Official Report 130KB pdf
Does anyone have any questions or comments on the paper on item 4, which is on methods of working?
Will all legislation be brought to the attention of the committee or do we have actively to seek it out?
No legislation will come before the committee automatically. The committee might want to discuss how it will identify the legislation that it is interested in.
Members have a copy of the legislative programme of the Parliament.
As far as we know it.
It is intended that the equality unit will, when it is set up, look at the equal opportunities implications of legislation. We should decide on areas that we want to look at as well and on the organisations that we want to engage in consultation about legislation.
As some of the contributors to the informal briefing sessions suggested, there is a danger that, at first sight, some legislation does not seem to have equal opportunities implications; it is only during implementation that it is discovered to have considerable disadvantages for certain sectors of society. We should not assume that some legislation raises no equality issues. If we are keen to mainstream equality, we ought to be in a position to have sight of almost all legislation coming before the Parliament.
The issue is how we manage that. I suspect that we will be quite dependent on other organisations to help us to scrutinise legislation, although of course we cannot abdicate responsibility.
I agree. All legislation requires a policy memorandum setting out any effects on equal opportunities, and we should be involved in that. One way of doing that is to look at bills as early as possible. We should be involved at the pre-legislative stage, which has begun for the education bill—that should be the first bill that we look at between now and October. We should look at all the others, but not as urgently.
I think that it is wrong that there is no requirement for legislation to come to this committee as a matter of course. I assume that there would never be an objection to legislation coming to this committee when we request it, but we should formalise a procedure. That has to be put in tablets of stone; we should not leave it to chance.
Malcolm mentioned the policy memorandum attached to a bill. The first bill is the emergency legislation and there is a mention of equal opportunities, although it is limited. We need to have a proper mechanism and some type of proofing system. A workable mechanism could be developed in consultation with organisations such as the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Commission for Racial Equality. My concern is that we could start to look at legislation without having a template of what we want to address, which would mean that we do not have continuity in our consideration from one bill to the next. Until we have a proper mechanism, it will be difficult to consider each bill properly.
The equality unit, when it is set up, is meant to equality proof all legislation. It is up to us to decide whether we consider all legislation. I do not think that we have to ask anybody else to decide what comes before the committee. When we talk about invitations I intend to suggest that we invite the equality unit to a future meeting to discuss its role and how it relates to this committee.
We should put on the agenda the early establishment of a clear template for proofing bills. We must have some continuity, and a mechanism would achieve that.
As long as it is not too restrictive—there must be flexibility.
That would be an issue when we decide on a mechanism.
I suggest that all legislation should be put on the agenda so that we could decide whether there are relevant issues. I do not know how the committees are publicised to the wider public, but presumably those who know how to use the web can find out what is on our agenda. That would at least flag up to interested organisations the fact that we intend to consider particular legislation so that they could make us aware of their concerns before we looked at it. We do not have a monopoly of wisdom. If we were in the habit of having legislation come here, people who had an interest in that legislation would ensure that we were appropriately briefed.
We must look at all legislation but, although this might complicate things and be difficult to manage, we must in the long run get involved at as early a stage as possible—at green and white paper stages. We have had a lot of submissions on the green paper on housing, because it does not address racial equality issues. If we can get involved at the green paper stage, the work should be done before we get the actual legislation.
We should bring to our next meeting a method of getting involved from the start—perhaps we could have a small paper on that. Johann spoke about engaging different groups. We are still putting together a list of organisations to write to. In the letter that we send, we can say how those organisations can have access to information and contact the committee with comments on specific legislation, which would then be brought to the committee for us to look at.
Previous
Schedule of MeetingsNext
Work Programme