Keeping the focus on equality 

View from the Chair, Business Newsletter, Tuesday 8th May 2012
Michael Wardlow, Chief Commissioner, Equality Commission NI

The last few months have seen a tremendous world-wide focus on the industrial traditions of Belfast with the history and imagery of the Titanic capturing everyone’s imagination. It is a compelling story and, right from the time the ship went down, it has been used as a metaphor for issues of all kinds – be it class, human ambition, or hubris.

The fatal shortage of lifeboats is one aspect of the tragic story which pulls several of these strands together – and can remind us all of the dangers of taking too narrow a focus in any great enterprise.

As a society, we have been struggling with the effects of world-wide economic recession, and will be working within the reality of reductions in public spending and welfare reform.

So the need to foster and encourage economic growth is vital but in driving that forward we cannot close our eyes to the need to protect all people against unfairness and inequality, particularly those most vulnerable.

It has, therefore, been encouraging to see the positive approach to equality taken in the Programme for Government, which sets out the Northern Ireland Executive’s strategies and priorities until 2015.

Significantly, the Executive makes a commitment that all Government policies and programmes “will be built upon the values of equality and fairness and the ethics of inclusion and good relations”.

It is good that there is a shared recognition of the need, even in the context of an economic recession, to tackle persistent inequalities and to be alert to the danger of new inequalities arising.

We have been pleased to see several of the recommendations the Equality Commission made to Government reflected in the Programme for Government including those in relation to shared education and a childcare strategy for Northern Ireland.

The ultimate objective for any economic strategy must be the development of a more prosperous and fair society for all our people. We cannot sustain a dynamic economy if it is built on a foundation where inequalities and disadvantage are allowed to go unchallenged.

Northern Ireland already has some of the strongest and most robust equality legislation in the area of fair employment in Europe, if not the world. That has driven the development of very high standards of employment practices here and has helped redress some of the historic imbalances and inequalities in the workforce.

But inequalities, discriminatory behaviour, and disadvantage for particular groups in our society remain, and in some aspects our equality laws have dropped behind the best standards in other jurisdictions.

To this end we welcome the commitment to extend the reach of age discrimination law to the provision of goods, facilities and services but we are also seeking a commitment to a wider range of legislative reform to ensure that people in Northern Ireland have no less protection from discrimination than people in Great Britain.

In the Programme for Government the Executive has recognised that “inequalities do exist and we will work hard to eliminate these”. It is important that this commitment is fulfilled, so that equality, fairness and inclusion are developed as core principles in all the key sectors of our society.