Covid-19: BAME Communities

Chris Stephens Excerpts
Thursday 18th June 2020

(3 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Dawn Butler Portrait Dawn Butler
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I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention, and I will come to that point later in my remarks. As constituency MPs, it is important for us to talk to doctors, and to understand and learn what is going on. I wish the Government would also take that on board.

Structural and systemic racism is also a health issue, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies revealed that the jobs that are most at risk are over-populated by African, Caribbean, Asian, and minority ethnic people. We must be honest with ourselves and ask why that is. The higher BAME death rate is apparent across all grades of the NHS, even in the highest socioeconomic groups. We must be honest with ourselves and ask why that is. If we shy away from the truth, nothing will change. The publication of the first report on this issue stated that 17 doctors died, 16 of whom were BAME. Eastern Eye then reported that, since 2 June, when that report was published, another 18 doctors died after saving lives, 17 of whom were BAME. We must be honest with ourselves and ask why that is.

The Public Health England report that the Government tried to hide states that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) said, there were numerous examples of doctors who were not able to access appropriate PPE to protect themselves adequately. It also stated that requests for risk assessments or additional PPE from BAME workers were more likely to be refused, and that requests were less likely to be made because of the fear of adverse treatment.

Mary Agyeiwaa Agyapong, a nurse, was still working at a hospital while heavily pregnant. She sadly died of covid-19. They managed to save her baby girl by emergency caesarean. That is so tragic, and we must ask ourselves why she was forced to work. Let me give a couple more examples. Two black employees in London, a taxi driver and one transport worker, Belly Mujinga, died after allegedly being spat at by somebody who claimed they had covid-19. Belly had an underlying health condition and should not have been put in danger. She requested to work in the ticket office, but that was refused. We must ask ourselves why such things are happening. The Government must urgently implore and ensure that all employers carry out risk assessments in all workplaces. As lockdown is eased, those most at risk are in greater danger unless the Government introduce structural requirements for employers.

Chris Stephens Portrait Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
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I thank the hon. Lady for what she has said so far. She talks about employers carrying out risk assessments. It is important that that includes Government Departments and the Government’s outside contractors, because, as she will be aware, many of the workers in these outside contractors—cleaners, for example—are from the BAME community.

Dawn Butler Portrait Dawn Butler
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I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. It is not one rule for Government Departments or Parliament and one rule for the rest of the country: we have seen that play out way too often. He is absolutely right that that has to be taken into consideration.

More than two in 10 black African women are employed in health and social care roles, Indian men are 150% more likely to work in health or social care roles, and 14% of doctors in England and Wales are Indians. Covid-19 does not prefer one person’s lungs to those of other ethnicities. It is not the pandemic that discriminates—it is society. It is almost as though being black is a pre-existing condition that results in worse outcomes for health, employment and education. That does not for one moment mean that it cannot be overcome. It is not a victim mentality that has put us in this situation, any more than it was indolence that put British citizens on planes and deported them during the Windrush scandal or bad sportsmanship that subjects our players to abuse on the field. We must call it what it is, because if we do not call it what it is, how can we identify it, how can we cure it, how can we stop it? It is racism, and it has become more structural and systemic. It is not just about individuals. Structural and systemic racism can exist without individual acts of racism, but it is an unfair, unequal discriminatory system—and it is literally killing us.

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Chris Stephens Portrait Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
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I had to change my seating arrangements earlier as I was told that the microphone where I was originally sitting was not working—not that that has stopped me in the past.

First, let me pay tribute to the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) for her brilliant speech. I thank her for allowing me to intervene so that I could mention some of the topics on which I now wish to start my own speech.

I was standing in this very spot last night when I started my Adjournment debate by condemning completely the far-right violence that we saw in George Square in Glasgow last night. The far right targeted a peaceful protest by asylum seekers who were protesting about the living conditions that they have been put in by the Home Office. Such violence and thuggery must be condemned, and is condemned, by many proud Glaswegians.

There are a number of issues that I have had to deal with on behalf of BAME constituents, which are just plain wrong and which show systematic racism. The first one I will touch on involves the Foreign Office, which was trying to bring back constituents who were stuck abroad. When we made the case that these were individuals who needed to be brought back home, who had health issues that needed to be addressed, those individuals were all of a sudden told by the British consulate that they were not British nationals. Why are they not British nationals? It is because they were given indefinite leave to remain. It was quite ridiculous. Even when the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office told the Foreign Affairs Committee that, yes, they would bring people back home on the basis of their address and where they were resident, consulates were saying that people were not British nationals. That is something that we really need to address. I have been working on the matter with the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi).

I will not revisit my 23-minute address that I made last night on how asylum seekers are treated, but to bundle them into vans and place them in hotels, under what is now known as hotel detention, with culturally inappropriate food and no social distancing is, quite frankly, a disgrace.

We also need to deal with the level of asylum support. A 26p increase in asylum support has been announced by the Government. That is the equivalent of being given a Freddo bar. That is what asylum seekers are being asked to live on in a week. It is an absolute disgrace. What they are being paid is 42% of what someone would expect on social security. I completely echo the comments of my friend the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), on the issue of no recourse to public funds. He has done a great job on that. He embarrassed the Prime Minister, who did not seem to have a clue about that.

I want to touch on how public services are dealing with risk assessments and with BAME employees in particular. We have seen industrial disputes fairly recently, including here in London, in the Foreign Office, with BAME workers going on strike for not being paid the London living wage. It is an absolute disgrace that a Government Department has allowed a contractor to deal with that, and we really need to deal with equality impact assessments properly. It is no use for Governments to say that they have carried out an equality impact assessment and have come to the conclusion that everybody is being hammered equally, so there is therefore equality in the system. That really is not good enough. Frankly, at times I think the Government ignore their duties on equality impact assessments and the public sector equality duty.

I hope that Members will sign early-day motion 596, on the “Dying for sick pay” campaign, led by the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), which particularly relates to how BAME employees—predominantly female BAME employees—are being dealt with in the workforce. I also hope Members will sign early-day motion 599 on the Scottish Trades Union Congress’s “Break the race ceiling” campaign.

In closing, we need positive action in this country. As secretary of Show Racism the Red Card, I say that we need to use our education system to eliminate racism in this country. I was delighted to see the National Football League having to do a U-turn, forced by NFL players and NFL black players. That shows that action can work.