Commentary on
CoSO's response to the Public
Authority Equality Scheme Guidelines: Initial Working Draft
The commentary will follow the response chapter by chapter and articulate the
reasoning behind each issue as it arises.
The main idea behind the equality duty is to oblige public authorities (PAs) to
"equality-proof" all their policies, taking the needs of various
constituencies, that is communities, into account. One example might be, the
public authority in charge of street lighting has never before considered the
impact of their street lighting policy on members of the LBGT community. But we
do have something to say about it because of queer-bashing. The new duty obliges
the street-lighting authority to look at the policy, decide which constituencies
it might effect, consult with us about the policy and only then to decide
whether to keep it the same or to change it.
In order for them to go through this process they need to draw up an equality
scheme, a process through which the above is achieved. At the moment that’s
where we’re at. Drawing up the schemes. These draft guidelines come from the
Equality Commission and say what an acceptable scheme ought to look
like. So the Equality Commission want our opinion on what the perfect scheme
ought to look like.
Our response also has to be understood in terms of coming from a constituency
which does not have additional existing legislative protection. It is crucial
that the full potential of this new equality duty be realised for the LBGT
community.
Our response is best understood by reading it along with the guidelines
themselves. All the constituent organisations have copies of these guidelines.
Please contact them in order to get a copy.
Issues
These were examples of issues we raised in our response document.
Not enough specific examples of Sexual Orientation issues have been
given to PAs e.g. street lighting. We tried to get across the following point
- how will PAs know to contact us about certain policies if they haven’t
been through an awareness raising process. See §4.2 for example.
Employment policies.
There is a fear that questions of employment policy will escape the
equality duty, with PAs saying that employment issues are governed by standing
legislation, on race, disability etc. However it is crucial for the newer
equality constituencies that employment questions are fully covered by the
equality duty.
Members of the community can’t be out in the workplace. They can suffer
discrimination and harassment but they have no legal recourse, except for this
new statutory duty.
A senior representative of the Equality Commission said to Graínne Close and Barbary Cook at the Equality
Commissioner’s briefing session that they were presuming that employment
policy was automatically covered by the duty – they hadn’t planned on
asking about it.
Individualised decision-making – personal prejudices.
According to the draft guidelines individual decision-making is not to be
bound by the new duty as it were. We have emphasised that application of
existing policy, though that policy may have been proofed can lead to
precedent setting situations and this needs to be recognised, the new
situation treated as a new policy and the new policy equality proofed. See
§4.15.
Issues around confidentiality/collection of data for impact assessment.
The Equality Commission must recognise and then persuade PAs that they had
to be flexible about collecting data and validity of representation. There
must not be a presumption that all evidence of discrimination must be
quantifiable or else it cannot be recognised. Representative organisations are
qualified either to articulate the needs/demands of the LBGT community, or to
coordinate their own sensitive research into various areas. See §§6.6-7.9
Multiple identity.
We are concerned with questions such as:
Have the Equality Commission policies in place to deal with multiple identity?
Will staff and PAs be trained to deal with multiple identity?
How will those policies and training change if part of the multiple identity
is sexual orientation and the staff member is unfamiliar with the issues?
Have the Equality Commission endeavoured to explain to PAs the logistics of
policy proofing on questions of multiple identity?
See §7.23
Issues around training.
The Commissioners were in general agreement, both during the presentation
and later during lunch, that issues surrounding sexual orientation covered
such new ground that extensive training was crucial. Training
The PAs must be trained, as should the staff in the Equality Commission.
Representative groups will need access to resources in order to be able to
carry out this training efficiently and effectively. See §§3.9-3.10
Tone of the Guidelines
Chapter 2 explains what mainstreaming is but also locates the new equality
duty in terms of the original Policy Appraisal and Fair Treatment (PAFT)
initiative. For members of the LBGT community the new schemes will have to
take sexual orientation into account when drawing up the schemes and then
using the scheme to proof their policies.
The issue surrounding §§2.10/2.11 was about the language they were
using. That second sentence said "[mainstreaming] should not be seen as a
procedure for preventing actions with significant adverse impacts on equality
from being implemented, but rather for ensuring that if such actions are
authorised this decision takes place in the full knowledge of their
consequences, with the participation of those effected, and in an accountable
manner."
From our response you can see how this is typical of an apologetic early
disclaimer tone which might encourage PAs to pay only lip-service to the new
equality duty since actions with significant adverse impacts on equality will
not be prevented.
Structure of the Schemes
There were also comments on the structure of the schemes. See chapter
5: Preparing and consulting on the draft equality scheme. Especially look
at §5.8.
Complaints and Investigations
See §§9.2-9.11. These paragraphs are fairly self-explanatory. Please
take note of them though as our complaints about the complaints system are
quite extensive.
We still need people to give their thoughts on the response
as it presently stands. Please take a look at the Equality Commission
page and e-mail us with your comments.
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