Select committee: Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 60
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 ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Given some of the Minister for Women and Equalities’ comments in her “new fight for fairness” speech about not focusing on groups, we are concerned about a risk of going backwards on important, long-established equality issues for groups of people protected by the Equality Act. The Equality Data Programme should be seized as an opportunity for the Government to set out, together with its proposed Levelling Up policies, a cross-departmental pan-equalities strategy based on data on the full range of factors that drive disadvantage, including protected characteristics under the Equality Act and the intersections between them and other factors. We recommend the Equality Hub publish a cross-departmental pan-equalities strategy by the end of the first quarter of 2022, covering the period to at least the end of this Parliament. To raise its profile and inform the longer-term development of its strategy, we recommend the Equality Hub publish a schedule of public and stakeholder events covering a range of equalities issues. We further recommend it publish annual Action Plans, setting out specific and measurable steps it will take in each financial year to meet its strategic equality objectives. Ministerial roles and equalities machinery in government
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.