Equality Monitoring Report 2013/14

CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND KEY HIGHLIGHTS

The main highlights in 2013/14 include:

INTRODUCTION

The General Duty

Specific Duties

The Structure of the Report

ORGANISATIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR EQUALITY

Equality Impact Assessments (EQIA)

IT and Software Development

SUPPORTING PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS

Engaging the Public with Parliamentary Business

Communities and Participation

Witnesses and Inclusive Practice

Accessible Information and Access to Proceedings

Time for Reflection (TFR)

Members’ Bills

SUPPORTING MEMBERS

Happy to Translate Membership and Enquiries from Members

Providing Support and Adjustments

Scottish Parliament Internship Scheme for Disabled Graduates

Members Expenses Scheme

SERVICES TO THE PUBLIC

Languages in the Parliament

Accessibility Provision for Visitors

Accessibility of the Building

THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENTARY SERVICE

Engaging Staff in Equality

Diversity in the SPS workforce

Age

Apprenticeship Scheme

Disability

Gender

Gender and Type of Contract

Gender and Grade

Gender and Recruitment

Starting salaries

Gender and Pay

Race

Race and Recruitment

Religion and Belief

Sexual Orientation

IMPROVEMENT PLAN

Improvement Plan – 2012/13 Actions Update

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND KEY HIGHLIGHTS

This is the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body’s (SPCB)fourthEquality Monitoring report which covers the period April 2013– March 2014. The purpose of this report is to demonstrate the SPCB’s achievements on promoting equality andhow it has implemented its policies on equality and diversity. It is aligned to the SPCB Strategic Plan and covers four main areas:

• Parliamentary business;
• Members;
• Public; and
• The Scottish Parliamentary Service.

The report demonstrates compliance with the Equality Act (2010) publishing information on how the SPCB is meeting the General Duty and its equality objectives set out within the SPCB Equality Framework.

The SPCB provides a strong commitment to equality and can present this fully in the evidence gathered in this report.

The main highlights in 2013/14 include:

/ The Happy to Translate Scheme was launched in September 2013 to make sure that everyone in Scotland can engage with the Parliament and its Members, whichever language they use.
/ Closed captionswere piloted and tested for improving deaf and hard of hearing people’s access to the Parliament’s video content. This has successfully led to the creation of a new captioning service to cover First Minister’s Questions and other debates in the Chamber.
/ A new Changing Places Facility was created in the Main Hall to provide greater access to people with profound and multiple learning disabilities.
/ The new External Security facility to the Parliament building was designed to enhance accessibility for all users and supported by a disabled people’s consultative group.
/ Parliament Days were held in Stirling, Arbroath and Dumbarton taking the Parliament out to local communities, with careful planning to ensure the involvement of and engagement with equality groups/communities.
/ The SPCB took an active interest in the equality arrangements in place with its main on-site contractors. Encouraging best practice has led to more effective contract management arrangements in promoting equality.
/ An International Women Parliamentarian’s Conference was held in March 2013 and attended by 50 women from commonwealth countries. The Conference explored experiences of female parliamentarians and the representation of women in politics.
/ The Apprenticeship pilot programme was successful in 2013 appointing two young apprentices to the Scottish Parliamentary Service. Overall, the scheme had a positive impact on the organisation and the intention is to expand the scheme further.
/ The SPCB signed up to the National Autistic Society’s Access Autism Award to ensure that its services meet the needs of people with autism. The aim is to achieve the award by March 2015.

INTRODUCTION

This report is the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body’s (SPCB) fourth equality monitoring report which complies with the General Duty imposed by section 149 of the Equality Act (2010). It provides a comprehensive report on the SPCB’s progress on equality and the steps taken to mainstream equality.

In complying with the Act, the information presented in this report relates to persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and who are members of the Scottish Parliament (Members); Members’ staff; Scottish Parliamentary Service (SPS) staff; contractors;visitors; and members of the public. The Act covers nine protected characteristics – the grounds on which discrimination is unlawful, namely: age; disability; gender; gender reassignment; pregnancy and maternity; marriage and civil partnership; race; religion and belief; and sexual orientation.

The General Duty

The SPCB is legally required to meet the General Duty of the Equality Act (2010). There are three parts to this Duty to which the SPCB must give due regard:

• Elimination of unlawful discrimination;
• Advancement of equality of opportunity; and
• Fostering of good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

In order to demonstrate due regard, it is the responsibility of the SPCB to ensure that these three parts of the Duty are reflected in its core business;

• That its policies and practices follow the key principles of the Act: prevention, promotion and advancement;
• The business of the Parliament is made accessible to everyone, and
• In fostering good relations, the SPCB promotes awareness and encourages people with protected characteristics to engage and participate in the activities of the Parliament where their participation is disproportionately low.

Specific Duties

In October 2011, the UK government introduced Specific Duties to help public bodies meet the General Duty. This requires the SPCB as a public body to:

• Publish information to demonstrate compliance with the General Duty at least once a year;
• Develop equality objectives which are specific and measurable, in pursuance of the three aims of the General Duty; and
• Publish information and equality objectives in a manner that is accessible to the public.

This report essentially meets the Specific Duties requirement to publish information on the General Duty and is published on the Scottish Parliament website with different formats available. The equality objectives are also available on the Parliament website. These objectives are included in the SPCB Equality Action Plan 2011-2016 which will next be reviewed in 2015.

The Structure of the Report

The remainder of the report is set out as follows:

Section 1: Organisational Framework for Equality

Section 2: Parliamentary Business

Section 3:Supporting Members

Section 4: Service to the Public

Section5:The Scottish Parliamentary Service

In addition, an Improvement Plan is attached to this report which highlights any new actions derived from this year’s progress. These actions are incorporated into the SPCB’s Equality Action Plan 2011-16 which is available on the Scottish Parliament website.

ORGANISATIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR EQUALITY

The SPCB has put equality at the heart of all of its activities to reflect the needs of all the communities it serves in Scotland. At the Parliament, there is a consistent drive to mainstream equality and to see it develop as an integral part of policy and decision making. This mainstreaming is supported by arobust frameworkin place which allows the SPCB to deliver best practice and engage effectively with different groups and communities. This section of the report sets out the arrangements put in place to deliver its framework.

Achieving Equality through Leadership

Leadership is imperative to the success of the Equality Framework and depends on building an organisation where barriers to opportunities are removed. This takes account of Members, their staff, Scottish Parliamentary service staff and members of the public.

The Presiding Officer

The Presiding Officer remains committed to the promotion of inclusion and access to the Parliament across all of Scotland’s communities. This year the Presiding Officer introduced 3 Parliament days which were set up to take the Parliament out of Edinburgh and into local communities. Being part of the Parliament’s engagement strategy provides an opportunity for the Presiding Officer and Deputy Presiding Officers to meet with groups currently underrepresented including disabled people, young people and people from black and minority ethnic communities. This year the Parliament went to Stirling, Arbroath and Dumbartonwith careful planning undertaken on ensure that underrepresented groups were involved in this initiative.

This has been a great success and has opened up the Parliament to a more diverse audience than it has ever done so before.

The Presiding Officer is also committed to doing more to engage the people in Parliament’s business, particularly young women and people from deprived areas and has asked for this to be considered further in 2014/15.

Clerk/Chief Executive

The Clerk/Chief Executive (C/CE) and Assistant Chief Executives (ACE’s) continue to provide a strong leadership role in promoting equality through policy and decision making.The Chief Executive is ultimately accountable for the implementation of the SPCB Equality Framework which incorporates the Equality StrategyandAction Plan. Heads of Group at an operational level are responsible for allocating resources for equality and making sure that equality objectives are being met within their operational areas. During this year, theC/CE and ACEs championed a wide range of equality issues and mainstreamed equality into high level corporate projects. These have included:

• The Review of the Change Management Programme, for which an EQIA was completed to ensure that no adverse impacts were brought about by the programme;
• An EQIA was also completed and consultation included in the building of the External Security Facility Project. This has provided a new fully enhanced accessible entrance to the Parliament;
• In planning for the Independence Referendum 2014, accessibility arrangements to the building and for non-permanent structures were reflected in the design plans; and

• With the launch of the Digital Parliament programme, it was essential that as the Parliament moves towards providing more information online, this is accessibleto all and workable with users of assistive technologies. Accessibility has been championed at a senior level throughout this programme with RNIBproviding guidance around technologies used by blind and visually impaired people andCALL Scotland (Communication, Access, Literacy and Learning), University of Edinburgh who are advising on accessibility guidelines for new software development and projects focused on producing digital information.This piece of work will take place in late 2014 to ensure that project managers are including accessibility at an early stage of planning.

Equality Impact Assessments (EQIA)

Equality Impact Assessments helps the SPCB to deliver better policy and better outcomes for the people who engage with the Parliament. The main EQIAs completed in the reporting period have included:

Closed Captions ‘subtitling’ / Change Management programme - final review / Paper Smart project
Professional Property Services Contract re-let / Document and Records Management / Open Data project
Procurement of catering equipment / Parliament’s mobile device utilisation / Procurement of Crèche Services contract
Digital Documents Project / Ryder Cup public exhibition / Procurement of marketing services
Equality Annual Report / Agility Framework / Proposed addition of Events to the Major Events and Exhibitions Programme 2013-14
Digital Radio Communication System and Associated Services / Translation, interpreting and transcription contract re-let / Replacement Chamber cameras, routing matrix and edit suite

The number of completed EQIAs in 2014 was 22, compared to 24 in the previous year. Staff should always be encouraged to refresh their existing EQIAs (for example if a contract re-let) or submit EQIAs when making new policy decisions or working on projects to demonstrate the potential impact on all groups/ individuals. This will require input from Leadership Group and Senior Responsible officers (SRO’s) to make sure equality impacts have been considered.

YEAR / Number Of Completed EQIA
2014 / 22
2013 / 24
2012 / 35
2011 / 53

Procurement Contracts

For all procurement contracts a clause within the SPCB Standard Conditions of Contract makes it a contractual requirement for contractors to fully comply with equality statutory requirements. The table below contains specific equality considerations from procurement exercises conducted within the reporting year and weightings allocated to equality related questions within the tendering exercise.

Name of Contract / Equality requirements / Weighting
Corporate Clothing / All clothing must be inclusive and take into consideration the needs of all groups. The Contractor must take all reasonable steps to ensure that all goods supplied under the contract are produced in accordance with all International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions that have been ratified by the country of their origin / 10%
Fully Managed Learning and Development Service / Equality was considered for the provision of booking training facilities for staff members. Consideration was given to accessibility and diverse needs of all staff. / 4%
Vinyl Lettering, Opaque Film & Signage 2013 / Signage must maximise visibility in line with the Scottish Parliament’s signage design guidelines. / Equality considerations captured within specification.
Childcare Voucher scheme / Contractor is expected to reflect the same equality principles as the SPCB within their own working practices and ensure that they fully comply with the requirements of the Equality Act 2010 / Equality considerations captured within specification

In October 2013, an equality questionnaire was issued to SPCB on-site contractors to encourage best practice in the delivery of their equality policies. As part of this initiative contractors attended SPCB equality and diversity training and were advised on how best to conduct equality monitoring and equal pay audits. This has led to standard practice being the inclusion of a formal equality questionnaire for all on-site contracts at the end of the first year of the contract and regularly thereafter.

IT and Software Development

The SPCB adhere to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) accessibility standards when developing for the web. Additionally, Microsoft’s accessibility guidelines are used when developing for desktop-based applications. Examples of this are designing User Interfaces to accept keyboard instructions and to allow navigation around the screen using the keyboard. Another example of development taking cognisance of accessibility needs is the design of the MAQA self-service landing page which successfully operates with a screen-reader in order to meet the needs of visually impaired users.

Looking forward, there is consideration to develop Parliamentary Accessibility Standards for software products to ensure that all future User Interface design phases actively consider accessibility requirements. In addition, a general shift towards browser delivered applications could help improve accessibility as the majority of commercial screen reader software is optimised for browser use.

SUPPORTING PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS

Engaging the Public with Parliamentary Business

The founding principles of the Scottish Parliament make clear that it should ‘include all the people of Scotland in the decisions that are made’. The Scottish Parliament conducts business with this in mind, challenging activities on their inclusiveness and representation of all Scottish society. Where it is recognised that groups are not as engaged, the SPCB will implement changes that will seek to engage more effectively with diverse communities. This is why monitoring is essential to understanding the level of engagement that exists to inform any future planning of activities.

This is the first year that a full set of data has been available following monitoring arrangements that were implemented in mid-2013. The new monitoring tools set up for Committees, Outreach and Events now provide a more accurate reflection of the Parliament’s engagement with equality groups and communities.

Events Engagement

In this reporting year there were 446events in total, 27%(123 in total) of these represented protected groups.These events are mainly MSP sponsored events in the Parliament.

Organisations/ groups representing a protected characteristic at events / 2014
(Number)
Age / 9.4%(42)
Disability / 9.6% (43)
Gender / 3.3% (15)
LGBT / 0.4% (2)
Race / 3.1% (14)
Religion and belief / 1.5% (7)
Total / 27.3% (123)

SPCB events

This year the SPCB supported a number of events targeting underrepresented groups, for example the Euroquiz which involves young people in P6 education and Parliament days.

The Festival of Politics actively encourages young people to engage with the events in the Festival. As well as a specific event for young people with the BBC, the marketing of the Festival was conducted through Young Scot and the Scottish Youth Parliament.

As part of the Andy Warhol: Pop, Power and Politics exhibition, free printmaking workshops aimed at young people and families were taken up by 500 participants.

Within the Andrew Carnegie: The legacy that changed the world exhibition, a workshop was held with two Dunfermline secondary schools, which involved carrying out video interviews with S5 and 6 pupils about the legacy and impact of Carnegie’s philanthropy.

The International Women Parliamentarian’s Conference in March was held at the Parliament and attended by around 50 women from different commonwealth countries. The Conference explored experiences of female parliamentarians and the representation of women in politics.International Women’s Day which targets women from a diverse cultural and ethnic background from across Scotland was again supported by the Scottish Parliament.

Each Parliament Day throughout the reporting period has included people representing protected groups within the areas:

In Stirling in June 2013 a civic reception brought together local people from a variety of organisations and community groups, including a presentation by two young carers from Stirling Carer’s Centre. This was followed by a visit to a local social enterprise working to improve residents’ self-esteem and confidence and a visit to Stirling Community Hospital to hear about a project supporting people with dementia.
When the Day was held in Arbroath in November 2013there was a visit to Darling’s Coffee Shop, set up by Enable Scotland as a social enterprise business for the training opportunities of young people with learning disabilities.
In Dumbarton in February 2014 local schools were visited to find out what matters to young people and to Café Connect, a not-for-profit social enterprise for adults with learning disabilities, run by Dumbarton Council to meet with some of staff working there.

In addition, information was gathered on those attending Parliament Days to help identify the community groupsrepresented at the events and to inform any future planning of events.