Equality Bill Event

On 17th March, the Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) hosted an event for employers to discuss the Equality Bill and in specific, its impact of a new equality duty on public body procurement, which stipulates, under secondary legislation, that public bodies must require their suppliers to comply with primary equality legislation to win contracts.

Around 75 delegates attended the event, held at the Queens Hotel in Leeds, and facilitated by Viv Duke, CEO of Equality AS and member of CREC's Flexible Working Group.  Briefings were given by Alan Christie, Director of Policy for the EHRC, on the business case for equality in procurement and Alison Pritchard, Head of Strategy for the Goverment Equalities Office, on the equality bill and procurement.  The briefings were followed by presentations from Trevor Higgins, Regional Partnership Director for BT and Chair of CREC's Flexible Working Group, who spoke on behalf of CREC's Chair, Zulfi Hussain, about supplier diversity, shining light on BT's own success in attaining supplier diversity, Janet Lakhani, CEO for Committed to Equality (C2E), who spoke about equality standards and their place in the public sector supply chain and a Q&A session hosted by Anj Handa, Commercial Director for CREC and Head of Employment & Skills Partnerships for Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce.

During the second half of the event, delegates participated in a series of workshops, allowing them the opportunity to share their opinions and issues.  Feedback from the workshops was forthcoming, and indicated that the business case for diversity still needs to be sold to many small to meduim businesses, clarification on the specific duties supported by ongoing information and advice was desired, and a standard national accreditation would be positively received, or else a revised framework into which the existing independently developed accreditations could fit.

The duty on public bodies is in line to become enforcable from April 2011, which leaves procurers and suppliers one year to set out and begin implementing their revised objectives.  The substantial questions raised during the day have prompted Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber to go forward and explore the issue further.