Marco Contextual

Throughout the interviews in London Borough councillors and officers discussed equality, and socio economic inequality in particular, not only in terms of the political priorities of the council but as a response to the policies introduced by the 2010 Coalition Government. The Director argued that London Borough’s

commitment to equality was long standing, but had been given ‘more energy’ by the election of the Coalition government in 2010, which made it easier for Labour councillors in London Borough to highlight inequality as a way of defining themselves against the national government:

Because we are Labour, and strongly Labour and are opposed to the current central government administration it [change of government] actually gives us more energy. Our politicians will definitely take the opportunity to be distinct from this… defining themselves against…. So we will keep the socio-economic and so on. Whereas I think if it was a Labour government that had got rid of [the socio economic duty] (laughs) it would have been harder for councillors to say, ‘typical you don’t care about the poorest people’ (Director).

All the interviewees raised negative impacts on equalities work that had happened as a result of Coalition policies. The main areas of complaint were the impact of

spending cuts and the changed approach to equality. Local authorities have faced significant cuts to their budgets leading to substantial cuts to local services. These cuts overshadowed all the interviews that took place in London Borough. Concerns

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included a reduction in the ability of the council to deliver on its aim to reduce inequality and fears about the future;

We are still not really through the cuts of the last 2-3 years and the budget in 2015 is going to be very hard. So it is looking very, very difficult for local authorities from then. I think that the figure is £50 million per local authority. So how that will fall because given that council services do already […] serve the most vulnerable […] it is all that knock on stuff you don’t do [….] so it is all of the lack of community cohesion, social inclusion issues and I think we will only see the impact of that in 2016/17 (Former Leader). In addition to cuts to services the equality team was facing shrinking resources in terms of staff and budgets:

As a team we have gone down from having six people in the policy team to having four in the [combined] policy and equality team so it is quite a significant shrink […]we have got rid of our team of twenty people looking at equalities in education down to two so that is likely to have a big impact. (Equality Officer).

At a time when all council workers were overstretched, work on equalities was in danger of being seen as simply another burden:

I think officers were trying to, from their perspective when they were

suffering cut backs and having less staff to do things they were trying to just basically slip through things that were going to reduce the burden of work on them, which is understandable, but the fact is that the people who were going to lose out, there would be equality strands who would suffer for that.

(Equality Officer).

Activities such as data collection, which ensured that equality officers had the information needed to do their job were being given reduced priority;

There has been a move to marginalise the collection of ethnicity data and language data, so it is not being resourced as it should so I can’t get hold of the information (Equality Officer).

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Lack of data collection was not simply an outcome of lack of resources; it was also a result of a change of policy from central Government that reduced the obligation on public bodies to collect and publish data. The former Leader of London Borough observed that this had led to officers ‘slacking off a bit’ on collecting data. She also complained about the lack of data available from central Government agencies:

Things like the Office of National Statistics is not collecting data on a number of different benefit entitlements so whereas before we had quite granular detail about which groups were receiving different benefits and so on, now it is very much…it does mask where certain groups have a number of different equality issues within their lives that they are dealing with. (Former Leader).

Alongside the cuts officers and councillors commented on the changed approach to equality from central Government. For councillors this was expressed in largely political terms as part of a wider criticism of the Government. Officers were more likely to raise the detail of changes to policy, for example the reduced need to collect data described above or the ‘shockingly negative’ outcome of the review of the PSED. However while equality activists and civil society groups in the borough complained of the ‘lack of leadership’ from the Coalition on equalities this was not raised by officers at London Borough, perhaps because of the strong leadership on equalities within the council. The Director described the Government’s attitude to equalities as ‘annoying’ but concluded that ‘in terms of practice on the ground I don’t think it has made much difference here’. In spite of her claims it did appear that the Coalition Government’s attitude to equality had made a significant difference in London Borough. Not only were there the changes to data collection policy described above but the decision to focus on a few equality objectives rather than more comprehensive action plans was only possible because of the changed specific duties introduced by the Coalition. This is in line with the conclusions of earlier studies on mainstreaming that political context can have a significant impact on the form that mainstreaming takes (Woodward 2003, Verloo 2005, Walby 2011). In addition the reduction to the role and budget of the EHRC under the Coalition meant that the Commission was not perceived as either a source of support, or pressure as described below.

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6.9 Role of the EHRC

There were frequent critical comments about the EHRC from all officers and from the Equality champion. Officers complained about the lack of support and

information that the EHRC was able to provide. Some were simply dismissive, describing the EHRC as ‘poor’ or ‘not helpful’. Others were more sympathetic to the impact that the cuts to the EHRC budget had had on its ability to provide support while still concluding they were ‘not important’ politically:

The rug was pulled out from under their feet at a time when we really needed clear guidance. The fact that they weren’t allowed to do statutory guidance, the fact that they were cut to smithereens, yeah, even on those obvious

aspects on their provision and their ability to support and challenge they were weakened. But also if I sent in any questions at that time I rarely got a

response. Now I have very little awareness of what they can do, the website is there, technical guidance has been helpful. Everyone knows politically they are not important (Equality Officer).

For those with a leadership role (the Director and the Equalities Champion), more worrying than the lack of support was the lack of scrutiny or external pressure provided by the EHRC.

The EHRC is absolutely rubbish. You know at no point have I ever, ever thought the EHRC would be checking me. Absolute rubbish (Director). We invited the Equality and Human Rights Commission several times to come and talk to us or we would talk to them. They couldn’t respond. Not once could they respond to anything. We asked them to look at us, to look at our equality and human rights assessment to challenge us as to whether we were doing…. They couldn’t respond at all [….] in reality nobody is examining us, nobody is questioning what we do, nobody is checking we meet any standard or quality in terms of what we do. It doesn’t feel like there is any external pressure. We are just…. self-regulating. (Equality Champion).

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Both women compared the lack of scrutiny from the EHRC with the ‘heat’ or ‘fear’ felt from the previous commissions, particularly the Commission for Racial

Equality.

In terms of before you felt a bit more heat from the CRE and the Disability Rights Commission, you did feel heat from them (Director).

I have worked in the field of race equality when the Commission for Racial Equality was still there and public bodies were fearful of the Commission for Racial Equality launching an enquiry into them (Equality Champion).

It was clear that both wanted external pressure from the EHRC in order to strengthen their position in persuading colleagues to give work on equality a high priority. The lack of pressure meant that this process was harder. A strong regulatory body was identified as crucial for reflexive regulation in initial proposals for an equality duty (Hepple et al 2000). The experience in London Borough suggests that the lack of this body not only leaves public authorities largely self-regulating but also reduces the ability of officers inside these authorities to ensure the processes of internal deliberation which is central to reflexive regulation.