Fairer Scotland action plan: progress report 2020

Equality

COVID‑19 has had a dramatic impact on all of our communities and people, but particularly those who were most at‑risk to start with. It again highlights why now is the time to think about things differently and to renew our focus on the goals of reducing inequality and improving the quality of life of all of our people

We will only achieve the ambitions we have set out, and ensure a genuinely collective recovery for everyone, by putting equality and human rights at the heart of our approach. We will ensure everyone in Scotland receives the support they need, and we will take action to tackle the systemic injustices in our society.

We are taking a cross‑portfolio approach to implementing the recommendations of the Expert Reference Group on COVID-19 and Ethnicity and build this into our ambitious plans to advance race equality. We will prioritise action to promote equality and human rights for minority ethnic communities.

By the end of 2020 we will establish a national race equality network to produce an action plan with annual progress targets for health and social care employment at all levels of seniority in relation to minority ethnic groups. The national network will also review existing recruitment and promotion processes. Through our Leadership and Talent Management Programmes, we will increase the numbers of minority ethnic staff in senior and executive team roles.

Partnering with Museums Galleries Scotland, in collaboration with race equality and museums sector stakeholders, we will sponsor an independent expert group to make recommendations on how Scotland's existing and future museum collections we can better recognise and represent a more accurate portrayal of Scotland's colonial and slavery history and what further steps should be taken to ensure people in Scotland are aware of the role Scotland played and how that manifests itself in our society today.

More equal Scotland

Building on the on-going success of the Access to Elected Office Fund, established for the 2017 Scottish local authority elections, we established a Public Appointment Shadowing Placement Programme in June 2019. This programme, which finished in September 2020, provided opportunities for five disabled people to shadow public body Boards. Each person was mentored by a member of the Board and participated in discussions and sub committees of the Board. The outcomes included demystifying the work of boards, building participants' confidence to apply for public appointments and improving boards' awareness of disability issues. On 24 September 2020, we held a workshop bringing together everyone who have been involved in the scheme in order to help evaluate it and we will produce an evaluation report on 15 December 2020.

Our Race Equality Action Plan 2017–2020, outlines the activity we have undertaken over the course of this Parliament to secure better outcomes for minority ethnic communities in Scotland. These steps are a vital part of the action we are taking towards achieving the vision as set out in the Race Equality Framework.

On 20 March 2020 we published the Year 2 progress update on our Action Plan and a final year report will be published in 2021. This report will include a full update of progress towards achieving our ambitions in the Framework.

We will of course need to pay particular attention to the issues that have been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the recommendations of the Expert Reference Group on COVID-19 and Ethnicity.

Further to a consultation on the principles of reform, we have now conducted a second consultation on the provisions of the draft Gender Recognition (Scotland) Bill. The consultation on the daft Bill included a draft Equality Impact Assessment, and was open for responses from 17 December 2019 to 17 March 2020.

However, on 1 April 2020, the Minister for Parliamentary Business informed Parliament that, in light of the on-going impact of COVID-19, work on a number of planned government bills has been halted. As a result, we will not now bring forward a Bill to reform the gender recognition process in this parliamentary session.

We will continue to deliver the other related actions, short of legislation, which we committed to last year, including the working group on non-binary people's equality and a working group on data on sex and gender.