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The Equalities Review

The Equalities Review

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Review Panel awayday, 19 and 20 July 2005

Venue

Swan Hotel
Bedford

Attendees

Review Panel
Trevor Phillips (Chair)
Carol Lake
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas
Nick Pearce

Review Team
Paul Britton
Rosie Seymour
Stephen Earl
Cathy Francis
Uma Moorthy
Sarah Martyn

Reference Group
Bert Massie (morning session 20 July only)

What is equality - presentation by David Miller

  1. Following David Miller's presentation the Panel explored a number of issues in more depth. These included:
    • the relative importance of family background in reducing inequalities
    • transgenerational transmission of inequality
    • the extent to which the state could or should intervene in private life.

Feedback from the Reference Group

  1. Bert Massie (co-chair of the Reference Group) provided feedback from the first meeting. He indicated that some members of the Reference Group had expressed concern that members had not been kept up to date with the work of the Panel and how thinking was being developed. He also highlighted a number of key issues that the Group had asked the Panel to consider:
    • the importance of setting out the moral case for reducing inequality as well as making the business case.
    • potential threats to achieving greater equality in the delivery of public services, particularly in health and social care services, where the culture was becoming increasingly risk averse due to fear of litigation.
    • multiple disadvantage and the need to look between and across the equality strands, for example, at the needs and experiences of older gay and lesbian couples.
    • the importance of making the case for equality within the context of what the costs of inequality were - and that it was not cost neutral.
    • how the rights of individuals were balanced with the rights of communities.
    • how to affect change - what works? For example, how could Inspectorates be used to deliver greater equality of outcomes?
    • the importance of language in achieving greater equality, particularly in relation to inclusion / exclusion, and whether, for example, this language spoke to middle aged white men.
    • that highlighting individual examples of success could distort the reality of the majority e.g. examples of highly paid women could mask concerns about equal pay.
    • the impact of class and the need to understand its relative importance.
    • taking account of people's everyday needs e.g. housing, social security payments, transport etc.
    • the importance of culture and respect, societal norms and values, shared for example, across communities, trades union movement etc.
  2. The Panel had a general discussion about how best to work constructively with the Group during the life of the Review. It was agreed that the Panel would build a strong working relationship with the Group using it to test out ideas and that it would seek the Group's views on the direction of the Review. It was also agreed that Trevor, on behalf of the Panel, would attend all future meetings of the Group.

Presentation of key facts: what we know and do not know

Rosie gave the 'Key Facts' presentation[PDF 181KB, 37 pages]

  1. A number of questions were raised following the presentation:
    • what were the barriers to success: economic, educational, those linked to the absence of soft skills?
    • what was the relationship between socio-cultural factors and academic success?
    • what precisely was the additionality of education? And what outcomes should be measured, for example, proportion of GCSE candidates achieving 5 A*-Cs or drop out rates?
    • what was the causality and relationship to class?

Presentation on the case for change

Rosie gave the 'Case for Change' presentation[PDF 50KB, 13 pages]

  1. There was some discussion of whether the Panel should be focusing on equality of opportunity or equality of outcome - or something else.
  2. On measurement and comparison the Panel considered a number of areas and groups where there remained significant inequalities of outcome, there was also a discussion about those areas where the evidence base was so poor that it was not possible to baseline outcomes, for example, by faith group or sexual orientation.
  3. It was suggested that an approach which might help avoid the skewing of comparisons by e.g. a small number of extremely high (or low) performing women (or men), might be to use a bell curve of achievement, e.g. income curves for men and women in similar professions.

Measuring progress - presentation by Nick Johnson

  1. The Panel discussed a number of issues following Nick Johnson's presentation[PDF 105KB, 30 pages] including:
    • ranking
    • the importance of soft targets
    • the balance of objective and subjective factors
    • aggregation
    • ensuring that meeting targets is not process driven
    • culture change
    • learning from best practice in the private sector, particularly around customer relationship management
    • the balance between national and local measures.

Conclusions

  1. The Panel decided that it would be important for the Review to be able to articulate a shared understanding of long term aspirations and set out a timetable for change.
  2. The final report would need to set out:
    • progress
    • intractables
    • causality
    • unintended consequences.
  3. The use of the following levers would be examined:
    • economic
    • social
    • cultural
    • institutional.

Evidence gathering

  1. The Panel agreed that the following papers should be developed with individual Panel members in the lead.

    Equality - of what and for whom (NP)
    The moral case for equality (TP)
    Limits of public policy intervention - in private life (CL/JMJ)

    What are the intractables? (CL/JMJ)
    Class/not class: how do we begin to approach the question? (NP)
    Trigger Points: what bits of the life cycle are vulnerable and useful for intervention. (TP)

Research

  1. The Panel asked the Team to investigate the possibilities of research in the following key areas:
    • success - what kind of person becomes more equal?
    • what is the cost of inequality?
    • longitudinal work - based on '58, '70 and 2000 cohorts to establish evidence of intractability and to project some trend outcomes (where are the gaps in the evidence base?)
    • what is the additionality of education?
    • levers and incentives, targets - hard versus soft, what works and why?
    • the political language of equality
    • when are cultural factors the cause of systematic disadvantage? When is it right to challenge the practices of particular communities and people in those communities?

Appendix

Paper prepared by the Equalities Review Team for consideration by the Panel at the awayday.