The Women and Equalities Select Committee published a report on equalities impact assessments around the 2015 Spending Review and Autumn Statement in November 2016.
The report says that the Government must do more to demonstrate that it has fulfilled its obligations to assess the equalities impacts of future Spending Reviews, Budgets and Autumn Statements.
The Committee recommended that to maintain public confidence that the Public Sector Equality Duty is being fulfilled:
- The Treasury should be independently evaluated on how robustly it has complied with that duty in the 2015 Spending Review process, and how it can improve its equalities analysis;
- This evaluation should be carried out by an organisation with the requisite level of expertise; and
- Similar evaluations should be commissioned for the equality analyses accompanying all future spending rounds and fiscal events.
