Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of (a) poverty and (b) overcrowding on the liklehood of (i) contracting and (ii) dying of covid-19 for (A) BAME people and (B) people from a Bangladeshi background.

Public Health England’s (PHE) review ‘Disparities in the risk and outcomes of COVID-19’ presented an analysis of survival among people with confirmed COVID-19 by sex, age group, ethnicity, deprivation and region. It showed that, after taking these factors into account, some ethnic groups still had a higher risk of death than others.

People from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities are likely to be at increased risk of acquiring the infection. This is because they are more likely to live in urban areas, in overcrowded households, in deprived areas, and have jobs that expose them to higher risk.

On June 4, the Government’s Equality Hub published how Government will take forward next steps of this work.

This Department is committed to making the housing market work for everyone and will continue to review what further work we need to do to support government objectives, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.