Equalities Review: Panel awayday, 6 December 2005

Review Panel awayday, 6 December 2005

The Foreign Press Association
11 Carlton House Terrace
London

Review Panel
Trevor Phillips (Chair)
Sir Robert Kerslake
Nick Pearce
Carol Lake

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

Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas

Trevor set out the need for the session to enable him to circulate a draft interim report at the beginning of January. By the end of the day the Panel would use the presentations and discussion to establish the key areas for inclusion within the interim report.

100 responses (of around 250 received) had been so far analysed. Stephen gave a short presentation on the key messages emerging.
- People accept that progress has been made, but there is more to do.
- Race and ethnicity issues were highlighted by a relative majority of respondents, although this was probably not statistically significant.
- Society's attitudes remain a barrier to progress.
- Media influence was described as both a positive and negative factor in reducing inequalities.
- A clear barrier to equality is lack of leadership.
The discussion included some consideration of how social change in the recent past has affected progress on equality; the Team would investigate this issue further.
The Panel requested, in addition to the summary of all responses:
- a summary of the duties in existence under current legislation
- a summary of what respondents to the consultation have recommended
- summaries of the responses from the main equality bodies and the big organisations such as the CBI
- a summary of the responses from any government departments
- a summary of any responses that highlight surprising or unexpected issues.

Rosie gave a short presentation outlining some of the main challenges identified by the Panel in its previous discussions and set out some suggested next steps. In discussion the Panel agreed that:
- Tania Burchardt would be commissioned to produce a paper building on the Panel's discussions of ‘what is equality’.
- One recommendation for the CEHR could be to ensure robustness in monitoring equality, so that data are correct and consistent.
- Issues of linguistics, such as the language in which the equality was conducted, would need to be addressed before the final report.
- More information is needed about public attitudes to equality and about the possibility of carrying out further research in this area.

Cathy gave a short presentation looking at why inequalities persist, this included consideration around issues of capacity and motivation and how these helped to produce effective public policy and interventions. In discussion the following points were made:
- Neighbourhood effects are important in this area, it is clear that inequality is more likely to persist in some deprived areas even in spite of targeted intervention.
- Further work was needed to try and identify a list of persistent inequalities, highlighting interventions which have worked as well as what hasn't worked.
The research commissioned from Richard Berthoud would give a clearer picture of longitudinal employment inequalities for inclusion in the interim report.

Giovanni gave a presentation highlighting two approaches to calculating the costs of inequality, the first the traditional micro approach, one a more novel approach that attempts to calculate the costs of inequality at a macro level. The Panel agreed that:
- The new approach was novel and worthwhile, and that work should continue on both approaches.
- It would be helpful to investigate whether international comparisons could be made using the macro approach.
- The comparative micro-economic calculations should draw on the Berthoud work to identify persistence in inequality.