All together now, by Alex Klaushofer

11 Oct 07
The Equality and Human Rights Commission came into being this month, bringing all equality issues under one roof. Is this a great leap forward in the fight against discrimination or a messy merger of quite different battles? Alex Klaushofer investigates

12 October 2007

The Equality and Human Rights Commission came into being this month, bringing all equality issues under one roof. Is this a great leap forward in the fight against discrimination or a messy merger of quite different battles? Alex Klaushofer investigates

The battle for equality in the UK moved into a new phase this month when the Equality and Human Rights Commission opened its doors. This new public body, made up of the old Commission for Racial Equality, Equal Opportunities Commission and Disability Rights Commission, will be responsible for enforcing the laws against discrimination on the grounds of race, sex or disability. It will also have new duties to champion the right to equal treatment regardless of faith, sexual orientation and age, plus a more general obligation to promote human rights legislation and equality for all.

The political signals from the top suggest that equalities have never had it so good. Gordon Brown's debut speech to the Labour conference as prime minister last month reaffirmed his commitment to the equalities agenda, highlighting the importance of 'a genuinely meritocratic Britain'.

This message was reiterated by deputy leader and Equality Secretary Harriet Harman at a fringe meeting organised by gay rights group Stonewall. 'Barbara and I pledge to be champions of all strands of equality,' she said, referring to Barbara Follett, appointed minister for equality in July as part of the new equalities office established in the Department for Work and Pensions. The government is preparing an equalities Bill to put before Parliament in November next year, which will attempt to address weaknesses in existing anti-discrimination legislation.

With this supportive context, the EHRC would seem to have everything going for it. It is chaired by high-profile race campaigner Trevor Phillips and features a star-studded cast of commissioners, including Muslim writer Ziauddin Sardar, human rights academic Francesca Klug and Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill. It has also had 18 months as a transitional body to prepare. But it is having a difficult birth. There are concerns about its capability to deliver, including claims that in organisational and staffing terms, it is insufficiently prepared to do the job. This pressure is exacerbated by the fact that it is coming into being against the backdrop of Britain's mixed record on equality – something all three former commissions have highlighted in legacy documents assessing the current state of play.

The CRE's report, A lot done, a lot to do – the CRE's vision for an integrated Britain, concludes that modern-day Britain is 'still a place of inequality, exclusion and isolation'. Despite obvious progress over the past 30 years in some areas, segregation and extremism are on the rise, it warns. A second – less rhetorical and more evidence-based – report surveying the public sector's record on compliance with its race equality duties does not make more cheery reading.

The performance of the public sector was 'disappointing', particularly in Whitehall's 15 departments, with the biggest spenders 'failing to achieve even basic compliance'. It argued that the new body should take a zero-tolerance approach to non-compliance by central government, initiating legal action where necessary.

Nick Johnson, the report's author and director of policy at the CRE until it shut up shop last month, reveals some depressing insights into the dark side of Britain's public service ethos. He blames Whitehall's poor equalities record largely on 'institutional complacency' stemming from an unshakeable faith in the pure heart of the civil servant. 'They just don't think they could be discriminating or contributing to unequal outcomes,' he says. 'When we've talked to them, they've said, “We don't discriminate”. When we ask them “How do you know?” they begin to struggle. They just don't seem to get it.'

One major problem, he says, is a lack of data. For example, the Department for Communities and Local Government does not know the ethnic makeup of 58% of its staff, a gap that makes it impossible to know if there is any discrimination in employment practices.

In addition, equality issues seem to be invisible when it comes to policymaking, with huge implications for public service provision. 'They don't seem to have a notion of evidence-based policy, particularly in health,' says Johnson. 'We were looking at race, but I don't see it would be any different for gender, disability or even on socioeconomic grounds. I think they need to change the way they make policy fundamentally.'

Johnson says that meetings with Cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell have convinced him that there is commitment to the equalities agenda at the top, but he finds little evidence of it elsewhere in the civil service. Whitehall's equalities officers have little effect, he claims: 'There are some particularly good ones, but they don't have the resources, they're not seen to be important people and they're not listened to.'

A spokeswoman for the Cabinet Office says that discussions with the CRE to date have resulted in government departments acting on specific points about monitoring procedures and data collection. 'We will look at any further points made by the CRE,' she says, but adds: 'We do not agree that equalities officers are ineffective and under-supported. The civil service has a Diversity Champions Network comprising senior and board-level members from all the main departments.'

Other areas of the public sector have also come in for a drubbing. Despite three formal investigations into the criminal justice sector, the CRE professes itself 'deeply unhappy' with the prison service's response to recommendations following the murder of Zahid Mubarek by his racist cellmate at Feltham Young Offenders Institute.

In the NHS, an audit of compliance with the Race Equality Duty, conducted last year with the Healthcare Commission across all 570 trusts, found that 40% did not have an updated race equality scheme. The picture was even worse in further education: the CRE found that not one of the 50 bodies audited was fully compliant with its legal obligations. 'The actual performance of individual bodies was among the poorest the commission has seen,' the report said.

Local government fared better. The report found that even small local authorities with limited budgets were meeting the Race Equality Duty better than central government departments, with those in London and other large metropolitan authorities doing particularly well. But across the board, the picture was mixed – 30 of the 47 councils assessed were found to be non-compliant, while 'not a single district authority was… even approaching compliance'.

The judgement comes as councils increasingly try to meet the needs of their ethnically diverse populations, to both tailor services to better suit users and promote community cohesion.

Angela Mason, national adviser for equalities and cohesion at the Improvement and Development Agency, finds the variation in councils' ability to further equality unsurprising, given the very different contexts in which they work. 'For some authorities, it seems more relevant. It tends to be the authorities in large urban areas with large ethnic minority populations,' she says. 'It's also a question of resources.'

She also disputes the CRE's assessment of district councils. 'I think that's quite a blanket condemnation,' she says, adding that the complexity of the race duty makes it difficult to judge overall performance for organisations on a learning curve. 'I think districts and authorities are performing well on some parts, and not on others.'

So what kind of in-tray does this snapshot of Britain leave for the EHRC? There is widespread agreement that much more needs to be done. There even seems to be consensus that the equalities challenge is broader today than the traditional concept of discrimination, extending beyond the unequal distribution of resources to the multiple forces that shape a person's identity and life chances.

Jenny Westaway, policy officer at the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for gender equality, says much of the focus in women's equality has been on pay and employment issues. 'You haven't had the mirror change at home – that's the key challenge for the EHRC and it must not ignore what's happening at home,' she says, adding that domestic violence is a major area the new body needs to tackle.

Her view is in line with the EOC's conclusions in its legacy report, The gender agenda: the unfinished revolution. This argues that the priorities for the new commission should be correcting imbalances in domestic life as well as closing the pay and power gaps between the sexes.

But there is less agreement on what kind of organisation is best suited to do this. The EHRC's gestation has been dogged by an almost philosophical debate about whether a merged body bringing all forms of discrimination under one roof will help or hinder the anti-discrimination cause. 'We're nervous,' says Johnson. 'The CRE has long-standing concerns that race will be diluted. Issues that have a particular faith/race element don't cut across other strands.'

The Fawcett Society has supported the setting up of the new merged body from the outset, says Westaway, and welcomes the opportunity to tackle multi-discrimination. 'There is obviously a concern about dilution, but it doesn't need to be the case,' she says, citing work by both the EOC and the society in tackling the double discrimination suffered by ethnic minority women. 'Actually, ethnic minority women experience particular issues that are very often overlooked because they fall between two stools. For example, Muslim women may face discrimination on the basis of their sex, but also on the basis of their ethnicity.'

The Disability Rights Commission's legacy report, Disability agenda – Creating an alternative future, found that despite new laws and duties, disabled people still face discrimination in accessing services and employment. The report said that a sustainable future for Britain needed levels of prosperity and productivity that could be achieved only if everyone was empowered to play an active part. Like the other bodies, it had initial concerns about the merger but says these have been allayed by the appointment of a dedicated disability committee within the EHRC.

'We think it's going to be a significant presence on the new body – that is something that neither race nor gender issues have had afforded to them. Good people have been appointed and they will be very vocal in voicing concerns,' says a spokeswoman. 'Really, I think we're a lot more positive than we were 12 months ago.'

For Mason, the inclusion of faith, age and sexual orientation in the EHRC's brief will make it more meaningful for local authorities serving a huge range of different communities. 'I think it'll make it easier because people will be able to see where they fit in,' she says.

The uncertainty of the issue is highlighted by Trevor Phillips' own U-turn – as CRE chief he opposed the idea of a merged body. 'Trevor's view is that some of the concerns they had were addressed, and bringing together the issues gives it strength,' says a EHRC spokesman.

The organisation's immediate priorities are impressively ambitious. They include mapping Britain's 'equality battlegrounds', a comprehensive assessment of the public sector's fulfilment of its positive equality duties, a 'state of the nation' report and a major campaign against hate crime.

But before it can even embark on its bold new programme, it will have to get its house in order. It is not yet fully staffed: 370 staff have moved over from the old bodies, but about another 130 people need to be recruited before the commission can operate at full strength. Only two out of 15 appointments for operational heads have been made and a fourth and final group director is needed.

Johnson, who declined a position with the EHRC in favour of a post with the Institute of Community Cohesion, doesn't pull his punches about the process. 'The way the EHRC has been established so far has been shambolic,' he says, pointing particularly to the appointments process. 'It has been secretive and in some cases suspicious, with certain people getting jobs. There's been no transparency.'

A commission spokesman acknowledged that the organisation was still sorting out its staffing arrangements, but said: 'It's part of being quite a complicated process, bringing old organisations together and identifying where the gaps might be. It's not as straightforward as a merger, or setting up a new organisation.'

In contrast, Mason is optimistic about what can be achieved by the movers and shakers recruited to the new body so far. 'They've got John Wadham – expect some action. That's not an appointment that signals nothing is going to happen,' she says, referring to the appointment of the former director of Liberty as EHRC's legal director.

Corporate politics aside, others in the equalities world point out that it is early days for the new organisation. 'While I understand the concerns, really it all depends what the EHRC actually does,' says Ted Cantle, professor at the Institute of Community Cohesion. 'The jury is out. We've got to give it a chance.'

Luton leads the way: equality in practice

Luton Borough Council is one of a handful of councils praised for good practice in the Commission for Racial Equality compliance report. The council has a comprehensive system of structures and procedures to try to ensure that prospective policies are 'equality proofed' from the outset. All committee reports have an 'equalities implications' section which their authors must complete. An impact assessment of all budget proposals is mandatory too.

'I suspect officers used to complete it without thinking too much about it, but we're making it mandatory now,' says Valerie Grant, the authority's head of equalities. 'It makes for better decision-making.'

She cites an attempt to cut school uniform grants as an example of a policy that was pulled because of its likely effects on poor families, including people from ethnic minorities, disabled people and single mothers. 'As a result, members didn't cut the budget, because the pain would have been too great,' she says.

The approach in Luton — which has a big ethnic minority population — has been to apply practice in race equality to gender, disability, faith, age and sexual orientation. 'We've got better at extending good practice from one area to the other,' says Grant. 'We're looking at the six strands in everything we do, because they're interlinked — there isn't a person who is one thing, or the other.'

Angela Mason, national adviser for equalities and cohesion at the Improvement and Development Agency, agrees. 'You could say that mainstreaming it in policy and service delivery is the next big challenge,' she says. 'At the end of the day, services are delivered to people, and people do come in different shapes and sizes.'

PFoct2007

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