My Lords, Amendment 76 concerns equality impact assessments and would reinstate statutory requirements to undertake them as part of the public sector equality duty. An equality impact assessment involves assessing the likely or actual effects of policies or services on people in respect of disability, gender and racial equality. While equality impact assessments are not legally required, they have been widely adopted as an effective and efficient means for public authorities to undertake proper consideration of equal opportunities. They are described by the authorities that use them as,
“a positive force for the delivery of real equality”.
Moreover, case law suggests that these assessments provide robust evidence documenting how decisions were reached. Indeed, case law has confirmed that to have due regard to equality, a public authority needs to gather sufficient information about the impact on equality, give such information proper consideration at a formative stage of decision-making and consider whether any negative impact can be eliminated, mitigated or justified. Authorities are also advised to have some kind of audit trail to show that the actions they took comply with the duty. Therefore, while it is true that the courts have never held that there is a requirement to complete a written equality impact assessment or that having an equality impact assessment itself is sufficient to show compliance with a duty—especially if it has been completed with a purely tick-box or form-filling mentality—the main components of a good quality, substantive equality impact assessment process are what the courts have held to be necessary in order to have due regard to equality.
It does not help to ensure public authorities’ compliance with their duty to have the Prime Minister and other government Ministers simply dismissing equality impact assessments as wasteful, bureaucratic and unnecessary exercises. Rather than calling time on equality impact assessments, as the Prime Minister did at the CBI conference in November 2012, we believe that these vital assessments should be enshrined in legislation. We therefore call for an additional amendment to be made to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill that would require public authorities to assess, consult, publish and monitor the likely impact of proposed policies.
This becomes even more important when, days after the announcement of a review of the public sector equality duty by the Secretary of State, Maria Miller, the Prime Minister announced that public sector organisations will no longer be required to undertake equality impact assessments as a means of fulfilling their obligations outlined in the public sector equality duty. Instead, these important assessments have been dismissed as unnecessary.
Repeated government announcements about equality law being burdensome red tape, the declaration of the Prime Minister at the CBI conference, and the dismissal of equality monitoring by the Community Secretary Eric Pickles as unnecessary, intrusive and a waste of taxpayers’ money, fuel our concerns about the removal
of these assessments. Indeed, I was reflecting that it would be nice if this Government actually made some positive announcements about equality impact assessment and how they are necessary to judge the impact of how public money is spent and used. Just saying, as the Prime Minister did, that,
“We have smart people in Whitehall who consider equalities issues while they’re making the policy. We don’t need all this extra tick-box stuff … so I can tell you today, we are calling time on equality impact assessments”,
seems to me to be a somewhat facile assessment of what is a useful public sector tool.
It is notable that the review of the public sector equality duty comes after the Government were criticised by the EHRC for failing to abide by the requirements within it. Furthermore, despite its membership including four Conservative members, not one Labour politician has been appointed to the steering committee that is reviewing this. Will the Minister tell us when the steering group looking at the public sector equality duty is due to report? My understanding is that it has been further delayed and that it will not now report until the summer. How is the steering group conducting its inquiry and who is it inviting to talk to it about the public sector equality duty?
Will the Minister also comment on a recent blog for Liberal Democrat Voice by the BIS and Equality Minister Jo Swinson? She seemed to imply that the duty has actually held policymakers back from properly considering equality. She said:
“As Liberal Democrats, we do not think equalities should be about ticking boxes and regulatory hoops—it’s too important to be relegated to an administrative duty. Advancing LGBT, gender, disability and race equality will only be achieved by putting equalities at the heart of every department”.
She is right about that, but you also need to see the effects of the policies you are pursuing.
The Minister needs to address two issues. First, if you do not have an equality impact assessment, how will you assess the effect of the work of public authorities? Secondly, if the body that is reviewing the public sector equality duty reports back that it does not think it is necessary, what will the Government do with that information? Are we going to find ourselves at the end of the summer in a situation in which the Government completely stop looking at the impact of any of their policies, spending commitments and decisions on factors such as age or gender, or on any of the different groups such as LGBT people covered by equality legislation? I am at a loss to know what direction the Government think they are taking with this so-called regulatory reform. I beg to move.