Is Britain Fairer? 2015 - evidence from Scotland

The Commission has a statutory duty under Section 12 of the equality Act 2006 to monitor progress towards equality and human rights and to report on this progress every five years. In 2010 the Commission published the first of these reports - How Fair is Britain? The Commission is currently updating How Fair is Britain? ready for publication in Autumn 2015.

The findings of the report will inform Governments, inform the Commission's strategic plan and influence the priorities of other organisations.

To fulfil this statutory duty, the Commission has developed its measurement framework (MF) to collect evidence on equality and human rights The MF, which covers England, Scotland and Wales, formed the basis of the Commission's first report to Parliament, How fair is Britain in 2010. The 2015 report  - Is Britain Fairer? - will incorporate evidence from the our Measurement Framework and other sources. It will also integrate evidence on human rights.

The evidence gathered and analysed for the report covers England, Scotland and Wales and will be analysed at GB and country level. It has been structured in 10 domains[3]  and these are:

• Life
• Health
• Physical security
• Legal security
• Education and learning
• Standard of living
• Productive and valued activities
• Individual, family and social life
• Identity, expression and self-respect
• Participation and voice

This will be a mix of qualitative and quantitative evidence and will be reported in a set of evidence papers (one for each domain) and will cover:

• Structure: Overview of legislative and regulatory frameworks
• Process: Analysis of evidence and effectiveness of systems
• Outcomes: Key indicators of people's treatment, experiences and outcomes

Initially the evidence and the domain papers will be quality assured internally, and then externally, by a series of ten GB seminars, six Scotland seminars and six Wales seminars. It is anticipated that the quality assurance will benefit from the contribution of experts familiar with the Scotland context and data.