Committee
Equal Opportunities Committee 11 February 2016
11 Feb 2016 · S4 · Equal Opportunities Committee
Item of business
Subordinate Legislation
Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2016 [Draft]
Alex Neil
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I think that the Parliament, led by this committee, would take a very dim view of that and, as would normally be the case, would decide what to do about the minister who had failed to carry out their duties. I do not think that we would include provisions that would mean my having to go to Barlinnie if I failed to carry out my duty, but there are other things short of sending me to Barlinnie that the Parliament can do to me.
In the same item of business
The Convener
Lab
Agenda item 2 is an evidence-taking session with the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Communities and Pensioners’ Rights on an instrument that, having b...
The Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Communities and Pensioners’ Rights (Alex Neil)
Thank you very much, convener. First of all, I should introduce Eileen Flanagan from the equalities unit, who deals with the policy side of things, and Stuar...
The Convener
Lab
Thank you, cabinet secretary. Annabel Goldie will ask the first question.
Annabel Goldie
Con
I have three pretty simple questions, cabinet secretary. First of all, how many additional listed authorities will now be brought under the provisions of the...
Alex Neil
Thirty additional authorities will now be covered. I will read some of them out to you, but we will send you a full list of them. We can also send you a list...
Annabel Goldie
Con
Thank you. That is helpful. I know that, during the consultation, some concerns were raised about data protection issues because of the smaller size of some...
Alex Neil
The main concern was about the level at which we should set the lower number, and on the advice of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, it has been set ...
Annabel Goldie
Con
Finally, there will obviously be an additional financial and administrative obligation on the smaller listed authorities. Has there been any attempt to quant...
Alex Neil
Before we decided to introduce this secondary legislation, we looked at whether there were other administrative ways of fulfilling this requirement without h...
Annabel Goldie
Con
So you do not expect the organisations to have to take on extra staff.
Alex Neil
Not at all.
Christian Allard
SNP
I have a brief question. When I looked at the amendments that you are making in these regulations, I saw that proposed new regulation 6A(1) of the Equality A...
Alex Neil
I will bring in Stuart Foubister but speaking from my 17 years’ experience in Parliament, I have to say that the phrase “from time to time” has appeared regu...
Christian Allard
SNP
It just seems very strange to have the word “must” before it.
Alex Neil
Absolutely. The answer, I think, is that it allows a degree of flexibility. If we were too prescriptive—if, for example, we said that something had to be don...
Stuart Foubister (Scottish Government)
That is correct. If the regulations were silent on the matter and did not use the phrase “from time to time”, it could be suggested that there was an obligat...
Christian Allard
SNP
What is the minister’s intention just now? Have you any idea when you will be taking those steps?
Stuart Foubister
Once the regulations are in force, it will be a case of doing that as quickly as possible, but the idea is that after some information is picked up, the proc...
Alex Neil
I can provide some clarification on the timetable. In effect, the new arrangements for the 30 additional bodies that will be covered become operational from ...
Annabel Goldie
Con
Given the delightfully flexible drafting of the regulations, I suppose that the phrase “from time to time” can mean now and again when it comes up the minist...
Alex Neil
I think that the Parliament, led by this committee, would take a very dim view of that and, as would normally be the case, would decide what to do about the ...
John Finnie
Ind
I suspect that we would discuss the sanctions in private, cabinet secretary. Laughter. I had intended to ask about the number of listed public authorities w...
Alex Neil
The issue with organisations with fewer than 20 employees relates to the diversity requirements. For example, someone might not want it to be known that they...
John Finnie
Ind
I am sorry—I should have clarified that I was asking exclusively about pay matters. Clearly, I would not wish to disadvantage anyone in the way that you have...
Alex Neil
As far as pay is concerned, everyone knows the pay of people on a board, because we publish that information for every board member, regardless of whether th...
John Finnie
Ind
Let me rephrase my question—I might be slow on the uptake here. Are we talking about public authorities in which there are certain individuals who are employ...
Alex Neil
The situation varies across the board. Let me take the example of Scottish Enterprise, which is already covered by the legislation; the chief executive of Sc...
John Finnie
Ind
Thanks very much for that. An aspiration for some people, including me, is that we address the issue of wage ratios in a more public way. Obviously there ca...
Alex Neil
I am very sympathetic to that. In his report, Will Hutton suggested that no organisation in the public sector—and, if I remember correctly, the private secto...
John Finnie
Ind
Thanks very much.