NHSScotland breastfeeding policy: equality impact assessment

1. Executive summary

The Equality Act 2010 places a duty (known as the Public Sector Equality Duty, or PSED) on public authorities to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity, and promote good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 (Regulation 5) require public authorities to assess and review policies and practices against the three needs of the PSED.

The Scottish Government has undertaken national equality impact assessments (EQIAs) as part of the policy development process to refresh the extant NHSScotland Partnership Information Network (PIN) workforce policies. This EQIA Results Report provides a summary of the key findings from the EQIA Record prepared for each workforce policy.

The EQIA evaluates how a policy may affect different segments of the population both positively and negatively. If adverse effects are identified, efforts have been made to reduce or remove them. However, the focus is not solely on negating negative impacts, as there is also a proactive duty to promote equality. The development of the EQIA has been guided by equality legislation and addresses the protected characteristics of age, disability, gender reassignment, sex, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, and sexual orientation.

The NHSScotland Breastfeeding Policy has been equality impact assessed, and it has been determined that there are no barriers to any of the protected characteristics. The NHSScotland Breastfeeding Policy is expected to positively impact on eliminating unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation. This may be particularly evident in relation to disability, sex, pregnancy and maternity and gender reassignment. The policy is also expected to advance equality of opportunity across all protected characteristics. Again, this may be particularly evident in relation to sex, pregnancy and maternity and gender reassignment. The policy has no negative impact in promoting good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. There is no evidence of negative impacts on people with protected characteristics. The key findings section below provides a summary of the policy’s impact on individuals with protected characteristics.

Scottish Government is committed to actively considering equality impacts during the implementation of the NHSScotland workforce policies. This EQIA will be subject to further review and revision to ensure that any negative impacts, whether direct or indirect, on individuals with protected characteristics are addressed and mitigated.