Equal Opportunities Committee, 21 Sep 1999

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 21, 1999

Official Report 133KB pdf

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Improvement in Scottish Education Bill

The next item is the improvement in Scottish education bill. We must discuss what we are going to do with it. Did you raise this item for the agenda, Malcolm?

I do not think that I did, but it should certainly be on the agenda, so I am glad that somebody did.

We must decide whether we want this item on future agendas. The bill is one of the important pieces of legislation that the committee should look at. This committee could make representations about the bill to the Education, Culture and Sport Committee. We could consult other organisations and we could also have Sam Galbraith along to answer questions.

Lots of organisations would like to have some input into the debate. Last night, I was at an inclusion group event held by an organisation that is making representations to the education committee. I suggested that it might want to make representations to this committee on the specific equal opportunities implications of the bill.

Something on page 2 of paper 99/3/3 concerns me. It says that because

"equal opportunities is a reserved matter, it is unlikely that the Bureau will normally refer an Executive Bill to this committee."

In a sense, it does not matter whether the bureau refers it or not, because we can still look at it. However, if that is the bureau's thinking, I am worried. If members of the bureau are thinking about equal opportunities solely in terms of legislation, perhaps they need some education in equal opportunities. I do not know whether that is what the bureau really thinks.

I am surprised by that; it is certainly not the impression that I get. In the report to the conveners liaison committee, the equal opportunities and social inclusion committees were seen as being responsible for every piece of legislation and as cutting across every issue that the Parliament would consider. I am not too concerned about that, because we must remember that we can look at legislation without its being referred to us.

That was my interpretation of the standing orders. Under the procedures by which a bill is considered, the bureau refers a bill to the committee to go through it line by line, as a standing committee would do. That does not prevent any committee from being interested in the bill, although it is my understanding that the formal reference would be to the committee within whose remit the subject matter of the bill falls. Only if the subject matter of a bill fell within the remit of more than one committee would the bureau need to appoint more than one committee. It would then designate one of them as a lead committee. That would not prevent any other committee from expressing views on a bill and passing them to the lead committee.

The phrase does not imply that the bureau is not concerned about equality of opportunity; it relates to the process by which we envisage that a bill would be referred to particular committees.

Excuse my ignorance, Kate, but can you give me some information about the size and scope of the equality unit that is referred to in paragraph 10 of the consultation paper?

We are going to invite the equality unit along to the committee. The group works to the Executive, not to this committee, and is responsible for equality proofing legislation. The person who will head the unit is not yet in post and we will invite them along to ask them what their role is. I do not know how many people will be working in the unit. Do you know, Martin?

It is not a very big unit, but I cannot remember exactly how many people will be in it.

I ask because, if every piece of legislation is going to be referred to us, we could find ourselves bogged down with paperwork. If the equality aspects have already been considered by the unit and it is doing its job properly, the role of the committee might be more along the lines of fine tuning or monitoring. If the unit is properly resourced and staffed, what is the value of our looking in detail at all bills? I hope that the people in the unit will do that.

Until we see what the unit is doing, it will be difficult to say. The unit works to the Executive and this committee exists to scrutinise what the Executive is doing as well as what the unit is doing. Things will become clearer when we see the kind of equal opportunities policy statements that are produced along with the legislation. In previous meetings, we have discussed our work load and we all realise that we will be heavily dependent on other organisations to help us scrutinise legislation. The education bill is one that we will want to scrutinise closely and comment on because, if we can get equality in education, that will be a good basis for the future.

That brings us back to our previous discussion about how we should go about examining the legislation. That discussion hinged on the use of a template—some standardised format or method that we could use for all pieces of legislation. Before we can implement many of the conclusions about the improvement in Scottish education bill, we will need to have scrutinised it against the template. Then we would be in a position to make representations to the Education, Culture and Sport Committee or to seek guidance from other organisations on the equality issues that may be thrown up in the template and in our previous scrutiny of the bill.

I know that Martin Verity has highlighted three areas for consideration by the committee. One of them is whether we want to seek the views of other organisations on the education consultation paper. I received information from the Equal Opportunities Commission, which has done quite a bit of detailed work on a proofing system. Perhaps we should invite a representative from the commission along and consider using the consultation paper as a template, so that we could get an idea of how such a template might work and what the outcome would be. That would be an opportunity to run something through the proofing system and to see what the commission has to offer. It would also give us something more constructive to work with; it could lead to a template. We do not want this committee to have to reinvent the wheel when much good work has already been done.

I am quite happy with that. However, there are areas that the Equal Opportunities Commission does not cover, particularly the inclusion of kids with special needs. We may want to look at the way in which we segregate such children in Scotland and organisations that specialise in that area may want to lobby the committee. I know, for example, that one Scottish organisation is drafting an amendment to the education bill.

I agree that inviting the Equal Opportunities Commission would give us a good start, but we would have to ask questions on as broad a range of topics as possible.

I share Tommy's hope that we will soon have an effective equality unit. However, the education bill will be introduced in November, before the unit is up and running.

The education bill will not be the only one that we shall want to consider, but it will be one of the major ones. From the point of view of equality, it will be more important than perhaps land reform will be. There are probably equality dimensions to other bills, but—

You will get a lot of letters from people about having said that.

I should not have said it and will withdraw it if necessary.

We should make a serious effort to address the education bill because it will be our first piece of legislation and a challenge to the committee. I support Michael Matheson's suggestion that we should talk to the Equal Opportunities Commission, but we must involve other bodies, too. We could invite them, or we could just ask for written submissions about how the education bill affects their particular areas. We should do that in the next couple of months. The Macpherson report contains an important section on education, so there is some overlap. We should certainly look at the subject from that point of view. I suggest that we have a combination of written evidence and witness statements.

I do not know how well we are getting on with building up a database of organisations that we can consult. Are you suggesting that we could write to people saying that we are going to consider the bill and that we would like their comments?

That would be one way of doing it.

I was going to suggest that, along with that, we could use the template to work up some sort of system. Because of time limitations, however, perhaps we should ask organisations to comment on the consultation paper. Simultaneously, we should try to establish a system for future legislation. That would allow us to cover both aspects.

I return to the ill-fated equality unit. Do not you think that, as the Equal Opportunities Committee, we should flag up quite early our concern that, if the equality unit is not yet up and running—[Interruption.] Sorry. Is it established yet?

Some of the equality unit's staff are in post, but the head of the unit is not in post yet. I think that that should happen in the next couple of weeks, but the unit is not properly up and running yet.

This committee has a wider political role than the unit does, in terms of what is happening across Scotland. We receive representations from various bodies and try to ensure that equal opportunities issues are at the heart of all of the Parliament's deliberations. However, with the greatest of respect, if there is a full-time unit that is staffed by professionals in the equal opportunities field, I would hope that the staff would have a more hands-on approach on the detail of legislation.

That is why I am worried that the unit is not yet up and running. The legislative process has begun and I hope that we can tweak our muscles—so to speak—and say to the Executive that we are concerned that the equality unit should get on track as quickly as possible. Malcolm made the point that, if the unit is not ready in time for scrutiny of the education bill, we will have to be involved in that. There should be people in post who are sufficiently professional and qualified to be able to see things that members of the committee may not be able to.

I will find out exactly what stage the unit is at. There are staff in post, and I imagine that they will be starting to do some work—it is only the head of the unit who is not yet in post. We will invite the unit to a meeting as soon as possible so that we can find out what it will be doing.

For some time, a consistent theme has been that we do not need to reinvent the wheel. Many people have done a huge amount of positive work and we hope to have very close liaison with the equality unit. The fact that the unit exists means that it will be consulted at the earliest stages of legislation; we are likely to be happy with that process.

This committee's role, as a non-Executive body that scrutinises the work of the Executive, is different from the role of the equality unit. We cannot deal with all the legislation, but it is important for equal opportunities organisations to know that they can lobby this committee and make representations to us. Organisations that have amendments or areas of concern should think of this committee as the first base. We do not want to write to those organisations later in the process to ask for their representations; we would prefer them automatically to give us their comments when legislation is coming on stream, so that we can be a filter or focus. That is why a procedure is important—yes, we want to see all legislation, but we will not necessarily want to scrutinise all of it. People beavering away in an organisation will know that they could access us in order to comment on a piece of legislation.

Jackie Baillie will be here next week and members may want to question her about role of the equality unit.

Johann hit the nail on the head. Perhaps when the unit is up and running, legislation will already have been equality proofed by the time we get it. The issues that we will take up will be those that other outside organisations have identified as gaps and that are likely to be more contentious. That is where the distinction between the committee and the Scottish Executive may lie, as the committee will listen to a wide range of views. We might have to suck it and see, as the committee is in its early days. As Malcolm pointed out, the education bill is our first major piece of legislation and we might have to test how our process works. Once we are advised of the equality unit's distinctive role, our process should be fine.

We need to have templates and checklists and so on. However, my anxiety is that we might end up with a mechanistic approach to legislation that would not deal with the underlying political debate. Organisations can make representations, however, and we need to access the issues and the political debate that Tommy referred to. Mechanisms will allow us to put aside the non-contentious issues and to focus on the political issues that organisations want to pursue with the committee.

We will write to the organisations in the database to ask for their comments. When we feel ready, we will also make arrangements to invite the Minister for Children and Education and the deputy ministers to a future committee meeting.

We were also considering the establishment of some procedure for scrutinising legislation. I take on board Johann's comments—she is dead right. It is important that any procedure that we implement takes account of the matters that she mentioned, such as the underlying political issues and representations made by organisations. However, I am concerned that, if we do not establish a procedure at an early stage, another piece of legislation will be presented to us and we will again find ourselves having to write to other organisations. To some extent, the committee will not have had a chance to scrutinise legislation to establish whether we are satisfied with it. We need to use the consultation on the education bill as an exercise for establishing a procedure.

When we see how the current exercise works—and how effective it is—we will have a basis for the future. We are feeling in the dark at the moment, but once we have been through the process with the education bill we will know what has been effective and what has not.