Making Scotland's future - a recovery plan for manufacturing: fairer Scotland duty assessment

Summary of assessment findings

Who this Recovery Plan will affect

Making Scotland's Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing affects everyone involved in the Scottish manufacturing Industry. It will directly affect employers, employees, trade unions and workplace representatives, workplace contractors, customers, suppliers and delivery drivers.

It also potentially indirectly affects recent graduates, students and the unemployed through actions targeted at re-skilling and streamlining recruitment in the manufacturing sector. By safeguarding jobs and creating opportunities for manufacturing firms to transform how they work the plan will create benefits throughout Scotland.

It will particularly benefit areas which rely on manufacturing for local employment by ensuring that the manufacturing sector is equipped to recover from the challenges created by the pandemic and allowing it to move forward.

How this plan can be strengthened in terms of its impacts on equalities of outcome

The Recovery Plan contains a strong commitment to Fair Work principles embedded throughout it.

A combination of feedback from the Equality and Fairer Duty Scotland Impact Assessment and Business Regulatory Impact Assessment consultations and the Fair Work principles will guide the implementation of the actions which are proposed in the plan.

In order for the plan to fully achieve its intended purpose it is vital that it is shared by the partners across the public, private and third sectors and trade unions who will help us to develop and implement the plan in a way that helps address identified inequalities in the manufacturing sector and improve outcomes throughout Scotland.

Timescales

The plan and its actions will be taken forward at pace over a 12 month period (by the end of 2021). Work on the actions identified as immediate priorities has already begun. The wider public consultation on the plan which was carried out from 4 December 2020 to 12 February 2021 has informed the development of a final plan, incorporating the consultation feedback, which was published in June 2021.

An evaluation of the Recovery Plan will be carried out which will inform the direction of the broader Making Scotland's Future programme and partners as we progress towards the end of the Recovery Plan delivery period. This will provide a further opportunity to address any identified issues which fall outwith the scope of the Recovery Plan due to the pace with which it has had to be developed and implemented.