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

Although the power to legislate on equal opportunities is reserved to the UK Government, the Scottish
Parliament has the power to encourage equal opportunities, as well as the power to impose duties on Scottish
public bodies and cross-border public authorities in relation to their Scottish functions.
In 1999 the Scottish Parliament established an Equal Opportunities Committee as one of its eight mandatory
committees. The committee has responsibility for considering and reporting on equal opportunities issues and
monitoring equal opportunities in Parliament. The Parliament’s standing orders also require that all proposed
legislation presented to the Executive is accompanied by a statement of impact on equal opportunities. The
Parliament has also used its powers to place more specific duties on certain bodies in respect of aspects of
education, housing, care and social services.
139_Public Health
News (2005),
Why is Scotland’s
population shrinking
and ageing?- a new
research initiative.
(18 April 2005)
Currently there is no Race Equality Strategy for Scotland. There is a generic Equality Strategy, first published in
2000. A Review of Race Equality in Scotland, published in November 2005, introduced a number of measures
aimed at reducing discrimination and challenging racism. The Review also announced that there would be a
Race Equality Strategy and Action Plan announced in the autumn of 2006.
Demographics
Scotland has a long tradition of immigration with the first recorded Africans in Scotland in the Court of King
James IV in 1505. However, more recently, from the mid twentieth century onwards we have seen increased
migration to Scotland. People from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Caribbean and Nigeria were recruited to
come to Britain to fill labour shortages and many settled in Scotland. The largest community is the community
of Pakistani origin and the largest Pakistani Community is well established in Glasgow. The 2001 census
showed that 47% of the people of Pakistani origin in Scotland were born in Scotland. There is also an
established Chinese community in Scotland. The pattern of self-employment within the Chinese community
(mainly in the restaurant business) means that as a community they are scattered throughout Scotland, and in
the rural areas the Chinese community is the largest visible ethnic minority group. A Chinese community has
been established in Glasgow since the 1960s.
In Scotland the Scottish Executive have produced an analysis of ethnicity in the 2001 Census which
consolidates all the data in relation to ethnicity in Scotland and which highlights key socio-economic data
related to housing, the labour market, health care and education. 139 This is an important publication in the
context of this study and provides policy makers and service providers a basis from which to benchmark the
socio-economic progress of minority ethnic groups in Scotland in Intercensal periods. As a consequence, in
this study there is significantly more detailed data available for Scotland than for Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Based on data from the 2001 Census, the size of the minority ethnic population was just over 100,000,
which accounts for 2% of the total population of Scotland. (5.062 million in 2001). Pakistanis are the largest
minority ethnic group, followed by Chinese, Indians and those of mixed ethnic backgrounds. Over 70% of the
total minority ethnic population were Asian: Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese or other South Asian and
over 12% of the population describe their ethnicity as ‘Mixed’. The size of the minority ethnic population has
increased since the 1991 Census. Whilst the total population increase between 1991 and 2001 was 1.3% the
minority ethnic population increased by 62.3%.