Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

Committee for The Executive Office, meeting on Wednesday, 11 September 2024


Members present for all or part of the proceedings:

Ms Paula Bradshaw (Chairperson)
Mr Timothy Gaston
Mr Harry Harvey
Mr Brian Kingston
Ms Sinéad McLaughlin
Ms Carál Ní Chuilín
Ms Emma Sheerin


Witnesses:

Ms Eliza Browning, Equality Coalition
Mr Daniel Holder, Equality Coalition
Mrs Patricia McKeown, Equality Coalition



Inquiry into Gaps in Equality Legislation: Equality Coalition

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I welcome to the meeting Daniel Holder, director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) and co-convener of the Equality Coalition, Patricia McKeown, who is the regional secretary of UNISON and co-convener of the Equality Coalition, and Eliza Browning, who is the senior policy officer at the Committee on the Administration of Justice.

Thank you all for attending today. You are very welcome to the Committee, and thank you also for your submission in advance, which was very comprehensive. We really appreciate that. OK. Patricia, are you leading?

Mrs Patricia McKeown (Equality Coalition): Thank you very much, Chair and Committee members. Thank you for the opportunity. We welcome this invitation. We have provided in advance our written evidence, and we have the opportunity to provide oral evidence today. I should say that, as the Equality Coalition, we are the eternal optimists. We have been presenting evidence, written, oral and in other forms, for more than a quarter of a century, and we hope that, at some point, what we say will end up with improved equality tools and legislation to advance the issue that is at the core of all our work, which is a better life for the people of Northern Ireland, with particular emphasis on the areas and groups of greatest need.

I will introduce the coalition itself. We have been in existence for more than a quarter of a century. We came together on the basis of what we hoped would eventually be the core of the section 75 groups in the Northern Ireland Act. We wanted to influence the equality and rights outcomes of the peace agreement and then, eventually, the Northern Ireland Act 1998 itself. We have stayed in existence and gone from strength to strength since then. Today, the coalition is made up of more than 100 civil society organisations across Northern Ireland, with the collective aim of creating that better society — the rights-based society that we are talking about — one that is based on real equality outcomes.

We are non-governmental organisations. We are trade unions. We work cumulatively across all the nine equality categories and beyond those section 75 categories into other protected equality grounds. We provide a forum for unity among multiple sectors when campaigning for equality, and we are the representative forum for the entire equality sector and, I think, are recognised as such. Our coalition has a long track record of campaigning for the full implementation of the rights-based commitments in the peace agreement and for compliance with international treaty-based obligations, including single equality legislation and the implementation of the section 75 statutory equality duty. It is in those two key areas that we centre this submission. However, when you look at our submission — I am sure that you already have — you will see reference to a body of more than a quarter of a century of detailed research, recommendations and proposals not only from us collectively as a coalition but from the organisations that form the membership of the coalition. That body of work is absolutely vital to the issues that you are addressing.

I will pass on to Daniel to take us through the core issues that we are addressing.

Mr Daniel Holder (Equality Coalition): There are three issues in our submission, one of which is single equality legislation. The second is enforcement of the equality duty, and the third is the good relations duty.

On the first one, as we know, Northern Ireland still has no single equality legislation, and there is, at present, no plan to take it forward in the Programme for Government. All the technical work has been done to set it up: the Equality Commission has done a good job of mapping the gaps in equality law, and, over the years, we have had numerous treaty body recommendations on how single equality legislation should be taken forward. It is needed to comply with international obligations as well as peace process commitments, but we have a frustrating political blockage over it, despite majority support. That is frustrating for rights holders and for our sector, given the gaps in protection that that leaves. It is also frustrating for employers and service providers, who have to deal with numerous statutes rather than one comprehensive, overarching Act.

If the political blockage remains, other options that the Committee could recommend are that the UK Government take forward the long-overdue bill of rights, which, as advised by the Human Rights Commission, would require provisions on new legislation to end unfair discrimination. An alternative option to recommend is to ratify protocol 12 of the ECHR, which also provides for a requirement for free-standing equality legislation and could compel legal requirements to introduce legislation in this jurisdiction.

The second issue is the section 75 equality duty. We very much question whether the legislative framework for and actions of enforcement of the duty by the Equality Commission are sufficient. We at this end have found them to be ineffective. Section 75, as Committee members know, was a core part of the Good Friday Agreement. It was meant to operate as an objective legal safeguard with an objective threshold. It was to allow public authorities and officials to impact assess whether a policy could promote equality or would, in essence, constitute a discriminatory detriment. "Adverse impact" is the term used in the legislation, but that is what it means: that a policy is, essentially, a discriminatory detriment on a section 75 ground. That assessment would then trigger duties to consider alternative policies or mitigating measures. That is how it is supposed to work, and there is a two-stage methodology of equality screening and, as necessary, full equality impact assessment (EQIA).

We have done a fair bit of research into that. We have two reports in particular: 'Equal to the Task?' and the equality duty enforcement project report. We found that, notwithstanding pockets of good practice, there is regular flouting of the duty by public authorities in many ways, including just not doing equality screening or doing it rarely, rarely doing EQIAs, or just doing equality screening in a box-ticking, tokenistic manner by saying, without doing a proper analysis of the policy, that the impact is great and the same for everyone. The point is that the duty is supposed to have teeth. There is supposed to be enforcement. In some circumstances, it has been amenable to judicial review, which has been successful.

There is also meant to be a statutory remedy through the Equality Commission, however, and we have significant concerns about deficiencies in how the commission has exercised those powers. Our concerns centre on long and, at times, inexplicable delays in dealing with and taking forward complaints and on the commission declining to use its powers of enforcement or investigation in relation to most of the valid complaints that it receives. We agree that there should be a review, and the commission has the power, under the Northern Ireland Act, to trigger an independent review of the effectiveness of the section 75 duties, but that must encompass how the commission itself has exercised its enforcement powers and if and how the legislative framework or policy framework could be strengthened.

The third and final area is the good relations duty. It is the second limb of the section 75 duties. It was not in the Good Friday Agreement, but a good relations duty was added to it. There are two primary issues of concern about how it is operating. First, there is a significant legislative gap, in that good relations is not defined in the Northern Ireland legislation, despite repeated recommendations that it should be. They have come from international treaty bodies in terms of international obligations and from other places, including the Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition (FICT). The Equality Act 2010 in Great Britain defines good relations — clearly, it is not intended to be a completely different concept — as tackling prejudice and promoting understanding across protected equality grounds.

International standards have defined good relations in a similar way, also referencing duties around integration and combating discrimination. The Equality Commission has also recommended good definitions along those lines, yet no definition in the legislation means that what quite often happens is that a lay definition of good relations is just invented. Essentially, that lay definition is about whether the policy is politically contested, whether it is contended or whether some parties are angry about the policy proposal. That is not what good relations is supposed to mean in the legislation. It is certainly not what the section 75 equality duties were supposed to be about.

That is compounded by a second problem. The legislation on the section 75 duties is very expressly clear that the duties around impact assessment, the duties to assess adverse impacts — discriminatory detriments in particular — and the duties to consider alternative policies and mitigating measures relate only to the equality limb of the duty. They are not tied to the good relations limb of the duty, and most of the Equality Commission guidance says the same thing. However, in 2010, the commission, outside the framework of that legislation and in contradiction to its other guidance, recommended that public authorities within equality screening also conduct good relations impact assessments. There is a real question about what that actually means. What is a good relations impact if there is no definition? It ends up being the exact opposite of what the legislation was supposed to be, which was an objective measure of whether something is compliant with or in conflict with equality law. It becomes a subjective veto.

A combination of those two factors has frustrated the whole purpose of the equality duty, because the focus ends up being on a lay assessment of good relations impacts rather than on an objective assessment of whether there are discriminatory detriments. We have seen this in numerous policies. In fact, it is usually deployed against policies whose purpose is to enhance equality and human rights. Housing is one example. We have seen it deployed against same-sex marriage, which clearly promotes equality, with pushback that it was damaging, somehow, to good relations. We have also seen it in Irish-language policies and other socio-economic rights policies up to and including policies on free school meals. We have seen situations in which the purpose of the duty can be flipped on its head by those lay good relations impact assessments, and our recommendation is that we consolidate a definition. There is one there. Secondly, as some public authorities have already done, we recommend removing the good relations impact assessment questions from equality schemes. Also, we recommend that the commission rescind that recommendation, given the chaos that it has caused.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you so much. Again, there is a lot in that paper, and I could pick out some of it from what you were saying. My first question is probably subjective. It goes back to what you said in your opening remarks, Patricia, which was that you have been doing this for a quarter of a century. To what degree have societal changes moderated how we support those people or removed barriers to discrimination over the past 25 years? In other words, have we seen that society has moved way ahead of where legislation should be?

Mrs McKeown: It is fair to say that parts of society have, but the truth of the matter is that poverty and division have deepened in this society. Those are absolutely critical issues, and we had hoped that a quarter of a century of implementing genuine equality tools and rights tools would have brought about a different outcome from the one that we have today. The frustration that we have experienced at the blocking of progress has become worse rather than better. For the first 50% of our existence as the Equality Coalition, we did direct business and had direct engagement, first with direct rule Ministers, then with the Northern Ireland Assembly, particularly through its junior Ministers, and then with a succession of Secretaries of State and UK Government Ministers during the various periods of suspension. In recent years, however, we have kind of drawn away from the engagement with, for example, the junior Ministers, who are the obvious people with whom we want to sit down and do business, because we could not get any consensus. Einstein said that, if you keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome, therein lies madness. So, we stopped doing that. We have to have a different approach, or, ultimately, you have to have a different approach. You are the people whom we elect, and nobody — no political party or politician — has stood on a platform promoting the widening of inequality or the deepening of poverty.

Our frustration is that the tools are there. Back in 1998, when we had the first iteration of the peace agreement, those tools were hailed as some of the best. They were certainly way in advance of what was available across the rest of the UK or on these islands, or, indeed, in many instances, internationally. In 2024, we find ourselves more than a decade behind GB, for example, and well behind many other jurisdictions that drew from our experience in order to improve their own tools for better policymaking. Section 75, in particular, was designed to create better policymaking. That should not be a tool to fear for anyone; it should be what we all seek to achieve.

We are still committed to working in collaboration and partnership, wherever we can, with the decision makers, the policymakers and the legislators. Civil society has a great deal to offer. Our efforts to try to make life better should be matched by the efforts of our elected politicians to do the straightforward business of improving those equality tools and stop blocking.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): We have the single Equality Act 2010 in GB and what are known as the Equal Status Acts in Ireland. I am not across every section of those, but, if both of those jurisdictions — I know that GB is not just a composite jurisdiction — were able to move forward and bring different strands of society and stakeholder groups, including those regarding disability and age, together in those Acts, what has been the justification for why we have not kept pace in harmonising ours? I sat on the Health Committee for seven years, so I am genuinely not across the detail of why, when GB and the Republic of Ireland have been able to move forward, we have not been able to do so here.

Mr Holder: In part, it is down to the Good Friday Agreement structures for how the institutions were to operate that were not properly put in place. When you look back at the agreement and what was committed to, you will see that we were meant to have rights-based safeguards. We were not supposed to have subjective political vetoes. The petition of concern was not supposed to operate as the basis of a blocking mechanism. It was meant to be a tool: every time that a petition of concern was tabled, a Committee was to be established to measure the proposed legislation or policy against the standards in the ECHR, equality law and the bill of rights, and only when those standards were breached were things supposed to be stopped. We ended up with structures in which opponents of equality have disproportionate power. They have a veto and can therefore prevent progress when there is majority support, even in the Executive and the Assembly. The vetoes that were introduced in the context of St Andrews in particular have compounded that problem and, essentially, ground progress to a halt. If you look at the history of the single Equality Act — we have set out a bit of the narrative in our submission — you will see that we had an international agreement, which was one of the agreements of the peace process, as well as numerous treaty policy recommendations, that such legislation had to be taken forward. Work was done under direct rule until the institutions were established in 2007. You then had four of the five parties in favour of taking forward the single equality Act, but one clearly was not, and it did not happen. It was debated and debated in the Assembly, but it was not then put in the Programme for Government, and, therefore, it has not been taken forward. It has been done in other jurisdictions, but not here.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I have a quick question, after which I will open up the session to members. Your papers state that the Equality Commission provides the practical guidance for the equality screening duty to be delivered. Is there capacity in our Civil Service to deliver on those? It is one thing getting the guidance, but it is another thing being able to do the proper analysis. Is there an issue with how those are delivered by Departments?

Mr Holder: Yes, there is certainly an issue that is regularly highlighted, but it is not that complex. There are issues with training and around other things, but the real gap is enforcement. When things get enforced, they will have to be done properly.

Ms McLaughlin: Thank you very much. Honestly, it is so depressing to have this evidence and this presentation again. It is a circular failure, and we have to overcome it. Daniel, you said that it is about the structure of government and the veto. We need to reform these institutions, and this is not even about collapsing government; it is about being able to govern when we are in government. That is a political failure.

I want to ask about the definition of good relations, because the definition is fundamental. Daniel, we will look at what it means in relation to some of the work that the Committee is trying to do. For example, there is the FICT report and the fundamentals of flags, culture and emblems. When the Executive come to look at this big piece of work around equality issues and what we mean by "good relations", we get stuck. This year, in Derry, there are so many flags in our city. There are hate flags as well. They are everywhere. It is driving really poor relations, and we have no remit — you know, in the authorities — to tackle those areas of hate crime and sectarianism because we have not dealt with the equality issues. We would sort out so much and make so much progress in Northern Ireland if we get the structures right, the definitions right and the legislation right, and we would release the authorities to deal with some of the bigger issues and would drive a more cohesive and inclusive society and deal with our inequalities in a much better way.

That definition and closing the gaps is fundamental for us to drive our economy and to drive wealth and prosperity, and we are being held back. It might sound as if we are nearly being academic about some of the stuff because we are talking about it in that academic way about what we need in legislation, but it is holding our whole society back. It is holding our housing back, holding government back and holding everything back, and we get into the cycle of doing nothing because it is too difficult and because we have not dealt with it. How do we move the definition piece on, for example, without making any political party feel that it is under threat as a result?

Mr Holder: I will pick up on hate crime and the issue of racist expression in public space, which has been a live issue over the summer. We welcome bits of the hate crimes Bill being prioritised, and the aggravated sentences model is very important. We know that there is less time in this mandate. To us, it is very important that recommendation 15 of the hate crimes review, which is the statutory duty on relevant public authorities to take reasonable steps to remove racist, sectarian and other forms of hate expression from public spaces, is also taken forward as a matter of urgency as part of this package. We also need to make sure that the measures around misogyny that were in the hate crimes piece are urgently addressed. We think that a recommendation that really focuses on the most harmful forms of expression is the way to begin to move on this. Hopefully, there will be no one who is against the removal from public space of blatantly racist hate expression that constitutes intimidation etc.

On the definitional piece, there are international obligations. One way to move forward on the definitions is for public authorities, Departments and arm's-length bodies to amend the definition of "good relations" in their own equality schemes. That is not too difficult; they just have to resubmit them to the commission. Some public authorities have done that, and the commission has accepted it. I will outline a definition based on international standards. The definition that the Council of Europe has recommended, which is not too dissimilar to the definition under the Equality Act 2010, is:

"Promoting good relations between different groups in society entails fostering mutual respect, understanding and integration while continuing to combat discrimination and intolerance."

I do not think that anyone could have any legitimate concerns about any of those concepts.

The Council of Europe treaty bodies have already raised significant concerns that the good relations duty, and the way in which it is currently interpreted, has taken priority over equality and minority rights initiatives that were blocked on grounds that they could lead to community tensions. That is the key. It is removing the suggestion that it is a veto because someone is angry about a policy and replacing the definition with that which is grounded in international standards.

Ideally, the legislation would be amended. I know that that has to be done at Westminster. It could still be recommended by this Committee. It would only draw the legislation in line with the GB legislation. It is not intended to be a different concept. As an interim measure, however, public authorities, Departments and others — a number of councils have already done this — could simply amend the definition in their equality schemes. That would bind them to using that as a definition, as well as removing the good relations impact assessment's questions, which would then allow them to focus on those types of things — positive action on fostering mutual respect, understanding and integration — rather than using it as just a political veto.

Mr Gaston: Thank you very much for coming along and providing your evidence. This coalition is certainly new to me. To give me a bit of background, does it have any representatives from victims' organisations? If so, who are they?

Mr Holder: We have over 100 members. I am trying to think. We have loads. We have lots of ethnic minority groups, who are victims of racist violence. We have lots of LGBT groups; obviously, there are victims of discrimination in that area. We have the entire women's sector, which faces systemic discrimination. We have numerous victims — rights' holders — represented on the Equality Coalition.

Mrs McKeown: When we established the Equality Coalition, we also established another coalition that centres on securing an enforceable bill of rights. It has a number of victims' organisations. We are members of both. It has WAVE. When we lobbied in Washington to secure some US Government backing for a bill of rights in Northern Ireland, we were represented by the Disabled Police Officers Association, which argued very strongly for an enforceable bill of rights. I think that those victims' organisations have their own networks, but we do business with them as well. Some are in one coalition, and some are in more than one.

Mr Gaston: This is just to get a bit more background. You talk about an "irrelevant criminal record". Can you explain what that is in the coalition's dictionary?

Mr Holder: That is a reference to the bill of rights recommendations by the Human Rights Commission in 2008, which included that the Secretary of State should look at introducing the protected ground of irrelevant criminal convictions in anti-discrimination legislation. That was to deal with issues around the reintegration of prisoners with conflict-related convictions and others. The word "irrelevant" is important there. Quite clearly, if someone who applies for a job in a bank has a long string of convictions for fraud, it would be reasonable to think that they might not be the most appropriate candidate for that job. However, the barriers that ex-prisoners face in a conflict resolution process to reintegration and the much broader issues of former offenders and their reintegration could be dealt with by having that as an equality ground. It was part of the advice to the Secretary of Stage that the Human Rights Commission issued way back in 2008.

Mr Gaston: Based on your answer, do you think that people engaged in the terrorist campaign in Northern Ireland should then be classed —.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Timothy, just stop for a second. Can we come back to the subject matter today? We are looking for gaps in equality legislation between Northern Ireland and GB and the Republic of Ireland.

Mr Gaston: I think that it is important to get the context of where the group is coming from.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): No, I do not think that it is. I am going to rule that out of order. Move on to your next question, please, or I will move on to the next member. Thank you.

Mr Gaston: There is a statutory duty on the Executive Office to look after the interests of victims, and it seems to me from what we have in front of us —

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): We have had sessions, and we will have sessions again —.

Mr Gaston: — that that is not the case.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Excuse me; I am speaking. We have had sessions with victims' groups, and we will continue to have them. Today, we are taking evidence on the gaps in equality legislation. Next question, please. Thank you.

Mr Gaston: I move on to the next point that I want to raise. It talks about how:

"mutual political vetoes can prevent progress".

Would you like to see an end to minority rights and protections for minorities? Is that what your evidence is suggesting?

Mr Holder: No. We want to see a beginning to minority rights and the enforcement of the international treaty obligations that were signed up to as part of the Good Friday Agreement. By "mutual political vetoes" we are referring again — I went through some of this earlier: our position is pretty clear — to how we want to return to the framework that was committed to under the Good Friday Agreement, whereby there would be rights-based safeguards, not subjective political vetoes. When I say "subjective political vetoes" I refer to the way that the good relations duty has been misinterpreted. I also refer to the veto that was not in the Good Friday Agreement but was introduced as a result of the St Andrews Agreement, which prevents individual Ministers from taking decisions on very subjective grounds, ie, that they are "significant or controversial". That is not tied to rights-based standards.

The whole premise of the agreement was that you protect minority rights by having minority rights and human rights safeguards. That means that no minority's rights can be infringed, but that has to mean the real rights of minorities. It does not mean the ability to block rights and block legislation that promotes rather than infringes rights.

Mr Gaston: In your evidence, you brought up the topic of the Irish language. There is nothing in your evidence that talks about the freedom of assembly and the right to cultural expression. Is that reflective of your membership list in the network?

Mr Holder: This is a submission on gaps in equality law, and the section that you refer to is about additional protected characteristics in equality law. We are suggesting that language, which is only protected currently under the European Convention, has no real protection for Irish and Ulster Scots speakers against discrimination, and therefore that could be added as a ground. If you would like to visit our website, you will find huge amounts of reports and information that cover things like freedom of assembly, the right to protest and various other human rights issues, but, obviously, what is in a submission to your inquiry on gaps in equality law relates to gaps in equality law, rather than broader human rights issues.

Mr Gaston: I will certainly take you up on that offer. What has been submitted to the Committee today looks to me like a political submission and not an independent one. I will certainly do more research on the organisation for when you come back to the Committee in future. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Carál please? Sorry, Carál we cannot hear you. Your microphone is on. We will just check. Do you mind if we bring in Emma, and then we will come back to you, Carál? Is that OK? Go ahead, Emma.

Ms Sheerin: Thank you all for your presentation and the answers that you have given already. I share the frustrations of many on the Committee around the battle that has been going on for over 25 years that you referred to. I appreciate your submission. I know that I keep going on about it, but you referred to the need for a bill of rights and I know how much work you guys did and how much you helped us in that process.

What can we, as a Committee, do? Where can we make progress here?

Mrs McKeown: We would love it if you agreed everything we recommended. [Laughter.]

We would say that is real progress.

Mr Holder: We have some fairly concrete recommendations there. If the blockage remains over a single equality Act, the two options are there. At some stage, if the institutions continue to be blocked and dysfunctional, the two Governments may well reach the stage where they trigger the provisions that are already within the Good Friday Agreement — they are not outside the terms of it — to review how things operate. Obviously, part of that discussion has to be the long overdue bill of rights and its implementation. It was the core safeguard under the agreement, and things really are not working without it.

The other recommendation that we have is to look at protocol 12 of the ECHR. This is just one of the protocols that the UK has not signed up to. Certainly, when Labour was last in Government, it was looking at that. It may well have given strong commitment to the ECHR and may do so again. It would have to be the state party that signed up to that. It could not be the devolved institutions, but certainly this Committee could recommend that. What that would do is bring a free-standing right to non-discrimination across protected characteristics within law, which would make it much more difficult not to have domestic legislation that codified and implemented that. That would be a way of bringing on single equality legislation.

In terms of the equality duty, we would welcome looking at the effectiveness of enforcement powers. We have legislation in section 75 that is supposed to work, and if it is not working, recommendations about that would be helpful. They may be directed at the commission in terms of it making greater use of its enforcement powers. With regard to limiting delays, after we took a complaint to the Public Services Ombudsman, it had to revise its procedures and put in some timescales, but, again, all that could be tightened.

With regard to the good relations duty, we would welcome pushing forward on the issue of a definition, and that could be built into equality schemes, and also the recommendation to remove the good relations impact assessment question, which is not compatible with the legislation. It was not required by the legislation and has, essentially, frustrated the purpose of the equality duty. That does not require legislative change but would require a change in the commission's guidance, which would be easy to do.

Ms Sheerin: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Carál, we will try again. Go ahead, please. No, sorry.

Mrs McKeown: It is not happening.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Can you exit and rejoin, Carál, please? Thank you.

I had a question that I did not get to. Maybe we can touch on it while we get Carál back on. What difference would it make if there was a definition in a Northern Ireland Bill for "good relations"? What would the manifestation of that be?

Mr Holder: It would narrow the space for mischievous lay interpretations of good relations being about just what annoys a particular party or whether there is political opposition to a policy. It would put a definition in legislation, and that, hopefully, would prevent it from being misused. It would also set much more of a framework for how the good relations duty could be used positively. How you could have a framework for positive action around all those things, around duties that tackle prejudice and promote understanding.

It would be remiss not to mention all the far-right violence that has occurred over the summer. The good relations duty would be a duty on the relevant public authorities, insofar as it relates to racism, to tackle racist information, for example. Promoting integration as well. We are into the realm of compelling public authorities, within their functions, to take positive action rather than doing nothing. I appreciate that there is good relations work that does not relate to section 75 duties as such — local government programmes and things like that — but it would also put a bit of a structure on that as to what those programmes should be targeted at and aim to do.

Mrs McKeown: That is something that, over the past few weeks, the trades union movement and employers' organisations have been taking extremely seriously. They are prepared to put resources into what you would call a proper definition of "good relations". Understanding how you might tackle the issue of racism, for example. We would want to see that matched by the public sector, the public authorities and the system. That would give exactly the right signal.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you. Carál, do you want to try again?

Ms Ní Chuilín: Sorry about that. I want to thank you for your paper. It was very informative. The denial of equality and of rights has been very political, so in pointing that out, you are just pointing out the obvious.

Daniel and Patricia, I do not know if you were in the room for the Equality Commission's presentation. I asked about good relations versus equality. So, my question for you is this: where did this good relations impact assessment come from? Is it not a breach of section 75 that that is used instead of implementing section 75 as a duty?

Mr Holder: It came from 2010 guidance issued by the commission, which also related to its model equality scheme. It introduced a recommendation that, in addition to carrying out equality screening, public authorities did so-called good relations impact assessments. The concept of good relations is not amenable to an impact assessment in the same way that the concept of equality is. The concept of equality is incredibly well defined in case law. There have been equality laws for decades. Therefore, when you are trying to work out what a discriminatory detriment is, there is a huge body of jurisprudence, case law and standards on what that means. Whereas, if you are going on a lay definition of good relations, none of that exists, and it becomes subjective. We think that that has frustrated the purpose of the equality duty.

It also contradicts other guidance that is very good that the Equality Commission had issued on equality impact assessments. If you take its very lengthy guidance — of hundreds of pages — which, I think, dates back to some time around 2005, you can search for "good relations", but you will find that it does not appear, other than in the text of the legislation. That is because equality impact assessments were about the equality duty. The good relations duty was supposed to be about complementary actions. Back in 1998, before my time in the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) — Patricia, I think you were there —.

Mrs McKeown: I was around.

Mr Holder: We were worried, back in 1998, that this would happen; we foresaw this happening. As a response to that, Mo Mowlam, the Secretary of State at the time, agreed to amend the legislation to build in the safeguard that subordinated the good relations duty to the equality duty and that it must be without prejudice, etc. However, that, unfortunately, has proved to be insufficient. We think that the commission's recommendation to do good relations impact assessments rather than focus on the positive duties that a good relations duty could foresee has created this problem. We have also repeatedly asked the commission, which stands by this recommendation, to point to an example of when the good relations impact assessment methodology has produced some sort of positive result, to justify its continued existence. No example has ever been forthcoming.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Yes. That is my concern. I see people using good relations as a way of not implementing equality. That has been custom and practice for political arguments. It is also my experience: I have seen it in some local government settings and in some Departments. in relation to this inquiry, I believe that there is an equality gap as well as the obvious gap around the bill of rights and the single equality Bill. It is an equality gap, and it needs to be fixed, because it is about the here and now. We would need to go back to the Equality Commission and, perhaps, look at putting a better or greater definition on what good relations should be, in parallel with what equality impact assessments are.

Mrs McKeown: If we do not, we continue with a divided city with 70 separation walls, for example, and the same divided mindsets that we had decades ago. We should be in a different place by now. It was always our concern that there would be some redefinition of what we were seeking to do with the equality and human rights agenda. It is about creating a better society. We need to make our minds up. Do we still envisage living in a divided city, separated by 70 or more walls, in a quarter of a century? All 100-plus member organisations on the coalition are adamant that we will do our bit to create a better society here. We would like to see the political system getting on board with that.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Yes, so would we, Patricia. Like you and others, I am relentlessly optimistic because, if we are not that way, nothing will change. For me, the issue is that, if older people, disabled people or LGBTQ+ people are being discriminated against, it is not because they are Catholic LGBT or Protestant LGBT but because they are LGBT — that is the fact. For the inquiry, we would like to see where things can be strengthened under our own remit and how gaps can be filled. The gaps are there. They are not imagined; they are a fact. Thank you again for your presentation and for your determination and grit for the past 25-plus years.

Ms Eliza Browning (Equality Coalition): May I make a point about your initial question? You asked about the difficulties of public authorities in complying with section 75. I have a degree of sympathy for public authorities on that. Section 75 screening and equality impact assessment is not prioritised or well resourced, particularly at a senior level, but, as Daniel said, that is because, ultimately, the risk of enforcement for non-compliance is so low. Not only our membership but, increasingly, public authorities say that, while advice and guidance from the Equality Commission is welcome, it does not reach senior levels, and enforcement is needed to shift the culture of non-compliance. What happens is that, over time, if done well, screening processes become easier, because monitoring is embedded in equality schemes, and once you monitor effectively, you get better data, which leads to better assessments.

Finally, I want to make the point that just because something is difficult does not mean that it is a reasonable defence for failing to comply with a legal obligation.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Paula, just to come back on that, there are very senior chief executives and senior managers in local authorities and in some of the arm's-length bodies. Frankly, I have no sympathy for them at all. They are very well paid. They need to be at least across their statutory duties. If they are not, boohoo. Citizens, residents and ratepayers, are getting shafted. For me, that is just not good enough. I appreciate what you said — you are very generous — but I cannot let that go unchallenged.

Ms Browning: To clarify, I agree with you. A lot of equality officers have really good intentions, especially at a council level, but they are often not in the room when decisions are made.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): We are just about to lose another member. Thank you so much, Timothy.

Thank you, panel, for coming today and for your submission. You can see the determination in the room and among the Committee, I hope, to get some tangible outputs at the far end of this. We will keep in touch with you as we continue with the inquiry.

Mrs McKeown: Thank you very much, Chair and Committee.

Find Your MLA

tools-map.png

Locate your local MLA.

Find MLA

News and Media Centre

tools-media.png

Read press releases, watch live and archived video

Find out more

Follow the Assembly

tools-social.png

Keep up to date with what’s happening at the Assem

Find out more

Subscribe

tools-newsletter.png

Enter your email address to keep up to date.

Sign up