Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Zarah Sultana

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

What steps he is taking to (a) maintain jobs in the steel industry and (b) create new green manufacturing jobs.

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Kemi Badenoch)]

The Government have supported the steel sector extensively, including providing over £500 million in recent years to help with the costs of energy. At the summer economic update, the Government announced an ambitious £3.05 billion package for housing decarbonisation designed to cut carbon, save people money and create jobs. Alongside that, our covid support package is still available to the sector to protect jobs and ensure that producers have the right support during this challenging time.

[Zarah Sultana [V]]

My constituency is home to Liberty Pressing Solutions, part of the Liberty Steel Group. The threat of the company’s collapse risks losing good, skilled, unionised jobs in Coventry and across the country. This would be a disaster for the city and for British manufacturing, so rather than waiting for the company to go bust before taking action, risking workers’ jobs, terms and conditions, will the Government step in now, with all options on the table, including bringing the business into public ownership, guaranteeing its future and retaining the skills we need to rebuild and to tackle the climate emergency?

[Kemi Badenoch]

It would not be appropriate for me to comment on the details of individual companies, due to commercial sensitivities. We are monitoring developments around Liberty and continue to engage closely with the company, the broader UK steel industry and trade unions. I recognise that reports around Liberty cause worry and uncertainty to the affected workers and their families. What I would say to the hon. Lady is that there is a lot of stuff that the Government are doing that will help her constituency. For instance, we are helping to create new green manufacturing jobs by providing support to drive the electrification of the UK automotive sector, supporting thousands of high-quality jobs in the west midlands.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Zarah Sultana

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

We are committed to improving skills in the economy and levelling up productivity across England. That will be achieved through our lifetime skills guarantee and further reforms, which will create jobs and opportunity across the country, supporting us to build back better from the coronavirus pandemic. We will provide further detail and a full conclusion to the review of post-18 education and funding at the next comprehensive spending review. I thank my hon. Friend and the Open University for their engagement on this so far.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab) [V]]

The disgraceful 1% pay rise for NHS workers is really a pay cut when inflation is factored in. The Prime Minister claims that it is all we can afford. The Government had no problem finding £37 billion for the private test and trace system, an extra £16 billion for the military budget, or hundreds of millions of pounds in dodgy covid contracts for the Health Secretary’s WhatsApp contacts. NHS workers have seen their pay fall by more than 10% in real terms in the past decade, so instead of handing out fortunes to mates and donors, will the Chancellor heed the calls of trade unions and NHS staff and give them the pay rise that they deserve, which is 15% to make up for a decade of lost pay?

Covid-19: Ethnic Minority Disparities

Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Zarah Sultana

Monday 1st March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

Yes, I can assure my hon. Friend of that. It is what I responded to my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Kate Griffiths), and I can reiterate it again now. What I would also say is that we want to assess the effectiveness of the scheme, so it is not just about letting people know that it has happened, but about checking that what we are doing and what we think is happening is working. Participating local authorities will provide regular progress reports over the course of the community champions programme, for example, so that we can evaluate exactly what is going on. One of the next steps in my report is to share the learning from the programme and to maximise the benefits from the funding we have given so that everyone, including those who have not participated in the scheme, can benefit.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab) [V]]

When I challenged the Minister on the disproportionate impact of covid-19 on black and minority ethnic groups after the first wave of the virus, the Minister denied that systemic injustice was to blame. This new report shows that, in the second wave, Bangladeshi and Pakistani people were three times more likely to die from covid, and that black and minority ethnic communities as a whole are still significantly disproportionately in critical care with it. Does the Minister now acknowledge that it is systemic injustice that black and minority ethnic communities face from higher rates of poverty and overcrowded housing to higher rates of frontline work and barriers to accessing healthcare?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I think it is a really interesting question that the hon. Lady has asked. She says that I dismissed the claim that systemic injustice was to blame, but the fact is that we did not know what was to blame at that time. That was in June, three months before my report.

What we need to understand is what exactly we mean by systemic and structural. We have seen that the data show that, at some point, ethnic minority gaps in terms of disproportionate impact completely disappeared. If these were structural issues, that is not what we would expect to see. For example, at the beginning of the second wave, we saw the disparity between black groups completely close. It is not credible to say that people were being structurally racist and stopped being so during the summer, and then over Christmas these structural issues re-emerged. That does not explain what is happening.

We need to look at what the data tells us. We cannot start from the conclusion that we want this to be systemic injustice so that we can continue to move from a political ideological perspective. We are using a scientific perspective —what does the data tell us?—and the data is telling us that this is a very complex situation. There are multiple factors, and that is why the recommendations, which the Government have, are addressing those underlying factors. It is not a genetic disease, and being an ethnic minority is not the risk factor specifically.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Zarah Sultana

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

What discussions she has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the economic effect of the covid-19 outbreak on (a) women, (b) disabled people and (c) Black, Asian and minority ethnic people.

[The Minister for Equalities (Kemi Badenoch)]

The pandemic has affected all communities in our country. This Government have done their utmost to protect lives and livelihoods. We have targeted economic support at those who need it most. For example, rolling out unprecedented levels of economic support worth over £200 billion has provided a much needed lifeline for those working in shut-down sectors such as retail and hospitality, the workforces in which are disproportionately young, female and from a black, Asian or minority ethnic background. We have taken action to ensure that disabled people have access to disability benefits, financial support and employment support, such as the Work and Health programme, and we have extended the self-employment income support scheme, in which some ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented.

[Kemi Badenoch]

The hon. Lady will be aware that the Chancellor will be announcing his spending review this afternoon, and I think she will find that many of the questions she is asking will be answered at that point. With respect to the sectors that have been shut down, as I said in my first answer, we recognise that those people who are on low incomes have been disproportionately affected, and those groups are the ones who have most benefited from the interventions that the Treasury has put in place.

[Zarah Sultana]

Nearly one in seven people in Coventry are now on universal credit. That is a 97% increase since March. Low earnings, higher rates of poverty and greater need mean that women, BAME communities and disabled people rely more on UC and the social security system. Fixing it, from scrapping the two-child limit and benefit cap to an uplift in payments, is a question of gender, racial and disability justice. What has the Minister done to push for these measures in today’s spending review, including keeping the £20 UC uplift from April 2021 and extending it to jobseeker’s allowance and employment support allowance?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am afraid that, as I said in my earlier answer, questions about the spending review need to be asked to during the spending review, which will take place later this afternoon.

Public Health England Review: Covid-19 Disparities

Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Zarah Sultana

Thursday 4th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

The short answer is no. The report is a welcome first step, but it certainly has not gone far enough. We will take it to where we think it needs to get to.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The coronavirus does not discriminate, but the system in which it is spreading does. Higher rates of poverty, overcrowded housing, precarious work and jobs on the frontline mean that if you are black or Asian you are more likely to catch the virus and to be hit worse if you do. “Black lives matter” is not a slogan. We are owed more than confirmation that our communities are suffering; we are owed justice. Will the Minister commit to a race equality strategy covering all Whitehall Departments, so that we can rebuild by tackling the underlying inequalities and systemic injustice that coronavirus has so brutally laid bare?

[Kemi Badenoch]

All I can say to the hon. Lady is that the Government are doing every single thing they can to make sure we eliminate the disparities that we are seeing because of this disease. We must remember that, as we talk about different groups, there are many other groups that have been impacted based on age and even based on gender. We are looking at all of that. I am not going to take any lessons from the hon. Lady on race and what I should be doing on that. I think the Government have a record to be proud of. We will wait and see the outcomes of the following steps in the recommendations.