4. Will the Deputy Minister make a statement on the implementation of the Equality Act 2010 in Wales? OAQ54259

Last week, a symposium that I attended, organised with the Equality and Human Rights Commission, explored how the Welsh-specific regulations on the public sector equality duty could be strengthened. We're also commencing the socioeconomic duty, Part 1 of the equality Act.

Thank you for your answer, Deputy Minister. Transport for Wales has to, of course, ensure that reasonable adjustments for disabled people are in place following the Act. Now, reasonable adjustment for a train where you could sit for over three hours between Aberystwyth and Birmingham International is simply, of course, a properly designed disabled toilet. It's the case at the moment that many disabled people can't use that facility, which, I'm sure, you would agree is totally unacceptable.

Last week, I was pleased to hear that the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales will be writing to Transport for Wales on this issue, but I wonder if you could add your weight to this, Minister, as the Minister responsible for implementing the Equality Act 2010, to ensure that reasonable steps are taken to rectify this situation at the earliest opportunity.

Certainly, Russell George, I will be backing the Minister for transport in respect of access, not just to that particular service, but in terms of the opportunities that Transport for Wales has to improve access. And, of course, we also have the opportunity with the new rolling stock to really be transformational in the way that we deliver on that.

Minister, the Welsh Government has taken a very significant lead in agreeing to implement section 1 of the Equality Act 2010. There's been a campaign for many, many years to try and get this implemented with England and is still awaited. I wonder if you could outline the extent to which the socioeconomic duty will be at the core of Welsh Government policy, bearing in mind the scale of working people who are living in poverty at the moment, living on poor terms and conditions, but also the inequality that arises within that grouping of people as well.

I thank Mick Antoniw for that supplementary question, because it was mentioned, as you know, last week by the First Minister in the social partnership statement that we would enact Part 1 of the Equality Act 2010—the socioeconomic duty. In fact, this is a priority for me. In terms of taking this forward, to enact it by the end of this calendar year is our target. I'm meeting tomorrow with organisations to look at the ways in which the socioeconomic duty fits in with other legislative responsibilities and duties of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, but looking at where we can strengthen equality and human rights, and the socioeconomic duty plays a part in that. But I think the key point is that this will be new guidance that will ensure that we tackle the social disadvantage in our communities. It will require Welsh public bodies to make decisions—this goes back to Delyth's question earlier on—that tackle unequal outcomes caused by socioeconomic disadvantage. And that has been missing from the toolkit that we have to tackle poverty and inequality and to make sure that it is part of the duties of our public bodies.