Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities

Kirsten Oswald Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank the Father of the House for his question and for his comments, which I completely agree with. The issue he describes around education back in the day is actually something I experienced myself. There is still much to do, but we have come a long way from 25 years ago when I first immigrated to this country. On Gurpal Virdi, I am happy to meet my hon. Friend to fully understand what happened and to see what the Government can do.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP) [V]]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. A United Nations working group strongly rejected this report, saying that it

“further distorted and falsified historic facts”,

could fuel racism and twists data, among other pointed criticisms. The Minister just spoke about the lack of evidence of institutional racism, but the Runnymede Trust rightly points out that evidence of institutional racism was submitted to the commission. Twenty thousand people joined the Runnymede Trust and Amnesty International in calling for the report’s withdrawal, and 36 trade union general secretaries have repudiated the report.

In contrast to the Prime Minister, who said that the report contains “interesting observations”, Scots campaigner Talat Yaqoob called the report a “whitewash of reality” produced only to let the UK Government abdicate responsibility for tackling institutional racism. How can the Minister justify a report that says policies such as the hostile environment were not deliberately targeted at the UK’s ethnic minorities? Leading clinicians have said the report will worsen systemic health inequalities. The NHS Race and Health Observatory has declared that institutional racism exists in the UK, the health and care system and across wider public bodies. In the light of those responses, will the Minister repudiate the report’s glossing over of the impact of covid on ethnic minority groups?

The SNP will always work hard for Scotland to be a global leader in diversity and inclusion. If re-elected, we will introduce a Scottish diversity and inclusion strategy, focusing on institutional barriers and providing education on colonial history. The Scottish Tory manifesto is silent on these issues, but in bringing forward this report, it certainly looks like the UK Government are going in the opposite direction. So can the Minister tell us specifically what the Tories are doing to tackle institutional inequality and to deal effectively with colonial history? Can she understand why so many people will be deeply disappointed with this response, which feels, at best, like a bunch of cans being kicked down the road?

[Kemi Badenoch]

Before I begin to answer the hon. Lady’s questions, I would like to point out that the PM wrote to devolved Administrations shortly after the commission was established to invite them to engage with this work. It is noticeable that Northern Ireland was keen to take part, and hosted the commission on crime and policing matters. However, the Scottish National party Administration did not engage, so I believe that the words the hon. Lady is now saying about how dedicated they are to fighting racial inequality are completely hollow. When the commission was set up, I am afraid that they did very little indeed to engage.

Regarding the statement by the UN experts, the group grossly misrepresented the commission’s report; the statement is clearly born of the divisive narratives perpetrated by certain media outlets and political groups that are seeking to sow division in our ethnic minority communities. It is also quite clear that the UN experts did not read the commission’s report, judging from some of their statements, which seem to have been cut and pasted from a Labour party press release. The obvious flaw in their critique is that there is no comparison to be drawn with peer countries in Europe, especially because they do not even collect data on race and ethnicity. As such, I share the commission’s disappointment in, and rejection of, yesterday’s statement by the working group of experts on people of African descent, and I will be writing back to them in the strongest of terms.

It is no surprise that the hon. Lady has listed a lot of left-wing groups that disagree with the report. Disagreement and debate is part of politics. We have no issues with people disagreeing with the substance of the report; what we do have an issue with is people misrepresenting it. This report was tasked with finding out why disparities exist. It was not supposed to define where exactly we are seeing institutional racism, but to call racism out where it exists, and it did that. Perhaps if the hon. Lady spent some time reading the report, rather than remarks on Twitter, she would be better informed about what it actually says.