Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. I will be honest with the House: I was beginning to think that today’s statement would never come. The “Inclusive Britain” strategy is woefully late. The Sewell report was published a whole year ago and the Conservatives have been in government for more than a decade. We all know that significant race and ethnic disparities exist in Britain today—indeed, even the flawed Sewell report acknowledges that life chances and outcomes for black and ethnic minority people vary hugely—so why has it taken the Conservatives 12 years to decide to do anything about it?

Most frustratingly, the strategy unquestioningly accepts the Sewell report’s controversial premise that there is no such thing as structural racism in our society. When the report was published last year, it was met with outrage for its failure to acknowledge that structural racism exists and, despite the spin on today’s announcement, the Government continue with the same flawed analysis; one that Baroness Lawrence rightly stated is

“giving racists the green light.”

If both the Sewell report and the strategy fail to identify the root causes of racial and ethnic disparities, how can either possibly hope to tackle them? That is why the strategy was always going to be hopelessly ineffective and short-sighted, and that is why it will fail to deliver for black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.

Let us briefly reflect on what that means. The strategy fails to deliver for black, Asian and minority ethnic NHS workers—frontline workers who faced a disproportionate risk to their health throughout the deadly covid-19 pandemic. It fails to deliver for black children living in Britain, more than half of whom are growing up in poverty. It also fails to deliver for Child Q, a 15-year-old black girl from Hackney who faced the most appalling treatment at the hands of the police, with racism very likely to have been an influencing factor. When the Government publish a flawed report and then churn out an inadequate strategy a whole year later, those are the very people they are failing.

When we look at the strategy line by line, sadly, matters go only from bad to worse. The strategy suggests that we can tackle race and ethnic disparities by just levelling up, but levelling up is a slogan still searching for a meaning. It is the empty soundbite for a Minister struggling to answer the question. It is not the solution to entrenched racial disparities. Where the strategy does put forward proposals, they are either too weak or too slow. For example, it fails completely to implement mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting despite repeated calls from the CBI, the TUC and the Labour party to do just that. Does the Minister think that such measures are not urgently needed? It is absurd that her strategy places so much emphasis on early years support when the Government systematically decimated Sure Start, stripping away a lifeline for children and families. The strategy will not paper over the long-term harm that did.

Where the Conservatives dither, the Labour party acts decisively. The Labour Government in Wales have already introduced a bold race equality action plan to create a truly anti-racist Wales. The Leader of the Opposition commissioned Baroness Lawrence to produce a report addressing the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on minority communities, with clear recommendations for the Government. The next Labour Government will introduce a landmark race equality Act to tackle racial inequality at its source.

The Conservative Government have had 12 years to act. Instead, they have failed to deliver and failed to acknowledge the genuine reasons for racial and ethnic disparities in Britain today. This country deserves so much better.

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. I have a lot of time for her personally, but the fact is that Labour Members cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that this is an ambitious strategy. It would not have mattered what we brought to the House today; they would have criticised it.

The report is not late: we started implementing actions immediately after the commission’s findings came out. Labour Members know that. They know that the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities is set up and running, and they know about the work that we have been doing on maternal disparities. They even know about the changes we made in ethnicity reporting and guidance, because her predecessor wrote to me about that. We have started implementing many actions and are presenting how they weave into so many other strategies across Government, such as levelling up, the health inequalities strategy and the schools White Paper. We will not wait for the last thing to be ready so that we can put it into a nice package for the Labour party to criticise.

It is laughable to say that Labour is decisive in this area. It had the internal Forde inquiry into racism in its own party in 2019, and, three years later, it still has not reported. It is joke that Labour Members are telling us we are late when we have started implementing the actions.

I turn to the hon. Lady’s specific comments on the report. It is not true that the commission’s report denied the existence of structural racism.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

It did.