The Equality and Human Rights Commission has set out a programme of work to tackle entrenched inequalities and protect the human rights of everyone in Britain, including people in some of the most vulnerable situations across England, Scotland and Wales.
The Commission’s Business Plan for 2014/15 sets out a range of projects it will undertake over the next year. Particular areas include:
• Safeguarding people with mental health conditions in State detention. • Investigating concerns about possible unsafe working environments, discrimination, non-payment of wages and forced labour in the cleaning sector. • Ensuring job adverts do not discriminate against groups of workers, for example by targeting those of a particular nationality. • Following up recent concerns about failures leading to poor care and risks to patient safety, by working to raise levels of compliance with equality and human rights standards in health and social care. • Tackling the recognised significant under reporting of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender hate crime. • Contributing to work to reduce incidents of female genital mutilation. • Seeking improvements for disabled people in access to banking services and opportunities to participate in sport. • Tackling the ongoing under-representation of women on corporate boards by improving recruitment practice in FTSE 350 companies
Level Playing Field would like to point out that the new business plan from the EHRC covers our topic of work:
2.1.3 Increasing participation of under-represented groups in sport:Some groups, particularly women and girls, Asians and Muslims and disabled people, have disproportionately low rates of participation in sport – as players, spectators, volunteers, officials and employees. Sport has an important role in health, social interaction and inclusion and can help build skills and self-confidence which can help people succeed in other areas of life.The EHRC want to address the barriers which prevent people participating, including by improving the physical and cultural accessibility of sporting venues and tackling discriminatory attitudes and behaviours.
They will use UK Sport’s Sports Equality Standard framework to work with a range of sports’ governing bodies across Great Britain to deliver and evaluate a range of projects and develop a suite of practical resources to improve practice, with the aim of increasing the number of sports bodies achieving the Intermediate or Advanced Equality Standard over the next two years.
This section can be found on page 17 of the report. The full business plan can be downloaded here.