Race Disparity Audit

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

As the hon. Lady will know from her time in government—it was a pleasure to serve with her—we are unlikely at this stage to leap to such long-term commitments on the basis of information that we have only just gathered. However, she makes a fair point. The underlying point is that this is an issue not only for central Government, but for the private sector. I know that many private sector organisations, some of which were represented at the roundtable event held at Downing Street this morning, are anxious to follow up a lot of the work on trying to reduce the gender pay gap and to address pay gaps among people from different ethnic backgrounds as well.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I applaud the Government’s efforts, because this is the first such audit to be carried out. As chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on Pakistan and on communities engagement, I have consistently raised with the previous and current Prime Ministers the matter of the British Pakistani community falling behind on educational attainment, employment and wages. What will the Government’s strategy be to address that? Will there be effective community engagement so that the answers come from the bottom up?

[Damian Green]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend has a long and honourable record of campaigning in this area. The employment response from the Department for Work and Pensions will be targeted at specific areas, and 20 hotspots where the most difference can be made will be identified. I obviously cannot commit today to saying what those 20 will be, but I would be surprised if the impact was not deliberately designed to help the areas in which those communities tend to live, where the unemployment rate is not as good as it is on average.