Child Poverty: Ethnicity

Lord Woolley of Woodford Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Woolley of Woodford]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the review by the Office for National Statistics Child poverty and education outcomes by ethnicity, published on 25 February 2020, which found that Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Black ethnic groups have a higher percentage of children living in low-income households than the national average; and subsequent to this, what assessment they have made of the importance of tackling child food poverty over the upcoming six-week school holidays.

[Lord Woolley of Woodford (CB) [V]]

I thank noble Lords for giving me the opportunity to begin this crucial debate. I wish it were longer, but an hour is better than nothing. I am particularly pleased that we are having this debate in the week of the one-year anniversary of the death of George Floyd—nine minutes and 29 seconds that moved the world. Some of us hope that it will change the world, but that remains to be seen. After his death, in front of our eyes, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of young people, black and white, marched on the streets of cities and towns in countries around the world. Central to their demand was that our institutions, our Governments. our people look at systemic inequality, particularly race inequality. That is why today’s debate is important.

To look, as we should, at child poverty in general, as many noble Lords know, 14.4 million people in this country are living in poverty. When we drill down to black, Asian and minority ethnic families and children, the data is stark. We should not only acknowledge and confront this but have the bravery to close those gaps and unleash the talent within our communities. I was struck by the data that the Social Metrics Commission unleashed on us about a year ago, which said that half our black families are living in poverty, many in deep poverty. I tried to get an image of what deep poverty looks like. It is not just about people going to the food banks that we have seen; it is the way that people look down on them when they go. It is also about their housing. I found data in a recent report showing that as many as 13% of black people are living in damp, poor accommodation. For Africans the figure is 10% and for Pakistanis 9%. That compares with 3% in white communities. We see the gulf in food poverty, in housing poverty and in unemployment. The TUC stated that black people have been hit four times harder by Covid-19 in being made unemployed. Unemployment rates for young black men are now rising. The national average is 4% and the figure is about 13% for young people, but for young black men it is nearer 40%.

We know how that pans out. We know where that goes, when people have no hope and no dignity. We see them being vulnerable. We see unscrupulous gangs waiting for them in the wings to take them under their spell and lead them to no good in this double pandemic of Covid-19, which has devastated black, Asian and minority ethnic communities disproportionately, and the George Floyd murder and protest. It has been a double pandemic—a perfect storm, if you like. Historians will look back at this time and ask but one question: when the systemic inequalities were laid bare by this double pandemic, what was our response? What did we do?

We have three choices. We can do nothing, we can do a little or we can do something great. For me, it is not good enough to build back better. I have seen the data from back then, and it was not great then. It was made worse by Covid-19. We parliamentarians have got to build a new better. We must have that 1945 moment, when we built the National Health Service, but we cannot do that if we are not brave. We cannot do it if we are steeped in denial, like Dr Tony Sewell, who saw all this evidence in education, health, jobs and housing and then confronted you and me, saying he found no systemic racism. We cannot deny the lived experiences of many out there, black and white. We must not.

We have an opportunity when bad things happen. We have a unique opportunity before us to have the greatest conversations and the greatest unity ever. Will we take it up? I have been fantastically impressed by that young man, the footballer Marcus Rashford, who has, in his own way, changed our world by demanding that we look at those uncomfortable truths—and he still plays great football and keeps on his track to guide us. Will the Minister listen to the range of experts, supermarkets and charities that make up Marcus Rashford’s End Child Food Poverty coalition and expand free school meals to all under-16s with a parent or guardian in receipt of universal credit or an equivalent benefit? They are slipping through the cracks, and that is on our watch. We cannot let that happen.

I want to be bigger than that. I know noble Lords want to be bigger and bolder than that. We have done right in disregarding the Tony Sewell report because we know it is dishonest and disingenuous and seeks to blame people for their situation, rather than to have an adult conversation. I hope we can have a conversation and meet the Minister and relevant experts in the field to have broader discussions and to formulate, in the absence of a race equality strategy, a framework that deals with these uncomfortable truths, so that we join the dots where Covid has laid them bare. We know where we need to look. We join the dots, in the short term, to make sure that kids do not go hungry; in the medium term, to start building; and, in the long term, so that all our young kids, families and communities can say that in 2021, after the anniversary of the tragedy of George Floyd, we came together—bigger, bolder, more creative, non-political and shoulder to shoulder—to have a plan that will deliver for all our communities. I thank noble Lords for this special time.