Introduction The Equality Act 2006 placed a duty on the Commission to report regularly on the extent to which equality and human rights are improving in Britain. In October 2015 we published Is Britain Fairer? our report on progress since 2010. In preparing the report, evidence was gathered and analysed across 10 areas: education; standard of living; productive and valued activities; health; life; physical security; legal security; individual, family and social life; identity, expression and self-respect; and participation, influence and voice. For each of these a detailed evidence paper was published at the same time as Is Britain Fairer?. These can be found on our website and include Wales data. When deciding what to include from the evidence papers we used three criteria: the degree to which there has been change over time. the extent to a specific group was affected. the scale of impact on life chances. Is Wales Fairer? provides a short summary of evidence for Wales and, based on this evidence, the key challenges that require action here. Is Wales Fairer? In assessing whether is fairer we have found that compared to five years ago: There are a few improvements, for example, a reduction in hostility towards lesbian, gay and bisexual people. In areas of life such as education and employment significant inequalities remain between different groups of people. people are significantly worse off in many ways including income, employment, poverty, housing and access to mental health services. Key challenges Our analysis has identified seven key challenges that need to be addressed in Wales over the next five years. These are major, entrenched inequalities and human rights abuses that will require substantial efforts of public, private and third-sector organisations and of individuals to reduce them. We encourage everyone who to make Wales a fairer country to respond to the key challenges.
Key challenges summary attainment gaps in education. Close attainment gaps by raising standards of children receiving Free School Meals, children with Special Educational Needs (SEN), looked-after children and Gypsy and Traveller children. Reduce exclusions from school and reduce bullying. Encourage fair recruitment, development and reward in employment. Increase the employment rates of young people, disabled people, ethnic minority people and Muslim people. Close pay gaps focusing on young people, ethnic minority people and women. Improve living conditions in cohesive communities. Reduce poverty especially amongst children, disabled people and ethnic minority people. Improve access to care for people and children. Reduce homelessness, especially for people fleeing domestic abuse and people with poor mental health or learning disabilities. Increase access to justice and encourage democratic participation. Ensure equal and effective access to justice for everyone. Improve political and civil participation and increase diversity in public life. Improve access to mental health services and support to people experiencing poor mental health. Improve access to mental health services. Reduce the rate of suicide especially amongst men. Prevent abuse, neglect and ill- treatment in care and detention. Prevent neglect and ill- treatment of children and older people in hospitals and care homes. Protect human rights of people held in detention. Eliminate violence, abuse and harassment in the community. Eliminate the incidence of violence, abuse and harassment particularly against women, disabled people, ethnic minority people, Muslim people and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Evidence and data gaps Is Britain Fairer? is on an extensive and rigorous process of gathering and analysing evidence across ten key areas of people’s lives such as education, health and standard of living. The collection of evidence was done for the whole of Britain including, where available, disaggregated data for Wales, Scotland and England. The core quantitative data we use covers the period 2008 to 2013. This has been supplemented by some more recent quantitative and qualitative evidence. The Commission sought stakeholder at round-table discussions and conferences to test and verify findings. In undertaking this review, it is clear that more comprehensive and better quality evidence is needed to enable us to assess progress. Sometimes the data is not available at all, and it is often impossible to undertake a more sophisticated assessment of key areas of disadvantage, for example, where people’s characteristics intersect. Some small groups of people such as those aged over the age of 80, transgender people, Gypsies and Travellers, children and people affected by abuse and exploitation, are often invisible in the data. The Welsh Government and public authorities in Wales should take steps to improve the evidence collected. In this report, all evidence cited is for Wales unless otherwise stated. Data has been sourced from Is Britain Fairer? and its accompanying reviews of evidence. Notwithstanding some data gaps, Is Wales Fairer? provides a clear, evidence-based assessment of where there has been progress, where we have fallen back and where there has been no change at all.
Political context There has been a great deal of political change affecting Wales. In the last five years two general elections have brought changes in the UK Government. The 2011 National Assembly for Wales’s elections replaced the Labour – Plaid coalition with a Labour minority government. There were European Parliamentary elections, local government elections and elections for Police and Crime Commissioners. Ministerial responsibility for equality matters in Wales has changed over the period. Following the 2011 National Assembly for Wales’ elections, responsibility for equality became part of the portfolio of the Minister for Finance and Leader of the House. It then became the responsibility of three successive Ministers for Communities and Tackling Poverty. Equality and rights were the subject of several inquiries by National Assembly for Wales Committees. These included investigations into the future of equality and human rights in Wales, disability harassment, human trafficking, home adaptations, wheelchair availability and the educational outcomes of children from low-income households. There have been changes in the devolution settlement. In 2011 a referendum granted the Assembly full law-making powers in its areas of responsibility. A UK Government Commission (the Silk Commission) reported on the Assembly’s tax and borrowing powers, with most recommendations being included in the Wales Act 2014. The Commission then reported on the Assembly’s powers, and recommended that a model closer to the reserved powers model already applied to Scotland should be looked at for Wales. This has some implications in respect of equality and human rights. The draft Bill was published in October 2015.
Challenge 3: Improve living conditions in cohesive communities Priorities Reduce poverty especially amongst children, disabled people, and ethnic minority people. Improve access to care for people and children. Reduce homelessness, especially amongst people fleeing domestic abuse and people with poor mental health or learning disabilities. Since 2008 there has been no reduction in inequality in living conditions. Poverty continues to affect some people disproportionately. Access to care continues to be difficult. Homelessness has declined, but some groups of people are more likely to be homeless than others. Income and poverty There has been no change in the proportion of people in Wales who live in poverty in 2012/13 compared with 2007/082 - nearly one in four (23%) people. There was no statistically significant change in the poverty rate for almost all groups of people. As a result high levels of poverty have persisted for: Children - 32% in poverty in 2012/13, with even higher rates for children aged 0-4 (42%). Girls (38%) were more likely to be living in poverty than boys (26%). Disabled people - 27% in 2012/13. Ethnic minorities - 38% in 2012/13. There was a marked increase in poverty amongst people in some socioeconomic groups. People with routine or semi- routine occupations (such as security guards, receptionists, sales assistants and labourers) were three times as likely to live in poverty in 2012/13 as those with professional and managerial jobs. 2 Measured as having a household income of less than 60% of the contemporary median, after housing costs.
Challenge 4: Increase access to justice and encourage democratic participation Priorities Ensure and effective access to civil justice for everyone. Improve political and civil participation and increase diversity in public life. Reforms to legal aid and other reforms affecting access to justice may pose a threat to equal protection and support. has been little increase in the diversity of people participating in civil, political and public life. Access to justice Major changes to legal aid have occurred through the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO). LASPO reduced the scope of cases for which civil legal aid is available, excluding the majority of housing, debt, welfare benefits, employment and clinical negligence matters, and made legal aid in private family law cases available only where there is evidence of domestic violence or child protection concerns. The UK Government found that the reforms could have a greater impact on some people with protected characteristics (Ministry of Justice, 2011a). In July 2013 a two-tiered fee was introduced for claims made to employment tribunals or the Employment Appeals Tribunal, with discrimination claims attracting the higher level of payment. In England and Wales the number of applications to employment tribunals dropped by 81% between January and March 2014, compared with the same period the previous year. Police stop and search powers continue to have a disproportionate impact on young people, males, Black and Asian people. Political representation There is been little evidence of improvement in political representation in the last five years, with women, disabled people, young people, ethnic minorities, religious minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people remaining at all levels of politics in Wales. Women’s representation in the National Assembly for Wales is the highest of all GB political institutions although women remain a minority at 42% of Assembly Members. The under-representation of women is greater amongst Members of Parliament (23% of the total) and local councillors in Wales - 28% of the total (Expert Group on Diversity in Local represented
Challenge 6: Prevent abuse, neglect and ill-treatment in care and detention Priorities Prevent the neglect and ill-treatment of children and older people in hospitals and care homes. Protect human rights of people held in detention. There is no evidence that abuse, neglect and ill-treatment in hospitals, care homes and people held in detention has decreased. Abuse, neglect and ill-treatment in care The Care and Social Services Inspectorate (CSSIW) has reported that progress has been made in arrangements to protect vulnerable adults from abuse (CSSIW, 2013). Nevertheless significant concerns remain about the treatment and support provided in some care settings. Older people In 2013/14 24% of care and nursing homes for older people did not meet the inspectorate’s requirements (CSSIW, 2014a). The Older People’s Commissioner has found that older people living in care homes often became institutionalised, did not have their basic health needs met, were unable to access specialist services, and that their emotional needs were not fully recognised (Older People’s Commissioner, 2014). CSSIW found that some people were afraid to complain and that advocates sometimes had difficulties making a complaint or referral (CSSIW, 2013). Operation Jasmine was an investigation by Gwent Police into the deaths of 63 older people in six care homes in south east Wales. After failure to prosecute any of the alleged perpetrators, a Welsh Government-commissioned independent review of the investigation and its aftermath (Flynn, 2015) found extensive ill-treatment and lack of care and was highly critical of many statutory bodies involved. Younger adults CSSIW reported that services for younger adults had not generated the same levels of concern as older people’s services up to 2013/14 (CSSIW, 2014a). It has recently announced a national inspection of care and support for adults with learning disabilities (CSSIW, 2015).
Challenge 7: Eliminate violence, and harassment in the community Priorities Eliminate the incidence of violence, abuse and harassment particularly against women, disabled people, ethnic minority people, Muslim people and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. has been no overall reduction in the violence, abuse and harassment experienced by some people but there has been an increase in reporting of incidents to the police and in conviction rates. Homicide and violent crime Although homicides have decreased overall in Wales and England, those at greatest risk of homicide remain infants aged under 1. In 2013/14 the homicide rate for infants under 1 was 23.9 per million compared with 10.4 per million for adults aged 16 and over. has been no significant change in the rate of violent crime in Wales, with 3% of adults reporting that they had been a victim of a violent crime in 2012/13. Adults under 35 were more likely than older people to be victims of violent crime, as were men compared with women. The self-reported incidence of violent crime experienced by children aged 10- 15 fell between 2009/10 and 2012/13 in Wales and England from 8.5% to 6.1%. However, the gaps between disabled and non-disabled children, boys and girls, ethnic minority and White children, and children with a religion compared with those without, persisted. Child neglect and abuse In Wales the number of children on the child protection register has increased from 2,510 in 2008/09 to 3,135 in 2013/14 (CSSIW, 2014a). The main reasons for a child being on the register were neglect (39% of registrations) and emotional abuse (38% of registrations).
Hate crime, discrimination, harassment and abuse In Wales and England there was a decrease in the number of hate crimes reported to, and recorded by, the police between 2008/09 and 2012/13. The number of hate crimes motivated by disability, religion or transgender reported to the police increased. In Wales, just over three-quarters of the 1,810 hate crimes reported to Welsh police forces in 2012/13 were racially motivated (Home Office, Office for National Statistics and Ministry for Justice, 2013) with Black people being most likely to be the victim. Hate crime motived by sexual orientation was the second most commonly reported hate crime (235 reports), followed by those motivated by disability (135). Hate crime motived by religion accounted for a relatively small number of hate crimes reported to police in Wales (just 39 in 2012/13). In England and there is a rising incidence of Islamophobic and anti- Semitic hate crime. The number of convictions for hate crime in Wales and England has increased, with increased convictions occurring for all motivations of the crime. In 7% of adults aged 16 and over reported experiencing discrimination, harassment or abuse in the previous 12 months. The incidence of discrimination, harassment or abuse was much higher amongst some groups of people than others. experiences were reported by: one in five people from an ethnic minority one in five people from a religious minority one in ten young people one in ten disabled people one in ten people who have never worked or who are long-term unemployed. The proportion of British people who believe that ‘same sex relations are always wrong’ has decreased from 64% in 1987 to 22% in 2012 (NatCen, 2014). However, British data suggests that LGBT people, and Gypsies, Roma and Travellers experience stigma (Fundamental Rights Agency, 2014; Pew Research Centre, 2014). Disability- related harassment remains a serious problem with significant impact on everyday life, as highlighted by the Pilkington inquiry (IPCC, 2009) and the Commission’s Inquiry ‘Hidden in Plain Sight’ (EHRC, 2011).