Corporate equalities policies and Race Equality Impact Assessment

Report: 09
Date: 20 May 2004
By: Clerk

Summary

One of the core requirements of the Equality Standard for Local Government is the need for the development of equalities policies for each of the equality groups. Although the MPA has had an equal opportunities in place for some time, it has not, until recently developed a full suite of equalities policies. This report discusses the work that has been done in presenting these to the Board for its approval. It also updates members of the progress with the development of Race Equality Impact Assessments, highlights some of the key issues that have emerged and outlines the progress that has been made in the work with the MPS Policy Clearing House in agreeing the MPS policies that will be quality assured by the MPA.

A. Recommendations

Members are asked to:

1. Note the draft policies and agree the process outlined for approving these.
2. Note the issues arising from the Racial Equality Impact Assessment process.
3. Note the progress made in quality assuring key MPS policies.

B. Supporting information

Draft Equalities Policies

1. Earlier in the year, the Race and Diversity Unit developed a draft set of the Equality policies to inform the requirements of the Equalities Standard for Local Government. The development of these policies also represents significant progress towards meeting its ‘Exemplary Employer’ status, which it signed up to in the Best Value Review of the Equalities in 2001 and one of the key risk recommendations arising from the Internal Audit report in to the MPA and MPS Diversity Monitoring published in summer 2003.

Consultation on the Policies

2. MPA staffs were consulted on the early policies and made a range of extremely helpful comments, which have informed the revision of he policies.

3. On 23 March 04, the Race and Diversity Unit organised a consultation event and invited a range of external statutory, voluntary and community organisations to give comments on the early draft policies as well as on the draft Equality Impact Assessments that were completed by MPA colleagues.

4. The event was facilitated by Ionann Consultancy and was extremely useful. The comments and the observations were significant in informing both the redraft of the policies as well as the revisions to the Equality Impact process which will be discussed in detail later in this report.

5. The report of the event is attached at Appendix 1 for members’ information. Members will note that one of the suggestions arising from the consultation was that the MPA should have an overarching Race and Diversity policy, with accompanying policies specific for each of the Equalities groups. This, they felt was important to ensure that fair and equitable emphasis is given to each Equality area, which may not be realised in the generic policy. Ionann assisted in redrafting and producing policies for those areas, which were omitted by the MPA Revised Equalities Policies.

1. 6. Eight separate policies have been developed. These are enclosed at Appendix 2 for members only. They are
2. An Overarching Corporate Equality policy
3. Age Equality policy
4. Disability Equality policy
5. Faith and Religion Equality policy
6. Gender Equality policy
7. Religion and Belief Equality policy
8. Race Equality policy
9. Sexual Orientation Equality policy; and
10. Work and Parents policy

7. Although there is no current legislation on age and age discrimination the MPA felt it was in line with its Exemplar Employer role to include this in the suite of draft policies, at this stage. This like all the other policies will be revised in time.

8. Further consultation will be taking place internally with staff, and externally with key stakeholders and partners on these drafts.

9. A copy of the draft policies have also been placed in the Members lounge and all have been asked to provide their views and comments, should they have any.

Development of the Corporate Equality Plan (CEP)

10. The overarching Equality and Diversity policy will form the basis for the MPA Corporate Equality Plan. The consultants contracted to assist with this exercise will be translating much of the statements into targets, with measurable outcomes and actions. There are a few omissions to the current policy and a further version will be available to members once that work has been completed and the CEP finalised.

11. The draft policies will be impact assessed and the outcomes of this will be made available to all members to all members prior to the publication of the information on the MPA Website, to meet the Publication Duty of the Act.

Race and Equality Impact Assessment

12. The MPA has made some encouraging progress towards meeting the Specific Duty of the Race Relations (Amendment) act 2000, to impact access its policies for adverse impact. However this progress has highlighted a number challenges, learning opportunities, which are being used to inform the review and revision of the process.

13. Recommendation Eleven of the Stephen Lawrence report stated that the full force of the Race Relations Legislation should apply to all police officers and that the Chief Officers of the police should be made vicariously liable for the Acts and omissions of their relevant officers to the legislation. The report also identified the concept of the institutional racism and recommends that all institutions should ‘examine their policies and the outcomes of their policies to guard against disadvantaging any section of the community’. The amendments of the 1976 Act strengthen and extend the legislation to cover the policies and functions of the public authorities including the police, and placed a duty to ‘impact assess’ all policies and functions.

14. The CRE Statutory Code of Practice on the Duty to Promote Race Equality states that ‘public authorities should consider the following steps to meet the General Duty:

1. Identify which of their functions and policies are relevant to the duty, or in their words, affect most people.
2. Put the functions and policies in order of priority based on how relevant they are to race equality.
3. Assess whether the way these relevant functions and policies are being carried out to meet the three parts of the Duty (eliminate unlawful discrimination, promoting equality of opportunity, and promoting good relations between people of different racial groups).
4. Consider whether any changes need to be made to meet the General Duty and make the changes required.

15. The published MPA Scheme is explicit in listing the range of areas in which policy is likely to be made. These are:

1. Internal MPA Management/organisational policy decision
2. Authority/Committee decision
3. MPS Recommendation
4. MPS Policy
5. Best Value Review
6. Evidential Scrutinies
7. Home Office/Regulatory Report
8. New Regulation/legislation

16. The Act defines policy far broader than the traditionally limited definition of policy to include written policies, practices and decisions on the basis that these are the processes by which institutionally discriminatory practices and processes become embedded.

17. The Act requires that all policies should be assessed for potential for ‘adverse’ impact prior to being implemented and steps be taken to amend the policy.

18. The Act recognises that some policies may be indirectly discriminatory (for example, the MPS Stop and Search policy). However in such cases, it requires the public authority to justify the adverse impact and take steps to address this, with appropriate monitoring and review arrangements.

MPA Race Equality Scheme

19. The MPA race equality scheme submitted to the CRE in 2002 outlines a schedule for carrying out impact assessments on the MPA functions and policies. There have been delays in achieving this largely due to a lack of understanding about the requirements of the Act and the need for more training for all staff.

20. The Race and Diversity Unit have developed a proforma and guidance to assist policy leads carrying out the impact assessments. This has proved challenging primarily due to the lack of understanding about the requirements of the legislation. This is further compounded by the fact that the process can be extremely time consuming. Although initial training was conducted by the CRE for all MPA staff, it has become increasingly evident from the REIA’s completed to date that the need for ongoing training remains.

21. A copy of the current draft of the proforma, which has been updated, is attached at Appendix 3.

Equality Impact Assessment requirement under the Equality Standard for Local Government

22. The Equality Standard for Local Government provides a systematic framework for mainstreaming good equality practices and meeting the range of equality legislation and European Directives similar to the RRA.

23. The ESLG also has a requirement to impact assess policies for potential adverse impact. In view of this requirement, the MPA proforma has been amended so that assessments are made at the same time to all equality groups.

24. This new revised R/EIA proforma will be used from May 2004. It is proposed that this be reviewed after a trial period of 6 months before any further amendments are made so that policy officers can have some permanence in the process.

MPA R/EIA Quality Assurance Process

25. The Race and Diversity Unit have established a quality assurance process whereby individuals external to the MPA, but experienced in their field, contribute to quality assuring the completed EIA’s. This is best practice, which is promoted by both the CRE and the Equality Standard process.

26. This process has been extremely helpful but it has identified a range of inefficiencies in the process and the work completed by colleagues to date. This has been brought to the attention of the Chair of the EODB and the MPA Senior Management Team. The process is being reviewed whilst work is being done internally by colleagues. A further phase of the quality assurance process will begin towards the end of May 2004.

MPS Equality Impact Assessments

27. MPA and MPS officers from the Policy Clearing House have made significant progress in agreeing a schedule for quality assuring those MPS policies that have been identified in the MPA and MPS schemes as likely to have most significant impact on the public.

28. This is a significant step and goes some way to enabling the MPA to execute its governance role for influencing and informing those policies that have been experienced negatively by sections of London’s diverse community for many years.

C. Race and equality impact

The General Duty of the RRA is a central component of the Act. The steps outlined in this report outlines the progress and challenges which have emerged as the Authority has taken the necessary steps to meet the requirement. The Race Equality Impact Assessment has enabled the Authority to make improvements in other organisational areas and is therefore achieving one of its key aims of enabling the Authority to improve its decision making ability across all equalities areas.

D. Financial implications

There are no direct financial implications associated with this report. However, it is worthwhile highlighting that the process is extremely resource intensive and is likely to remain so until the process becomes embedded within the MPA.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: Julia Smith, MPA.

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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