Progress report

Long-term Challenges

There are deep, entrenched and long-standing inequalities within society. These inequalities are aggravated by UK Government decisions on public expenditure and welfare reform.  There is a strong link between these inequalities and poverty; people’s life chances are often heavily shaped before birth and in their early years.

The pay difference between men and women has been gradually narrowing, and the pace has increased from 2008. Education and skills are important factors in how people fare in the labour market, and disabled people are significantly less qualified than others. Educational attainment among pupils with Special Educational Needs improved slightly between 2009-10 and 2010-11 but is still well below average.

Our Actions

The Welsh Government was the first in Britain to bring in specific equality duties to help devolved public authorities meet the general equality duty in the Equality Act 2010 - to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations.  These specific duties came into force in April 2011.

In line with these duties, in April 2012 we published our Strategic Equality Plan setting objectives for tackling inequalities based on sound evidence and extensive engagement, and the actions we will take, across all Welsh Government departments, to meet them. These include: addressing inequality in education, employment and skills outcomes; reducing health inequalities; increasing the provision of affordable childcare; and addressing under-representation in public appointments.

Chapter 8 of the Programme for Government will be updated next year to build in the objectives and actions in the Strategic Equality Plan, with appropriate indicators to track progress. Poverty and inequality are closely linked and our Strategic Equality Plan and Tackling Poverty Action Plan will dovetail.

Other progress this year:

• We have acted on findings from evaluation of Community Cohesion funding and from April 2012 we are funding a new network of Community Cohesion Officers working with local authorities.
• We have established better arrangements for engaging with partners through the new Women’s Equality Network and the new Race Forum.
• In September we published a Framework for Action on the issues faced by Gypsy and Traveller families. The number of authorised Gypsy and Traveller sites has increased and changed funding arrangements have encouraged more applications from Local Authorities for new or improved sites.
• In July 2011 we published a Strategy and Action Plan for asylum seekers and refugees.
• We are well-advanced in developing a Framework for Action for Independent Living for disabled people, based on extensive engagement.