improving government service delivery to minority ethnic ... - NCCRI

Conclusion
The Race Relations Amendment Act 2000 has undoubtedly brought major changes to the race equality agenda
in Scotland. The requirement on all public bodies to assess the relevance all their functions to race equality and
to be proactive in pursuit of race equality in respect of all those functions has undoubtedly generated a great
deal of activity.
199_CRE submission
to Scottish Parliament’s
European and External
relations Committee:
21 June 2005.
A criticism of the RRAA has been that it has generated mountains of paper and policies but not necessarily a
corresponding amount of action. Without doubt it has raised the profile of race equality and all public bodies
now have a race equality scheme. The enthusiasm with which they are pursued does however depend on the
commitment of leadership in the organisation as well as the skills and competence to implement them at all
levels of the organisation.
The demography of Scotland is rapidly changing. Not only is there an aging population but there are serious
skills and labour shortages in many sectors. The combination of these two factors means that Scotland
is positively encouraging migration to Scotland through the Fresh Talent Initiative. In addition to the BME
communities that, by and large, have been here for several generations, there are increasing numbers of new
migrant workers arriving from the accession states.
Mainstreaming is a key strategy for the Scottish Executive and the mainstreaming agenda has had an impact on
policy development. However, for many in the BME voluntary sector, mainstreaming is seen as a paper exercise
that has brought about little real change. There is still evidence of what the CRE describe as the “ethnic
penalty.” 199 The discriminatory attitudes and experiences that are faced by the BME communities, including
Gypsies/Travellers and refugees will not make Scotland an attractive place to live unless the issues of racism
and discrimination are addressed.
Because of the legislation described in this chapter, service providers recognise the need to be proactive in
pursuit of race equality and they recognise the need to be transparent in their actions. However, many are
still struggling with identifying and prioritising the appropriate actions. The CRE Scotland has moved from
a position of providing public bodies with individual tailored feedback to a position of expecting compliance
and it is now ready to move into its enforcement role. The role of Inspectorates is crucial in relation to the
mainstreaming agenda. There is concern that with the advent of the CEHR there will be a dilution of focus and
that issues of race equality may become marginalised within the broader agenda of equality and diversity.
While there is evidence of much good practice that targets the BME communities there is a need to move from
a position of specialist provision that is not securely funded to one where it is recognised that the processes for
delivering appropriate services to the whole community requires differential methods.
Within the BME communities there is experience of targeted services being delivered as pilot projects that
do not go on to receive mainstream funding, or of research being conducted into the communities’ needs and
then there not being adequate funding for work to meet those needs. At the conference, Lesley Irving from the
Scottish Executive outlined new funding opportunities: