Ministers change tack on public sector equality duty

The government has outlined a major shift in approach to the public sector equality duty that is due to come into force in April 2011.

In a consultation paper launched yesterday, the Equalities Office said the Secretary of State would not set top-down targets or national equality priorities. The previous government’s proposal for a specific duty on public bodies to have regard to such priorities when setting their equality objectives will therefore not now be taken forward.

The government said: “We believe that public bodies should be free from the central diktats that so often skew priorities, divert resources and hinder the ability to react more rationally to locally needs. Putting trust in public bodies by reducing Whitehall interference will give them flexibility to respond to local needs, supported by local data.”

Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone said that the amount of information public bodies are required to publish in relation to their workforces and the services they provide would be increased. The emphasis will be on empowering people to scrutinise that data and evidence.

The consultation paper also said that:

• Other than the general requirement on public bodies to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, there will be no additional processes on public bodies telling them how to conduct their procurement activity. “They will be judged on the outcomes they deliver”
• Proposals on transparency would mean that the previous government’s plan to require public bodies to set out the steps they propose to take in order to achieve equality objectives would be rendered redundant. “What matters is whether a public body delivers improved equality outcomes, not the bureaucratic process a body is going to put in place to achieve the outcome”
• The disability reporting duty on Secretaries of State will not be retained. “Our radical new approach to transparency and democratic accountability is the best way of ensuring that progress towards disability equality is tracked and scrutinised by the people affected – disabled people themselves and their representatives."

Featherstone said: “Equality is central to delivering the fair and more efficient public services that support a fairer society. However, in the past equality has too often become a byword for box-ticking and bureaucracy, with public bodies focusing on red tape rather than results.

“The new equality duty will change this – instead of the government imposing top-down targets and bureaucratic processes on organisations, we will require them to publish data on their equality results in their services and their workforce, empowering the public by giving them the information they need to hold organisations to account.”

In terms of the information that public authorities will have to provide, the government said:

• Different bodies will necessarily publish different data sets relating to their particular business, but how they do it will be guided by common principles. This includes being consistent with the public data principles set out by the Public Sector Transparency Board established by the Prime Minister
• The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) will set out the standard requirements for the equality data to be published by different types of public bodies in its statutory code of practice and guidance on the equality duty
• There will be neither a specific duty to carry out prescribed types of engagement work nor a particular process or prescribed set of forms to assess the impact of decisions on equality. However, authorities should be open about how they have engaged with people and the results of their assessments
• The published data should be “broad enough to give the public a full picture of equality in the workplace and in public service provision”. If a public body does not have the necessary data, they will be expected to fill that gap. Public bodies will be expected to publicly set out their plans and timescale for filling such gaps
• Public bodies with 150 or more employees will be required to publish data on equality in their workforces. The EHRC’s code of practice and guidance will set out what workforce equality data should be published by different types of bodies. It will include data on important equalities such as the gender pay gap, the proportion of staff from ethnic minority communities and the distribution of disabled employees throughout an organisation’s structure. Public bodies will have to publish this data annually in an accessible way
• The requirement to publish data should not be interpreted as a requirement on public bodies to routinely collect data on sensitive personnel issues, such as the religion or sexual orientation of employees. The government said it recognised that some public bodies “may not yet have achieved a culture in which employees are ready to be asked to provide personal information”
• Public bodies will be required to publish data enabling people “to judge how effectively they are eliminating discrimination, advancing equality and fostering good relations through the services they provide, commission and procure”
• Public bodies will be required, as part of their normal planning process, to set equality outcome objectives. These should be “specific, relevant and above all measurable”. These objectives should be reviewed in the light of progress at least every four years.

The consultation runs until 10 November 2010. A copy of the consultation paper can be downloaded here.

The public sector equality duty will affect a range of public bodies, including central government departments, local authorities, schools, police authorities and NHS trusts. A full list is in the consultation paper.