not be known for another two years .......
To again translate, the EHRC has spent scarce funds on research which cannot tell if what public bodies have published is of any value, if it is seriously crap, or even if the reports and planned actions could in themselves have the potential to create further discrimination.
It would seem to be time for the Scottish Parliament to carry out its own research into whether the EHRC is still up to the job of acting as a catalyst for equality in Scotland. Based on the confused and conflicted reports it is currently publishing on the performance of others, there is every reason to believe that it has lost the plot, is now part of the problem, and is no longer fit for purpose.
