Welsh Assembly and the lost equality impact assessment

So no one thought to keep paper files as well in case this happens? I refuse to believe that there is no electronic or paper trail despite what is being claimed.

Its also incredibly unprofessional for the Head of Gender Equality Review for the Welsh Government to answer FOI's with the sign off "[a]ny of the statements or comments made above should be regarded as personal and not necessarily those of the Welsh Government, any constituent part or connected body.".

Brain seems to be spamming this over many threads that are "inconvenient" for the TRA cause.

interested? non Brian, we are not

There is a difference between private enterprises (e.g. your recently opened Primark) and our public services. Government-provided public services must carry out Equality Impact Assessments, first of all., before making policy. This is a statutory requirement.

Have trawled through my local council's website and although LGBT groups are mentioned and in some cases trans groups appear on official charts/EIAs, I can't find any mention of women being expected to share spaces as council policy. As far as I can see it's left to individual businesses. For example, the recently opened Primark has unisex changing rooms.

The fact that a Welsh Government Action Plan to advance equality for transgender people was produced in 2016.

But with no trace of any Equality Impact Assessment in either Welsh or English, that we can trace.

And no trace of consultation with women. It all talks of consultation with trans groups. No women's groups mentioned, apart from Welsh Women's Aid; and Welsh Women's Aid has a transgender bias, because it is reliant on Welsh Government funding.

The person who sent in the original FOI also sent in a complaint / request for an internal review. Their complaint was rejected without any clear rationale: "An internal review has been conducted and I am satisfied that all reasonable steps have been taken to ascertain whether the information is held by the Welsh Government.The document cannot be located.Therefore I uphold the original response in the letter reference ATISN 13028 that was emailed to you on 3 April."
In other words 'bog-off'. From the "Director, Communities & Tackling Poverty".

Honestly, I get a bit despairing when I look at the Westminster UK government these days; but now that we have the Welsh Government, I really should get off my arse and start contacting my Assembly Members.

Here's what they should have done - bit of a gap between theory & practice.
“Monitoring the Impact of our Policies and Practices
Within our Welsh specific equality duties, listed bodies must also ensure they continue to monitor the impact of their policies following an Equality Impact Assessment. Equality Impact Assessments are live and continuous assessments which last the lifecycle of the decision or policy and, in some cases beyond.
In Welsh Government, on completion of Equality Impact Assessments, an action plan and review date is required. At this review date, the original assessment of impact on protected characteristics must be reconsidered and evaluated. Where new impacts are identified,
or evidence has been gathered which supports our original assessment of impact, these are incorporated into the assessment.” From www.assembly.wales/.../gen-ld10885/gen-ld10885-e.pdf

Watching with interest..they must be held to account.

This is so bloody anti-democratic. As is the pretense that it was done, that it existed only as a single copy / single source with no related paper-trail, and then that it mysteriously disappeared without trace. How dare they behave in this way. Duplicitous and potentially damaging to the rights of women & girls.

And possibly in two languages, too, SirVix! It may have eaten two lots!

So a very hungry Welsh terrier ate the Welsh Language Impact assessment ?
I am stroking my chinny chin chin.

Surely things like this aren't completed by one person? In my company, documents go through various drafts and reviews, with comments added etc. Each version gets emailed round at each stage.

If you mean EIA then yes I can believe it was done by one person. The ones I have seen for my council are very basic tick boxes. If it doesn’t raise any issues then it probably wouldn’t even be discussed in a meeting. It would be among the meetings papers though.

(Just to make it clear that "gender reassignment" in Equality Act 2010 is a protected characteristic, but "gender" and "gender identity" are not.)

Thanks for this thread, thatdamnedwoman!

Lots (but not all) of Welsh Government stuff is translated into Welsh. So I've been googling relevant words and phrases in Welsh, just in case there might be a Welsh language version that exists somewhere, of an Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) on the Welsh Government Action Plan to advance equality for transgender people.

But no. The dog appears to have eaten the Welsh language version, if it ever existed, as well as the English language version.

In the process - it's amazing how many EIAs miss out on the protected characteristic of sex, but they include "gender" or "gender identity" (which are not protected characteristics in UK law), and sometimes "gender reassignment" as well.

Surely things like this aren't completed by one person? In my company, documents go through various drafts and reviews, with comments added etc. Each version gets emailed round at each stage.

All of those drafts and emails have mysteriously disappeared, have they.

Chinny reckon.

No words here... except, you women are amazing. Thanks for doing all the work this entails. It would be wonderful if an investigative journalist could get on board and run with this too.

This seems like just another element in the huge scandal that is gradually breaking, thanks largely to the wonderful women on this board.

Morven possibly the dog gets about a lot?

We need a list of all the EQIAs mysteriously gone missing.

That’s funny, because our local council ( not in wales ) also can’t find their EQIA for making all the single sex spaces ( toilets, showers, changing rooms ) into unisex.

What a huge coincidence.

Just placemarking, this is starting to sound like a case for the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Surely they are flouting the public sector equality duty here?

The dog ate my impact assessment?

If it happened it will be evidenced in:

• Who was commissioned or assigned to do this and who wrote the policy as obviously they would have seen the IA before they started work. (names, job titles)
• Email trails of those people during the assessment process
• Specifics on who was consulted and how, and how those decisions were made, the specific timeframes: emails and minutes of meetings
• Minutes of the meetings that planned the policy and the assessment, allocated the work, reviewed the conclusions and identified key points for the policy being written.

ALL of this should be easily retrievable from their systems if it exists. Even meeting minutes will have been emailed out and IT can pull them up.

Will be fascinating to see what happens if all the above evidences that the IA did not take place. Or even if it was raised and it was decided intentionally not to do it. Again, I'm fascinated they'd happily admit to open incompetence because it suggests they're avoiding admitting something worse publicitywise.