Welcome to the 11th meeting in 2014 of the Equal Opportunities Committee. Please set any electronic devices to flight mode or switch them off.
Agenda item 1 is an update from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. We agreed to seek an update from it on a range of policy areas. In paper 1, members will see its response, which we received last week.
I flag up that we sought information on the EHRC reforms from stakeholders in 2013 and that any further work should take the views that we received into account.
The current response from the EHRC could be used to feed into the committee’s work programme considerations later this year, particularly on the public sector equality duty and the EHRC’s business plan.
Members will also see that the EHRC is to publish its annual report and accounts for 2013-14 later in the summer. If members would like to hear formal evidence, we could either programme an evidence session with the EHRC in September or October or hold an additional committee meeting in August. I seek the committee’s agreement on which approach we should take.
September or October would be a good time to have an evidence session. By that point the EHRC will have published more evidence on some of the things that it details, particularly on Gypsy Travellers. That will be quite interesting, so we should wait until then. An evidence session would definitely be helpful.
I agree entirely with Siobhan McMahon. However, in the interim—in line with the other work that the committee is doing—would it be possible to get the parameters of the research that the EHRC is conducting on Gypsy Traveller accommodation?
Yes.
Thank you.
We want to ensure that we get the research.
Before we have the meeting.
Yes, that is important. We must also have time to study it.
Are we therefore agreed that we will have an evidence session with the EHRC in September or October?
Members indicated agreement.
I suspend the meeting while we wait for some witnesses to arrive for an evidence session.
09:07 Meeting suspended.Previous
Attendance