Why the socio-economic duty (and its meaningful implementation) matters
• Enactment of the socioeconomic duty under section 1 of the Equality Act.
• Safeguarding the intention of the duty by ensuring guidance on best practice implementation and monitoring is developed in partnership with people who have lived experience of socio-economic disadvantage.
The Poverty2Solutions award-winning collaboration merges lived and learned expertise of poverty and socio-economic disadvantage to revolutionise policymaking. We are determined break through outdated approaches by using participatory methods that prioritise people at the core.
We have been calling on the UK government to ‘do your duty for equality, that is: enact the socio-economic duty and develop guidance on best practice implementation and monitoring in partnership with people who have lived experience of socio-economic disadvantage for a number of years. We launched our campaign to ‘Do Your Duty for Equality’ during a high profile event at the Labour Party conference in 2019 https://www.jrf.org.uk/blog/lived-experience-influencing-policy-how-we-did-it. and further developed this campaign https://www.poverty2solutions.org/do-your-duty-for-equality on a local level with other partners through the development a Local Authority guide to implementing the duty as good practice (I will add a link)
Poverty2Solutions welcome the commitments in the Labour Party’s policy handbook to ‘enact the socioeconomic duty under section 1 of the Equality Act’ and embrace the positive development that would create a legal imperative for public authorities to pay ‘due regard’ to the desirability of reducing the inequalities caused by socio-economic disadvantage and poverty in their policy making and budgetary decisions. This would help to drive forward better policies and services and ultimately create a fairer society.
Simply passing the duty into law, however, will not in itself lead to better policy-making and fairer outcomes. This would simply be the first step in a longer and more ambitious journey.
As part of our next phase of Poverty2Solutions, we will be building on our work to date, collating powerful case making material and seeking support from our partners and allies to ensure a collective call to embed participatory policymaking approaches. We believe that in order to ensure the duty has the transformative approach intended by the spirit of the law, it is crucial that guidance on best practice implementation and monitoring is developed in partnership with people who have lived experience of socio-economic disadvantage.
Making the duty a success: partnering with people with lived experience
It is vital to ensure the duty drives forward the transformative approach to policymaking intended by the spirit of the law, and is not reduced to a tick-box exercise - as has been the case with some adherence to the public sector equality duty. To fulfil the duty’s potential, it is crucial that guidance on best practice implementation and monitoring is developed in partnership with people who have lived experience of socio-economic disadvantage.
This development work should include organisations like Poverty2Solutions, who are a core group of ‘experts by experience’ who have a wealth of expertise on which to draw.
What might the guidance cover
Poverty2Solutions have developed some core principles that should inform partnership work on developing the duty and associated guidance. These include:
Recognising that the knowledge about how best to enact the socio-economic duty is held by those in communities who have lived experience of socio-economic disadvantage.
Understanding that meaningful involvement is not about gathering a thousand stories, but about understanding the collective experience, truthfully represented.
Accepting that real success comes when there is a bringing together of different types of expertise (lived experience and other expertise such as statistical analysis or policy knowledge) through collaboration and co-production.
What Poverty2Solutions seek is to drive forward and be part of a cultural shift so that policy is not done to, but rather with communities who have lived experience
What are lived experiences, why do they matter & what difference would it make if they were incorporated into policymaking?
‘Lived experiences provides a holistic approach when addressing a problem. We are also bigger than our lived experiences. We bring additional expertise, insight and knowledge. So why are we ignored? Our expertise should be valued. It is this expertise that could make the change that we all need’
(Kathleen, Thrive Teesside)
To find out more about Poverty2Solutions or get in touch with us via this link
