Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of the report of 18 January 2018 by the Centre for Social Investigation entitled Are employers in Britain discriminating against ethnic minorities.

The Centre for Social Investigation’s findings on potential discrimination at the written application stage of recruitment are concerning. The Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful to discriminate against employees and people seeking work because of their race.

The Government’s Ethnicity Facts and Figures website and Business in the Community’s 2018 Race at Work Survey highlight that people from ethnic minorities still encounter disparities in recruitment and progression. In October 2018 the Prime Minister announced a package of measures to make the workplace fairer for people from ethnic minorities, including a Race at Work Charter and a consultation on mandatory ethnicity pay reporting. The consultation closed on 11 January 2019.