Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Abena Oppong-Asare Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 18th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders]

I am afraid the right hon. Gentleman does not understand what the Bill does. It hands the power to Ministers, not to Parliament—that is why we are so concerned about it. Taking back control was about this Parliament, not giving power to Ministers.

I turn back to the Bar Council’s clear warnings. It is not some sort of anarchist organisation, it is not part of an anti-growth coalition—it is the Bar Council, for goodness’ sake. Anyone who is concerned about parliamentary scrutiny and accountability and who wants to make this country work should listen carefully to what the Bar Council says and its warnings about why the Bill is inappropriate.

The sunset clause is interrelated with the question of Ministers’ powers and the ability of Parliament to effectively scrutinise changes. I do not want to be faced later this year with having to make a choice between a reduction in the number of days’ paid holiday that people are entitled to and their having no rights at all—and that is a choice that this Bill could force upon us, if we are pushed up to the precipice due to timescale.

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

Following the Bar Council’s recommendations and concerns about protections, I put on record that I have been contacted by a large number of constituents who are concerned about the protection of their rights as workers, which they fought hard for, and their rights as consumers. Furthermore, they want hon. Members, particularly the Minister, to know that they are concerned that no scrutiny will take place on this. Does my hon. Friend agree that, based on this Government’s record, there is no way they will maintain the high standards that our constituents expect or ensure that this Bill adequately represents our constituents?

[Justin Madders]

My hon. Friend articulates well why her constituents and indeed many people across all sectors of society are concerned about the impact of the Bill. It is not about Parliament taking back control. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has said that the

“abuse of delegated powers is in effect an abuse of Parliament and an abuse of democracy”.

As the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) is here, I will quote his response, when he was Leader of the House, to the Committee’s report on the frequent use of skeleton Bills. He said that it did not necessarily provide

“a model example of how Parliament would like to see legislation brought forward.”,

and that he would be encouraging Secretaries of State

“to minimise the use of delegated powers where possible.”

For once, I agree with him; I am sorry he does not agree with himself any more.

Ethnicity Pay Gap

Abena Oppong-Asare Excerpts

Monday 20th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hosie. I thank the Petitions Committee for making the time for this important debate, and the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for introducing it. I also thank the organisers of the petition. As the hon. Gentleman said, 130,000 people signed it, including 470 from my constituency.

I thank all hon. Members who contributed to the debate. The hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar) talked about structural racism and its impact on society. The right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) talked about how reporting will not really happen unless it is made mandatory, and about her work on the Select Committee on how BAME individuals have been affected during the pandemic. That work shows issues of inequality. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) talked about the effectiveness of mandatory reporting and gender pay gap reporting, and about how that has made a significant difference.

The past 18 months have brought a welcome focus on issues of race and ethnicity in this country and around the world, which is something I am particularly passionate about. In the context of the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter protests, we saw the petition take off. I mention that because ethnicity pay disparities do not exist in isolation; they exist within broader structures of racism that affect black and Asian minority people in every part of their lives. I have experienced it myself.

I have previously called for the Government to implement a race equality strategy and an action plan covering areas such as education, health and employment. I feel that would address the structural inequalities that exist. At the centre of that, I believe there must be action to tackle discrimination in the workplace, unequal access to training, finance and opportunities, and the ethnicity pay gap, which brings me specifically to this petition.

The petition calls for the introduction of mandatory ethnicity gap pay reporting. As the Minister will know, this is not a new suggestion or a new demand; people have been calling for it for some time. Can the Minister outline the Government’s proposals to address the suggestion? As the hon. Member for Bath said, the 2018 McGregor-Smith review into race in the workplace said:

“The Government must…legislate to make larger businesses publish their ethnicity data by salary band to show progress.”

We all know that the Government launched a consultation on this issue, which ran from October 2018 to January 2019. I am extremely concerned that we are yet to see anything published about that consultation some two years later. Can the Minister tell us what message that sends to black and ethnic minority people in this country? To me, it comes across that the Government do not particularly care about these individuals, because the consultation has been done and nothing has materialised from it.

I want to talk about issues with mandatory reporting that have been identified and how they can be overcome, but the delay is not about the practicalities of introducing mandatory reporting. Instead, the Government have gone cold on the idea. Despite the prolonged delay, this issue will not simply go away. We cannot settle for voluntary reporting. I hope that the Minister hears loud and clear that voluntary reporting is totally inadequate, and I will tell him why.

Just this week it was reported that only 13 of the largest 100 employers in this country have published their ethnicity pay gaps. As the hon. Member for Bath mentioned, this situation is similar to what happened before mandatory gender pay gap reporting was introduced in 2017. Prior to it becoming mandatory, a voluntary initiative led to only six companies publishing gender pay gap data, yet consultation shows that employers were generally supportive of mandatory reporting because it meant that all organisations would have to use consistent methods and be able to benchmark against each other. In this case too, only mandatory ethnicity pay reporting will deliver meaningful data from a wide range of businesses. This echoes conversations mentioned by hon. Members about the fact that we need to get the data.

A lot of businesses back mandatory reporting and conversations have been had. The CBI has joined the TUC and the Equality and Human Rights Commission in calling on the Government to go beyond the recommendations of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities and bring in mandatory reporting without delay.

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

My hon. Friend will be aware that, without mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting, we do not truly know the full scale of the problem. At the moment people say the gap is about 2.3%, but when we look at individual ethnic groups we see there is a gap of 16% for Pakistani groups and 8% for black groups. Does she agree that until this is made mandatory not only will we not know the scale of the problem, but companies will not take steps forward to address these inequalities?

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Unless we get mandatory reporting, we will not know the full scale of this issue. That is shown by the fact that very few organisations, given the opportunity to do the reporting voluntarily, have taken it up. That leads me to something that I will discuss later—the stats that have been collated, which are quite alarming. We need to make reporting mandatory in order to be able to address the issues that are there—the inequalities that exist.

I want to address the report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which called only for voluntary reporting, and some of the practical issues that the Government have highlighted. The commission stated that

“many employers around the country simply do not have enough ethnic minorities for the recording sample to be valid.”

That is something I have heard in this debate, but leading experts in this field—including the Chartered Management Institute and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development—have set out practical ways to overcome it. Other concerns, such as the legal basis for collecting ethnicity information or low declaration rates, can simply be overcome with clear guidance from Government. Those practical issues are what the Government have been working on over the past two years, so the information is there for us to be able to do this, rather than kicking the issue into the long grass.

I want to end by saying something about why ethnicity pay gap reporting is so important. We know that, at national level, significant disparities exist between people of different ethnicities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) mentioned. In 2019, the Office for National Statistics found that median hourly pay was £12.49 for white people, £11.50 for black people and just £10.55 for people of Pakistani origin. The ONS study also found that people of Chinese origin earned on average £15.38 an hour and people of Indian origin earned £14.43. That really should lead us to caution against making sweeping statements about ethnic minorities as a whole, but there is clear evidence that people’s race and ethnic background determines how much they earn, and I have seen that at first hand. Sadly, for many people, the colour of their skin, along with their gender and class, determine the opportunities that are open to them. That is something that we really need to change.

I wanted to mention the interaction between race and other characteristics such as gender. A report was done recently by the Fawcett Society, which found that ethnic- minority women are

“almost invisible from positions of power across both public and private sectors”

in the UK. We see that around us. We know that a range of connected factors determine pay disparities. They include age, location and, of course, gender and race. It is for precisely that reason that we need to build up more data on those disparities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham mentioned. Company-specific reporting is important, because it obliges employers to examine their data and to work out why disparities might exist. It does not assume that discrimination takes place, but rather provides information so that employers can make informed decisions to improve recruitment, promotion and pay policies. Without it, we will not be able to see what progress has already been made and where there is more to do.

Let me conclude. To fight discrimination, we must first see it and understand it. The Government have dragged their feet on this issue for far too long. The consensus for mandatory ethnicity pay-gap reporting is broad and the arguments for it are compelling, so I would be grateful if, when the Minister responds to the debate, he would tell us what the Government will do to bring forward legislation to implement this vital measure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for letting me progress with my speech, because that is exactly the point that I was coming to.

We have continued to work with businesses and other organisations better to understand the complexities identified through the consultation. More recently, we have been working with the Business in the Community app and race at work charter members. My right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) spoke about people and businesses crying out for reporting. The number of charter members is currently 700, which is up from 300 this time last year, so there is clearly a big push of people signing up to the charter. One of the points in the charter is to collect data on ethnicity and the ethnicity pay gap. This work has looked particularly at action planning and what participating organisations believe to be the key drivers of the ethnicity pay gap: culture and leadership; recruitment; retention; and progression.

In parallel, earlier this year, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities published its report, setting out a road map to racial fairness in the UK, which made an important contribution both to the national conversation about race and to the Government’s efforts to level up and unite the whole country. In the report, the commission pointed to the statistical and data issues that could affect ethnicity pay reporting and suggested a voluntary approach. It made a further recommendation:

“The Commission recommends that all employers that choose to publish their ethnicity pay figures should also publish a diagnosis and action plan to lay out the reasons for and the strategy to improve any disparities. Reported ethnicity pay data should also be disaggregated by different ethnicities to provide the best information possible to facilitate change. Account should also be taken of small sample sizes in particular regions and smaller organisations.

To support employers undertaking this exercise, the Commission recommends that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is tasked with producing guidance for employers to draw on.”

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

The information that the Minister has provided is very helpful, particularly on the work that Business in the Community has done and also his quoting the report from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. I would be grateful if he clarified exactly what the Government have done since they conducted the survey and consultation in October 2018. I have heard what organisations have been working on, which is fantastic, but I would really like to hear what the Government have been working on to address this issue.

[Paul Scully]

The Government are clearly working towards this and I will continue developing that journey in my speech. What we want to do is to make sure that we are delivering on something that is possible. What I do not want to do is what the Leader of the Opposition did last week, by talking about setting a £10 minimum wage, then this week advertising for stewards for the Labour party conference and paying £9.75 an hour. Politics is the art of the possible. We must ensure we get this right and that we diagnose and solve the problem correctly.

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

I am still not clear what the Government have done since October 2018. I would be grateful if the Minister would clarify and set out what the Government have done since then to address this issue.

[Paul Scully]

As I said at the beginning of my response, I am developing that journey covering the last two years’ worth of work if the hon. Lady will remain patient. The hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar) talked about racism, and clearly we need to ensure that we tackle racism in all its forms. However, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities found that most of the disparities when tackling ethnicity pay do not have their origins in racism. There are other factors that may be at play, such as geography, class, sex and age. However, whatever the cause of the pay gap, it is essential that we get organisations to tackle this.