Hansard

Thank you, convener. It is a bit strange to be sitting at this side of the table instead of in the convener's chair.As the convener has introduced the Equal Opportunities Committee delegation, I will go straight to a brief presentation, after which we will answer questions.As well as satisfying the demands of many organisations that have campaigned for many years for equality in Scotland, the establishment of the Equal Opportunities Committee gave effect to one of the four founding principles of the Scottish Parliament. Although the power to legislate on equal opportunities is reserved to Westminster under schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998, as the Procedures Committee knows, the Scottish Parliament has wide-ranging powers to encourage equal opportunities, to secure observance of the requirements of law and to ensure that Scottish public authorities do not unlawfully discriminate. That is a big responsibility for the Equal Opportunities Committee.The Equal Opportunities Committee is one of the eight mandatory committees, the rules for which are set out in the standing orders. Those rules define equal opportunities broadly. The definition is far broader than is often the case in other legislatures. The remit was initially overwhelming for the committee. It was difficult to decide where to start. Therefore, in line with the consultative steering group's recommendations, we appointed four reporters to the committee to cover race, gender, disability and sexual orientation.The responsibility and role of the Equal Opportunities Committee are explicit in the fourth CSG principle: "the Scottish Parliament in its operation and its appointments should recognise the need to promote equal opportunities for all."Furthermore, we feel that our work is implied in the third CSG principle:"the Scottish Parliament should be accessible, open, responsive, and develop procedures which make possible a participative approach to the development, consideration and scrutiny of policy and legislation".If the Procedures Committee examines the Equal Opportunities Committee's work with consultation and accessibility in mind, it will see that, in engaging translation and interpreting services and in consulting such a range of organisations, we have adhered well to the third CSG principle.We should also remember that, to date, the phrase "equal opportunities requirement"—and all the legal weight that it carries—occurs in only three of the 27 acts of the Scottish Parliament: the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001, the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001 and the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc Act 2000. I am pleased to say that the Equal Opportunities Committee was involved in ensuring that the phrase was included in those acts. However, the difference between the contribution that the Equal Opportunities Committee makes and the changes that we want to bring about in the whole Parliament is a crucial issue for discussion. Although I will not reel off all the recommendations in annexe H of the CSG report and reply to them one by one, I am confident that the Equal Opportunities Committee has addressed many of them and that it is enough at this stage to consider the clear intent of the CSG report.We need to examine what the Equal Opportunities Committee considers its role to be and what the other committees and the rest of the Parliament consider that role to be. The Equal Opportunities Committee is clearly intended to be a catalyst—an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action. It was never intended to be the watchdog of the Parliament or to police other committees, which has tended to be how our role has been perceived.The work of the Equal Opportunities Committee has always been the same as that of any other committee, but with the added element that we help other committees to mainstream equality in their work. By "mainstreaming", we mean the integration of equal opportunities into all policy development, legislation, implementation, evaluation and reviews of practice. To be fair, on the intent to mainstream in the Scottish Executive, the Equal Opportunities Committee feels that most of the time it is pushing on an open door. The Executive has published its equality strategy, which the Equal Opportunities Committee refers to regularly. However, the devil is in the detail. The task and approach of mainstreaming are mirrored in the work of other committees. The Finance Committee has done some very good work to ensure that subject committees consider financial implications as part of their work. The Finance Committee has also done quite a lot of work on gender in the budget process.In the Scottish Parliament, we have a head start over other legislatures, so mainstreaming should be easy for us. We have the chance to learn from good practice in other areas. We have the clear steer that has been given to us by the CSG principles. We have the overarching legislation of the Scotland Act 1998 and explicit requirements to comply with the European convention on human rights. The status of the Parliament is a creation of statute and it is subject to compliance duties under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. There are equal opportunities statements in the policy memorandums to bills, for example.The existence of the Equal Opportunities Committee and this committee's far-reaching inquiry contribute to our position as the leader in the field. Therefore, it is disappointing that we seem unable to get other committees to realise that we are not a watchdog but a catalyst for equal opportunities.I will close with a brief summary of the Equal Opportunities Committee's current work load, which might be of interest. We have just agreed to publish a report on the race relations event that we held in the chamber on 14 September 2001. More than 100 people from ethnic minorities attended that civic participation event on the Race Relations Act 1976.On 2 November, we will host a workshop on the committee's report on its inquiry into Gypsy/ Travellers and public sector policies. That report will be debated in Parliament in November. The workshop is to facilitate feedback on the report and the Executive's response, which we hope to have by 2 November. That will be the first time that there will have been such scrutiny and consultation on any Executive response.We expect the first tranche of external research work on mainstreaming equality in mid-November. I know that the Procedures Committee is interested in that. In the meantime, we are committed, as a minimum, to scrutinising all primary legislation in this year's programme. We have revised the questions for the equality checklist and this morning agreed the interim checklist, which will be published for consultation on the Equal Opportunities Committee's website.That is all that I want to say at this stage. I am happy to take any questions. If anything else occurs to me, I will write to the committee.