Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Dholakia

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement and give it a partial welcome, 12 years into this Government. A year ago, the independent Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities published its report, which within hours was unravelling. It has been discredited by many prominent experts and individuals.

As my honourable friend Taiwo Owatemi MP said in the Commons:

“If both the Sewell report and the strategy fail to identify the root causes of racial and ethnic disparities, how can either possibly hope to tackle them? That is why the strategy was always going to be hopelessly ineffective and short-sighted, and that is why it will fail to deliver for black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.”—[Official Report, Commons, 17/3/22; col. 1073.]


The answer that she received from the Minister there was that:

“A rhetorical trick is happening around this question.”—[Official Report, Commons, 17/3/22; col. 1075.]


Perhaps the Minister can explain why her Government find it so hard to accept that we still have a country where there clearly is discrimination and that racial disparities are the result of historic, endemic and still existing structural racism. Unless we accept that and build from that understanding, both individually and organisationally, we will not solve the terrible racial disparities, many of which are described in the original report.

Although I partially welcome this statement, it is based on the wrong premise. It has some good ideas but quite a few half-baked ones. Let us take employment, for example. It has failed completely to implement mandatory ethnicity pay-gap reporting, despite repeated calls from the CBI, the TUC and the Labour Party to do just that. Unlike with gender pay gaps, there is currently no legal requirement for UK businesses to disclose their ethnicity pay data. Will the UK Government follow the recent recommendation of the Women and Equalities Committee and introduce mandatory ethnicity pay-gap reporting by 2023, including urging employers to publish a supporting action plan?

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has previously called for mandatory reporting, similar to the rules in place for the gender pay gap, to apply to all large employers. Commenting on the Government’s decision not to adopt mandatory reporting at this stage, Ben Willmott, head of public policy at the CIPD, said:

“The Government has missed an opportunity to tackle racial discrimination and inequality in the workplace by failing to introduce mandatory ethnicity pay reporting. Unfortunately, we know from previous schemes that a voluntary approach will not help drive the changes that are needed in many organisations.”


For example, if the pay gap is non-existent at entry level but significantly skewed at more senior levels, that can help inform the areas of focus. Employers might decide to, for example, invest in mentoring, with a focus on supporting particularly under-represented groups to progress, or in assessing the progression path to interrogate and root out baked-in bias. The TUC recently warned that insecure work is tightening the grip of structural racism in the labour market, with ethnic minority workers overrepresented on zero-hour contracts. Will the Minister urge the Government to introduce the long-awaited employment Bill to tackle zero-hour contracts?

Health, with a long section in the report, brings one of its major suggestions: for the establishment of an office for health disparities, to look into the issue and to work alongside the NHS to reduce differences in areas such as healthy life expectancy, and the propensity to develop some conditions. There are two issues regarding the NHS, and I declare an interest as a non-executive director of a health trust who has been on the workforce race equality course in the last month or so.

One issue is health inequalities, most starkly demonstrated in the pandemic in the unequal way that it affected and cost lives in our ethnic minority communities, but we know this to be the case over a whole range of health matters. How does the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities intend to change this? What levers will it pull to create the culture change and the investment change which will be necessary? The other issue is employment, concerning the treatment and promotion of ethnic minority employees in the NHS. White applicants are 1.6 times more likely to be appointed from shortlisting, compared with BME applicants. This figure has got worse in the last year or so.

BME staff are 1.6 times more likely to enter formal disciplinary process compared with white staff. The number of BME board members in trusts has increased —we should be very pleased about that. The workforce race equality indicators used in the NHS, which are very powerful tools indeed, will have a significant impact over a period of time. What they say relating to perceptions of discrimination, bullying, harassment and abuse—and on beliefs regarding equal opportunities in the workplace—is that they have not improved over time for BME staff.

It is astonishing that there is so little reference to policing in the Minister’s Statement. It was the actions of the police in the United States which sparked the protests here and led to the commissioning of the Sewell report. Trust and confidence in policing are absolutely fundamental to communities feeling safe and secure, and for addressing disadvantage and racial disparity in every other area of life. What action will the Minister take in the action plan to address a transformation in the culture of our policing which so desperately needs to address racial disparity? The report says that it wants to

“bridge divides and create partnerships between the police and communities”.

Will the Minister explain how she thinks that we can possibly bridge that divide when black schoolgirls are being strip-searched? Is she aware that this is not an isolated incident? The Metropolitan Police’s own figures show that, in 2021, 25 young people under 18 were strip-searched. Most were black or from other ethnic minorities. Some 60% were black, and only two of the 25 children were white.

The Conservative Government have had 12 years to act. Instead, they have failed to deliver and failed to acknowledge the genuine reasons for racial and ethnic disparities in Britain today. Britain and its communities deserve better.

[Lord Dholakia (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for this Statement. There is progress is some areas of disparities, while questions arise on other matters which need clarification. The first major question relates to the Covid pandemic and the Government’s disregard for the disproportional impact on ethnic minorities. Many workers have lost their lives. The pandemic showed how heavily we depend on our diverse communities to serve our NHS. Will the Minister commit to including the impact of the pandemic on ethnic disparity in the terms of reference for the Covid inquiry?

I had to enter a local hospital for a procedure recently, and throughout the seven days I was there I did not meet a single white person. All the services were provided by minorities from various parts of the world. How can we adequately thank them—instead of criticising their appearances as postboxes, as the Prime Minister once said? The actions set out by the government plan do not go nearly far enough to create a more inclusive society. They kick the can down the road on most issues with the creation of new strategies and frameworks in the years to come.

The new framework for stop and search will not build trust between the police and the ethnic communities they serve, unless they end suspicionless stop and search due to its disproportionate impact on minorities. On policing, I was shocked to hear from some crime commissioners that they do not intend to appoint additional police officers. Underrepresentation of police in recruitment, retention and promotion still remains a concern after over 50 years. This is not going to help the adversarial relations between the police and black communities. It is a shame on our police that a young, black student was stripped and searched intimately last week. How are the Government to put these matters right? The Government must be held to account for their actions.

It is worrying that the Government have set out an action plan to tackle inequality based on recommendations from a commission which concluded that there was no systemic racism in Britain. The Inclusive Britain strategy, published on Wednesday evening, was developed in response to a controversial report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities last year. The commitments in the action plan include revamping the history curriculum for schoolchildren, a cash injection for school pupils who have fallen behind during the pandemic, and clamping down on online racist abuse through new legislation. On this, we do not need to look far: simply examine a football match on a Saturday afternoon to see how much we hate the extent of racism which is perpetrated on football grounds, and the action taken by many football players by taking the knee.

Moreover, I understand that the Department for Education will invest up to £75 million to deliver a state scholarship programme for students in higher education. The Government aim to improve maternal health outcomes for ethnic-minority women, a disparity which experts have linked to systematic racism. I trust that the Minister will have answers to some of these questions.