Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities

Debate between Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Kemi Badenoch

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am very happy to reassure my hon. Friend. This is a new way of thinking about things. We are not looking at issues in isolation. We had many suggestions from people across the country about what we should do. The Government have listened. We do not agree with all the suggestions, but we think that to have a genuinely ambitious and transformative strategy on race we need to ensure that we look at the evidence. We do not accept the premise that all disparities are due to discrimination, so that is one principle that actions must have. We also want to make sure that we do not damage institutions even when we find problems, because the institutions themselves will be part of the solution. Finally, as I said in answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), we also want to make sure that we target solutions across the board and do not segregate communities. We were sent many actions that did not meet those three tests, which we believe will help to frame the way that we look at race in this country and improve it for a generation.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)]

Unfortunately, I find what the Minister has said to be smoke and mirrors. We started with a report that began on the premise that there is no evidence of institutional racism when those who contributed to the report and those who it is meant to support have widely rejected that idea as completely false. Why would the Minister not take the question back to the drawing board? What on earth is moral history meant to be when people have called for the teaching of black history? How can the Government claim that there is no evidence of institutional racism given the case of Child Q and everything we have heard about police institutions, educational institutions and health institutions? Claiming that those institutions do not fail people will not help us to start from a place where we can fix things. Does the Minister understand why black, Asian and ethnic minority people across the country will not be encouraged by what she has said today? It simply looks like more smoke and mirrors, more warm words and nothing that will solve the racism we face daily.

[Kemi Badenoch]

I completely disagree with the hon. Lady. In fact, I know that black, Asian and other ethnic minority communities across the country will be very pleased with the plan because I have gone out and spoken to them. I repeat what I said to the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), who spoke from the Labour Front Bench: I know that there is nothing that we could say from the Conservative Benches that would please Labour Members, because they believe that they own this topic. They are not in government; we are. The fact is that we have been carrying out actions over the past 12 years. We even had one of the shadow Front Benchers, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), carry out a review.

We have taken actions on those reviews, yet even after we carry out those actions Labour Members stand up and deny that anything is happening. The truth is that they are not interested in an action plan. They want a debate about institutional racism. I will not spend time as a Government Minister having an academic argument and debating semantics and language. We will deliver the actions in this plan, and I am very proud to be the Minister responsible.

Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities

Debate between Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Kemi Badenoch

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

My hon. Friend is right that local authorities have a very important role to play in this space. I am very pleased that he has actually read the recommendation and not just the reports about the report. Local authorities have played an important part in mitigating the disproportionate impact of covid on some ethnic minorities via the community champion scheme, for which we announced funding last autumn. With regard to his other comments, the Government response is not yet prepared; it will be coming in due course in the summer. We will consider the recommendation that he has made in the light of the full report.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab) [V]]

In her responses, the Minister repeatedly conflates disagreement with this report with misrepresentation or not having read the report, so let us draw a line under that—we have read it, but we know that institutional racism is still felt across every area of the UK and that there is no new story to tell about slavery and colonialism. She may disagree, but does she at least recognise and understand why people—more specifically the people this report is about—overwhelmingly see this report as steeped in denial and why it is viewed as a complete insult to those who have been the victims of institutional racism, such as black women, who are four times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth? Does she recognise that denial is a core mechanism of institutional racism? Can she explain how she plans to push ahead with this report when it is so widely rejected by those it impacts?

[Kemi Badenoch]

If the hon. Lady reads beyond The Guardian and perhaps statements in the Morning Star, she will realise that the report has been welcomed by many, many organisations, not just the Equality and Human Rights Commission, but even the Royal College of Physicians and many more. I am not here to reel out a list of who supports the Government. It is interesting that she says that I confuse disagreement with divisiveness, because it was her colleague the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) who just stood up there and called people “racial gatekeepers”. I wonder whether the hon. Lady agrees with that comment, which is unbelievably divisive rhetoric. What I would say to her is that she does not speak for all ethnic minorities. Ethnic minorities are not uniquely left wing, and to claim that a report about black and brown people can only talk about issues from her perspective completely ignores the fact that there are many of us, of various skin colours—she can see my face and she knows I am a black woman, just like her—who disagree. We disagree. She raises the point about maternal health, and I would like to take the opportunity to make this point: in a debate on 11 March, she said that

“one in four black women dies in childbirth”.—[Official Report, 11 March 2021; Vol. 690, c. 1089.]

That statistic, which thankfully she has now corrected, is completely wrong. The actual figure is not 25% of black women, but 0.34%. It is a very confusing statistic because we often represent the numbers in terms of numbers per 800,000.[Official Report, 27 April 2021, Vol. 693, c. 2MC.] What I have been doing is working on maternal health. I have spoken to the chief midwifery officer and to Dame Donna Kinnair, the head of the Royal College of Nursing; we in government have had conversations and they all accept that because the numbers are so small, it will often be very hard to target effectively, but that does not mean we will not try. We do have a maternal health strategy, which I know the hon. Lady has seen, and I wish that for once she would acknowledge the work that the Government have done, rather than repeating false statistics and pretending that nothing is happening, when that is far from the truth.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Kemi Badenoch

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

Sexual and reproductive health services have remained open during the pandemic. Services are maintaining access during this time through scaling up of online services. Guidance from the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare sets out that local pathways for urgent referral for vulnerable groups, including via young people’s outreach, should be maintained.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)]

The EHRC report on the hostile environment released today shows just how bad the situation has been over the years. It is clear that the EHRC does not have the capacity to launch an inquiry into every piece of legislation that has had its equality compliance questioned. Will the Minister explain what steps are being taken to ensure that future legislation is not labelled as complying with the public sector duty when it so clearly does not?