FAIR CHANCES FOR ALL: BUILDING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PUBLIC SERVICES

Improving schools and safeguarding children Bill

Creating world class standards in schools, listening to parents, giving them more information and acting to protect vulnerable children by:

• delivering the commitments in the forthcoming Schools White Paper including:
• a new set of guarantees to an individually tailored education for each child and their parents;
• backing head teachers to enforce good behaviour with measures to clarify parents responsibilities to sit alongside their entitlements;
• an accountability framework and school improvement strategies for all schools, underpinned by a new School Report Card;
• giving parents a greater say over the range of schools in their local area;
• clarifying the role of Ofsted and other inspectorates in inspecting Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) and enable information sharing for LSCB purposes;
• improving monitoring arrangements for children educated at home;
• helping to tackle anti-social behaviour through powers of intervention with Youth Offending Teams that are considered to be failing - otherwise putting young people and/or local communities at risk;
• putting in place a new framework, based on the position in youth courts, to enable the media to report the substance of family proceedings whilst protecting the identities of families and providing the courts with discretion to disapply this safeguard where it is in the public interest and safe to do so.

Equality Bill (click here)

Strengthening equality law and fighting discrimination by:

• banning age discrimination by those providing services and public functions. The Bill would ban harmful discrimination but would not affect products or services for older people where age based treatment is justified or beneficial e.g. priority flu vaccinations for over age 65s;
• placing a new duty on Ministers, departments and key public bodies such as local authorities and NHS bodies to consider what action they could take to reduce the socio-economic inequalities people face;
• placing a new Equality Duty on public bodies which would require them to consider the needs of diverse groups in the community when designing and delivering public services so that people can get fairer opportunities and better public services;
• using the power of public procurement to help achieve the Government's public policy objectives on equality.  A common approach could reduce burdens on business applying for public sector contracts;
• including a power to require reporting on the gender pay gap by private sector employers with more than 250 employees. This power would not be used before 2013 and would only be used if sufficient progress on reporting had not been made. The Bill also includes powers to require public authorities to report on equality issues. The Government is consulting on requiring public authorities with more than 150 employees to report annually on their gender pay gap and their ethnic minority and disability employment rates. The Bill would ban secrecy clauses that prevent employees discussing their pay with colleagues;
• extending the scope to use positive action, by giving employers the choice to make their workforce more diverse when selecting between two job candidates who are equally suitable. It would also allow political parties to do more to increase diversity, for example by extending the use of all-women shortlists;
• The Bill generally applies to England, Scotland and Wales. The socio-economic duty applies to England and Wales only.

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