For some
years now [since 2013] public bodies in Scotland have been required to report
every two years on what they have been doing to deliver equality, as defined by
the Equality Act 2010, both as service providers as well as employers. A critical part of this process is that the public bodies should publish all their reports in a manner that is 'accessible' to the public.
In the Regulations telling public bodies what to report and when, an 'Executive Note' explained that the Regulations would:
'allow the wider community to monitor (and where appropriate challenge) the performance of public authorities in relation to the public sector equality duty.'
Recent research used Freedom of Information requests to explore whether NHS Boards in Scotland were meeting their legal duties under the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 to publish equality-related reports in a manner accessible to the public. Despite the legislative aim of fostering transparency, accountability, and public engagement, the findings reveal widespread shortcomings. The bulk of Scotland’s NHS Boards do not systematically collect or report data on whether the public are accessing downloads of the key reports—such as Mainstreaming Equality, Gender Pay Gap, and Workforce Monitoring reports—and all of the Boards had no records of requests from the public for paper or alternative formats of the reports. Where data on downloads was provided, the number of downloads was strikingly low and highly concentrated in a small number of Boards, suggesting minimal public reach.
As a benchmark to the performance of Boards, the same questions were asked of Scottish Government, a public body in its own right. Surprisingly, the government was unable to provide any of the data requested, and was unable to evidence that it was meeting the aims of the Regulations when it published reports on what it was delivering on equality.
The research report concludes that accountability is largely illusory: NHS Boards [and government] fail to promote their reports to the public, websites are difficult to navigate, and there are no linked and traceable mechanisms to encourage feedback, challenge, or dialogue and so construct a virtuous circle to the accountability concept inherent in the legislation. This culture of passive compliance undermines the original policy objectives of the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012, leaving both NHS Boards and the Scottish Government open to criticism for failing to demonstrate leadership or embed accessibility and accountability in what is being done to deliver equality. In reality, the public sector in Scotland is still rooted in a out-of-date culture which does things TO people and continues to fail to do things WITH the people who are supposed to gain from what is being done by public bodies.
To address these failures, the report recommends systemic reforms, including the creation of a centralised, Audit Scotland–hosted database of all equality reports published by the public sector; automatic compliance monitoring for the Equality & Human Rights Commission; mandatory Plain English standards; and requirements for Boards to actively promote their reports, track readership, and respond to public feedback. Without such measures, Scotland’s NHS, government and the rest of the public sector cannot credibly claim to be accountable to the communities it serves in advancing equality for those communities.
