Friday 27 April 2012

How free do you think you are ?

It is Clarence Darrow who is credited with the aphorism:


Clarence Darrow at the 1925 Scopes trial
'You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's freedom.  You can be free only if I am free.'


By that criteria, damn few of us are 'free' and most of those who are keep their ill-gotten gains in some off-shore tax haven.


As we trundle towards the end of a soaking wet but drought-ridden April in 2012 hoping the free sand bags will keep our feet dry, we find hundreds of £millions being spent on playing with the lives of unemployed people as A4E and the like construct cruel games in which to prepare people for jobs which are simply not there.


We stumble over government ministers desperately sweeping under the carpet [or, famously, hiding behind trees] their dealings with Rupert Murdoch.  And not just in Westminster.  Scotland's government has more than a whiff of the Murdoch taint at its heart.


Older people in 'care' homes are shown to be abused and not protected by human or other rights.  Young disabled people find their schooling disrupted because a health board fails to provide nurse support.  Councils seriously consider mass enforced migration of social rented tenants to other parts of the country because of housing benefit caps imposed by government.  And the NHS in England now finds Virgin is delivering services to patients - and making a profit.


Hundreds of thousands of people are clearly not 'free' in our society.  It is the responsibility of those few of us who have and enjoy real, clear freedoms to endorse Clarence Darrow's analysis and work unstintingly to enable those who are not free to slip the shackles of 21st century slavery.


Getting equalities off the corporate page and into the daily lives of people

My twitter feed recently alerted me to another blog which tells yet another story where equalities exists only on the corporate page and not in the daily lives of people.  The blog is about a young boy, Adam, who is disabled and who is not able to go to school because his health board - NHS Lothian - won't provide him with the support he needs to attend school.  NHS Lothian are required in law to provide that support.


A few weeks ago, Nicola Sturgeon, Cabinet Secretary for photo opps in our NHS, was told that NHS Lothian had been fiddling the data on waiting lists so that they did not cross over a line set by the Cabinet Secretary for photo opps.  Intrigued by the potential consequences of the scale of the duplicity in this area of a board's performance, I asked the Cabinet Secretary in between flashes : 
what systems are used by your staff to validate and audit progress and performance reports NHS Boards publish on meeting their general and specific equality duties?.
I also asked :
Can you please ensure that the quality assurance required and used in this context will be readily and easily accessible to Scotland’s citizens and community organisations representing the views and experiences of people with protected characteristics ?
You would have thought the Cabinet Secretary for photo opps would seize the chance to plug the massive holes in her performance management capacity when it came to health boards.  You would have thought she would want to create a legacy where performance on waiting times, equalities, equal pay and much more improved when she was in office.  You would have thought.


Her response, drafted by her officials, was:
it is for each Health Board, as a named public body in equality legislation, to have in place the precise mechanisms they require to assure they are complaint [sic] with their legislative requirements. The Equality & Human Rights Commission is the regulatory body that ensures these requirements are met.
Nothing like not answering the question. Nothing like ignoring the reality that Westminster is slaughtering the EHRC and it will be unable to cross the road on its own to get change of a fiver, never mind check the performance of public bodies.


Self-assessment is not fit for purpose.  We have the stark evidence in from NHS Lothian on its waiting list data.


If we are to make sure that the performance of our health boards is open, honest, transparent and eliminating the discrimination which exists, we need a tough, fit-for-purpose, independent and transparent performance monitoring regime.  Given the Cabinet Secretary's fondness for her concept of mutuality in the NHS, it is also critical that checking performance has to be done in partnership with the very people the whole effort is supposed to benefit - people from the equalities communities.  She might even want to think about inviting Adam to be part of a new partnership monitoring regime.


You might want to suggest to Nicola that she needs to get tough on equalities and tough on the performance of health boards in delivering equality. Feel free to use this tweet button to do just that.  
If you want to support Adam go to school, use this tweet button to prod Nicola out of the glare of the flash bulbs and into doing her job as Cabinet Secretary for Health.  
And you might want to tweet and ask the EHRC to do what Nicola says it does - ensure Lothian meets its legal duties. 

Monday 16 April 2012

Our Freedoms, Our Rights

I was struck recently by an example of just how much Freedom of Information [FoI] has become a lever for extracting information from public bodies.  Often this information should already be published and in the public domain [like equal pay audits] but isn't.  A recent case which caught my eye was the BBC having to provide data on the size of its gender pay gap [10% as it happens] as a result of an FoI request.


I thought I'd dig a bit deeper and checked out the web site of the Scottish Information Commissioner.  Here you can find an analysis of what FoI cases the Commissioner has been asked to get involved in, which public body is playing coy with revealing information, and what happened.  It is very helpfully laid out in a spreadsheet to you can look at the core data from any number of angles and conduct your own analysis.


From 2004 to end-March 2011, the Commissioner has dealt with 2,896 cases.  Of these, 439 [15%] involved Scottish Ministers/Government.  1,235 [or 42%] were about Scotland's  Councils and 177 [6%] were about Scotland's Health Boards.  Where cases were investigated and closed with a decision from the Commissioner, the outcomes were :


Where it was Scottish Ministers/Government, out of 241 such cases, 177 [73%] were wholly or partially for the applicant.
Where it was local government, out of 515 such cases, 303 [58%] were awarded, wholly or partially, by the Commissioner to the applicant.
In the NHS, there were 58 such cases, and of these 39 [67%] were awarded, wholly or partially, by the Commissioner in favour of the applicant.


Scottish government appears to be playing fast and loose with information they hold and use on our behalf, and appear not to trust us with that information.

Saturday 14 April 2012

This is the [discriminatory] BBC

The BBC has been floundering around this week trying to explain the size of its pay gap [10%].


Having twanged some tweets on this, pointing out that at least the BBC has the data whereas the NHS in Scotland does not, I thought I'd look at other equalities data reported by the BBC.


It was not the easiest thing to find on the BBC web site, but using the search facility I uncovered what I was looking for.  It is not the best of web site sections for giving the visitor good quality accessible data on which to judge just whether the organisation is making equalities happen.  It is not the worst.


The report on workforce data offers the barest of pictures.  It does not offer an analysis of what has been learned or what new action is to be taken to tackle deep-rooted discrimination.  It simply reports data.  Shame.


It does set workforce diversity targets [on page 3] to be achieved by December 2012.  This is much more than most health boards and councils in Scotland have set.


The BBC targets are :

• 12.5% for BME employees overall [12.3% at September 2011]
• 7% for BME employees at Senior Manager grades [6.1% at September 2011]
• 5.5% for disabled employees overall [3.7% at September 2011]
• 4.5% for disabled employees at Senior Manager grades [3.2% at September 2011].


The report also offers readers an analysis of what the figures are by division or region.  In Scotland, the comparison with targets are :

• 12.5% for BME employees overall [2.9% at September 2011]
• 7% for BME employees at Senior Manager grades [0.0% at September 2011]
• 5.5% for disabled employees overall [2.6% at September 2011]
• 4.5% for disabled employees at Senior Manager grades [7.1% at September 2011].



The BBC, like any other part of the public sector in the UK, is still, after almost 40 years of legal imperative, shuffling about on the start line of dismantling structural and institutional discrimination.  There is no sense in the BBC diversity reporting that it has yet woken up to the need to work in power-sharing partnerships with people and organisations of and for the equalities communities to eliminate discrimination, or that it recognises that white people in the BBC will stubbornly resist, however politely and subtly, the transfer of what they still see as 'their' power to people from the BME communities.

Friday 13 April 2012

Women [not] doing it for themselves

This has been an odd week in a lot of ways.


On Twitter there have been a lot of tweets twanging around from Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell, her husband and CEO of SNP, about their campaign to take Glasgow from 'complacent' Labour.


Later in the week, there was news about the BBC's pay systems, revealed through an FoI.  Haven't had the time to work out why an FoI was needed when BBC should have been publishing  equal pay audits to comply with equality law.  I will follow that up next week.  The report suggested that women at the BBC were paid 10% less than men.  It gets better.


A BBC spokeswoman [my italics] said recruitment took place on merit alone.  She said: "Pay is determined individually based on on a range of factors including grade, role and responsibilities. It is never dependent on gender."  She probably believes in the 'Big Society' as well as the Tooth Fairy.


To close this loop of thought, Nicola is Cabinet Secretary for Health+ and has, since 2009 when she was quizzed by the Parliamentary Equal Opportunities Committee on equal pay, been dragging her feet on delivering equal pay in the NHS.  I have blogged extensively on this subject and chased Nicola with regular questions on when it will happen.  Her claim that Labour are complacent in Glasgow Council when she is stalling and delaying on equal pay reminds me of just how complacent she has been over the years of theft by men from the pay packets of women.


For those who are not fully conversant with Scottish politics and its key players, Nicola is a woman.  I mention this not to objectify her but because I have assumed she as a woman would want equal pay for women to be a top priority as health minister [a huge number of women work in our NHS] and as minister for equalities.


Not so.  Like the BBC 'spokeswoman', she has managed to find a way to persuade the sisterhood she is one of them whilst at the same time staying in the ranks of 'the boys'.


I will keep prodding Nicola with a sharp stick on equal pay.  The more people who do this the sooner we can get equal pay for our sisters.  I've made it easy for you. Just press the Twitter button, and your message will twang its way to Nicola.

Thursday 12 April 2012

Fiddlers at the top

A few weeks back, the Cabinet Secretary for Health+ had to advise Parliament that one of the health boards she has responsibility for - NHS Lothian - had been fiddling [my word] the waiting list data for its patients so that Lothian's performance complied with targets set by Nicola.  As ever, inquiries are underway and promises have been made that things will change.  As ever, there is no sense that the executive team in charge of the public body will find their performance related pay reduced as a result.


Part of the problem Nicola has is in her excessive reliance on systems of self-assessment by health boards.  There is quite simply no adequate central resource available to her to conduct real spot-checks on the data from health boards in this and in other critical performance areas.


Intrigued by the potential consequences of the scale of the duplicity in this area of a board's performance, I asked the Cabinet Secretary : 
what systems are used by your staff to validate and audit progress and performance reports NHS Boards publish on meeting their general and specific equality duties?.
I also asked :
Can you please ensure that the quality assurance required and used in this context will be readily and easily accessible to Scotland’s citizens and community organisations representing the views and experiences of people with protected characteristics ?
You would have thought the Cabinet Secretary would seize the chance to plug the massive holes in her performance management capacity when it came to health boards.  You would have thought she would want to create a legacy where performance on waiting times, equalities, equal pay and much more improved when she was in office.  You would have thought.


Her response, drafted by her officials, was:
it is for each Health Board, as a named public body in equality legislation, to have in place the precise mechanisms they require to assure they are complaint with their legislative requirements. The Equality & Human Rights Commission is the regulatory body that ensures these requirements are met.
Nothing like not answering the question. Nothing like ignoring the reality that Westminster is slaughtering the EHRC and it will be unable to cross the road on its own to get change of a fiver, never mind check the performance of public bodies.


Self-assessment is not fit for purpose.  We have the stark evidence in from NHS Lothian.


If we are to make sure that the performance of our health boards is open, honest, transparent and eliminating the discrimination which exists, we need a tough, fit-for-purpose, independent and transparent performance monitoring regime.  Given the Cabinet Secretary's fondness for her concept of mutuality in the NHS, it is also critical that checking performance has to be done in partnership with the very people the whole effort is supposed to benefit - people from the equalities communities.


You might want to suggest to Nicola that she needs to get tough on equalities and tough on the performance of health boards in delivering equality. Feel free to use this tweet button to do just that.


Deaf Job Seekers and the DWP

Iain Duncan Smith - SoS at DWP
I signed on this week as unemployed and have become a shiny new cog in the glorious Heath-Robinsonish munificence which is the Department of Work and Pensions [DWP].  Iain Duncan Smith [IDS] is Secretary of State at DWP.  It would take weeks and thousands of words to adequately describe the Dickensian nightmare IDS has created at the DWP.  Steve Bell of the Guardian has captured it - the DWP culture and IDS himself - superbly in his current 'If..' strip.  Take some brief time-out to go there and find yourself laughing and crying at the same time.


My local Job Centre+ [that 'plus' symbol always makes me smile] processed me this week and re-engineered me into the shiny new Coalition Cog that I am now.  And they did this with their computer systems down/crashed, or perhaps they were being polished by A4E work experience placements.


In the midst of a lengthy script, I was told/warned I needed to let them know if I was going to be late for my 9.21 am sign-on slot.  Apart from raising an eyebrow, James Bond-like at the precision of 9.21 am, I asked how a deaf or hearing impaired 'customer' [smiles again] could advise JC+ of having fallen under a bus on the way to signing on.  Consternation and confusion all round.  When I suggested 2-way text messaging as being readily available and suitable for most deaf and hearing impaired people, the reaction was akin to that one would expect when breaking wind audibly at the £250,000 dinner table in Downing Street.


I was assured by the staff that the issue would be looked at.  I gently pointed out that, as a public body, the DWP and its many glorious parts - and those parts now privatised and in the hands of such as A4E - were required to provide deaf and hearing impaired people such as myself with the same level of access to and interaction with DWP as is enjoyed by all non-deaf and non-hearing impaired citizens.  This did not seem to be a nugget of knowledge which had been passed on to DWP staff through equality main-streaming training.


Knowing what it is to struggle in a public sector body to get equality made reality from the bottom up, I have since submitted a Freedom of Information [FoI] request to the DWP and asking them to list what 2-way communication options they have in place nationally for engaging with and being accessible to deaf and hearing impaired people, and asked them to list what similar arrangements they have in place in local JC+ offices across the country to enable equality of access for JC+ 'customers'.


I will share the outcome from this FoI request in a future blog.

Wednesday 11 April 2012

Scotland's Voluntary Sector in Faustian pact

For some time now, Scotland has looked at what is happening in England as a result of the Westminster government and indulged in much head-shaking and smug complacency that such things [NHS reform] would not happen here.  When the stench of fraud and duplicity surrounding A4E contracts with the Department for Work & Pensions became unbearable and the A4E founder, Emma Harrison, had to resign from being part of Team Cameron, the head-shaking was such it threatened to create an epidemic of whiplash across Scotland.


It is at times like this that the rationale for the separation of Scotland from the rest of the UK becomes wobbly.


I have followed the evolution of the reforms to the NHS in England.  I have joined up, via Twitter, with a body of decent people who are still trying to ensure the heart of the NHS remains beating.  Our Cabinet Secretary has confined herself to commenting that it is a good thing health is devolved.  Yes and No.


If the Coalition at Westminster is allowed to proceed unchallenged and companies like Virgin Health [yes, the bearded boy wonder] take over the delivery of more health services, government will look to reduce funding to what we call the NHS in England.  Having achieved that cut in spending, there can be no doubt that the block grant from Westminster to Scotland will also be cut to ensure that the spending on health across the UK remains in rough alignment, allowing for all the Barnett and other factors in the calculations.


I can't subscribe to the notion that people in England will just have to accept the dismantling of the NHS while Scotland keeps what it has.  That strikes me as parochial in the extreme.  To paraphrase Clarence Darrow when he declaimed  'You can only be free if I am free', I would claim 'my free health service can only be 'free' if it is 'free' for my neighbour'.


There is another area where our integrity in 'tut tutting' and head-shaking at the antics of Westminster is more than a tad compromised.


Many of you will know that Westminster has reformed the benefit support system with the simple aim of reducing spending.  Workfare is one of many programmes which aims to help government reduce spending on benefit support by £billions over the next 3 years.  Most people in Scotland seem to think this is yet another England-only tragedy.  Not so.


The voluntary sector has been persuaded to get into a
pact with the private sector companies who lead these
programmes and become collaborators in reducing
spending and removing benefit support.
Workfare is not only aimed at reducing spending.  In the process, the private sector - including such as A4E - can expect to make £millions in delivering programmes which bump people off the dole queue, into sham training or work preparation or experience placements, and until recently for young people, sometimes without any pay.  The private sector cannot do all of this on its own.  The voluntary sector has been persuaded to get into a pact with the private sector companies who lead these programmes and become collaborators in reducing spending and removing benefit support.


Don't just take my work for it.  With these links you too can access information mined with Freedom of Information tools.  You can find out the names of all companies and organisations involved via this link.  In Scotland, one of the companies leading the Workfare programmes is Ingeus.  Their collaborators from the voluntary sector include :

Access to Industry
Apex Scotland
CEiS Ayrshire
Forth Sector
Glasgow Regenerate
Inverclyde Community Development Trust
Momentum
The Lennox Partnership
The Shirlie Project
Third Sector Hebrides
WEA Scotland
Action for Blind People
LAMH Recycle Ltd
Phoenix Futures
Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH)
Scottish Mental Health Co-operative
Scottish Wildlife Trust
The Lennox Partnership
The Wise Group


Another programme leader is Working Links.  Their collaborators in Scotland's voluntary sector include :

Aberdeen Foyer
Apex Scotland
Barnardos
Building Bridges
CASS
DAPL ( Drug and Alcohol Project Ltd )
DISIP
Express Group
FASS ( Fife Alcohol Support Service )
FEAT ( Fife Employability Access Trust )
Fife Womens Aid
GeMap
General Physics
Gingerbread
Glasgow Womens Library
Grampian Society for the Blind
North West Resource Centre
One Parent Families Scotland
Paisley and Johnstone Training
Pathways Learning Centre
Penumbra
Perth and Kinross Council – Welfare Rights
PSYBT
PUSH
RAPA Volunteers
Renfrewshire Association for Mental Health
Rosies
SAMH ( Scottish Action on Mental Health )
Send It
The Coach-house Trust
The Scottish Community Services Agency
Third Sector Hebrides/Voluntary Action Training
Volunteer Centre
Volunteer Development Scotland ( VDS )
West Fife Community Drugs Team
West Highland College UHI
Workers Educational Association
Youth Connections

The voluntary sector can of course make money in this Faustian pact.  But at what cost to its future?


Monday 9 April 2012

Play it again, Nicola


It has been an arduous and sometimes fractious journey from the milestone set by the Equality Act 2010 to this latest crossroads, the second attempt in Scotland to adopt a set of specific equality duties with which to make equality a reality for all people across Scotland’s diverse communities.

While the draft regulations being put by government to the Parliamentary Equal Opportunities Committee [on 17th April] for approval are unlikely to attain the magical score of 11 out of 10, they are a considerable improvement on what was put before the Committee over a year ago.  The Committee kindly invited some of the dissenters from last year's failed attempt by government to introduce specific equality duties to provide evidence on this latest attempt.  What follows is the evidence I have submitted.


This latest draft of the regulations on specific equality duties is to be welcomed as offering clear evidence of government’s willingness to listen and, having done so, to amend previous positions and accept reasoned rationale for improving how these can deliver measurable, person-centred improvements in the experiences Scotland’s diverse citizens have when accessing and making use of public services.

That said, the debate continues on just how much needs to be made explicit in the regulations, and just how much can be implied or hosted in guidance, if we are to make a fresh start on delivering real, person-centred and measureable equality.  This should not be viewed as being simply some kind of academic debate.  Discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, hate and the denial of fairness and dignity remain an everyday reality for too many people living in Scotland. 

There comes a time when the debate on how to build a Scotland free from discrimination needs to close, in order for the focus and energy of all to switch to using the new powers in the shape of the specific duties to identify and eliminate discrimination from the design and delivery of Scotland’s public services, and from the daily lived experience of people who access and use those services.  That point has arrived and the Parliamentary Equal Opportunities Committee is commended to approve the draft regulations.

There remains, even at this very late stage, an opportunity for the Committee to encourage government to ensure guidance and action to support the specific equality duties is developed in particular areas in order to achieve the overarching goal – a Scotland free from discrimination.  The remainder of this paper suggests what these areas might be.


Overview

The consultation process and practice around this draft has improved on what was used to construct the previous draft regulations, and credit to government for undertaking and publishing a more balanced analysis of the responses.  There remain critical areas for major improvement in the consultation process and practice which, if adopted, could in turn lead to significant qualitative improvements in the formulation of government policy in future.

Reviewing the effectiveness of the specific equality duties is a firm commitment set out by government in the 2011 consultation paper.  In order to obtain the quality of learning we will need 5 years hence, we need to start work now in creating the monitoring framework required to capture the range of information and data we will need.

Equally important, the limited arrangements and capacity for enforcement of the general and specific equality duties appear to be fading in direct correlation with the sharply declining resources government is to make available to the EHRC.


Areas for further guidance and action

The Consultation Culture
There are three aspects to this which, if lessons are to be learned from the considerable experience gained from forming the draft specific equality duties, can be improved.  It is stressed the aim is not simply to improve the consultation culture itself, rather it is to improve the whole continuum of government policy development of which the consultation culture is just one, albeit critical, part.

The first aspect is one which goes to the heart of discrimination itself and is to be found in the core standard practice of how government consults.  Too many features of the standard practices in consultation represent barriers to all but the usual suspects in having their views and experiences heard, recognised and, where appropriate, acted on by government.  In brief, government currently requires the same ability to negotiate the bureaucracy of forms, papers, language, and the implicit constraints and opportunities which are commonly found in any government consultation, from any public sector body as it does from any individual citizen or as is commonly termed any ‘hard to reach group[1]’.  This ‘one size fits all’ approach to the practice of routine consultation and engagement is a barrier to all being given real opportunity to be heard.

Recommendation 1 – that the PEOC, in addition to approving the draft regulations, encourages government and the Equality Unit to offer a lead by innovating in consultation and engagement practices [such as those used recently by the PEOC] to ensure that marginalised communities experiencing discrimination have their views and experiences heard and acted on in the development of government policy and legislation.


The second aspect is that of how to achieve a balance between and across any analysis of responses to consultation and so build a case for change or for the status quo.  In brief, and using the latest consultation on the draft specific duties to illustrate, I submitted a response to the consultation as a citizen.  COSLA submitted a response, as the ‘voice’ of local government.  To all intents and purposes, the analysis commissioned by the Equality Unit from Reid Howie treated my yes/no response to questions on a par with the answers from COSLA.  While I may consider my response to offer as much if not more value to government as that from COSLA, it is I believe dangerous to conduct an analysis without some attempt to ‘weight’ those pro- and anti- views received. 

Recommendation 2 – that the PEOC invites government to ensure that analysis of responses received to future consultations is weighted to reflect relevant factors.  These factors and other changes to the consultation culture of government should themselves be the subject of a radical/innovative consultation themselves.


The third aspect is to do with establishing a clear provenance of responses received, before any analysis takes place and which is then used to draw conclusions and influence possible change.  By way of illustration, I undertook a simple comparative analysis of the COSLA response alongside a random sample of 4 other responses submitted directly by individual local authorities .

As can be quickly discerned, there appears to be a considerable dislocation between what COSLA has submitted, on behalf of Councils, and what Councils themselves have said individually.  In addition, I conducted a simple analysis of what 22 Councils submitted directly to government.  One strong pattern which emerged was that generally speaking Councils are in favour of using a template for reporting on employment data so that comparison and benchmarking can take place.  COSLA counsels against comparisons being made.

In broad terms there appears to be a dislocation between what COSLA is saying on behalf of Councils and what Councils themselves are saying direct to government.  In a wider context this dislocation does, I believe, reveal the need for some modification and modernisation of the government’s routine approach to consultations.  

Recommendation 3 – that the PEOC encourages government to consider the profiling of respondents to future consultation being expanded slightly beyond its present form to capture some measureable sense of the provenance of the responses being submitted.


Review of regulations
The government’s consultation paper from late-2011 set out a commitment :

Review
3.7 We are committed to monitoring how the Regulations work in practice. We will explore our approach to this in partnership with the EHRC, with equality groups and with public authorities. If necessary, Scottish Ministers can amend the Regulations if particular elements are not having the intended effect.

This was and remains a very welcome commitment.  Time has however passed since then and we are within sight of the point at which the specific duties will come into effect.  It is suggested that in order to carry out a review of the regulations for their effectiveness, there is a need to put in place now some elements of a monitoring framework – such as monitoring approaches used by public bodies currently to show how services have changed as a result of meeting the general duty and how they have evidenced that change in person-centred terms, and tracking changes introduced by bodies as a result of the new specific duties and what person-centred difference that makes, again with evidence linked to the general duty.

The review should include work commissioned to retrospectively research what worked and what didn’t work in relation to the general and specific duties previously covering race, disability and gender.  It should also include examination of the performance of public authorities in meeting those 3 general and specific duties, as was done by EHRC in 2011 in regard to the performance of the NHS in England.

Recommendation 4 – that the PEOC commends government to introduce robust monitoring arrangements on the effectiveness of the impact of the specific duties as a matter of urgency, and calls for any project board established to devise, implement and oversee the monitoring to be a real partnership [between government, public sector and voluntary sector] and that it operate in a transparent and accountable manner, with the PEOC being part of the accountability arrangements.


Enforcement
Committee members will be aware that the Westminster government has signalled a sharp decline in resources to be allocated to the Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] between now and 2015.  It is expected that staffing numbers will collapse from 420 to between 150-180. 

The EHRC has very recently published its three strategic  priorities for the next three years.  All three of these priorities are prefaced with the words ‘To promote …..’ and the word ‘enforcement’ is significant by its absence.

In summary, there will be little if any capacity to enforce the observance by public bodies of the general and specific equality duties. 

This is not to say that public bodies in Scotland wilfully ignore those duties unless there is the threat of court action or of being ‘named and shamed’.  History does however remind us that as recently as 2007, the former Commission for Race Equality did issue formal ‘minded’ letters to all of Scotland’s NHS Health Boards in relation to a widespread failure to observe the then race equality specific duties on employment data gathering and reporting.

In Scotland, we can simply stand back and observe the embattled public sector drift backwards in its performance on equalities.  We can decide to defer action until the outcomes from a review of the impact of the specific duties are available. 

Or we can learn lessons from incidents such as the recent uncovering in NHS Lothian of manipulation of waiting time data.  This recent failure reveals, I believe, an over reliance on self-reporting and self-monitoring by public bodies in relation to critical performance issues, including performance on equality duties.  This risk will always be present and requires a more imaginative mitigation approach.

Given the NHS in Scotland already has significant resource in the shape of the Directorate of Equality, Performance and People [hosted in NHS Health Scotland] and that local government has the Improvement Service, it is suggested that government should look to use both these organisations to take on a pro-active performance monitoring role on observance of the equality duties.  In addition and to strengthen the independence and integrity of a refreshed monitoring and enforcement culture and practice, the resources, staff and functions of both organisations should be merged and transferred into the voluntary sector and operate under service level agreements with government and the public sector.

This would provide government with a modern, coherent approach to light touch enforcement, as well as pro-active access to performance data and so mitigate risks to Scotland’s reputation on equalities.  Other areas of the public sector could be performance monitored in similar style by a modest expansion of the government’s own Equality Unit.  Over time this could then be transferred into the new organisation hosted in the voluntary sector as well.

Recommendation 5 – that the PEOC commends government to introduce innovative light-touch enforcement and performance monitoring on compliance with the general and specific duties within the existing resources available to it, that the function be transferred into the voluntary sector, and that these arrangements be exemplary in their transparency and accountability to both government and to the people of Scotland.



[1] In an equalities context this phrase should have a very limited shelf-life, in that having identified a group as ‘hard to reach’ any public body should immediately take steps to identify and dismantle the barriers which have made it ‘hard to reach’.  The fact that it continues to feature in the vocabulary, thinking and actions of many in the public sector, including government, is simply yet another illustration of the pervasive and deep rooted nature of structural and institutional discrimination.