Select committee: Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 65
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)
Equality for different groups can raise difficult, balanced rights issues, for example race or religion and belief can sometimes conflict with equal rights on the grounds of sex or sexual orientation. There are lessons to be learned from recent delicately balanced rights questions, perhaps most notably Gender Recognition Act (GRA) reform, the public debate around which has become protracted and acrimonious. The equalities machinery must adapt to better engage with civil society organisations and experts from all perspectives and seek common ground on the most difficult balanced rights questions. We recommend the Government invite the Equality and Human Rights Commission to engage with a range of stakeholders to seek common ground on the most difficult balanced rights issues. The new equalities strategy should set out a programme of such stakeholder engagement on the most pressing issues, for example the interplay between options for GRA reform and women’s rights to single-sex spaces, services and sports. It should also set out clear principles to underpin the choice of ministerial advisory panels and on which issues they should be appointed to advise.
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.