Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities

Chris Green Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

The hon. Lady will know that I have been reporting to this House quarterly on the very work that she describes—the effect that covid-19 has had on ethnic minority people and other vulnerable groups. We have explained the reasons for the causes of those disparities. The Public Health England report had a qualitative review, which talked about people’s experiences of racism in the system.

What we have to do now, however, is to ensure that we protect people. Our strategy at the moment is around vaccines. We have been doing everything we can to increase vaccine uptake, including significant amounts of work—which I reported to the House in February—on increasing vaccine uptake among ethnic minority groups where a large percentage of vaccine hesitancy remains, again much of it caused by misrepresentation and misinformation. I hope that the hon. Lady and members of her party will work with us in government on tackling misinformation and disinformation and will encourage those vulnerable groups to get vaccinated.

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

The BBC has now said that, in terms of race and culture, you are what you eat. That clearly has a narrowing implication for playwrights and authors who increasingly feel that they may write only about their personal racial and ethnic experience. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a rather chilling thing in terms of the values that are now being put out?

[Kemi Badenoch]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. I believe in freedom of expression. It is important that authors, playwrights and other artists feel free to write about and represent a broad range of people, regardless of their race or ethnicity. That is what we would see in a truly diverse society with a shared culture, rather than a “stay in your lane” approach that assumes our society consists of mutually antagonistic identity groups.