Equal Opportunities Committee, 26 Sep 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 26, 2000

Official Report 112KB pdf

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Housing Bill

The next item relates to the housing bill. Although we indicated that members could e-mail the clerks with any comments, nobody did. The report, therefore, has been put together without any comments from the committee.

Are there any questions? I look hopefully around the room to see whether anybody wishes to speak.

The race group will meet next Wednesday and I propose to examine the legislative programme at that point. After discussing the issues with other members, I will know what input we will be able to make. I do not yet have a position on the housing bill.

The committee could agree that I speak to the convener of the Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee to agree that our two committees will jointly take evidence at stage 1. I could also write to the Minister for Communities with some of the concerns that are raised in the report and indicate to her that the committee will take an interest at stage 1.

At the risk of repeating what we said about the checklist, I have to say that, at the moment, we can produce nothing better than what the Equal Opportunities Commission has. On each key question, it says that the impact on all equality groups must be taken into account. The housing bill illustrates that approach. We have done a lot of work on the race side and, on the basis of the evidence that we have taken and the report that we gave to Scottish Homes, we could make points in that regard. We have to go through all the issues, such as the disability issue that Irene McGugan raised—a lot of work needs done on that. We have not done much work on gender as relates to housing, although Johann Lamont referred to it in her report. There are obvious issues arising from gender, such as the fact that the amount of social rented housing will be of particular importance to women, who are, statistically, more dependent on it than men are. Lee Bridges, the clerk, has picked up a sexual orientation issue that we should deal with as well. We have to go through the bill in relation to each of the equality groups. The report has to be amplified to take account of all of those groups.

Is it agreed that the committee will deal with that at stage 1 and that we will either produce a stage 1 report or feed our work into the Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee's report?

Members indicated agreement.

Obviously, members of the committee can still make comments as part of the consultation.