Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will take steps with Cabinet colleagues to review all Government documents to ensure that they do not contain (a) racist and (b) other prejudiced terms; and if he will make a statement.

We do not tolerate racist, homophobic, sexist or any similarly unacceptable language in any form, including in Government documents or on our webpages.

The Government has issued guidance on how to write about race and ethnicity and promoted this across departments, including through a letter from the Chief Operating Officer for the Civil Service to all Permanent Secretaries in December. That guidance is on gov.uk here: https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/style-guide/writing-about-ethnicity

This is part of wider work to implement the Inclusive Britain Action Plan, the Government’s response to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which was published in March 2022. The Government issued an update to Parliament in April 2023 summarising the progress that has been made in delivering this plan.

Cabinet Office will be writing to Permanent Secretary colleagues to remind them of this guidance and asking them to ensure that it is easily accessible to all employees within their department and associated organisations.

Recent media coverage has highlighted language in two documents dating back to 2006 and 2012, and a 2015 comment on a publicly accessible Government web page, on which anyone is able to comment. The 2006 document was written by an external contractor for use by their own staff, the 2012 document used the language within a quote from a non-civil service scientific paper published in 1990. Both documents are no longer in use and the comment has been removed from the web page.