What Scotland doesn't have is a government Cabinet Secretary [Nicola Sturgeon] who is passionate about them or who showed on the day that she even knows that much about them.
We - 7 people in the public gallery - turned up for the start of the Parliament's Equal Opportunities Committee [EOC] session at 2.00pm.
The very courteous security staff outside the Committee room asked me to switch off my mobile phone. When I engaged with them on this [wondering why I could not tweet from the Committee Room] I was told that the press are allowed to tweet but not citizens. I will need to follow that up. I was also aware that the security staff outside Committee Rooms were in plain uniforms while colleagues on reception desks were in pin stripes.
The Committee took their time in planning their meeting. Enough time for the Cabinet Secretary to approach the security staff and have one of those 'do they know who I am/that I am waiting here' type conversations. They courteously assured her that the Committee were indeed aware she was there.
Sadly, Mary Fee, Convener of the EOC, had to be elsewhere. Stuart McMillan as Deputy Convener was in the Chair and got all present settled and down to business. This meant that Nicola Sturgeon read out a brief, offering a highly sanitised summary of how we had got to this point. Translated roughly? The government had again consulted widely, most people again agreed with what was proposed, there isn't really a problem, discrimination is something which only happens somewhere else, and I [Nicola Sturgeon] would rather be campaigning in the local government elections to try and win Glasgow city instead of sitting here in front of a Committee where we, the government, have an in-built majority.
I had got my infra-red headphones at reception so that I could hear what everyone said. Surprise, they didn't work and we were 15 minutes in before security staff managed to get me a set which worked.
There followed some very gentle questions to the Cabinet Secretary from some members of the Committee. These were batted back by Nicola Sturgeon, either by simply reading from her brief in a tome of voice showing as much interest/passion as you would expect from the person having to recite the stations on the Edinburgh to Glasgow Central line, or embarking on a surreal existentialist wibble punctuated with some vigorous head butts and where the question was simply buried in a deluge of government-speak. Most questioners were stunned into submission by the responses from the Cabinet Secretary.
Stuart McMillan did ask for a bit more on how the views received had been taken into account. Wibble from Nicola.
Siobhan McMahon tried to get clarity from the Cabinet Secretary on what section 7[5] of the regulations meant, where it set out that the government would review 'from time to time' whether the 150 staff threshold in relation to reporting gender pay gap data should be amended. I couldn't make sense of the Cabinet Secretary's wibbled response and from what I could see neither did Siobhan.
Annabel Goldie queried the lack of clarity around section 11, where government could require public bodies 'to consider such matters from time to time as was decided by Ministers'. Nicola tried to answer this and tried to explain whether or not these 'such matters as may be specified' would need additional regulations to be brought forward. Lots of wibble. We left that section with the lack of clarity firmly in place.
Annabel returned with a question on section 9 on procurement, observing that it had changed from previous drafts but that it was not clear and wondered whether a public body might be prevented from accepting a bid from a voluntary sector organisation which is below bids which are deemed 'the most economically advantageous'. Nicola struggled badly with that, wibbling furiously, and looked to her team of officials to help. Not a lot of clarity emerged on this section either.
Stuart McMillan asked the Cabinet Secretary if during the consultation that any of the responses had been given any differential weighting. This triggered a cataract of platitudes and cliches from the Cabinet Secretary which reassured Stuart that the consultation culture in Scotland is a national treasure and is something in which we doubtless lead the world.
Siobhan McMahon wondered what plans the Cabinet Secretary had for government's monitoring the impact of the specific duties. A rambling making-it-up-as-we-go-along answer from Nicola in which she started by saying that she expected public bodies to involve the voluntary sector. It was yet another version of PM and FM questions - make up a question in your own head and use the answer to that to provide a response to what you have just been asked - no matter how wide of the mark it is.
Siobhan also pressed the Cabinet Secretary on enforcement of the duties, given the massive cuts in the budgets and staffing of the Equality & Human Rights Commission. The Cabinet Secretary started by suggesting that this was an area outwith her scope but meandered on to wibblingly conclude that her contact with the EHRC suggested they would be robust.
The specific duties were formally put to the Committee by the Cabinet Secretary and equally formally adopted.
There will be no jaggy tweed revolution in Scotland - on equalities or indeed on much else. The evidence from that Committee session this afternoon was that there is a lack of conviction that there is a problem in Scotland needing an answer in the shape of the new specific equality duties. We have a Cabinet Secretary with oversight of equalities in Scotland who doesn't know how these specific equality duties will work in detail. We have a public sector culture in Scotland which still thinks we are already pretty good on equalities and that there is not much more to do before we can claim the gold medal in the world equalities games.
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