I’m grateful to the commission—in particular the Welsh commissioner, June Milligan, having taken over from Ann Beynon, who I’d like to thank for her work in that role—for this report, ‘Towards a Fairer Wales’. I think it’s important to understand that this report is from the Wales committee that is chaired by the Welsh commissioner as the lead officer of the EHRC, who supports it, and there’s a number of part-time people on that committee. But the vast bulk of the EHRC work happens on a Great Britain-wide basis across strands focused on—really, stemming from the previous commission, the Equal Opportunities Commission, which previously was focused on gender equality. The Commission for Racial Equality and Disability Rights Commission were rolled into this new EHRC. There is a disabled committee as there is a Wales and Scotland committee, but the idea of the EHRC was to focus on equality as a principle, rather than having competing commissions and bodies pushing different groups.

I think it would be wise for the Assembly to assess how that commission is working in terms of devolution. We have that particular Wales committee. There’s also a duty on the commission to report on what it’s doing in Wales in its own annual report; I can only find a very small paragraph on that, which then just links through to who’s on the Wales committee on their main website.

When we look at the seven key challenges that are identified for Wales, what I think would be valuable is if we were able to compare how we were doing on equality on these various perspectives in Wales compared to Scotland and compared to English regions, and whether the seven areas that have been identified are identified because they’re particularly important equality issues, or whether it’s because we have particular issues and challenges in Wales that aren’t shared elsewhere in the UK.

On its website, the commission says that it’s Great Britain’s national equality body, but I don’t think many people would argue that Great Britain is a nation; I can see why Wales or the UK would have a national equality body. But I think it’s important to understand how the Wales committee is working. It is advising the Welsh Government and also public bodies across Wales, and certainly some useful activity is identified in this report. But it’s also there to ensure that the EHRC on a Great Britain basis is taking into account the Welsh context and particular needs in Wales. I think it would be useful to explore the extent to which it’s doing that, and comparative data I think would be very useful to report back to the Assembly for future years.

For instance, when we look at its particular objectives for Wales, it wants to close the attainment gaps by raising standards for children receiving free school meals, children with special educational needs, looked-after children and Gypsy and Traveller children. When it speaks about free school meals, is that a particular problem in Wales—is the attainment gap greater in a Welsh context? Because I know in a UK-wide context, I think there’s been some narrowing in the free school meals gap, but that’s particularly been driven by very sharp improvements within London. Are there lessons we can learn there?

In encouraging fair recruitment, development and reward in employment, the Wales committee says it wants to increase the employment rates of young people, disabled people, ethnic minority people and Muslim people. It then goes on to say it wants to close pay gaps, focusing on young people, ethnic minority people and women. So, we see that young people and ethnic minority people are identified as areas of particular concern in both those areas, but its focus on closing pay gaps is for women; it doesn’t share that focus for employment rates, and, on employment rates, its particular concerns are disabled people and Muslim people. Are we not also concerned about the extent to which disabled people may be getting lower pay in the workforce, and the extent to which that may be a particular problem in Wales?

Similarly, when it refers to Muslim people, we see identification of particular groups who have a protected characteristic under the equality Act, but not necessarily a recognition of the wider context. For instance, the employment rate amongst Muslim men is a modest amount lower than it is amongst other men, but there’s a very, very large gap amongst Muslim women. Is that a particular concern of the commission and an area where it wants action by Government and public sector bodies? I just feel perhaps that we can look at this in a broader context, and also understand that we’re concerned about promoting equality and equality of opportunity more generally, rather than only about specific groups who happen to be identified in the equality Act. For example, in Wales, we’ve a number of communities where we have lower achievement or there are particular difficulties with employment or wages, often in white working-class areas, and I think we need to make it clear that we are as concerned about improving opportunities and outcomes there as we are with other areas that may perhaps have been identified in this report. But, overall, I welcome the report and thank those involved for their work.