Scotland's universities not learning ......... how to eliminate disability discrimination as employers

Whenever the question is asked - 'what are universities for ?' - it is impossible to find a universal truth which provides a clear answer in a short paragraph [just try 'Googling' the question].  There does appear to be a consensus that in the UK universities offer some of the best minds [in terms of passing exams] from secondary schools the opportunity to develop and stretch their minds to another level and to then embark on a life from which society anticipates it will gain, and be shaped and re-shaped, in various ways.  

In some senses, one could reasonably conclude that a number of the leaders society needs for tomorrow are currently attending university today.  In political terms that is certainly true, for good or bad.

From that perspective, the close examination and scrutiny of how universities are performing in relation to equality and the legal framework which seeks to eliminate discrimination, becomes even more important.  Part of the context in which tomorrow's leaders are formed is the culture and practices of our universities as employers.  Students as they pass through the system will encounter the rough and sharp edges of the university employment culture in the shape of the employment profile of each university and will in turn take away a sense of what is the prevailing culture of what is equality in the workplace.

When it comes to employment equality for disabled people, Scotland's universities are teaching the leaders of tomorrow that disabled people are expendable when it comes to making employment equality a reality.  From reports published in 2019 by all the universities, the proportion of people identifying as disabled across the sector was found in recent research to be 3.69%.  Scottish government claims the average employment rate of disabled people across the public sector is 11.7%.  At the same time, Scottish government's own report on employment equality from 2019 explains that their rate of employment of disabled people is at 7.6% against a benchmark of 19%.  

No matter which way the data published by Scotland's universities is stacked up, the result - 3.69% of the workforce identifying as disabled is simply unacceptable and represents hard evidence of institutional discrimination against disabled people.

Non-disabled people have held the monopoly on positions of power and privilege within Scotland’s universities as employers for decades, if not centuries in some cases.  Legislation in the latter part of the 20^th century and early 21^st century aimed at eliminating disability discrimination has failed to break the monopoly that non-disabled people hold.  The requirements of the Equality Act 2010 and specific equality duties in Scotland have found universities locked into a sterile two-year cycle of gathering workforce data and publishing often inaccessible and ineffective workforce profile reports – while the baseline evidence they reluctantly disgorge tells us that nothing is changing.  Disability discrimination remains in place across the university employment sector.

There is a well-known quotation defining insanity [and often mis-attributed to Einstein]  :

“doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.”

Scotland’s most recent attempts in the 21^st century at framing equality legislation and regulations to eliminate discrimination are insane.  Scotland's universities have displayed a lack of intellectual rigour in attempting to observe and comply with regulations which, each year, demonstrate clearly that the goal - the elimination of discrimination - is not going to be reached.  The insanity of the system for delivering equality is widespread and deep-rooted.

When is enough, enough, in LGBO equality in Scotland ?

In the Scottish Government's most recent mainstreaming equality report published in 2019, the reader will find her/himself overwhelmed by data sets and tables spread over 233 pages which makes nonsense of the concept of accessibility and buries in the mud of apathy any semblance of accountability between government and citizens.

Some of the pages provide stark insights as to how equality is not happening in Scotland's government as an employer.  On page 114 of the report data is offered on the ethnicity of the government's workforce.  For 2018 [the most recent year for which data has been gathered] just 2.1% of the workforce identified as what Scottish government calls 'minority ethnic'.  The report helpfully provides another line of data sets which provide the reader with a benchmark against which to judge performance.  This line advises that the benchmark for 'minority ethnic' staff in the workforce should be 4%.  Any sense that this has triggered alarm bells in government quickly vanishes on a reading of the other 232 pages of the report.  There are no real, significant, coherent plans to dismantle the discrimination in the employment culture and practices of government which act as barriers to Black Minority Ethnic [BME] people working in government.

When looking at the government's record as an employer in relation to disabled people, the sense of just how ineffectual government is in eliminating discrimination is hardened on a reading of the report's page 115.  The benchmark for employing disabled people is 19%.  The actual rate of people who identify as disabled in the government's workforce is 7.6% at 2018.

One area of the report where this trend of failure is reversed relates to what government describes as 'LGBO' - Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Other [see page 38].  The benchmark used by government to assess performance on employment equality is 2%.  The actual figure recorded for all employees identifying as LGBO in 2018 within government is 3.6%.  Heterosexual employees make up 62.3% of the workforce, against the benchmark of 96%.  The remaining 34.1% of the workforce are logged as either 'prefer not to say' or 'unknown'.

Please sir, who decides
when enough is enough ?

When asked what government would be doing to remedy an imbalance between LGBO and heterosexual employees, according to their own benchmark, it was explained that the 34.1% of employees logged as 'unknown' prevented government from having 'sufficient data' to make policy decisions about over- or under-representation.  Such a take - and position - is clearly indefensible.  No matter which way one allocates the 34.1% of 'unknowns' between the cohorts of LGBO or Heterosexual, the percentage of the Scottish government workforce identifying as LGBO will be, at absolute minimum, 3.6% - well in excess of the benchmark of 2%.  Put another way, the number of LGBO people working at Scottish government would, if the benchmark translated into actual reality, give a count of 185 people.  There are in fact 335 people identifying as LGBO in government's workforce.

In isolation, this could be said to be a good thing.  But the data sets presented by Scottish government - and all other employers - cannot and should not be looked at in isolation.  

If, instead of just 2.1% of the government workforce identified as BME, this figure increased to 8.1%, in that scenario, non-BME people would have a strong claim to being discriminated against in the employment practices and cultures of Scottish government.  If the figure of 7.6% of the workforce identifying as disabled people increased to 27.6% [against a benchmark of 19%], non-disabled people would have a strong claim to being discriminated against by government.

Nicola Sturgeon - unable to answer,
when  is enough, enough ?

Ducking difficult decisions is something government's do, especially when they have been in power too long.  On this issue - the employment of LGBO people - Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister is failing to offer a lead to employers across the public and private sectors on how to answer the question - when is enough, enough ?

NHS in Scotland not listening to deaf and hearing impaired people

When you call the NHS, you expect and believe that the service you get over the phone will be the same as if you were there in person.  The same high standards will apply.

That is fine if your hearing is good enough to hear what the person on the other end is saying and asking.  If you are one of the hundreds of thousands of deaf and hearing impaired people [not using BSL] who struggle with telephone based conversations, the NHS in Scotland struggles to offer you the same quality of service which hearing people get when they phone the NHS

In 2019 Scotland's NHS Boards were asked to provide data on all telephone calls received over the last 3 full financial years, with the telephone being the most common method of contacting the wide range of services provided by the NHS.  From that baseline data, Boards were then invited to release data which showed how they were quality assuring telephone calls to them made by deaf and hearing impaired people not using BSL and where the contact would most likely be made via Minicom or Next Generation Text Relay.

The questions were focused to reveal what quality assurance systems were in place in each Board to check the accuracy of the call enabled and the accuracy of medical advice offered in such calls.   Boards were also asked what systems were in place for regular sampling of these calls to gauge user satisfaction and to reveal what levels of satisfaction were being reached.  To provide a wider context to the study, Boards were also asked to provide similar data sets for people contacting them by phone and for whom English was not their first language and who would need communication support in the shape of Language Line or Big Word interpreting services.

On the basis of the data supplied by the minority of NHS Boards in Scotland, incoming calls to NHS Scotland exceeded 52,100,000 over the last three calendar years.  Given the number of Boards unable to find and supply the data, the true figure is likely to be well in excess of that total.  On a daily basis, 9 of the 22 NHS Boards in Scotland are receiving, on average, 47,600+ telephone calls per day.  The other 13 NHS Boards in Scotland don’t know how many calls they are receiving each day.

We are now well established in the 21^st century and yet large parts of the NHS in Scotland are unable to access and assemble basic data on telephone traffic which should be an essential and key feature of the strategic management of service development today and well into the future.  If this data gap were revealed to be the case with a large private sector organisation such as British Airways or Marks and Spencer, the share price would plummet as a direct result.

In 2018, the average daily calls in to the NHS across all of Scotland by people using language interpreting support was 41 calls per day – when the average daily rate of all incoming calls to NHS Boards was over 47,700 per day.    

While evidence of equality of access to the NHS for people whose first language is not English is limited to just a few parts of the NHS, evidence on equality of access to the NHS for deaf and hearing impaired people not using British Sign Language [BSL] is even more difficult to find.  Just two of Scotland’s 22 NHS Boards [NHS24 and NHS Fife] revealed details of the volume of calls received and enabled by such as Minicom, Next Generation Text Relay or other systems.  According to the data supplied by all Boards it is revealed that the number of calls made to the NHS across Scotland by deaf or hearing impaired people and enabled by Minicom, NGTR or similar averaged 1 per week.  This compares to the total incoming calls across NHS Scotland of an average of over 47,600 calls per day.  

When it came to quality assurance of the calls, and from the responses received from the 5 Boards who had logged the over 43,000 calls received over 3 years and enabled via Language Line or similar, it was revealed that not one of the 43,000+ calls was selected for audit and quality assured for accuracy of content or of the medical advice offered.

Given just 2 of the 22 NHS Boards in Scotland [NHS 24 and NHS Fife] have been gathering data on calls received from deaf or hearing impaired people using Minicom, NGTR or similar, it was not expected that much data on quality assurance would be available.  The response from both NHS 24 and NHS Fife to this particular part of the FoI was to indicate that none of the calls received via Minicom, NGTR or similar had been quality assured, either for accuracy of the call content or for the accuracy of the medical advice offered in the call.

In the last 3 complete calendar years, Scotland’s 22 NHS Boards received well in excess of 52,188,408 telephones calls [just 9 of the 22 NHS Boards provided call data – the rest not gathering or unable to gather the data].  Of the 52+ million calls received by the NHS in Scotland over the last 3 years, just 43,162 [0.09%] calls were received from people whose first language is not English and were enabled by Language Line or similar.  Calls from people who are deaf or hearing impaired and not using BSL and enabled by NGTR or similar totalled 181 [0.0004%].

NHS Boards reported that none of the calls made possible via the different forms of communication support are routinely subject to audit by them for quality assurance purposes in relation to the accuracy of call content or accuracy of the medical advice offered.  Similarly, none of the calls were subject to user satisfaction surveys on experiences of accessing and using health services by phone.

Given the Equality Act 2010 places a clear duty on NHS Boards to provide health services free of discrimination, the realities revealed by this research note suggest that NHS Boards in Scotland are unable to offer robust evidence that equality of access to health services by phone is being delivered for people with different communication support needs.  

Access beyond the ghettos of accessible housing

From time to time, the media, business, governments, elected members and charities acknowledge how inaccessible most of the traditional high streets are across the UK for disabled people with particular mobility and access needs.  Real equality means that disabled people who, say, use wheelchairs and are visiting a place like Dalkeith in Midlothian should be able to know that they can visit, for example, Ladbrokes in South Street and place a bet [they can – it has ramped access].

While dropping in to the High Street is often an unthinking event for non-disabled people, so too is the decision to drop in unannounced on a friend or relative who lives, say, just a few miles away and whose company you enjoy.  Such is the stuff of life for non-disabled people.  Place a bet on the Grand National at Ladbrokes, grab a few beers from Lidl, and then zip round to watch your horse come in last on the large-screen tv at your friend’s house.

We know that all can gain equal access to Ladbrokes and bet the house on the 3.30 race at Newmarket.  What we also know is that the vast majority of houses built across Midlothian [old and new] and the rest of the UK are not visitable by disabled people who use a wheelchair.  Too many, way too many, still have stepped access, even when the building site was relatively flat [architects and developers like to make statements at entrances to homes and steps can be part of such ‘statements’].  Too many still have inadequate door opening widths, meaning entrance over the few which have level, no-step, access, can mean anything from getting stuck, grazed knuckles, or getting marooned in the hallway because there is no turning space and the doors leading into the rest of the house open the wrong way.

Even if a person is lucky enough to get into the lounge of their friend’s house, all the while making sure the blood from their knuckles is not dripping on the on-trend off-white fitted carpet, the space standards used in building most homes are so minimalist that while you have been lucky enough to get into their lounge, you can’t move around the lounge. 

We could go on and on, describing how it is most unlikely that you can get into the kitchen to raid his or her fridge for more beers once the Lidl shop has drowned the sorrows of the horse coming in last.  Even in those rare occasions where you have been lucky enough to obliterate the memory of that rash bet, being able to get to and use the toilet is likely to take as long as your horse did to get round Aintree, and with no guarantee that you will get over the last hurdle and into the toilet.

How did we get here ?

Two basic approaches used by governments for decades now explain where we are and why.

Firstly, governments have focused on the homes disabled people live in and trying to improve basic standards of accessibility to and in them.  Current standards while not perfect work after a fashion for most disabled people.

Secondly, when it comes to housing built for the majority of the population who are non-disabled people, builders and developers have been encouraged – rarely forced – through regulations and guidance to ensure that all new homes built since the 1990’s are visitable by disabled people.  Given the majority of housing built since 1979 has been private sector for the owner-occupied market, the consequence of these approaches is that we have created ghettos in terms of where disabled people can expect to live and, by default, exclude disabled people from not only being able to live in the vast bulk of housing built, but also excluded from being able to visit and socialise with people living in the vast bulk of housing built.

Excluding disabled people from being able to visit and engage socially with friends, family and neighbours through enabling the building of unvisitable housing is a breach of human rights.  Government needs to recognise this and start to work with disabled people in getting planners, builders and developers to stop ghettoising the lives of disabled people.

If the people with particular housing needs were people of colour [POC] and housing policy led to POC only being able to visit other POC, society would erupt in a storm of protest at such racist, segregationist and discriminatory policies.  If the people with particular housing needs were Catholics and housing policy led to Catholics only being able to visit other Catholic people while Protestant people could visit any and all other people, society would rightly storm Parliament and demand an end to sectarianism in housing policy and discrimination against Catholic people because of their particular faith.