Covid-19: Disparate Impact

Marsha De Cordova Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab) [V]]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement.

Coronavirus continues to expose deep-rooted structural inequalities in our society, and these drive the health inequalities. Today, the Minister has published her first quarterly report on progress into addressing covid health inequalities, but it is now well over four months since both Public Health England reviews were published. The country is now sadly well into a second wave of the virus, yet we are still lacking a forward-looking national strategy and action plan.

Just this week the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Runnymede Trust showed that well over 2,000 black and south Asian deaths could have been avoided during the first wave of the pandemic if those populations did not experience a higher risk of death from covid-19, and that 58,000 people would have died in the first wave if the white population experienced the same risk of death from covid as our black populations. The Government must be prepared to admit and act on the root causes of the hugely disproportionate impact that coronavirus has had on our black and ethnic minority communities.

I welcome the Government’s decision to make the recording of ethnicity as part of the death certificate process mandatory, but collecting data is only one part of what needs to be done. The Minister mentions that there will be further research, but we do not know when this research will report or how quickly the Government will act on its findings. It is also unclear how the Government can measure or demonstrate the effectiveness of their public health communications for diverse communities and ensure that such communications are inclusive and accessible. Given the scale and the urgency of this crisis, the Government have fallen short of doing what is needed.

This first quarterly report does not commit to much that is quantifiable or timed, so I ask the Minister these questions as a matter of urgency. She mentions that she will be looking into the clinical groups of people who are severely in need of support. When will that review take place, and when will those groups be added to the list of those who are shielding?

Where is the Government’s plan of action to address the long-term structural inequalities, such as the deep-rooted inequalities in housing and employment, including occupational discrimination? Where is the Government’s implementation plan, with milestones, for protecting our black, Asian and ethnic minorities during this pandemic? Which local authorities will receive some of that £25 million funding for the community champions programme, and how did the Government reach that amount? How will that funding be allocated to the local authorities and what will the criteria be?

Will the Minister now publish in full any or all of the equality impact assessments of the likely impact on our black, Asian and minority ethnic communities of the Government’s covid-19 responses? It is absolutely right that the NHS has carried out 90% of its occupational risk assessments, but why have the Government updated the guidance only for employers, rather than putting in place proper checks and balances to ensure that our workers are being protected? Finally, why has it taken so long for the Government to act on the disproportionate impact that covid-19 is having on our ethnic minority communities? The volume of evidence that we have seen has been coming forward to us for months. We are already in the second wave, and this is now beyond urgent.

[Kemi Badenoch]

It does not appear to me that the hon. Lady has actually read the statement that I sent to her. She asks about what the Government are doing. I have just given a statement about what the Government have been doing over four months.

I think we need to restate this: we did not wait until today to say what we were going to do. As soon as we discovered this disproportionate impact, actions were put in place. The hon. Lady talks about us not issuing revised guidance to employers, but we did that in July and, as I said in my statement, we did it again in September, highlighting the findings of the PHE review and explaining how to make workplaces covid-secure. We required passengers to wear a face covering in taxis and private hire vehicles, and we asked this to be done for hospitality staff, many of whom are from ethnic minority backgrounds. We provided £4.3 million in funding for six new projects. We provided a range of guidance to support those living in multi-generational households. We spent an additional £4 million on reaching ethnic minority people through tailored messaging, strategically chosen channels and trusted voic-es.

The hon. Lady talks about the NHS guidance and risk assessments as though that was the only thing we have done. We have been implementing new payments for people in low-income areas with high rates of covid-19 who need to self-isolate and cannot work from home. What we are not going to do—it is clear what the hon. Lady and her party are expecting—is to implement segregated policies for people from ethnic minority backgrounds. What we are doing is looking at risk groups, but tailoring support for the whole population.

The hon. Lady talks about the IPPR report, and my answer is that I do not recognise those figures. Its methodology was not transparent, and our statisticians in the Cabinet Office could not understand where it got the numbers from. I found the presentation scaremongering and alarming. It is really important to me that we let people have trust and faith in the Government, and that we let them know what we are doing. That is why I am standing here in Parliament giving this oral statement, rather than just making a report to the Prime Minister.

The hon. Lady talks about what the Government have done. I wrote a letter to every single Member of Parliament asking them to share with ethnic minorities and their communities how they can join the national vaccine register, and I have been taking vaccines myself. Opposition Members have not been doing so. Especially when it comes to the hon. Lady, knowing that she has a large ethnic minority population in her community, what has she done to tell them to join the national vaccine register? We have not seen anything to that effect on her social media. It would be good if Opposition Members showed us that they are looking to help people, rather than looking for reasons to bash the Government. We must not politicise covid-19.