Tuesday 27th October 2020

(4 years ago)

Lords Chamber
Read Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Berridge Portrait Baroness Berridge (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. As Minister for Women, one of my specific concerns is the underachievement of Gypsy Roma in most categories. The Government are firmly committed to delivering a cross-government strategy to tackle these inequalities. I will have to come back to her on the specific point about BAME; I presume that BAME registration would include that as an ethnicity but I will double-check. My noble friend Lord Greenhalgh, who is the MHCLG lead on this issue, wrote to local authority chief executives in April to point out the specific support that those communities might need in terms of services such as water sanitation and waste disposal on their sites. We have been working closely with the various representative organisations to ensure, again, that the message gets out to communities that might be harder to reach than others.

Baroness Barker Portrait Baroness Barker (LD)
- Hansard - -

My Lords, in April the Government produced statistics on the furlough scheme on a local authority and parliamentary constituency basis, and then they stopped. First, will the Minister find out why? Secondly, can she see whether it is possible to produce up-to-date data on that basis so that decision-makers at national and local level can work out whether there is a correlation between access to furlough payments and infection rates?

Baroness Berridge Portrait Baroness Berridge (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

My Lords, we are working closely with the Office for National Statistics and analysts from PHE. I will have to check with them and will write to the noble Baroness in relation to the specific data, which I have to confess I was not aware was out in that form and then not out in that form.