Oral Answers to Questions

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

2. What steps she is taking to help end discrimination against ethnic minority people.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab)]

6. What steps she is taking to help end discrimination against ethnic minority people.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

14. What steps she is taking to help end discrimination against ethnic minority people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Seema Malhotra]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and I completely agree with him. Indeed, I also attended a wonderful interfaith iftar in Hounslow on Friday. Islamophobia is completely abhorrent and has no place in our society. No one should ever be the victim of hatred because of their religion or belief. The Government have established a new working group to provide the Government with a definition of anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia, and advise the Government and other bodies on how best to understand, quantify and define prejudice, discrimination and hate crime targeted against Muslims.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I thank the Minister for her commitment to mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting. However, I was disappointed to learn that the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority are rowing back on their proposals to boost diversity in financial services. I feel that risks pushing away the very best talent from the sector. Only 4% of financial services firms disclose their ethnicity pay gap. The announcement will only slow the pace of change that is needed to tackle inequalities. Does the Minister agree that initiatives that aim to reduce the ethnicity pay gap are not anti-growth, but pro-talent and pro-growth?

[Seema Malhotra]

Fair and equal treatment at work is a right, not a privilege. Companies like Deloitte, which I visited recently, are reporting voluntarily on their ethnicity pay gaps, and I have attended roundtables chaired by organisations such as Change the Race Ratio and ShareAction, which promote the benefits of ethnicity pay gap reporting. There has been progress; last week, the Parker review showed that there is an increasing number of ethnic minority board members in our FTSE companies. I agree with my hon. Friend that pay gap reporting can help employers to identify and remove barriers to progression for their workforces, and unleash talent from all our communities, thereby supporting economic growth, and I thank her for her work on this.