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Patricia McKeown: I have been a feminist since my late teens. I have no doubt whatsoever
that the deepest discrimination not only in this society but on this planet is against
women. I have learned on my feminist journey of the deep discrimination faced by other
groups in society. I know that I belong to the majority group that is discriminated against
and I know that in most instances they belong to the minority groups. The reason we have
a coalition is because those interests, those people that come from the groups who suffer
some of the worst discrimination in our society came together a long time ago to share each
other's oppression, to understand it and to look for a common cause. I come from a part
of this island which has been riven by discrimination for generations. The politically controversial
discrimination is on the basis of religion and politics. But I also know as a feminist
that most outrageous of discrimination on this island has been against women. Whether
they be indigenous Irish women or whether they be women of different races, whether
they be able-bodied or disabled, whether they be young women or older women, whether they
be women with caring responsibilities and dependents or without them. And that is the
all-pervasive discrimination in this society. And it used to be permissible to say those
sort of things out loud when I first became involved in the world of work. When I first
became a trade unionist, it was permissible for governments to legislate and indeed even
the representatives of the movement who were male to say that married women shouldn't work
because they were taking up the space that really belonged to the young men who were
coming into the workplace. That part-time women workers should absolutely not have the
same rights as 'real workers'. That issues on reproduction, issues on equality, issues
on *** abuse that none of those things were relevant to the agenda. We weren't about
that. But actually I belong to a movement that has always been about the underdog, the
disadvantaged, the oppressed and doing something about confronting and challenging that. So,
we've been on the issue of equality and human rights for a very long time and the first
thing I'd say to you is we believe that the framework we should be talking about is an
equality and human rights framework. And it's not just about a budget. It is about a programme
for government, whatever the investment strategy and whatever the budget looks like. They're
not stand-alone. I mean you don't work out a budget without trying to work out a plan
first of all as to what you want to do with what you've got. So, these things are intimately
connected and we're on the same mission on both parts of the island. We want our respective
governments to develop those kind of frameworks and to stop doing what they're doing which
is causing more harm to the most disadvantaged in society across the island where the gap
between rich and poor, the quality gap is rising. And the one thing that we know is
that history tells us that every time there is an economic crisis then discrimination,
intolerance and bigotry rises. Hasn't been eliminated, but it rises. The current situation
in the North is very clear evidence that that is the case. We've just recently produced
the information on our child poverty levels. No surprise to you. All these things tend
to be measured in a U.K. context. We're trying through a new economic institute that has
been set up by the Trade Union movement to start measuring these things properly on an
all-Ireland basis as well. But the North of Ireland has indeed the highest rates of child-poverty
in a U.K. context and it has twice the rate of the deepest most acute child poverty. And
that's just an example. But why is all this important? We had high hopes. We've always
had high hopes that we could get to a place where we lived in a society that was just
and that was fair. We've always known that the way in which we need to do that is to
develop strategies that are based on equality and human rights. The 20 year campaign I'm
talking about, very quickly, is actually a campaign that starts back in the 70s when
we're campaigning to get anti-discrimination laws and in the North we're gonna benefit
from the fact that Europe takes decisions, states are required to introduce anti-discrimination
laws and we get '76 when we finally get sex-discrimination laws and an equal-pay act that they stall
its implementation for another 5 years. What Europe's not doing is also saying states will
introduce laws which will outlaw issues such as discrimination on the basis of religion
and politics so that's another campaign which is running - parallel. And those laws do come
in in the mid 70s in Northern Ireland and my first public service job was working for
the equal opportunities commission for Northern Ireland and I wasn't in it for very long before
I found out that it was utterly and totally failing to do its job. It took two years,
a very active campaign, inside the workplace and with the trade union movement to deconstruct
the equal opportunities commission, reconstruct it and it did become for about 20 years a
strong enforcement agency. It cost me my job, but that was kind of going to be inevitable.
I did go back to that commission about 5, no maybe 8 years later as its deputy chairperson
and I served during its strong enforcement period for about 8 years. So I have an intimate
knowledge outside and inside of how these things ought to work and how a society can
be so deeply improved if there was a genuine political commitment to looking after the
most disadvantaged, ensuring their rights and in our case in the North, underpinning
the Peace Process with equality and human rights because there isn't one without it.
There is no shared society without it. And we're very clear about that. We're also very
clear that there is a complete move away at the moment from any attention, and I believe
in both parts of this island, any attention on the areas and groups of greatest disadvantage.
Now that's a very interesting space for us to be, because the areas and groups of greatest
disadvantage are increasing as we speak. And the decisions that are being taken by the
political systems in both parts of the island are compounding the disadvantage and deepening
it. And there's one hell of an evidence base for that. But let me give you the most acute
one in the North, 15 years into the Good Friday agreement. We currently have now got a greater
gap in life-expectancy for the most disadvantaged people in our society than we did 15 years
ago when that agreement was signed. We currently have a higher rate of pre-mature death for
people in the most disadvantaged groups than we did before we got devolved government in
2001. And our burgeoning suicide rates are dominated by long-term unemployed people from
the areas and groups of greatest disadvantage. So our mission was to get a framework, get
equality tools, get human rights tools. Convince that these things should be at the heart of
government, the programme for government, the budget should be constructed to address
all of the patterns of discrimination that would bring us to a reverse situation on those
outcomes. And our reality is that is where we are today. So this is long-haul, this a
difficult campaign. This a long fight. And I'm looking at some of these lovely young
faces in the room and thinking 'I looked like that!'. [laughter] So be prepared but don't
stop. That campaign is characterised by building alliances and allegiances, using the best
possible expertise that's out there who's thinking the same way we are. And I'll give
little bits and pieces of examples of that. This is 1996, a professor Christopher McCrudden
with the C.A.J. which is our human rights N.G.O. with UNISON which is a trade union
that takes all of this really seriously, producing the arguments for moving to a statutory obligation
on government to promote equality of opportunity and also the human rights arguments. This
is 1997, and these are discussion documents accompanied by large seminars with all sorts
of groups in civic society putting pressure on government officials and others to come
into the room to be part of these discussions, This is 'Mainstreaming Fairness' which is
the next contribution to the debate. This is 1998, the year of the Good Friday Agreement.
And what you see is all of the work we've tried to do as allies and coalitions, finally
making its way into the Good Friday Agreement as sets of commitments on equality and human
rights and then translating their way into the 1998 Northern Ireland Act as the clauses
that establish new equality tools in particular Section 75 and then we'll do a bit more detail
on that. But also establish our human rights obligations and that establish the human rights
institutions and may I be absolutely clear there's no space on this island for the merger
of the equality bodies and the human rights bodies. The human rights bodies need to be
independent internationally recognised, stand alone, and they are linked not only to European
obligations and to the domestic requirements on states to establish those bodies, they
are linked to the Good Friday Agreement, signed by two international parties, the Irish government
and the British government and you really need to start a campaign you know it's looking
pretty late they've announced a shadow body but it's not on and I do think it's some very
serious legal infringement and maybe the infringement proceedings is something people should think
about. We did a lot of work as two organisations C.A.J. UNISON on the Good Friday agreement
and what we believed the equality and human rights provisions were. That's a write up
of a conference that involved Mary Robinson, Christopher McCrudden again and all sorts
of organisations who are allies. There were organisations representing women, representing
ethnic minorities, representing loyalist, nationalist, republican, unionist communities,
the organisations representing disability, the organisations representing L.G.B.T. sectors.
The organisations representing children and older people. And we've got all sorts of framework
groups and coalitions around that. So our coalition is actually about 80 coalitions
coming together on this. It's a big part of civic society. We come to some very detailed
work the coalition then does on what the law should then look like. We get to a place where
we've then got the law and we then start looking at how it should be delivered and how things
like the programme for government and the budget and all of that should change. And
what are the key things in our society. It's not gonna change over-night. It's gonna take
a long time to disturb the existing patters of discrimination. And back in 1990 we knew
that. You cannot be part of such a deeply divided, distinctly discriminatory society
and think that it's gonna change over night. So what you're looking at is the hope of a
programme that's put in place based on equality and human rights. It's gonna bring us to another
place and I've told you what we're like 15 years on, not there. But that does not mean
we stop. The role of the Equality Coalition is to keep on this agenda and keep at it.
We had big reservations about the establishment of the Equality Commission back in the year
2000 because they merged together our other anti-discrimination bodies which were the
bodies that were dealing with gender, discrimination with religion and politics and we'd just got
the one that was dealing with disabilities and race at that stage. Can you imagine? We
did not have any anti-race discrimination laws in the North of Ireland until a few years
ago, because apparently we didn't need them. [laughter]. So we weren't racist. But they
meddled them all together and we had a genuine fear as the coalition that somebody's oppression
would dominate everybody elses'. And we rather suspected it was gonna be religion and politics.
I have to tell you that it's a hell of a disappointment 12 years later to say that nobody's oppression
is dominating the agenda. In fact we're not entirely sure that equality or the pursuit
of it is dominating that agenda anymore and that's a critical place for everyone. So that's
the current role and we've just most recently been engaging with the enforcement body to
say 'What have you done? You've got the tools, you've got enforcement powers, what have you
done to stop what's happening in this society that promised that equality and human rights
would be at the core of it'. That's depressing but there's hope. So I'm gonna hand over to
Emma who's gonna talk a bit about that particular tool that is Section 75 of the Northern Ireland
Act. So I'll wind up and I'll tell you what we've learned. [Applause] Emma Patterson:
Hi everyone I'm Emma Patterson, I co-ordinate the coalition but I work for C.A.J. which
the human rights body that co-convenes with UNISON on the whole issue. And as you've probably
guessed as well I'm a feminist and I also work for gender equality and women's place
post-conflict in Northern Ireland which is mostly what I work on there. I'm gonna give
a really brief overview here on Section 75. I don't want you to think that this is the
be-all and end-all of it. If you don't understand it or you want more information talk to me
at lunch, ring me, send me an e-mail, get my details from Clara because you're probably
not going to get it all from these slides but here we go: Section 75 of the Northern
Ireland Act. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about how it works in practice. How it's supposed
to be implemented by the public authorities and then if it doesn't work how you complain
about it. And then I'm just gonna tell you a little bit finally about what the coalition
is working on at the moment on then we'll hand back to Patricia she'll tell you how
you can take key learnings from what we know. So the public authority in Northern Ireland
must have under Section 75 due regard to promote equality of opportunity between 9 categories
and these 9 categories are: religion, political opinion, race, age, marital status, ***
orientation, gender, persons with and without a disability and persons with and without
dependents. So, what the public authority is supposed to do is Section 75 they're supposed
to promote due regard then they use the Northern Ireland Act which is the legalities of it
all to put it into their Equality Scheme so that they can implement the due regard aspect
of it. Patricia: Can I say a wee bit about due regard? Because there's been a while big
debate about what it actually means. There are two parts to Section 75 of the Northern
Ireland Act. One is about mostly equality of opportunity for all those groups just mentioned
and the other is about basically Catholics and Protestants not liking each other very
much you know so we need a 'good relations'. Now, that's your motherhood and apple-pie
bit. That's the bit you can throw money at, that's where you can get your wee 'it's a
cross-community project' going without having to change the systemic discrimination so the
reason we fought for the word 'due regard' for the first part of section 75 is because
all the business would be going on on the pretend good-relations bit but you can't have
good relations in a society riven by discrimination unless you actually start addressing discrimination
in the first instance. Otherwise you build on shifting sands. You're not building anything
that's real. So, 'due regard', big fight, we'll tell you about where that got us to...
Emma: Well, to promote the due regard the designated bodies produce the following things
and this helps them promote equality. They produce an equality scheme and this is produced
around a model scheme that the equality commission will put out and then they can basically change
their name and timelines and send it back in and the equality commission has to approve
the scheme before the scheme becomes legally viable. Now, inside the equality scheme will
be things like how they're gonna consult with people, how they're gonna get heard to reach
groups like children and young people. How they're gonna train their staff in equality
and things like how they're going to screen, which is the most important one, how they're
gonna screen to revise the new policies that come out. So what they do is internally they
monitor their equality scheme and they send a report to the equality commission every
five years and the equality commission monitors their schemes. But in order to support the
equality schemes they often produce equality action plans and this is where the timelines
and outcomes of their equality scheme would be based. Now a lot of public authorities
produce them together and consult on them both but some don't. So, but they all have
to consult on those equality schemes. Then the third thing they have to do is produce
an audit of inequalities. And this audit is really a review and analysis of them and the
services that they produce and if they maybe adversely impact on a certain group. So maybe
they don't have enough women using their services - how are they going to get more women to
use their services? So that's really what the audit of inequalities is supposed to do.
So it identifies potential function areas so they can better discharge their equality
duty going forward. A little bit complicated but it gets there. They then have equality
screening documents and any new or revised policy that comes out they have to look at
the nine categories and see if adversely impacts any of these groups and it's an equality impact
assessment or E.Q.I.A. for short. They have to produce one of these. And these five things
help them to pay the due regard to the promotion of equality. I'm just gonna give you a brief
overview of how they would all come together. So say for instance a government department
decides to make some new housing provisions in an area of Belfast, well the first thing
you're gonna think of is if it adversely impacts either Catholics or Protestants because in
Belfast everyone lives in a segregated society. So they have to check their audit of inequalities
to make sure they have that data. They then screen their proposal to see how it has an
equality impact on, or if it has one. They would produce this equality impact assessment
and then they would consult. Now, a lot of them again consult on their E.Q.I.A. and for
instance this new housing and some of them don't. It just depends. But they have to consult
on the proposal itself. And that's where N.G.O.s come in. So N.G.O.s and community groups can
then help shape this policy by responding to their consultation. Now, the big question
is what happens when all of this or one of these things doesn't happen. And if they decide
that it doesn't have an equality impact. Well there's a few different things that have to
happen. The public authority has a commitment in their equality scheme to make sure that
they have a complaints mechanism. So you must always go to the designated body in the first
instance. Now the problem is the designated body will more than likely say 'whatever'.
So, what do you do then? Well, the equality commission itself has two areas that you can
take a complaint. The first is paragraph ten. But you must be a directly affected person.
So this policy or consultation that you have an issue with must directly affect you so
that you can take it. And that's hard to do sometimes because of timescales or due to
what the policy is or just not having all the information so it is hard to get through
in paragraph ten. Paragraph eleven though is you can draw attention to an issue and
the equality commission has the powers to investigate it itself. No I'm going to talk
a wee bit more about that in a minute. But you can say to them that you think that they
should investigate this issue and you don't have to be directly affected. The last thing
you could do is take a judicial review on Section 75 but as you can imagine this is
limited. It's still possible but it's a long drawn out process. So that's just a brief
overview - you have to go to the public authority, state that there was a breach of the equality
scheme, and then go to the commission or you could say that Section 75, they didn't have,
the public authority didn't pay due regard and take a judicial review. The only thing
as I've said about judicial review is timing and resources. It could take two to three
years to get a decision and that might just be too long. So this is really just to show
a couple of complaints that went to our equality commission and how they worked. The first
one was a paragraph ten investigation, remember that's the directly affected person, and this
was a woman who believe it or not was acting up into a position for ten years and they
never made her permanent. She couldn't go for any other promotions and she didn't have
any terms and conditions the same as the other staff who were permanent. So that is a direct
equality issue for that woman. So the equality commission for Northern Ireland ruled that
they had no screening to look at the adverse impacts on their temporary promotion policy
so then that lady could take a case and she won her case and ended up with a permanent
job and better work conditions. Now, paragraph eleven, this is where it gets exciting. Paragraph
eleven has only been used this once by the equality commission and they've been there
for... ten years. So, this one that's been taken is a bus service, it was a town service
in a small town that we have in Bangor Co. Down, and the town service really facilitated
older people going to and from hospital appointments or getting to and from the shops. And it serviced
all of the smaller housing estates but Translink took it off because they decided there wasn't
enough people using it. So the equality commission are currently investigating this and are awaiting
further information before recommendations are gonna come out. I would say the recommendations
would probably be something like, you know, there needs to be a different service that
will service them or maybe a [inaudible] service. But, we don't know yet. Now, this is where
it comes into play. We as the equality coalition have been looking at the welfare reform and
it's going to impact every single category of equality. It's gonna impact all of our
86 members and the equality coalition have decided to defer and investigated into the
welfare reform bill. Now we can't seek a directly affected case because we have 86 members and
organisations and umbrellas and there's just too many for that, but we thought they could
investigate because they're the investigating body. But no, they deferred. So instead, they're
gonna take an investigation into a playpark that's named after a hunger striker because
that will help all of the nine categories. It's crazy. Patricia: We estimate a quarter
of a million families impacted in Northern Ireland by the welfare reform cuts and primarily
women, primarily children, primarily older people, people with disabilities and that's
what they're gonna do instead. Emma: So that just is a very brief look into the work of
the Equality Coalition and the work that we do. What we're really doing at the moment,
and it mostly is around welfare reform, but I just wanted to say a few things about what
we do. I would encourage members to send round consultation responses for instance on the
welfare reform bill or any policies that are coming up. And then it means smaller organisations
due to the recession they might not have any policy workers themselves, it means they can
share our information and endorse things so they can still have their say, even though
they may be very small. We would also have engagement meetings with...the equality duty
is co-ordinated across the government departments by the office of the first minister and deputy
first minister's equality unit. So we would meet with them on a quarterly basis just to
have dialogue between us. And we'd also meet with the equality commissioner for Northern
Ireland on a quarterly basis. And we try to theme these meetings. Recently we've talked
about health and employment and training and education but funnily enough it's all come
back to welfare reform so it's just ended up being the same thing. The third thing we
do is we have have training capacity and we try and train our members up in things like
you know how the non-discrimination laws work, how to better engage with M.L.A.s, how to
actually use consultation to benefit you. And then last but not least what we're doing
most at the minute is advocacy and lobbying and we support all of our members in what
they want to do but then we've also been taking an over-arching equality view on the welfare
reform bill. So that's really a lot of what our work has been. And I'm just doing a shameless
plug that if you want to know more about us and that's our website but I must say there
is really good training documents on there about Section 75 that you could print out
or download for yourselves and take away. And there's one for public authorities, one
for individuals. How to take complaints. That's something you might want to go on and look
at . So they're all there for you and I'm going to pass back to Patricia and she'll
tell you how you can maybe take some of these learnings that we have. Patricia: Just one
slide but you might be thinking why would we want that? Well, it works. And what are
things you need to make it work? And the very first thing is political will. When this law
first came on the statute books it coincided with the first devolved government in the
North. I'd been fighting a campaign against the privatisation of hospital workers which
started in the Thatcher era. We were successful in most of it, but we lost some contracts
into the private sector. Those contracts were hospital cleaners and hospital caterers in
the 90 percent of them women. They'd been privatised. An we convinced the then minister
for health Bairbre de BrĂșn who was the first ever devolved health minister under this system
to issue an instruction across the department of health, all of the health service, using
section 75 to conduct an equality impact assessment of the outsourced services. And she did that
and we were able to go in then with our major database on what had happened over the years
and demonstrate that discrimination against the women workers had been compounded. That
the quality of service had dropped radically affecting the patients and that the only way
to put that right was to bring the services back in-house. And it took another two and
a half years but all of those services came back in-house. So, as a consequence of this
tool 1500, mostly women, came back into the health service. Their pay-rates rose. They
had sound employment, they were back in the pension scheme. Their conditions changed overnight.
The quality of the service rose. They came off minimum wage and 0 hours contract in most
instances back to where they belonged. So it works effectively with political will.
It works effectively if it is mainstreamed. The whole idea of this law, well what we fought
for was a tool that would make government and public service decision-making better.
That's what it's really about. Can we have better systems that create that more fair,
equal and just society that we're looking for. So that we don't have to have the discrimination
happen first and then we've gotta go to court to get redress. What about we head it all
off at the pass and we actually do the right thing in the beginning? And in order to do
the right thing in the beginning you have to genuinely mainstream it into your programme
for government and how you do your business and how you make your decisions. What all
that means is training your people up, resources. No resources attached to this extraordinary
programme. The creation of equality officers, usually one at the level of all of the public
authorities. If you were very lucky you got maybe a team of maybe an admin worker as well.
That wasn't a whole lot of work. That wasn't working. You need to really resource this
and make it mainstream. Data-collection, the kind of stuff that Nat was talking about,
the biggest argument politically from our government so far has been you can't equality
impact the programme for government, you can't equality impact the budget, because it's too
complex. And Louise sat up here and gave us an equality impact on lone parents of the
budget. That's hard, like. That's about real data. That exists. We're currently being told
that you can't produce equality impact assessment of the proposed welfare benefit cuts on our
society because they're not holding data on religion and politics. We could do it for
them on the back of an envelope. Because we know who lives where. They know who's in receipt
of benefits. Actually, we do too. It's out there. So that's back to political will again.
Genuine engagement, now what this is about is it was a unique experiment, it was the
engagement between the political system making the decisions and the affected groups in society.
And it started off with genuinely super models of engagement, health was one of the best
ones. When they were developing the programme to tackle our horrendous health inequalities
there was wholesale engagement of people out in communities. It was done properly and people
got their vote and it was direct. And there're great models. But, the politicians started
to say, 'hmm, this is the tension between participative democracy and representative
democracy' and there are many who think that participative democracy is a threat. Well
I live in a world of participative democracy, and I think you do too. And we are no threat,
we in fact enrich, in our view, the representative democracy. But that genuine engagement has
more or less stopped now. If you're in Belfast you'll see a bus going past with a message
from the health service telling you that if you ring a number and get on to a website
you can sign up apparently to become part of some elite consultation group. So they
big outreach has translated into that. Strong enforcement body - absolutely essential. Absolutely
essential. That was the strong enforcement body for a long time with our total support
and it has taken us a very long time I have to tell you to say anything critical about
the equality commission for Northern Ireland because we hoped and we hoped but what we're
now looking at, we believe, is an enforcement body, and this is not about the people who
work in it because they've got some brilliant people inside, but we're looking at an enforcement
body that we met recently and the Irish congress of trade unions said, the chief executive/the
chair said 'why are adopting the same policy as the D.U.P?' and that is actually where
we are at the minute. We've got the same policy on the blocked [inaudible] equality act. Coalition
of interest is essential. build it, build it, build it. You've got the equality rights
alliance, you've got the women's movement. We've got all of those. We have two big coalitions
in the North. The other one is the human rights consortium. And we're all involved in the
C.A.J. established it, and it's got I think about 180 organisations inside. And not everybody
inside that coalition all believe the same thing. They'll never be agreement in that
human rights coalition on abortion and the right to choose. But there's total agreement
there should be a bill of rights. You know, so they're on the issue of the bill of rights.
In our coalition we're all in a whole heap. So we are likely to get agreement because
that is the nature of the organisations inside. So your coalitions don't all have to think
the same way but there needs to be a common goal that everybody can sign up to. So the
wider coalition of human rights will go from churches to trade unions. And everybody in
between with all sorts of views. The current government and the D.U.P., I'll finish with
this, the congress met Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness three weeks ago and first
item on the agenda - the economy, the U.K. budget had just happened, a useful discussion.
Next item on the agenda, equality and human rights. Stops being a useful discussion. We
set out the stall on why we are saying it's absolutely imperative that the missing commitment
in the Good Friday Agreement are met. Martin McGuinness responds by saying we're on the
same page as the trade unions. Peter Robinson says I don't know what page you're talking
about. The first minister for Northern Ireland then tells us in no uncertain terms that he
does not support the Good Friday Agreement, his party is not in favour of all of the anti-discrimination
laws, highlights in particular the law on *** orientation, tells us bluntly there
will be no bill of rights and despite the fact that the human rights consortium has
polled the electorate in the North and 93 percent of D.U.P. voters are in favour of
a bill of rights and social and economic rights in particular and they identify health, social
care, housing and education in their top four we're told that they were asked the wrong
question. So we've got a big difference in this society between how ordinary people think
and how the people they vote for are behaving. And we're in very critical stage in our evolution
but again on the same mission. I think the whole island is in a very critical stage in
its evolution. You know, I was the president of congress, for two years I came into office
when there was a big boom and everybody was doing very nicely and I'm going, em I left
the presidency at the point of economic collapse. I think that's probably on my tombstone - It
wasn't may fault. [Laughter] But all the way through that boom there was lip-service to
equality on human rights a lot more reservation on the issue of human rights and now we're
in a place where the society really needs the tools of equality and human rights if
a very significant section of our population in both jurisdictions does not go under. And
in the North in the middle of the Peace Process we have people dying from inequality. And
that is a preventable cause. It's a preventable cause right across this island, so therefore,
go for it! [Applause]