Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what discussions they have had with the British motor sports industry regarding access to training and employment opportunities for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic young people.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The Government is committed to promoting diversity and inclusion in all sport and physical activity, including motor sport. Our strategy ‘Sporting Future’ sets out a clear ambition to increase diversity among sporting organisations and to help the sport sector be more inclusive and welcoming to its spectators, participants and people in its workforce. However it is ultimately for all individual sports’ national governing bodies, to decide on the specific aims and appropriate initiatives in their organisations, and to evaluate progress with these.
We welcome the work of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Sir Lewis Hamilton which is aimed at improving the representation of Black people in UK motor sport. We will continue to work across government and with sector partners to ensure that inequalities people from ethnically diverse backgrounds face in sport, including motorsports, are being tackled effectively.
Sport England, UK Sport and the other home nations’ sports councils have also recently published the results of a detailed, independent review into tackling racism and racial inequality in sport. Following the findings each Council is working to develop their own specific action plans to deliver on their initial commitments relating to people; representation; investment; systems and insight. This will involve working closely with relevant groups or communities to tackle racial inequality in sport, and bring about lasting change.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the (1) findings, and (2) recommendations, of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Hamilton Commission report Accelerating Change: Improving Representation of Black People in UK Motorsport, published on 13 July.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The Government is committed to promoting diversity and inclusion in all sport and physical activity, including motor sport. Our strategy ‘Sporting Future’ sets out a clear ambition to increase diversity among sporting organisations and to help the sport sector be more inclusive and welcoming to its spectators, participants and people in its workforce. However it is ultimately for all individual sports’ national governing bodies, to decide on the specific aims and appropriate initiatives in their organisations, and to evaluate progress with these.
We welcome the work of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Sir Lewis Hamilton which is aimed at improving the representation of Black people in UK motor sport. We will continue to work across government and with sector partners to ensure that inequalities people from ethnically diverse backgrounds face in sport, including motorsports, are being tackled effectively.
Sport England, UK Sport and the other home nations’ sports councils have also recently published the results of a detailed, independent review into tackling racism and racial inequality in sport. Following the findings each Council is working to develop their own specific action plans to deliver on their initial commitments relating to people; representation; investment; systems and insight. This will involve working closely with relevant groups or communities to tackle racial inequality in sport, and bring about lasting change.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to give access to documents held on Commonwealth nations and their independence movements to Commonwealth scholars unable to visit the National Archives without access to funding to meet current charges for copying and postage.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
As a government department, The National Archives is obliged to charge for some of its public services, including research and record copying. These charges, agreed with HM Treasury, are set out in the Fees Regulations issued under the Public Records Act (1958) and are based on recovering the costs of providing these services. Digitised records on The National Archives’ website are always free to search but a charge of £3.50 per download generally applies to view the full transcription or download digital copies.
In line with its strategic vision of ‘Archives for Everyone’, The National Archives is engaged in a range of activities that aim to expand its audience and enhance access to its collections, both on site at its buildings at Kew and online. Recognising the particular interest in Commonwealth nations in a range of the public records in its collection, The National Archives is in ongoing and active dialogue with its peer institutions in Commonwealth nations, particularly through its membership of the International Council on Archives (ICA) and its leadership of the ICA’s Forum of National Archivists.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the implications of the report by the Red Cross Barriers to belonging, published in June, for their loneliness strategy.
Answered by Lord Ashton of Hyde
“Barriers to belonging: An exploration of loneliness among people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds” highlights that many people from BAME backgrounds face multiple challenges to feeling like they belong and accessing support services. These include increased likelihood of discrimination, not feeling welcome and fear of stigma. The report also points to greater barriers to accessing help for loneliness and joining in community activities, including a lack of money, language barriers and not having enough free time.
The cross government tackling loneliness team will consider the research findings and recommendations made to Government, in its work taking forward the loneliness strategy.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the appropriateness of the language used for different cultural and linguistic groups in measuring loneliness in their loneliness strategy.
Answered by Lord Ashton of Hyde
A national loneliness measure was announced in October 2018 as part of the loneliness strategy.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) undertook a programme of scoping work to recommend a way of measuring loneliness which would work for people of different ages and backgrounds, including how different loneliness measures compare for use with diverse ethnic groups, including those with limited English.
ONS’s final recommendation of using both direct and indirect measures of loneliness where possible is an approach currently taken by the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and the Understanding Society study. The recommended measures are well-tested across different surveys and demographics.
ONS worked with the Loneliness Technical Advisory Group to identify a range of criteria regarding the design, sample and geographical coverage of the surveys in which the measure will be included, to build opportunities to improve understanding of differences between ethnic groups.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they intend to take to reflect the experiences of people from BAME backgrounds when (1) raising awareness of the public health implications, and (2) addressing the stigma, of loneliness.
Answered by Lord Ashton of Hyde
Government’s loneliness strategy recognises that loneliness can affect people of all ages and all backgrounds.
The Government is aware of the recent research findings contained in “Barriers to belonging: An exploration of loneliness among people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds”, recently published by the British Red Cross, which will be considered in future work.
On the public health implications, Public Health England (PHE) has supported the development of standard measures of loneliness and has recently consulted on updates to its Public Health Outcomes Framework, which includes consideration of the addition of the standard measure of loneliness, to inform and focus future work.
One aim of Government's recently launched Let’s talk Loneliness campaign is to reduce the stigma of loneliness so that people experiencing it feel they can reach out or take action. This is based on the Mental Health Foundation's research which found that 30% of Britons surveyed said they would be embarrassed to say they felt lonely. The campaign will encourage people across different communities to talk about loneliness.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon on 11 March (HL13972), whether any departments, other than the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, hold archive material on (1) George Padmore, and (2) Claudia Jones.
Answered by Lord Ashton of Hyde
A search of the files held on The National Archives’ online catalogue, Discovery, has revealed no files relating to Claudia Vera Cumberbatch alias ‘Claudia Jones’ and three files relating to Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse alias ‘George Padmore’ These can be found here: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1255063; https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C14206480; https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C6097450
It should be noted however, that Discovery only searches catalogue descriptions, and does not search the contents of the records in our repositories. This means that these individuals may appear within other records held at The National Archives, for example passenger lists, but this would not be picked up by a Discovery search if their names do not feature prominently enough to be included in the catalogue description provided by the department on transfer.