Scotland, the UK and Brexit by Gerry Hassan & Russell Gunson

Author:Gerry Hassan & Russell Gunson [Hassan, Gerry & Gunson, Russell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912147182
Goodreads: 36528945
Publisher: Luath Press Ltd
Published: 2017-07-03T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Keeping up the pressure. Equality and human rights in Scotland post-Brexit

Angela O’Hagan

SCOTLAND SINCE DEVOLUTION has seen many significant changes in how its people lead their lives, the freedoms and rights that they now enjoy compared to a scant generation ago, and the requirements on public institutions to promote equality and human rights. While we are a long way from an equalities utopia, the protections from discrimination under the UK legislation, and the promotion of equalities under successive Scottish governments have arguably characterised political, legislative and attitudinal change in Scotland in the last 20 years.

We cannot forget the ferocity that met the proposed repeal of Section 28/Clause 2a in 1999-2000, but can now set it in the context of same sex marriage legislation, and funding support for a range of organisations engaged in the representation and support of LBGTQI people that are firmly part of civic and institutional Scotland. The discourse on gender equality in Scotland has long been shaped and informed by a vibrant feminist movement that under devolution has resulted in conceptual and practical advances in the recognition and institutional response to domestic abuse and other forms of gender-based violence. Scotland is one of the few countries in the European Union, and the only part of the UK, with a commitment to equality analysis in the national budget process and that produces an Equality Budget Statement.

In the face of withdrawal from the EU arguably none of these rights and protections are threatened. Legal protection from discrimination on a number of specified protected characteristics is provided under the Equality Act 2010: an act of the Westminster parliament. Schedule 5 of Scotland Act contains a provision to ‘promote’ equal opportunities but competence to legislate against discrimination in employment, for example, continues to be reserved to Westminster. Between that rock and the hard Brexit sits the Equality Act 2010 with its ‘very good protections’ (SP OR EHRIC, 3 November 2016) that include provisions beyond the European minima.

It has been suggested that preserving the Equality Act 2010 and the provisions extended through the Scotland Act 2016 do offer some safeguards to the status quo protections from discrimination. However, many of these provisions have come into UK law through membership of the EU. Indeed, ‘EU Law [has been] the engine that hauled the development of UK anti-discrimination law’ (HL 88/HC695 2016-17, p.7.) Maintaining the ‘gold plated’ provisions that include, for example, rights on maternity and family leave provision in the context of the daily realities of pregnancy and maternity discrimination (EHRC, 2016) and a current UK government that has offered no assurances or indication of its intentions to preserve these rights is far from secure.

Claims have been made that equalities legislation and protection have become so culturally acceptable and embedded in public attitudes in Scotland and the wider UK that any attempt to revoke or repeal existing provisions would not succeed. There are two significant caveats to that thinking. Business interests, along with what the UK or other governments are prepared to give away in the interests of profit, and the removal of any suggested impediment to employers’ rights.

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