 Welcome to the Equal Opportunities Committee, the fourth meeting of 2016. Please set any electronic devices to flight mode or switch off, please. I'd like to start with introductions. We're supported at the table by clerkin and research staff, official reporters and broadcasting services and around the room by the security office and also welcome to observers in the public gallery. My name's Margaret McCulloch and I'm the committee's convener and members will now introduce themselves and turn starting here on my right. Good morning. Sandra White, MSP for Glasgow, Kelvin. John Mason, MSP for Glasgow, Shetleston. Annabelle Gold, MSP for West of Scotland. Good morning, Christian. I'm the MSP for North East Scotland. Good morning, John Finnie, MSP Highlands and Islands. Drew Smith, member for Glasgow region. The first agenda item today is a decision on taking business in private. You're asked to create a paper on your review of the budget considerations at agenda item 4 in private. Are we all agreed? Yes. Agenda item 2, we are taking evidence from the cabinet secretary for social justice, communities and pensioners rights on an affirmative instrument, namely the Equality Act 2010, specific duties Scotland, amendment regulations 2016 draft. That instrument is laid under the affirmative procedure, which means that the Parliament must approve it before provisions may come into force. Following this evidence taken, the committee will be invited to consider a motion to approve the instrument under agenda item 3. I welcome the cabinet secretary and his accompanying officials. I invite the cabinet secretary to make any opening remarks, please. Thank you very much indeed, convener. I introduce Eileen Flanagan from the Equalities Unit from the Policy side. I'm Stuart Fubyster, who is a Government solicitor and advises us on legal matters. If required, both of them are available to answer questions as well. I'm pleased to be here today to move the Equality Act 2010, specific duties Scotland, amendment regulations 2016 and to answer members' questions. I will keep these remarks brief to allow maximum time for questions and answers. These draft regulations propose to do two things. First, to require listed public authorities to publish the gender composition of their boards and to produce succession plans to increase the diversity of their boards and to lower the threshold for listed public authorities to publish information on their gender pay gap and equal pay statements from those authorities with more than 150 employees to those with more than 20 employees. Our intention is that the new requirement to publish the gender composition of their board and to produce diversity succession plans will give added impetus and drive to how public bodies think about and plan their board recruitment processes, including how they can bring greater diversity to their board if that is what the evidence tells them is needed. We want our bodies to reflect Scotland's diversity and to make the most of the talent that is out there in our communities. The lowering of the threshold for authorities to publish their gender pay gap and equal pay statements is intended to bring a greater transparency and accountability in respect of pay. It is regrettable that, 45 years after the Equal Pay Act, we continue to see women bringing equal pay cases to the employment tribunal. While the full-time gender pay gap in Scotland narrowed last year to 7.3 per cent, the gap remains persistent and significant, more than doubles when you factor in part-time work. We have plenty of work ahead and challenges still to overcome. However, I believe that public bodies in Scotland have a central role to play in helping to promote equality and diversity and tackle inequality and discrimination. In fact, I would like to see a public sector in Scotland leading the way and setting a benchmark for others to aspire to. I believe that they are up to that challenge and I hope that the committee will approve the draft regulations to that effect. Cabinet Secretary, there are three pretty simple questions. First of all, how many additional listed authorities will now be brought under the provisions of the Equality Act? There will be 30 additional authorities. I will read out some of them to you. We will send you the full list. We can also send you a list of 20 or so organisations that will not be covered because they will get fewer than 20 employees. However, there are quite a number of valuation joint boards that will now come into the legislation. Others include the Accountant in Bank Rupsates, a Cossford School, Creative Scotland, Donaldson School, East Park School, 4th Estuary Transport Authority, Hermony School, Jordan Hills School, Lewis Castle College, Newbattle Abbey College, Orkney College, Royal Blind School, Bordna Gallach, South West of Scotland Transport Partnership, Stanmore House School, T-Bridge Joint Board, the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland, West Highland College is a sample. We will send you the full list. I know that, during the consultation, some concerns were raised about data protection issues because of the smaller size now of some of the listed authorities. I just wondered, Cabinet Secretary, how those concerns are going to be addressed. The main concern was where should we set the lower number, and it has been set at 20, and that is on the advice of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, because their advice was to go below 20, you are in danger then of basically, de facto, giving data protected information about employees and putting it into the public domain. Therefore, we have adhered to the advice of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. We actually within the Scottish Government have an organisation called ScotXZ, and that basically keeps a day-to-day eye on making sure that anything that we do across the Government does not in any way endanger the data protection rights of any employee of the Government or any of its agencies. Again, their advice was sought in this, and the advice is to go below 20, you are in danger of crossing the data protection legislation. For the smaller listed authorities, there will now be an additional financial and administrative obligation. Has any attempt been made to quantify what that means for the smaller listed authorities? Before we decided to introduce the secondary legislation, we looked at whether there were other administrative ways of fulfilling the requirement without additional secondary legislation. For example, we looked at whether the public appointment system that we now have in Scotland was robust enough to provide that information without requiring additional secondary legislation. We came to the conclusion that we needed the additional secondary legislation, and we have discussed it with the relevant bodies. The additional administrative cost is very marginal indeed and does not require any supplement to anyone's budget to be able to do it effectively. They really have the information. It is simply a case of correlating it perhaps in a way that they have not done before. In terms of the computer systems and the HR systems, it is a bit of a one-off exercise, because once you have set up the computers to collate the information, it churns it out on a regular basis. Do you anticipate them having to take on extra staff? No, not at all. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. I was looking at the amendment and I said that on new regulations 6A1, the Scottish ministers must from time to time take steps 2 and a whole range of steps to take, which are quite interesting. Is it the way in which we draft regulations that we must from time to time? I am trying to understand what means must from time to time. I will bring Stuart in here, but I have to say that 17 years in here, time to time, appears on a regular basis. But must before it? Absolutely. It seems very strange. I think that the answer is that it gives you a degree of flexibility. If you are too prescriptive, let's say that you have to do it. If it is said every three months, every six months, every 12 months, then you could create a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare in terms of requiring things that are way over the top or indeed you could be underreporting if you are too prescriptive. So I think that it is about leaving it to the judgment of ministers as to when these matters need to be reported on a regular basis. But it is a fairly standard piece of phrasology in legislation. Craig, if it was silent, then without any reference from time to time, then it might be suggested that it was only an obligation to do it once, but from time to time it just produces a sense that we have to keep doing it over time picking up this information. But without set timescales, as the cabinet secretary says. I give us the intention of the Scottish ministers to do it from what would be any idea when you will be. Once this is enforced, then it's about doing it as quickly as possible. But the idea is that once some information is picked up, it doesn't just stop there, you know, wait a bit, refresh the information, so it's from time to time. I just clarify timetables. Everybody covered, the additional bodies covered the 30 bodies. Effectively, that becomes operational from April 2017, and therefore, after that, we'll obviously be monitoring the situation to make sure that they are taking the necessary steps to ensure diversity in the succession plans and in terms of recruitment of new members and new employees and so on. Because some board members are also employees, obviously, in some cases. To make sure that in the recruitment processes they are fulfilling the requirements of the legislation. John Finnie 1, please. All right, okay, okay, supplementary, okay, Annabelle? Cabinet secretary, given the delightfully flexible nature of the draftsmanship, I suppose time to time can mean now and again when it comes up that the ministers have to do it. What I'd like to know is, whatever the phrasing is, what is the sanction of the Scottish minister does not take steps to gather this information? Well, I think the Parliament then would, led by this committee, would take a very dim view of that, and the Parliament no doubt would decide what to do in respect of the minister failing to carry out their duties, as would be the normal case. I don't think we're including provisions that I can go to Barlinnie if I fail to carry out my duty. But there are other things short of Barlinnie that you can do to me. Thank you. John Finnie, please. Thank you. We'll discuss these sanctions in private, as I suspect the Cabinet secretary. Cabinet secretary, it wasn't my intention to ask you how many listed public authorities with less than 20 employees there were, but if, and I would still like to ask that, but can I supplement that? I can well understand that you seek advice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, but people may well be surprised that there are data protection issues relating to what effectively are the salaries of public officials. Would you hope that that would expand at some point in the future? We should be open and transparent about the expenditure of public money. Your salary, my salary, are known to the public. I don't see why it should be an issue. The issue under 20 is in relation to the diversity requirements. For example, it may well be that somebody doesn't want it to be known that they are disabled. And if you go below 20, the advice of the Equality and Human Rights Commission is that you could be effectively putting that information in the public domain and thereby betraying the data protection rights of that individual. Sorry, I should have clarified it. I really have a couple of questions exclusively about pay matters. I would like to clearly wish to disadvantage anyone at all on that. Sorry, the pay, in terms of the pay. Obviously, the pay, if you are on a board, everybody knows what your pay is, because we publish the information for every board member, irrespective of whether the chair, the vice chair or an ordinary member of the board, all that information is already in the public domain. I might be slowing the pickup. Are there public authorities where it isn't an individual, isn't a board member but an employee? How many are you able to say how many are there? Well, it varies across the board. For example, if you take a body like Scottish Enterprise, which is already covered by the legislation, the chief executive of Scottish Enterprise is automatically a member of the board. If you look at the health boards in Scotland, the chief executive of the health board is automatically also made a member of the board. However, there are other organisations where the chief executive is not a member of the board. There would be an attendance at the board meeting, but they are not actually in law a member of the board. In those cases, we would still publish the salary information of the chief executive, obviously. We are going to be as open as we possibly can. Even if somebody is the most senior manager, their remuneration is still in the public domain, even if they are not actually also a board member. Okay, thank you very much for that. There is an aspiration among some people, which I have included, that we address the issue of wage ratios more publicly. I think that there can be a gender element to that. Would you imagine that something that the public sector would address? Would you support that being addressed? I am very empathetic. I mean, we had the report by Will Hutton, who suggested that within private sector organisations, as well, if I remember correctly, but certainly within the public sector, that new organisations should have a pay ratio in excess of the lowest paid ratio to the highest paid ratio. I think that it was 1 to 13. If you look at what we do pay, particularly given our commitment to the living wage, I cannot think of a case where, because as a minister in every job that I have been in, I have asked for this information. I cannot think of a case where in the Scottish Government, or any of our organisations, we have a ratio of where the top paid person is getting 13 times more than the lowest paid person. I can just say that it is absolutely exact. The number of organisations that are not covered by the legislation because they employ fewer than 20 is 17, and we will send you that full list as well, John. Before we move on to agenda item 3, does anyone have any other questions that they would like to ask? Agenda item 3 calls for the committee to formally consider and recommend approval of the motion, namely S4M-15553, that the Equal Opportunities Committee recommends that the Equality Act 2010, specific duties Scotland, amendment regulations 2016, draft be approved. I would like to invite the cabinet secretary to speak to and move motion S4M-15553. I am happy to formally move the motion. Thank you to any members of any other questions. The question is that motion S4M-15553, in the name of Alex Neil, be approved. Are we all agreed? Thank you. Much indeed, once again. Thank you very much. That concludes the affirmative instrument. We will report the outcome of our consideration to the Parliament. I thank the cabinet secretary for his participation. That concludes the public part of today's meeting. Our next meeting will take place on Thursday, 24 February. I will now suspend the meeting for the committee to move into private session.