Partly because of the reallocation of staffing resources in Scotland, we have not had much engagement with the private sector since the days of the Disability Rights Commission and others. Our Scotland committee made a conscious decision at the end of last year to work to re-engage with the sector, and we have undertaken a range of activity with Glasgow Chamber of Commerce.
We put out a contract for someone who already worked in the sphere to work with us so that we could test out different approaches. Some were successful and some were not. The area is very difficult for us. As you say, it is not as if we have a private sector duty with which we can work. Some of the more successful approaches that we have taken include our developing case studies around employment law, filming them and making them into resources—that seemed to be quite popular—and holding a range of legal, transfer-of-expertise events with, primarily, HR employees from private sector firms.
Going forward, we are particularly keen to look at how we engage with small and medium-sized enterprises, given the sheer number of those in the country and how many people they employ. We will continue to work to deliver guidance, advice and support through our transfer-of-expertise events, which run throughout the year.
The other area of focus, which has probably been more successful, has been our thematic approach. In particular, we have taken forward in Scotland a GB piece of work on the cleaning sector, which looks at vulnerable workers. I will let Chris Oswald say a little about the work that we are now doing to transfer learning from our previous meat processing work into the fishing industry. Our colleagues from the north-east might be particularly interested in that work.
There are two other large-scale pieces of work, one of which is looking at clarifying the law around religion or belief in the workplace. On the back of various cases last year, we believe that there is still a lack of certainty about what the law does and does not allow around that, so we are doing a significant piece of work on it, engaging across GB with employers and service providers and with those who receive services who have experienced discrimination or have questions about religion or belief.
The other major piece of work is on pregnancy and maternity discrimination. It is some 10 years since the Equal Opportunities Commission undertook a large-scale survey of the scope of such discrimination, and we are following that up with detailed survey work across Britain, including in Scotland, looking at both employers’ perspectives and employees’ experiences around pregnancy and maternity discrimination.
Our work in the private sector is challenging, without a doubt. We have not found it easy to gain a lot of interest. However, we will continue to look at different approaches, and we are always open to new approaches and ideas about how we can tap into that sector. As I said, our thematic work is important. There are areas in which employers across both the public and private sectors have expressed concern or interest, such as religion or belief, so we expect to have more buy-in there.
I ask Chris Oswald whether he wants to say any more about our private sector work.