Chamber and committees

We have no plans to draw up a national strategy in Scotland. Work is already being done in several areas to encourage women into traditional male-dominated occupations and vice-versa. Work to date has been focused on construction, child care, the police, teacher education and gender stereotyping in schools. We believe that continuing to implement the Equality Strategy with the aim of mainstreaming equality throughout the policy making process, across the different relevant portfolio areas would be more effective. This provides a means by which action can be put in place by strategic collaborative partnership working, without the need to develop individual strategies to tackle specific areas of policy. It remains our opinion that collaborative partnership working will be far more productive in achieving demonstrable results in gender segregation. The Executive is committed to working with Equal Opportunities Commission Scotland, Scottish Enterprise and Careers Scotland to tackle occupational segregation in the workplace.

Investors in People (IiP) recognises the importance and benefits of a flexible working approach and this already forms part of the scheme. Following a review of the IiP Standard in 2004, work-life balance and flexible working have been included in, and are now covered by, the new IiP Profile Tool. The tool allows an organisation to establish how well it measures up to the IiP Standard. It also gives an organisation the opportunity to benchmark itself with its peers. In this way, the tool will show how good that organisation is in comparison to others and where further improvements could be made.

As a result of feedback from employers, IiP also introduced the Work-Life Balance Model in 2003. This model, which can be used by organisations both within and outside the IiP scheme, encourages organisations to use work-life balance solutions to improve the way they do business and make their organisation a more attractive place to work. Flexible working might be one of the solutions adopted by an organisation using the model.

The Scottish Executive is committed to encouraging the growth of flexible working and welcomes the Equal Opportunities Commission’s (EOC) report. We understand the detail of the EOC report is still being considered by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) along with other responses to the recent “Work and Families: Choice and Flexibility” consultation exercise. Employment Relations is a reserved matter on which DTI lead. We await their response to the consultation including the case for extending the law to carers of adults and parents of older children.

We have no plans to subsidise specific training for small businesses on the management of flexible working. However, learndirect Scotland for business, local enterprise companies and the Business Gateway offer businesses advice on their training requirements. Business Learning Accounts (BLAs) are being piloted and offer financial support, for business growth related training, to small businesses which do not traditionally invest in training.

There is an informalarrangement currently in place between the Scottish Children’s ReporterAdministration (SCRA) and the Home Office through which SCRA will notify theHome Office when a referral is received involving a child from an asylum seekerfamily.

We are considering the roleof the SCRA as part of on-going discussions about the development of a protocolwith the Home Office which will include clarifying the role of Scottishchildren’s services in future removals of asylum seeker families with children.

We are in regular contactwith the Home Office on a wide range of issues but it would be inappropriate tocomment on the detailed circumstances in an individual case.

Discussions are underway betweenthe Executive and the Home Office on a protocol to ensure that future removalsinvolving families with children are carried out in a sensitive and humane wayand that Scottish children’s services are involved in advance of such removals.

No. The Executive does notpublish details of our communications with the UK Government about individualcases.

The Equal Opportunities Commission's proposal deals mainly with reserved matters such as flexible working, paid parental leave and pension issues. The Executive is working strategically across a wide range of policy areas to improve support for Scotland's parents, children and families.

The Executive welcomes this report from the Equal Opportunities Commission. The Equality Bill currently at Westminster will introduce a Gender Duty on public bodies. Whilst the precise form and scope of the duty has yet to be decided, (a consultation was launched on October 4 2005 and will run until January 12 2006) it is expected to include a requirement for key public authorities, including the Executive, to conduct and publish a gender impact assessment, covering all major proposed developments in employment/policy/services. A duty to assess policies for their impact on race is already in place and a duty to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people will come into effect from December 2006. The Executive is currently working on appropriate tools and guidance which will enable equality impact assessments to be conducted across all of the six equality strands.

The Executive's adult vocational skills programme for unemployed people, Training for Work, is available to people aged over 50 from the first day of unemployment. There are a number of local initiatives, supported by Executive and European funds, to help the unemployed, such as the Full Employment Areas Initiative in Glasgow and Genderwise programmes to close the gender gap in the labour market. The UK Government's Action Teams for Jobs offer early entry to employment support to people aged over 50 in Dundee, East Ayrshire, Glasgow, North Lanarkshire, Highlands and Islands and West Dunbartonshire.