WASP privilege indulged by Scottish government and Equality & Human Rights Commission in the running of local government

Scotland's Councils have had almost 11 years now to meet the legal duties they were given under the Equality Act 2010 and change how they go about their daily business and eliminate discrimination as employers and service providers.

Rather than embrace the challenges and shoot for the Equality Moon, Scotland's Councils have managed to demonstrate that the law can be stuffed into the drawer marked 'too difficult' and know that the enforcers of the law, the Equality & Human Rights Commission in Scotland, will do nothing, or as close to nothing as is possible to get without appearing utterly useless or corrupt.

As employers, Scotland's Councils in 2019 managed to count up that of they employed 258,680 workers and that just 5,592 of them [2.16%] identified as disabled people.  Scotland's adult population has 32% of people identifying as disabled.  Not even close to evidencing that discrimination has been eliminated against disabled people.  Woefully short.

As employers, Scotland's Councils struggle to find the evidence that they have eliminated discrimination against Black Minority Ethnic [BME] people.  Just 3,337 workers identified as BME out of the 258,680 Council workers across Scotland.  That is 1.29% of the total.  Estimates for the BME population of Scotland at 2020 suggest the figure is at 5% of the population.  Once more, Scotland's Councils are failing to show that discrimination, this time against BME people, is being eliminated.

Looking at the data for Scottish Council workers identifying as Lesbian, Gay or Bi-sexual [LGB], shows Scotland's Councils are not particular about who they discriminate against.  Just 1,789 workers identify as LGB.  That represents just 0.69% of the whole Council workforce across Scotland.  This at a time when the government itself reckons that 2% of the adult population identifies as LGB as at 2017.  

Another cohort of people who have experienced discrimination in Scotland for decades, if not longer, are Catholic people.  All of Scotland's Councils managed to find 16,907 workers who identified as Catholic.  Just 6.54% of the whole workforce.  The government's own Equality Evidence Finder shows that 14.3% of the adult population in Scotland identifies as Catholic.

In their role as service providers, Scotland's Council were given a chance late in 2020 to provide evidence that they were gathering data on their service users by protected characteristic [as they do with employees] and so demonstrate clearly that their services are equally accessible to all, that the experience in using services was equally useful to all, and that outcomes from using those services was equally available to all.  Thousands of pages of evidence were received.  Those thousands of pages showed all too clearly that Councils across Scotland are unable to evidence that their services are in fact equally accessible to all.  The consequences of this corporate laziness mean structural discrimination in the key functions of the bulk of Scotland’s Councils is going untraced, unchallenged and unchanged.

The basic numbers on employment and the complete lack of numbers in service provision reveal all too clearly that Scotland’s Councils have barely bothered to scratch the surface of discrimination in their functions as employers and as service providers.  Given there are no obvious reasons why this should be the case, applying Occam’s razor would suggest the most likely reason for the failure is that there is a marked lack of appetite in local government for changing a status quo in a Scotland which is largely run by and for WASP [White Anglo Saxon Protestant] privilege. For Scottish government and the Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] to be aware of this and not to actively intervene and drive the real change required, suggests WASP privilege is similarly indulged by government and the EHRC.

Structural discrimination in the key functions of Scotland’s Councils is going untraced, unchallenged and unchanged

 

It is now over ten years since Gordon Brown rushed through the House of Commons part of his legacy in the shape of the Equality Act 2010.  There was little which was radically new in the Act.  Much of the focus of the Act was in tidying up equality legislation dating back several decades and ensuring a coherent framework within which the different experiences of discrimination people with protected characteristics encountered could be placed.

 

The Equality & Human Rights Commission published a guide for public sector bodies in Scotland in 2016, ‘Evidence and the Public Sector Equality Duty’, and which was intended to “help authorities subject to the public sector equality duty to implement the duty as it relates to evidence”.  On page 19, the guidance explains:

 

After reviewing the existing evidence base, you are likely to identify things that you do, or protected groups that access your services, for which you do not have equality evidence. This could be because you have good information but it is not disaggregated for all protected characteristics, or because you do not routinely collect information in relation to particular functions.  Think about whether you have enough evidence, and the right type of evidence, to enable you to give rigorous consideration to the needs of the general equality duty across all your functions.

 

You will not be able to do everything at once, and it may take some time to develop relevant evidence across all of your functions. But a lack of evidence is not a valid excuse for inaction on the duty. It is important that you start to take action based on the evidence you have, while also taking steps to develop evidence in other areas.

 Late in 2020, Equality Here, Now investigated the extent to which Scotland’s 32 Councils had managed to examine how they were delivering services and use data gathering on service users to help them identify if discrimination was present in how those services were being delivered.  This would allow them to design out discrimination and so evidence that all people could have equal access to services, equality of experience when in them and equality of outcome achieved from using them.

 While there are any number of approaches to gathering data which could form the basis of evidence that equality of access to Council services is being achieved, there are some basic features which would need to be present.

 The first of these is that data needs to be gathered on who is using a Council service.  For instance, people using a Council library service could be profiled by protected characteristic when they first apply to be a member of their library.  This would then allow a Council to track actual use of library services and cross-reference/analysis made to Council population demographic data to identify if there is a comparative under-use by, say, people identifying as Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual [LGB] as against those identifying as heterosexual.  This would enable a Council to conduct focused research to establish reasons for comparative under-use found from data gathering and identify if systemic discrimination was a factor and put in place actions to eliminate that discrimination.

 On experience of services once accessed, it should not be beyond the capacity of Councils to undertake regular sample surveys of service users, profiled by protected characteristic, to establish, say, the satisfaction levels of people identifying as Black Minority Ethnic [BME] with the Council’s planning system and compare this with the levels of satisfaction returned by the surveys from people identifying as non-BME.  Over time, this would provide a Council with evidence of whether or not BME and non-BME people were achieving the same satisfaction in the quality of service from the planning system.  Any disparities revealed should be researched to identify the causes and identify remedial action required where discrimination was found to be a factor.

 In terms of outcomes achieved from access to and experience of Council services, gathering data would be determined to an extent by the core outcome to be achieved by anyone accessing a particular service.  In Council housing applications, it should be possible to tweak existing systems to track progress from application to outcome for people who are disabled and people who are not disabled, thereby determining whether disabled people and non-disabled people are on waiting lists for similar time frames.  With further tweaks, it should also be possible to gather data on whether the outcomes aimed for by applicants [reduction of overcrowding, homelessness, accessible housing amongst others] are actually achieved to the applicant’s satisfaction or if the housing offered is in fact a temporary solution before the preferred housing outcome is achieved by the applicant.  This and similar forms of data gathering would allow Councils to establish an evidence base on whether systemic discrimination was built into their housing systems and processes and to identify where changes would be required to eliminate discrimination against people identifying with any of the protected characteristics.

 Councils were asked to provide examples of using data gathered on service users to evidence that discrimination in the provision of services had been eliminated.  To make it easy for Councils, the data asked for just some of the protected characteristics.

 After reading through thousands of pages of reports where we were assured the data could be found [but without specific page/para referencing] the depressing but unsurprising conclusion was that Councils had been economical with the truth in their responses.

 Not one of Scotland’s 32 Councils was able to provide access to data it has gathered on service users, suitably anonymised and aggregated, to evidence that equality of access to, experience in and achieving outcomes from their services, is being delivered for BME people, disabled people, LGB people and people who identify as Catholic.

 Highland Council offered in evidence a Mainstreaming Equality Report and Citizens’ Panel Performance and Attitudes Survey.  The reports lack data on people accessing services by protected characteristic, instead offering data sets on satisfaction surveys.  From these, the reader can learn that:

 

·        People with disabilities are less satisfied with burials and cremation services

 

What the report lacks is the actual data, by protected characteristic, of people using the burials and cremation services, so enabling comparisons between BME people accessing the services and non-BME people using the services.  The report also fails to reveal exactly how Highland Council had managed to establish contact with disabled people who had died to establish their lack of satisfaction with their burials or cremations.

 Dundee Council offered 2 Mainstreaming Equality reports covering 2015-17 and 2017-19, totalling 116 pages, and advised that ‘the answers to your questions are contained in the attached’.

 In search of the answers, a reading of the Mainstreaming Equality report for 2017-19 revealed that Equality Outcome 1 [on page 13] was to –

 

Increase the level of disclosure of equality information

 The focus of this Outcome is all on employees and the Council’s function as an employer.  No work appears to be getting done by Dundee Council on gathering data by protected characteristics of service users, the focus of the FoI request.

 Edinburgh Council was late in responding to the FOI – 8^th December 2020.

In essence, the Council claimed the data requested could be found in the Council’s Equality Diversity and Rights Framework progress report 2019 and in Impact Assessments such as that for the Adaptation and Renewal Programme.  The Council also referred to other papers submitted to Scottish Government as statutory reports.  These were discounted as they did not fit the terms of the request made in the FoI.

 Equality Outcome 1 in the Equality Diversity and Rights Framework Progress Report 2019, on page 13, aims to deliver:

 

Improved accessibility of council services, housing and buildings

 It is noted that the aim is not to deliver equality of access to council services, but to deliver ‘improved accessibility’.  It is possible to argue that the aim fails the meet the duty to eliminate discrimination in the delivery of services. 

 The report lists some of the achievements made with delivering ‘improved accessibility’.  On page 13 the report lists:

 Edinburgh Leisure manages and develops sport and leisure services on behalf of the Council and the Active Communities team deliver projects to people who face the greatest barriers and tend to be much less active: women and girls, people with disabilities, older adults, minority ethnic groups and those with low incomes

 There is no offering of evidence on how this achievement is being measured, no evidence of a benchmark from which progress can be gauged, and no cross-reference to data gathering on service users by, for example, ethnicity.  This leaves Edinburgh Council unable to evidence that equality of access to, experience in and outcomes gained from using Edinburgh Leisure services is available to BME people as it is to non-BME people.

 More generally, there is a laziness in how Scotland’s Councils have responded to the data requested in this research.  Instead of collating specific reports or sections of reports which come even close to providing evidence that data on equality of access to services is being gathered and used, the majority of Councils made assumptions that if there was any evidence it must be in the Mainstreaming Equalities reports they already provide to elected members and publish on their web sites.  Given that none of these reports have contained any such evidence, the consequences of this corporate laziness mean structural discrimination in the key functions of Scotland’s Councils is going untraced, unchallenged and unchanged.

 Radical and refreshed approaches to enforcement of the Equality Act 2010, or variations on them are required to help concentrate the currently poorly focused minds of those running the public sector and untap the energy needed to accelerate the arrival of equality of access to, experience in and outcome from the use of Scotland’s public services for people sharing any of the protected characteristics.  Just as importantly, a new approach would enable hundreds of thousands of people to live the fullest possible lives, both in potential and in quality.