Businesses: Rights and Responsibilities

Lord Taylor of Warwick Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, for securing this timely debate today. There are many important issues presently concerning the corporate sector, but I believe that, first and foremost, there is a biblical foundation. As we see in the Gospels, Christ spent much of his time ministering in the marketplace. Of the 12 disciples that Jesus called forth, most were businessmen, not synagogue ministers. Six were fishermen operating established businesses in Galilee: in particular, Peter, James and John.

Matthew was an Inland Revenue man, a tax collector with an office in bustling Capernaum. I suspect he would have had a view about corporate tax avoidance. Another apostle, Luke, had a thriving medical practice. One can imagine how scathing Dr Luke would have been about a drug company increasing the price of an anti-epilepsy medicine by 2,600 % overnight.

Jesus himself was raised in the family carpentry and furnishing business, which supported a family of at least nine people. Of the 50 parables told, 34 of them can be described as having a business, finance or workplace content by way of illustration. Furthermore, many of those who supported the Apostles in the book of Acts were business people. For example Priscilla and Aguila operated a tent-making business with Paul; and there was Lydia, a distinguished dealer in the finest purple cloth.

It is also significant that Jesus in Matthew 3 v 12 said,

“I must be about my father’s business”.

He was very much in the business of people, creating both prophets and profits. As business is about people, I wish to focus on diversity in the corporate sector. Diversity itself is obviously a wide subject encompassing race, gender, sexuality, age, disability and religious diversity, but because of time constraints, I will focus on race, while of course accepting that other kinds of diversity are no less important.

Whatever one’s view on immigration or Europe might be, Britain has changed and will continue to do so. If this change is embraced by the corporate sector, not just endured, Britain itself will then, and only then, be all the stronger.

The Motion refers to “balance”. The balancing scales of justice is probably the oldest symbol we have embodying fairness and truth. Unfortunately, that balance and fairness does not presently exist when it comes to diversity in the corporate sector. Of the UK’s population of 63 million, 14% is black and ethnic minority. More than half of the BME communities live in three main cities—London, Manchester and Birmingham. Those three cities are at the heart of business and corporate Britain. In her first speech as Prime Minister in July, Theresa May had to admit, quoting figures from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, that people are treated differently in Britain depending on their race. For example, the employment rate for ethnic minorities is 10 percentage points lower than the national average and people from ethnic minority households are almost twice as likely to live in relative poverty compared with the mainstream population.

Although gender diversity in the corporate sector has improved, the lack of ethnic diversity in UK boardrooms persists. In 2015, 6.6% of the FTSE 100 companies’ board members were from ethnic minorities, but in 2016 this had increased only by a meagre 0.1% to 6.7%. The latest annual survey of 10,000 top business leaders shows that the number of ethnic minority CEOs is falling and the number of all-white boards is increasing. Today there are just four non-white CEOs in the FTSE 100. Some 98% of all FTSE 100 chairs are white and 95% of the FTSE 100 chief financial officers are white. I ask your Lordships: is that acceptable? These facts show that we are nowhere near achieving a balance in diversity inclusion in the corporate sector.

We are all the products of our experiences and I was just reflecting on mine, which has had its high and lows. Some years ago I was invited to be a speaker at the Institute of Directors on the subject of diversity. I walked into the entrance hall in Pall Mall and said to the concierge doorman, “Lord Taylor of Warwick”. He said, “Ah yeah, we’re expecting Lord Taylor. You the driver, mate?” I replied, “No, I am Lord Taylor”. There was a famous hit song called “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum. Maybe they had this gentleman in mind when they wrote it, because he turned from white to very, very pale. I would like to think that nowadays that misunderstanding would not occur.

I have had the privilege of serving on a number of company boards, particularly in the sports, media and entertainment sectors, but I have lost count of the number of occasions when I have addressed business conferences and seminars where the only black people in the room were myself and the waiters. My wife, Lady Laura, is American and she noticed when she came to this country the big difference between America and the UK. America seems to have embraced diversity when it comes to boards, but we have not.

As a result of Brexit, the corporate sector will need to export more to other countries outside the European Union. Whereas there are 27 other nations in the Union, there are 52 nations in the Commonwealth. In many ways, Britain has closer ties to the Commonwealth than to Europe. These ties include the Queen, the English language and the Christian faith. Our local enterprise partnerships need to develop stronger working links with the Commonwealth diaspora groups in this country. I am talking about the religious leaders and businesses concerns. We need to harness our diaspora as a vehicle for employment, exports and economic growth, to benefit everyone. Our diaspora communities can bring huge benefits to the boardroom and senior management, through their family connections to, and cultural understanding of, emerging markets around the world as we seek to export more to a wider group of countries.

In 2011 the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Abersoch, was commissioned by the then coalition Government to produce a report concerning gender diversity in boardrooms. He made various recommendations, the most ambitious of which was a target of 25% of places on FTSE 100 boards to be filled by women. But while the glass ceiling for women is starting to show cracks, the ceiling for ethnic minorities in this country seems to be more concrete than glass. In 2013 the Companies Act 2006 was amended to require companies to include a breakdown of the number of females on their boards, in senior management and in the company as a whole. It is time to do so for ethnic minorities as well.

I also look forward to the publication of the report being prepared by the noble Baroness, Lady McGregor-Smith, in partnership with the business department, on ethnic minorities in company board rooms. I was privileged enough to be consulted during the preparation of that report. I was delighted that my recommendation was accepted that the ethnic minority business sector should be harnessed to increase our export trade post-Brexit.

The media and creative industries are very influential sectors of society. It is a great pity that black actors such as Idris Elba and David Harewood had to go to America to establish themselves in the TV and film industry. While television is using more black and Asian presenters, Directors UK claims that the number of BME directors working in UK TV is “critically low”.

A few years ago, I was a television producer at BBC White City. It got to the stage when I asked whether it was called White City because everyone else above kitchen level was white. As for newspapers, there is not a single ethnic minority editor of a national newspaper in this country. A City University survey in March this year found that British journalism as a whole is 94% white.

For 10 years, I was vice-president of the BBFC, the British Board of Film Classification. Although it treated me extremely well, it was a very white organisation when I first joined. I encouraged it to place job opportunities not only in the mainstream newspapers but in ethnic minority newspapers like The Voice and New Nation.

In sport, around 30% of players in the football league are from BME backgrounds, mostly black, but there are hardly any people of colour in football boardrooms. Of the 92 managers in the Football League divisions, just six are non-white and none is in the Premier League. That is not acceptable.

When my parents came to Britain in the 1950s, there were signs in windows stating “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs”. I authored a book by this title some 20 years ago. It was interesting to see the same quotation repeated in a new film about racism in 1940s Britain, called “A United Kingdom”. We have clearly come a long way since then, but for BME minorities in corporate Britain there are still many barriers to break.