Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-84)
EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES
COMMISSION (EOC)
25 APRIL 2007
Q80 Chairman: So you are not expecting
that to be dealt with within the context of the discrimination
law review?
Ms Ariss: We do expect there to
be proposals around equal pay but we are not quite sure how wide
they will go, whether they will treat the Equal Pay Act as something
that will stay as a separate piece of legislation or, if it is
incorporated into a single Equality Act, whether there will be
a chunk of it that has a ring-fenced conceptual framework, because
at the moment, obviously, the Equal Pay Act has a very different
conceptual framework to what prevails in the rest of the discrimination
law. It would be possible to incorporate it into a single Equality
Act but still keep it having a very distinct set of concepts and
ideas. It is arguable whether there would be any advantage in
doing that. It puts it all under one cover but it does not actually
make much difference to how effectively it works and at the moment
there is widespread consensus that the Equal Pay Act, important
as it is, and we are not arguing for a minute that it should be
got rid of, is too slow, too cumbersome and too ineffective and
the fundamental problem is that the onus is with individuals to
complain after the event. It does nothing to tackle discriminatory
pay systems on a proactive basis.
Q81 Chairman: Are you saying at the
moment you do not have a fully worked out set of proposals in
relation to equal pay legislation and what you want to happen,
and if you do, can you share it?
Ms Ariss: We do have a detailed
list.
Ms Wild: That fundamental question
of whether you take the Equal Pay Act into a new single Equality
Act or whether you keep it separate is one that we have not worked
through but we have worked through some of the other important
issues.
Q82 Chairman: If you could send to
us what you have, because I have a couple of other questions and
we have to finish at 11 o'clock.
Ms Wild: Of course.
Q83 Chairman: We will be writing
to government departments and public authorities to ask how they
intend to implement the Gender Equality Duty. Is there a programme?
You said that you had responsibility in relation to how that was
implemented. What about in relation to what happened in Northern
Ireland and their legislation? How closely connected are they
in terms of their experience and being a bit ahead of us?
Ms Ariss: They are quite a long
way ahead of us. In fact, I was talking to Evelyn Collins, the
Chief Executive of the Equality Commission in Northern Ireland,
about this last week and they are about to launch a substantial
review of how the public duty framework in Northern Ireland has
gone, which I think is due out within the next couple of weeks.
So we have been able to learn from their experience and indeed
from the experience of the Commission for Racial Equality—we
have been overseeing the race duty for some years now—and
from the Disability Rights Commission, whose duty is only a few
months ahead of ours, but nonetheless there is some useful learning
for us. One of the main things we learned from talking to other
people was that some of the existing duties are quite focused
on processes. If you look at what the law requires people to do
in relation to race equality, it is about setting out your arrangements
for doing things, not actually doing them, and technically, you
can comply with the law and do very little apart from publish
documents. Clearly, that is not what anybody intended. I was really
struck by this because I was responsible for implementing the
race equality duty within the EOC, and I was quite shocked. Obviously,
we wanted to do it properly because we are an equality organisation
but I was quite shocked when I realised, if you were clever enough,
how little you could do. We put a really strong emphasis in the
gender duty on making it focused on outcomes, so it is not about
setting out your arrangements for doing things; the heart of it
is setting objectives that will help to eliminate sex discrimination
and harassment and to promote equality of women and men, and then
to take action to achieve those objectives and, in monitoring
what happens, that is going to be right at the heart of what we
are looking for. So we hope that this is a better designed framework.
While the duty has been in preparation we have consulted on and
produced a statutory code of practice and a series of non-statutory
guidance documents to try and help public bodies to implement
the duty successfully. We have also had a substantial as our resources
will permit programme of activity to raise awareness of public
bodies about what is happening but also to help them think through
what this means, what kind of things might be changed. So we published
research, for example, looking at how gender equality would change
transport planning, which concluded that currently most transport
planning is done by men for men and that if we took a more imaginative
approach, we would get much better value for money out of the
public investment that goes into transport. So we have done research
to try and help people. We are now, as the duty comes into force,
moving more towards the monitoring and enforcement stage of the
work and we will be looking very closely, again, in so far as
our resources permit, at what people have done with the pay requirement.
We have already identified that in our monitoring work one of
our strategic priorities will be looking at what public bodies
are doing with the pay part of the gender duty and although we
do not want to be running around the place issuing compliance
notices just to look macho, we do think that Parliament has given
us enforcement powers for a reason and we should be making sure
public bodies are very clear that this is not a nice optional
extra but something they should do because it would be good for
their businesses, but they must do it and if they do not, we will
be on their case.
Q84 Chairman: That is extremely helpful.
I think we could do with exploring this in more detail. If you
have any information setting out how you see the gender duty working
and your role in relation to it, maybe you could liaise with Elizabeth
and make sure that we have that because I think it would be useful.
Also, the sort of questions you will be asking public authorities,
because we may ourselves wish for our own purposes to see what
answers we get when we ask them what plans they have to implement
it and also what they are going to put in their Public Service
Agreements about it. If you have any more information on that,
and also on the proposals in relation to equal pay legislation,
that would be very helpful. It may be that we will need to have
a look at it and maybe have some telephone conversations with
you to clarify any points that we do not understand, if that would
suit for us to proceed in that way because it clearly is very
important.
Ms Ariss: I did not mention but
we can send you some information also about some work we have
been doing jointly with the Commission for Racial Equality and
the Disability Rights Commission that we have been doing jointly
with the Treasury on the Comprehensive Spending Review and the
PSA framework, where we are trying a mixture of carrot and stick
to encourage the Treasury to take a very upfront and energetic
approach to this.
Chairman: I got a very positive response
from Stephen Timms when I raised precisely this point in Treasury
Questions, about approaching from different angles. Anyway, it
has been an extremely interesting session. We could easily have
gone for another two hours but I am sure you have other things
to do, as do we, but it would be very helpful to have that information,
if you could let us have that, and we will come back to you if
we have any questions on that. Thank you very much for your time.
We do appreciate it, and we are looking forward to our future
sessions, in particular when we get government departments in
as well, and start raising these questions with them as to what
they are doing. Thank you very much indeed.
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