Voter Authority Certificates
Debate between Baroness Scott of Bybrook and Baroness Hussein-Ece(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
As a Norfolk resident, I have taken that issue forward.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that there seem to be different restrictions in different local authorities before they issue ID cards? I had a message from someone who had been on the electoral roll since 1999. They were initially denied a certificate and had to go back with four different proofs of ID before the authority agreed to issue one. Is this normal practice, and will she look into it?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
It does not sound like normal practice. If the noble Baroness would like to give me some further details, I will look into it. I cannot discuss an individual case.
Social Mobility Commission
Debate between Baroness Scott of Bybrook and Baroness Hussein-Ece(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I certainly would never want to be called a chair; I have always required people to call me a chairman. That is the name of it, but perhaps I am a little old-fashioned.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, given that social mobility has been decreasing over several decades now, will the Minister define what the Social Mobility Commission and the new tsar should be doing to improve this? All the evidence shows that it is not working.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, it is working. The annual State of the Nation report from the Social Mobility Commission, published on 23 June, talks about the progress made towards improving social mobility in this country. Produced under the previous chairmanship of the commission, it sets out a new approach to social mobility. It introduces a new social mobility index, which provides a systematic way of measuring social mobility across the whole of the UK. Data will now be compiled annually and at longer intervals of five and 10 years. This is important because we need to show the trends and to be able to prove it, as at times we get conflicting evidence about what is happening to social mobility. Certainly, the number of children from deprived areas who are going to university is going up.
Youth Justice Statistics
Debate between Baroness Scott of Bybrook and Baroness Hussein-Ece
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
Sorry—it is so long since I have been in the Chamber. I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
The over-representation of ethnic minority children in the youth justice system, including in custody, is a real concern to the Government. We want people to have confidence in our justice system, and a justice system that is fair and open, with no person suffering discrimination of any sort. We continue to prioritise the understanding and tackling of disproportionality within the youth justice system, which includes practical work on diversion and better support for front-line justice services.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
I thank the noble Baroness for that response and apologise for my hasty intervention. Not only are children in the criminal justice system disproportionately black, Asian or from a minority ethnic background, they are more likely to be in care and extremely likely to have autism-spectrum disorders and communication difficulties. Just over 40% will reoffend within a year, and self-harm has gone up by 35%. This is compelling evidence of systematic failure and institutional racism. Does the Minister think that this national scandal is an acceptable way to treat children? What joined-up work is being done across government, police and all agencies to effect radical change? Scotland recently stopped treating under-12s as criminals and has moved away from an adversarial system, putting welfare above punishment. Will the Government urgently look at this more humane approach for England and Wales?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I am aware that my noble friend the Minister sent a comprehensive response to the Question from the noble Baroness when it was dropped due to Prorogation. However, I will answer the main point of her question. Of course this needs to be a cross-governmental issue: the youth justice system alone can only partially address the inequalities. It is important that we look at poverty, mental ill-health, educational attainment, school inclusion and looked-after children, where many young people from ethnic minority backgrounds also fare worse.
Racism
Debate between Baroness Scott of Bybrook and Baroness Hussein-Ece
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, the Government are already looking at this issue and will report in due course. However, the important thing to note is that because of the pandemic we look at unemployment among all the people of this country, and for that aim there has been a £30 billion investment in the Plan for Jobs, which obviously will include looking at the issues that ethnic minorities have in particular.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD) [V]
Institutional and structural racism is real and affects every aspect of black and minority ethnic people’s lives. A recent report showed that black women are still four times more likely than white women to die in pregnancy or childbirth in the UK, and that 85% of black people are not confident that they would be treated the same as a white person by the police. The Government seem to be taking a rather piecemeal approach. Will they take their responsibilities seriously, bring forward a plan for a comprehensive race equality strategy and, in doing so, implement the outstanding recommendations of the reviews that they commissioned, such as the 2016 Lammy review and the 2017 Angiolini review into deaths in police custody?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, the race disparity unit has been supporting the Department of Health in driving positive actions in maternity services to improve, quite rightly, the outcomes for ethnic minority women, including the NHS Help Us Help You campaign. As I have said, the commission will bring all these issues together and we will look at moving that work forward on the back of all those reviews that we have had in the past, taking them all into account.
Gender Pay Gap
Debate between Baroness Scott of Bybrook and Baroness Hussein-Ece
Baroness Scott of Bybrook
I thank the noble Baroness for her question, but we are 100% compliant with what we are asking employers to do. If we go further and make it a mandatory return, this can become a tick-box exercise, which we do not want. We want employers to actively use their data to tackle the barriers that women face in their businesses.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, in October 2018 the then Prime Minister launched a series of measures to tackle the barriers facing ethnic minorities, including ethnic-minority women, in the workplace: in effect, the ethnicity pay gap. The Race at Work Charter, which built on the work of the 2017 review, Race in the Workplace, found that people from black, Asian and minority-ethnic backgrounds were underemployed, underpromoted and under-represented at senior levels. That review concluded that the time for talking is over and the time to act is now. What has happened to the ethnicity pay gap recommendations in the review, and when we can expect to see them?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook
The Government ran a consultation from October 2018 to January 2019 on ethnicity pay reporting and received more than 300 detailed responses. They have since met with businesses and organisation representatives to understand the barriers to reporting and what information they could still publish to allow for meaningful action to be taken on the findings of that consultation. The Government have also run voluntary methodology testing with a broad range of businesses, using real payroll data better to understand the complexities outlined in the consultation. We will share the next steps on this in due course.