Black History Month
Debate between Steve Baker and Marsha De Cordova(3 years ago)
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Marsha De Cordova
No. Eight months on, the Government still have not published their response to the report. I hope that the Minister will today give us a timeline, as that was promised to be published in the summer. We are now leaving autumn and going into winter. Their apathy towards meaningfully addressing structural inequalities is shameful, and an insult to those of us with that lived experience.
Today, I call on the Minister to urgently look at implementing a race equality strategy to fundamentally change those systems and institutions in which structural racial inequalities exist. That includes reforming the national curriculum, as my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) has already mentioned. The Government must commit to addressing those shocking disparities in black maternal health, which leave black women at a greater risk of death during childbirth, and include the recording of accurate and robust data. They must also commit to upholding their obligations under the Equality Act 2010 in carrying out and publishing equality impact assessments. I was pleased to see that yesterday’s Budget included one, but that has not been the case with many of the Government’s policies and even legislation.
We all know that the Government should by now have responded to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report. The Minister may wish to say that the Government have conceded that the report does not even warrant a response. Perhaps the Government will just crack on and get on with implementing the recommendations from so many of those other reports alluded to by my Friend the Member for Streatham in her excellent opening remarks.
I will finish by quoting the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said:
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
That is so important. We are all here because we care about black history. We must demand action—from ourselves, but also from the Government.