Select committee: Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 64
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)
International conventions, including the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) impose long-established legal obligations on achieving equality domestically. The new equalities strategy and annual Action Plans should set out actions to be taken to meet the UK’s international equality commitments. Further, the Government should, as recommended by the UN and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, establish a National Mechanism for Implementation, Reporting and Follow-up, to ensure the most effective possible engagement with international equality and human rights conventions and treaties. Consideration should also be given Levelling Up and equality: a new framework for change 25 to restructuring current processes, which are fragmented across several departments, and bringing oversight into a single international compliance team in the Equality Hub. A refreshed approach to stakeholder engagement and communications on sensitive issues
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.