Covid-19: Disparate Impact

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that question. That is something that should happen right now. We want to make sure that things do not happen separately in Government, and I have been very keen to ensure that there is no silo working. A frequent problem is that different Departments do different things, and they often duplicate information and work, so we have been at great pains to make sure that that does not happen.

I share every single thing that I do with Ministers across Departments. We have a group of Ministers who look at equalities in the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education, and we feed into that group everything that we learn. The findings from the race disparity unit and ONS research are fed in as those Ministers make policy, whether in health or otherwise. We do not want this to be a separate Government project that requires new oversight; we all have to work together, and that is how I plan to do it.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I thank the Minister for her statement. I am interested in everything that it contains, and I commend her for volunteering to be part of the vaccine programme.

I want to raise two issues—possibly three, if I have time. Minority ethnic women are particularly over-represented in frontline care roles, so they are at particular risk of job disruption, as highlighted in a report by Close the Gap. Why have the UK Government not matched the Scottish Government’s action of a 3.3% wage increase for all adult social care workers to ensure that at least the real living wage is paid across frontline care, covering all hours worked, including sleepovers?

The Minister said that help that is provided across the population disproportionately benefits black, Asian and minority ethnic people, but that does not apply to those who have no recourse to public funds. I know that she has spoken about this before, but most people who have no recourse to public funds are from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. Will she support our calls to enable them to get support?

Finally, I note that the Minister said that she would include in future reports updates on other groups who are disproportionately impacted, and I want to make sure that older people are one of those groups. We know that people living in poverty are disproportionately impacted, and one way to lift older people out of poverty is to make sure that they know about pension credit, and to make it as easy as possible to apply for. The more voices across this House and across the Departments who commit to ensuring that older people know about the £2 billion-plus that is unclaimed every year in these islands, the better. I hope that she will commit to paying particular attention to that.

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. She is absolutely right to mention older people, who are the most disproportionately impacted group. Someone who is over 70 or 80 is 80 times more likely to have the disease, whereas someone from an ethnic minority background is between 1.2 and 1.8 times more likely to have it. We must keep this in perspective, and we are looking at everybody who is impacted and vulnerable in whatever way.

The hon. Lady asks about money we are spending on adult health and social care. We are spending an unprecedented amount in the pandemic. We have targeted as much money as we possibly can to all the groups we believe need it. It may not be exactly what people asked for, but we are looking at decisions in the round to ensure that we are covering all groups.