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Agenda item 5 concerns mainstreaming equal opportunities. The convener of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee has written to all conveners seeking committee views on a proposal by the Equal Opportunities Committee. The proposal is that all committees report to the Equal Opportunities Committee towards the end of each four-year session on how they built equalities considerations into their work during that session.
The Equal Opportunities Committee is concerned that, although equal opportunities are theoretically mainstreamed, they are generally not considered. In a lot of subjects, we will probably find that there is no obvious equal opportunities mainstreaming issue anyway, but one may arise on other issues. In rural housing, for example, there may well be an equal opportunities issue. If we are not going to report back to the Equal Opportunities Committee, it would be easy for us to examine an issue and never consider equal opportunities as part of the process, so I would like us to adopt the proposal.
Do other members want to comment?
I would like to know what prompted the proposal.
Will the Equal Opportunities Committee issue any guidance on how we should mainstream equal opportunities, particularly with regard to flooding?
There is guidance on it. There is a checklist—I have rather inconveniently forgotten what it is called—that we can go through to check that we are mainstreaming equal opportunities, so there is some guidance.
My view is that the proposal is probably the wrong mechanism to deal with mainstreaming. Surely the issue should be whether committees effectively scrutinise the Scottish Government's approach to mainstreaming equality, not whether we report on what the committees themselves do. Having a mechanism that addresses what the bodies that the committees scrutinise are up to is more important than having the proposed mechanism.
How would that apply when we launched an inquiry? A committee inquiry is not just a matter of scrutiny; we also consider a specific issue.
That is the case, but I hope that all committees take on board equal opportunities as a matter of good practice. If we are considering outcomes and change, we should focus on what the Government is doing.
In much of what the committee does, such as considering agricultural regulations, huge equal opportunity issues do not arise. However, Bill Wilson is right that equal opportunities issues will emerge from the rural housing inquiry. I am sure that the committee will consider how rural housing policy affects people with disabilities, for example. When housing associations build new houses, or under the new scheme in which the private sector will be eligible for grants, will a proportion of houses be required to be accessible or available to people who have low incomes? I am sure that such issues will emerge from our inquiry, but I am not sure whether we would need to report to the Equal Opportunities Committee on them and, if so, what form that report would take. However, committee members have a duty when producing reports to consider equal opportunities issues across the range of our responsibilities.
I remind the committee that the rural housing inquiry's remit was changed to cover affordable rural housing, so we will address housing for people with low incomes.
Perhaps I approach the proposal from a slightly different angle, which I thought that the convener suggested. It is right that, when we assess any public policy—whether it is our suggestion in a report that stems from an inquiry or a Scottish Government initiative—we ensure that equal opportunities are mainstreamed. However, I understood that the proposal was more about how the committees work and about considering how, when we undertake any public session in an inquiry, people can access that equally. The recommendation makes sense.
That is a fair point—that is a slightly different angle on equal opportunities.
I am trying to find out exactly what Keith Brown, as convener of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, is asking us to do. Is he saying that a rule change would require us as a committee to report on our work to mainstream equality issues and that the Equal Opportunities Committee would collate such reports? Would we report every four years to another committee?
That seems to be the proposal.
Why would we report to another committee? We do not produce reports for other committees, do we?
I am not sure whether one can draw a parallel from the past nine years. Are the clerks aware of similar circumstances, other than when we are a secondary committee on a bill or in an inquiry?
The nearest equivalent is the budget process, in which subject committees report to the Finance Committee, which publishes a report. The Finance Committee includes its own substantive views in the main section of that report and the subject committees' substantive views are attached as annexes. Parliament then considers and debates that report. However, the letter does not make entirely clear what the Equal Opportunities Committee would do with other committees' reports, so perhaps the situation is slightly different.
That is a different process. On the budget, we make recommendations to the Finance Committee. It is not clear to me that we are being asked to do the same in this case.
Are not we under an obligation to mainstream equal opportunities in everything that we do? It is a given. Is this not just a tick-box exercise?
I have another question for Bill Wilson. The committee is already required to produce an annual report, the layout of which is strictly constrained. The report that we produce is quite brief.
Under standing orders, all subject committees are required to report annually. Standing orders say very little about what the report must include, apart from the number of meetings and the number of meetings that are held in private. It is open to committees to decide what else they want to say. In the previous two sessions, the Conveners Group has agreed a template to which all committees have signed up. That involves committees sticking to a certain word count and using standard headings in the reports, but it is not a requirement in standing orders. As far as I am aware, the Conveners Group has not yet taken a view on the matter in this session.
Did the Equal Opportunities Committee consider raising the issue with the Conveners Group? For example, if we are to continue producing annual reports—which are controversial, because people are not entirely sure of their purpose—as we have done for the past eight or nine years, would not it be appropriate for us simply to add a heading on mainstreaming equal opportunities? Those are questions for Bill Wilson, as a member of the Equal Opportunities Committee.
The first question is why it is necessary for other committees to examine equal opportunities when the Equal Opportunities Committee already does it, but, inevitably, many issues will arise in other committees that the Equal Opportunities Committee will not examine. Rural housing is a good example. Lack of available housing for people with limited mobility is a real problem. In four years, the Equal Opportunities Committee may not get around to covering that, but the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee is about to conduct an inquiry into rural housing, so the problem should be covered in that inquiry because, as John Scott said, we have an obligation to mainstream equal opportunities issues in our work.
Members are expressing a degree of scepticism about what a report would achieve. One is supposed to be produced at the end of four years, by which time all committees will have completed their work, with or without mainstreaming equal opportunities. I am not certain how effective a report at the end of the session would be, because after an election everything changes and the dial is set back to zero.
The convener has suggested a more useful way forward, which is to include in our annual report what we have done on equal opportunities issues. Equal opportunities issues relating to rural housing will be raised in our inquiry into that; if they are not, we will be failing to do our job. We may want to reflect on whom we invite to give evidence in order to ensure that we cover that base. This has been a useful exercise because, if nothing else, it has ensured that we are thinking about equal opportunities issues.
Does the committee agree that we should express a preference for including a comment on equal opportunities in our annual report? That will require a proposal to be taken to the Conveners Group, which has in effect produced a template for annual reports that everybody agreed would be complied with. From our perspective, would that be a better route forward? If we reply to Keith Brown in that context, he will be aware that the issue will need to be raised at the Conveners Group. Is that appropriate?
The paper that has been circulated includes three specific questions. The committee's discussion probably gives us a fairly reasonable steer, but it may be worth considering those questions.
It is fair to say that we are not impressed with the notion that we should report at the end of four years, which appears to be a pointless exercise. Committee members may recall the extent to which they looked at our predecessor committee's legacy paper, which was given some consideration only at the very beginning of the session. A new committee that is made up of new members will have new ideas about what issues it wants to progress. That difficulty may arise whenever there is a complete change of Government at the end of a session.
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