Select committee: Women and Equalities Committee
Conclusion 58
First Report - Levelling Up and equality: a new framework for change
Published 24 Sep 2021
Addressed to Government Equalities Office
Women and Equalities Committee The role of the GEO: embedding equalities across Government All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The Government Equalities Office’s move into the coordinating centre of government, in the Cabinet Office, and the potential expansion of its coordinating role with the inception of the Equality Hub, is positive but the benefits are yet to be fully realised. We strongly welcome the intended permanence of the move, which will avoid much of the unnecessary and costly disruption of departmental and ministerial churn experienced during its history as an itinerant unit within government. However, elements of the Government’s equalities machinery remain too fragmented and lack Levelling Up and equality: a new framework for change 23 coherence. The Government is pursuing elements of the previous administration’s plans on equalities while dropping others, with no coherent rationale. Above all, the lack of a published cross-departmental pan-equalities strategy and Action Plan is a key weakness.
From: Women and Equalities Committee, First Report - Levelling Up and equality: a new framework for change (HC 702), 24 September 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 2 December 2021 (deadline 24 November 2021).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government welcomes the report and commits to engaging fully with the Committee, but does not take forward several of its main structural recommendations, including a pan-equalities strategy, a Cabinet-level role and a Cabinet Committee.
- On the Committee's scrutiny role, the Government "wholly commits to engaging fully with the Committee" but "does not agree that changes to the standing orders are required", saying Standing Order 152 "already allows the Committee significant flexibility".
- On a cross-departmental pan-equalities strategy, the Government's response is that the Equality Hub's aims and objectives form part of the Cabinet Office's Outcome Delivery Plan, published on 15 July 2021. It will publish its response to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities "in due course".
- The Government does not take forward a new Cabinet-level Secretary of State or a dedicated Cabinet Committee, saying the portfolios of Ministers and "remits of Cabinet Committees are the prerogative of the Prime Minister".
- On the socio-economic duty pilot, the Government does not believe a pilot "is necessary or appropriate at this time" and would first look at evaluation of how the duty is already working in devolved bodies and some English local authorities.