EHRC is creating a monitoring culture on equality which betrays the futures of the very people it is supposed to protect

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.