Mayor defends his record on diversity and denies report was shelved

Councillors have complained that a draft report on diversity issues was shelved – something Mr Houchen denies.

Meanwhile, a Freedom of Information request has revealed barely any of his staff at the Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) are from a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) background, which the mayor said was “being taken seriously”.

Labour’s candidate for Tees Valley Mayor, Jessie Joe Jacobs, said Mr Houchen “did not care one bit about diverse communities or levelling things up for women”.

Councillor Norma Stephenson, the chairman of the authority’s overview and scrutiny committee, said she remained extremely disappointed that the report she previously instigated which considered the lack of diversity in gender, ethnicity, sexuality and disability in local politics failed to progress to cabinet.

Cllr Stephenson’s Labour colleague, Councillor Matthew Storey said it was an exhaustive and detailed piece of work and the failure to take it any further did a “major disservice” to the people of the Tees Valley.

The report originally stalled after not enough members attended the committee on at least three occasions, meaning it was inquorate and a vote could not be taken.

By the time it was quorate the political make-up of the committee had changed, with independents replacing some Labour members following local elections last year, and a vote to approve the report failed to win enough support.

Mr Houchen claimed Labour leaders at the Tees Valley’s five local authorities disliked some of the recommendations in the report and had told colleagues who were committee members to stay away.

He said: “The honest answer I know to be true is that the five local authority leaders at the time got wind of it and told their members to stay away from the overview and scrutiny committee meeting because they did not want it approved.”

Mr Houchen admitted the failure to progress the report “did not shine a good light”, but said improvements in terms of diversity were being made and the combined authority invested in everyone, representing every community.

He said he would have supported the report had it reached the cabinet stage and he had worked with Cllr Stephenson and others in providing his input into it.

Mr Houchen said “It didn’t get shelved. The issue here is you had Labour leaders not wanting it to impact on their local authorities.”

But Cllr Stephenson said: “The incoming committee chose to shelve it and there were a lot of old arguments coming out about diversity and equality which I was really disappointed about.

“I can say I don’t intend to leave it there and I am going to revisit the report and do some comparisons to see where we are now.

“A lot of work went into this from all five councils and it would be doing them a disservice if the report is just left in a cupboard somewhere gathering dust.”

She added: “We need to be talking to ethnic communities and other sections of society and encourage them to get involved.

“Because they don’t see themselves reflected in local democracy they don’t think there is a place for them.

“It was an excellent result recently for Stockton Council to have its first Asian mayor, but it is 2020 you know?”

Cllr Storey, who was previously deputy chairman of the overview and scrutiny committee and contributed to the report, said: “The Labour members on the scrutiny committee were very keen to see it published and addressed by the mayor and the cabinet, but others ensured it has not been taken any further. 

“This does a major disservice to the people of Tees Valley.

“The Freedom of Information answer about TVCA staff is also extremely concerning. 

“How can we address these clear imbalances if we don’t acknowledge that an issue exists?”

Cllr Storey said the report included interviews and evidence from councillors in the Tees Valley and chief executives, trade unions and the combined authority itself.

He said: “It was an exhaustive and detailed piece of work which took a lot of time and effort to produce and highlighted the failings of local authorities to give a real cross section of the society and communities they seek to represent a say.

“We can and we must do better. 

“But that task is so much harder when reports like this, that address critical issues in terms of representation and equality, are suppressed. 

“I hope the report does see the light of day at some stage so that we can start the important work we need to do as local leaders to reach out to our wonderfully diverse communities across the Tees Valley and encourage and support greater equality in our democratic institutions.”

What did the report say?

The report said there was an “overwhelming and unanimous” desire for both the Tees Valley Combined Authority and the five Tees Valley councils to have memberships which more closely represent the communities they serve – and a recognition that this was not currently being achieved.

It said there was evidence that although women made up an above average percentage of Tees Valley councillors, they were not progressing into leadership roles and roles in which they regularly engaged with the combined authority.

It recommended that a deputy Tees Valley mayor be of a differing gender or protected characteristic group to the incumbent mayor and with a specific responsibility for driving the diversity and equality agenda across the region.

Substitute members for the overview and scrutiny committee should be where practical of a different gender or from a different protected characteristic group to the regular member, it said.

Local authority leaders should be asked to publicly commit to a gender balanced cabinet and committee system and acknowledge the risk of unconscious bias influencing the allocation of councillor portfolios.

Recommendations further included that Tees Valley councils should immediately begin recording and reporting the ethnicity, gender and sexuality of members in the same way as they already do with staff members.

And the combined authority should commit itself to the ambition of becoming the first combined authority to secure ‘diversity champion’ status.

Overwhelmingly male

One interviewee referred to “grumpy old men” and said public authorities had never been representative of the communities they serve.

Another said: “You’ve got to make people see that this organisation is open to everyone…TVCA is the opposite of that. 

“It’s overwhelmingly male.”

It was debatable how well the combined authority as a whole was delivering in terms of its engagement with groups who would otherwise be excluded.

The report said: “It would be unfair to suggest that councillors are capable only of representing people whose attributes match their own, but there can be little debate that the Tees Valley would benefit from a wider range of human experience being represented within its elected membership.”

It said improved organisational diversity could contribute towards the combined authority’s strategic aims, for example by having prominent women who could inspire younger women to aspire to work in sectors where there were skills shortages.

The report said the combined authority needed to command the confidence of and appear credible to the people it served.

“To do that it needs to look like its local communities or risk under-represented groups believing that their needs have been overlooked or are unimportant, causing them to disengage from both the organisation and the democratic process in general,” it said.

It said it was not possible to identify any BAME members represented in the cabinets of the five constituent local authorities, the combined authority cabinet or any of its statutory committees, and identified just one member of the Local Enterprise Partnership falling into this category.

One stakeholder said: “Is our council representative? Nothing like it. 

“We have two BAME members, one Asian and one Caribbean, and they are both standing down.”

Another said: “With Asian groups in particular there seems to be a scepticism of local bodies. 

“We have to change that.”

Better decisions

It was not possible to identify any members who considered themselves to have a disability, the report said.

And it was near-impossible to say with any authority how representative Tees Valley elected memberships were in terms of of LGBT+ members as the information was not recorded by councils.

A significant proportion of those interviewed agreed that a more representative membership could have a significantly positive impact on the quality of policy and decision-making by the combined authority.

An interviewee for the report said: “You don’t get better policy coming forward if you exclude 50 per cent of the population from the process. 

“You get better decisions from a more diverse group of people.”

A survey identified 63 per cent of Tees Valley councillors as being aged over 60 and 97 per cent of councillors identifying as ‘white British’ or ‘white other’, with 1.3 per cent identifying as ‘British Asian’.

In terms of gender 26 per cent of female councillors who responded thought their gender was an obstacle to their progress.

Other obstacles cited were caring commitments (43 per cent) and a lack of confidence (29 per cent).

The survey for the report found BAME groups were under-represented on local councils when compared to the general population.

Massive spending

The Tees Valley Combined Authority, which was created in April 2016, has massive spending powers and has committed to invest nearly £600m over the next ten years in transport, education, town centre renewal, the business sector, culture and tourism.

In 2018 a new female chief executive was appointed, Julie Gilhespie, while three women in all are now on the senior management team. 

Three female business women also joined the board of the Tees Valley Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), which is part of the combined authority.

But like many local councils the combined authority continues to lag behind in areas such as BAME representation.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service asked the authority in a Freedom of Information request what proportion of both members and its workforce were from a BAME background.

The authority said it did hold the specific information requested on its membership as the overwhelming majority were appointed by local councils.

However it stated that from 109 staff just one from was a BAME background, although 29 were in the ‘undeclared’ category.

It said all staff received mandatory training in diversity issues, while there was monitoring carried out in terms of recruitment outcomes.

The authority said it observed an equal opportunities policy and attempted to foster a “culture of inclusion and equality”.

The LEP – a forum for collaboration between public and private sectors aimed at improving the local economy which includes Mr Houchen among its members – has committed to achieving a 50/50 gender balance and increasing diversity.

A recruitment campaign was launched in December last year for a new chairman and private sector members, but was halted temporarily in April due to the coronavirus crisis, although it is due to recommence.

Quite damning

Labour’s mayoral candidate Jessie Joe Jacobs, said it was very disappointing, although not surprising, that work on equality had been shelved and that there was just one BAME declared employee at the combined authority.

She said: “We need a mayor who works for everyone. It’s important they are able to represent all local people to ensure jobs are created for people from all walks of life.  

“[Mr Houchen’s] narrow viewpoint means he’s silent on important issues, from domestic violence to child care, has not once taken positive action around tackling racism and he allowed a piece of work designed to improve equality to be axed. 

“The mayor does not seem to care one bit about our diverse communities or about levelling up for women.

“It is really all quite damning – there is so much the combined authority could do and it is time the mayor turned his attention to issues that matter to everyone, not just a narrow few.”

Ms Jacobs, who herself has a BAME background, added: “I am becoming increasingly worried about the mayor’s ability to deliver actual change. 

“While he talks a good game, the reality is we fall further behind the country in employment, child poverty, business numbers and economic growth.

“We need to be asking where is money going, what type of jobs are being provided and the type of industries being invested in?

“There are some amazing female-led companies in the Tees Valley, how many of them are getting contracts?

“We need to put pressure on to improve things as they are simply not good enough.”

What else did Mr Houchen say?

Mr Houchen said the diversity report focused heavily on local councils and said Labour leaders, who previously made up his cabinet at the combined authority, did not not want to approve the report.

He also said he was unaware that the overview and scrutiny committee when quorate had finally been able to take a vote on it.

“When I am aware of is before the local elections [Cllr Stephenson] tried to bring it three times to the overview and scrutiny committee, which was a majority Labour committee, and they didn’t turn up.

“It doesn’t shine a very good light on the situation, but it doesn’t shine a very good light on the local authorities and their councillors either.”

He said the cabinet had originally requested the report, and noted the progress with it, although no formal response was given by it since a final report was never presented.

Serious issues

The mayor said his authority spent cash “in all corners” of its five local authority areas.

He said: “We spend it to represent the whole community – we are only as strong as every member of each community.

“I am not of the view that anybody’s race or background should put them at a disadvantage – we invest in everyone.

“We all want to see what is best for the people of Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool.”

Mr Houchen said work was going on to ensure that not only local businesses and local people were targeted in terms of job creation, but also communities of all backgrounds who are furthest away from the jobs market and who have additional barriers to employment were reached.

He said: “We think we have bolted down how we deliver training and skills and help get people interviews for the contracts that are going out right across the Tees Valley, we just need to feed in other elements such as the need to promote female engineering.

“There are various ethnic communities that we also want to be able to show that these types of jobs are not for a certain kind of community, they are for everyone and we are working on that now.”

Mr Houchen said he was doing something in his role as Tees Valley Mayor about the “really serious issues that face our region”.

He said a good cause was chosen each year to be his mayoral charity and the first to be supported was the Stockton-based charity A Way Out.

“They do some amazing things with women who face domestic abuse, trafficking, prostitution and barriers in being able to support themselves and their young children in desperate circumstances,” he said.

“It’s sad that Jessie [Joe Jacobs] would make these comments about me as it is a charity she founded many years ago and it is now my official charity.

“The facts don’t ever fit the rhetoric.”