Oral Answers to Questions

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

I put on the record a tribute to the proactive and constructive work of Scope and many other organisations to support our efforts, which have resulted in record disability employment—up 1.3 million since 2010. Yes, these are unprecedented times, but we have made sure that all the schemes in our £30 billion plan for jobs have disability provision embedded. We will continue with our ambition to have 1 million more disabled people in work by 2027—nothing has changed.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

What steps the Government are taking to tackle institutional racism.

[The Minister for Equalities (Kemi Badenoch)]

We are committed to a fairer society. In July, the Government set up the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which is reviewing inequality in the UK, focusing on areas that include education, employment, health and the criminal justice system. The commission is looking at outcomes for the whole population and is due to report at the end of the year.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

This year, one of the issues about which I received the most correspondence was the Black Lives Matter movement and the death of George Floyd. A key thing that came across was that my constituents want to ensure that what we teach in schools is properly representative of the role that black Britons and other people of colour have played in our history. Today, the “Black Curriculum” report, led by Dr Jason Arday of Durham University, has concluded that the national curriculum in England

“systematically omits the contribution of Black British history”.

Will the Minister speak to the Secretary of State for Education, urge him to work with colleagues in the devolved Administrations, such as Kirsty Williams in Wales, and ensure that we have a truly reflective curriculum?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I have not seen the report that the hon. Lady refers to, but I will look at it with interest, decide, from an equalities perspective, whether I agree with the conclusions that have been made, and then speak to the Secretary of State for Education about it.