Equality has become a dirty word

Christopher Locke looks at equality in the Police Service and hears how Home Secretary Theresa May, Minister For Women and Equality, plans to tackle inequality by treating people as individuals rather than labelling them in groups. Theresa May also outlines a new radical approach to equalities that rejects political correctness and social engineering, then she underlines the Government’s commitment to equality and fairness and its strategy

Home Secretary Theresa May

Equality issues of all kinds have been a hot topic for decades, for the police and the public. A few of our older readers may remember the days of the Women Police Service when it was a separate division as it was thought women would not be able to cope with all the duties male officers undertook.

The Women Police Service was founded in 1914 and the female officers were originally engaged in exposing and deterring prostitution and helping to catch pimps. In 1969, in preparation
for the Equal Pay Act, the Women’s Branch was dissolved and by 1973 women were fully integrated into police forces.

Since then, we have seen women working in all branches of the Police Service and holding ranks up to chief constable.

Over 30 years ago we had our first woman prime minister and
now we have women MPs and ministers, and we have our second female home secretary – so times have changed from what were male-dominated jobs for decades.

As someone who joined the police just after women police
officers were integrated into police forces, I can remember the ribbing WPCs got from the older officers who found it hard to accept that women could do the same job, especially in the
more physical areas such as dealing with fights, drunks and
violent criminals.

For younger readers, it will seem normal for women to do the same job and it would be a foolish male officer who suggests
otherwise as women regularly outperform male officers in many areas. True diversity has a way to go yet but huge progress has been made in recent years.

Speaking at the Senior Women In Policing Conference earlier
this year, DCC Jacqui Cheer of Suffolk reflected on how far the
Police Service has developed in terms of making opportunities
available for women at a senior level – making reference to a female sergeant she was inspired by in her early years as a PC.

She explained: “During the 80s, being a sergeant was often the highest rank that most women would progress to.

“Now, I am so pleased to be able to say that the most senior
woman attending our conference is Chief Constable Julie Spence of Cambridgeshire Constabulary, and that we are also
joined by female assistant chief constables, deputy chief constables and women at the most senior level of police staff.”

We now have many women holding ACPO ranks and, in the
outside world, we have more women MPs and more Black and ethnic-minority MPs than ever before. We have the first Muslim woman to serve in the Cabinet and have more openlygay
MPs than ever before.

Home Secretary Theresa May also holds the position of Minister
for Women, therefore, she has a particular interest in this field so we can expect further progress in this area.

Diversity should be about fairness – it is not right or fair
when the opportunities open to people are not based on their
ambition, ability or hard work, but on who their parents are or
where they live.

Theresa May said: “Those growing up in households that have fallen too far behind have fewer opportunities available to them and they are less able to take the opportunities that are
available. We see it with families of three generations who
have no qualifications and no jobs.

“But you do not improve the lives of those at the bottom
by limiting the ambitions and opportunities of others. Instead, we need to design intelligent policies that give those at the bottom real opportunities to make a better life for themselves.

“Achieving equality of treatment and equality of opportunity
are aims that the vast majority of people would regard as sensible and noble goals for government policy.

“But, in recent years, equality has become a dirty word
because it meant something different. It came to be associated
with the worst forms of pointless political correctness and social engineering.”

Leading from the front: Jan Berry leading protesting officers in 2009. Jan Berry became the first female chairman in the 90-year history of Police Federation and she worked with first-ever female home secretary

Turning to the equalities agenda, Theresa May wants to change people’s perception of what the Government is trying to achieve on equality.

She wants us to move away from the identity politics of the
past – where government thought it knew all about you because you ticked a box on a form or fitted into a certain category – and, instead, start to recognise that we are a nation of 62 million individuals.

And that means demonstrating that equality is for everyone by
making it a part of everyday life.

The Home Secretary wants us to move away from the arrogant
notion from government that it knows best and stresses that
government can act as a leader, a convenor and an advocate for change but, on its own, it will only ever make limited progress.

She wants to work with people, communities and businesses to
empower them to enact change.

Why equality matters
Theresa May feels we can all agree on our ultimate aim of a
better society and thinks there are three main reasons why
equality of opportunity and equal treatment will help us to achieve that better society – moral, social and economic.

Morally, everyone would agree that people have a right to be
treated equally and to live their lives free from discrimination.

Anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of discrimination knows how painful, hurtful and damaging it can be and why we should seek to eliminate it from our society. And anyone who has ever witnessed discrimination would want to stamp it out.

She believes that equality is not just important to us as individuals, it is also essential to our wellbeing as a society; strong communities are ones where everyone feels like they have got a voice and can make a difference.

And those people within communities who are allowed to fall
too far behind are more likely to get caught up in social problems like crime, addiction and unemployment.

“Economically, equality of opportunity is vital to our prosperity,” she explains, “it is central to building a strong, modern economy that benefits from the talents of all of its members.”

The National Audit Office recently estimated that the overall
cost to the economy from the failure to fully use the talents of
ethnic minorities could be nearly seven billion pounds.

Better use of women’s skills could be worth 15 to 23 billion
pounds each year; so the Government believes it can no longer
afford to keep missing out on the economic benefits that greater equality could bring.

Theresa May argues that equality is not an add-on or an optional extra that we should only care about when money is plentiful – it matters morally, it is important to our wellbeing as a society and it is crucial to our economy.

“Despite the problem we still face, we have come a long way.
As recently as 1967, people like the war hero Alan Turing were
prosecuted for homosexual acts between consenting adults and, as recently as 1968, it was legal to refuse housing, employment or public services to people because of their ethnic background.

“As recently as 1975, it was legal to pay women less than men
for exactly the same work.”

Old injustices outlawed
Fortunately, these old injustices have been outlawed and we now have some of the most comprehensive equality laws in the world, but we still have a way to go.

Decades after equal-pay laws were passed, the full-time gender pay gap for women stands at over 12%, increasing to 22% if parttime employees are included.

Despite new legislation on hate crime, many gay people still suffer from intolerance. Despite legislation like the Disability Discrimination Act, around a third of disabled people still experience difficulties in accessing goods or services.

And despite some of the longest-standing and broadest-based race-equality laws in Europe, some ethnic minorities still suffer inequalities in education, employment and health – estimates
suggest that at least four in 10 Black men could be on the
National DNA Database.

The Home Secretary says that you can’t solve a problem as
complex as inequality in one legal clause and you can’t make people’s lives better by simply passing a law saying that they should be made better.

On dealing with the deficit, she feels that it needs to be
done carefully so all parts of society pay their fair share and
said: “There are over 31 million women in the UK – each of them is an individual and each of them will be affected differently by the changes we are making.

“Consider the woman who runs a small business and who will
benefit from our corporation tax changes. Consider the woman
who is an employer and who can keep all of her staff because we scrapped the proposed increase in employer national insurance contributions.

“Part of the problem with this old approach to equalities was
that it categorised millions of people according to what box they ticked on a form. It stopped treating people like individuals and, instead, viewed them as part of some amorphous herd.

“The idea that as a person you are defined solely by your gender, by your race or by your religion is as patronising as it is absurd.

“Of course I recognise that people can face discrimination
because of who they are and disadvantage because of where
they’re from. And we will still need specific action to deal with
specific problems.

“But we need to move beyond defining people simply by their
membership of a particular group; people are individuals. Recognition of this simple fact allows us to start looking at the problem differently and, importantly, to start looking at the solutions differently.

Jacqui Cheer: during the 80s being a sergeant was often highest rank most women would progress to

“We need our equalities policy to work with the grain of human
nature, not against it. That means government no longer dictating how people should behave. Instead, we need to put in place an architecture to support business and wider society to do the right thing.”

New approach
Mrs May said a new approach to tackling the causes of inequality would be taken, using a targeted action to deal with its consequences.

“And we will ensure accountability by shining the light of transparency on organisations, allowing their performance to be challenged and acting as a driver for change.

“Of course, money still matters. Nobody is pretending that it
doesn’t. But how you spend that money is just as important as how much you spend. To make a difference, spending needs to be directed at key interventions that will really help to alter someone’s life chances.

“So, despite the difficult decisions we have had to make to
deal with the deficit, we have prioritised spending on early interventions and on schools.”

“EQUALITY HAS BECOME A DIRTY WORD BECAUSE
IT CAME TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH THE WORST
FORMS OF POINTLESS POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING”

Over the course of the spending review, over £7 billion will
spent on a new fairness premium, which will give all disadvantaged two-year-olds an entitlement to 15 hours a week of pre-school education.

It also includes a £2.5 billion per year pupil premium to support
disadvantaged children. These measures, combined with plans for extra health visitors and a more focused sure start, will give children the best possible start in life.

“So money is important, but there are causes of inequality
that cannot simply be solved by spending more and more money. Cultures, attitudes and behaviours can all create barriers to equal opportunities that government alone cannot solve.

“Government needs to create a framework within which individuals, communities and businesses can bring about change.

“Take flexible working. Introducing the right to request
flexible working for some was a positive step. But by limiting that right to parents and carers, it perpetuated the idea that flexible working is some form of special treatment.

“We will extend the right to request to all, helping to shift behaviour away from the traditional nine-to-five model of work that can act as a barrier to so many people and that often doesn’t make sense for many modern businesses.

“Crucially, rather than dictating what employers and employees
should do, our approach will provide them with the choice to do
what is best for them; and some of our best companies are already taking up the baton.”

Tesco is now offering its 340-thousand employees the chance
to do more hours that fit in around their other commitments.
And some of Britain’s most innovative and successful small
and medium-sized enterprises are showing that flexible working
is good for their businesses as well.

Theresa May said that the new system of flexible parental leave will also provide a framework in which parents are able to make the right choices for their family.

The current division of maternity and paternity leave limits
choice, but it is also a stateendorsed perpetuation of the
stereotype that women should take on the lion’s share of caring responsibilities when a couple starts a family.

“And we have consulted on removing the default retirement
age, giving employees and employers the option to decide what
works for them.

“So our approach is not about government dictating what people and businesses should do – it’s about giving people and businesses the chance to choose what is right for them. The current framework is not fair, and that’s why we’re changing it.”

Consequences
The Home Secretary expressed that the sad reality is that whilst action is taken to deal with the causes of inequality, too many people are living with its day-today consequences – there are areas where direct government action can make a difference.

True diversity: three decades ago neither of these two officers could have hoped to hold down such jobs in the police because in the early Seventies women police didn’t have parity with male officers and the number of ethnic-minority officers recruited in forces was very low

“The DNA database currently treats thousands of innocent
citizens like criminals. And this can have a disproportionate effect on some of those already at risk of feeling alienated from the state – like young Black men who have been repeatedly stopped and searched and even arrested without ever being found guilty of a crime.

“So we will introduce a new system for holding people’s DNA;
destroying the records of the innocent whilst putting all those
who have committed a crime on to the database. We can also ensure that we take tough action against those who carry out discrimination and hatred.

“We will give schools the power to take tough action to tackle
bullying, including homophobic and transphobic bullying. And
we are conducting research on how to prevent and respond to
bullying of disabled children and children with special educational needs.”

With regard to correcting historical injustices, the Home
Secretary announced that measures in the Freedom Bill will be
introduced so that it is possible for those with old convictions for consensual gay sex to apply for their record to be deleted from the Police National Computer so they won’t show up on criminalrecord checks.

Enhanced transparency
To drive change across all of these areas, organisations need
to be more transparent and more accountable. Recently,
pay secrecy clauses being used to hide unfair behaviour in paying men and women differently were stopped, which enhanced transparency.

“We reshaped plans for the public-sector Equality Duty so it
now focuses on providing information to enable citizens to hold
public bodies to account – that enhanced transparency.

“And across government when we published details of salaries,
of contracts awarded and of organisational structures, that enhanced transparency. We want the private and voluntary sectors to follow our lead.

“As we enhance transparency, we shine a light on the behaviour of government and businesses. That empowers people to hold organisations to account for their behaviour. And that, in turn, encourages organisations to change their behaviour.

“But we want to go further. We will empower local community
groups, faith groups, charities and other civic organisations to
become more involved in delivering public services.

“These groups are often better at drawing in underrepresented
people than government, opening up delivery of public services to a broader range of participants.

“Services that are designed by the people who use them are
more appropriate for individuals, more responsive to their needs
and more effective in delivering the outcomes we want.

“From December 2010 we will be testing the Right to Control in
five initial trailblazer areas. The Right is based on the principle
that disabled people are the experts in their own lives and are
best-placed to decide what support they need and how it should be delivered.

“Disabled people taking part will have a legal right to be told
how much support they are eligible to receive, to decide and
agree the outcomes they want to achieve and will have choice
and control over how they receive support.

“And we are providing extra support to tackle the particular
obstacles faced by disabled people who want to become
MPs, councillors or other elected officials and we are establishing internships in all government departments for young people from ethnic-minority backgrounds.

Conclusion
“As a nation we have come a long way, but there is much still to do; and it doesn’t just take a minister and a law to change Britain and to build a fairer society.

“In the end, it will take all of us working together to build the
strong, modern and fair Britain that we all want to see.”

If you have a view on diversity within the Police Service email
chrislocke@constabulary.org.uk

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