Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill: equality impact assessment

Stage 4: Decision making and monitoring

Identifying and establishing any required mitigating action

No positive or negative impacts have been identified from the introduction of primary legislation as part of the Circular Economy Bill.

However, there is the potential for secondary legislation to have impacts on groups of people with protected characteristics, potentially with regard to age, race and sex and disability. This will be considered during the design of proposals for secondary legislation.

On present evidence, we do not believe that these measures are directly or indirectly discriminatory. Any new evidence, that results from the implementation of measures or coming to light during the Bill's passage through parliament will be supplemented by additional EQIAs carried out during the development of proposals for secondary legislation.

Describing how Equality Impact analysis has shaped the policy making process

This EQIA has helped to highlight areas where there may potentially be impacts on certain protected characteristics, especially at the secondary legislation stage. Appropriate engagement will take place during the public consultation at that stage to ensure that any additional concerns are identified.

Evidence available and gathered during the consultation has helped to inform, in line with good practice, this updated EQIA.

It should be noted that our initial assessment concluded that any impacts would arise from the introduction of secondary legislation, which would itself be subject to an EQIA.

Alongside the already identified protected characteristics groups, one further group, Race, was identified through the CE Bill consultation.

In addition, a number of comments received did not provide detail as to which proposal they felt may cause an effect on any given group. Rather these were broad statements urging Scottish Government to consider a specific group/s more generally across all proposals.

Findings from the original iteration of the EQIA remain the same at this time, and neither positive nor negative issues for protected characteristics groups from the introduction of primary legislation have been identified via the consultation responses.

Monitoring and Review

The first EQIA version identified areas where further consideration may be needed at the secondary legislation stage. The updated EQIA includes additional insight into these areas where consultation responses have highlighted potential issues/connections between the Proposals and protected characteristics groups. It remains appropriate for the design of a monitoring and evaluation strategy to be considered alongside the development of secondary legislation, as this is more likely to impact on protected characteristics.