Black and Minority Ethnic People: Workplace Issues

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this today, and indeed for the story of her great-uncle who escaped from the problems that he had in being a Catholic by finding a home in the Labour Party. I am sorry that his great-niece managed to escape our clutches. She also paid tribute to her Secretary of State but of course we have the wonderful Sadiq Khan, for whom we have great hopes later this week. I am sure he will be a grand role model in future.

I pay tribute to the expertise, experience and, for some, the long record of those who have contributed today. The difficulties faced by BME people are at every level and in every sector. Those difficulties are in the public sector and in industry, from board level down to apprenticeships and the unskilled. The difficulties are perhaps more marked for women, but they are there all the time.

So when we champion and celebrate those who have broken perhaps not a glass ceiling but a brass ceiling, we should acknowledge the hurdles that they have overcome. The causes are wide, of course, and therefore the solutions will be too. They are societal, educational, attitudinal and legal, and we must start in all those fields. We need to raise aspirations as well as the educational and network support to equip all our citizens for a fair chance at work, but we also need to educate and train those who recruit to look out for—indeed, to search for—those who do not automatically come knocking at their door.

We need to support those in work by encouraging trade union membership, by training and mentoring or, yes, by a bit of positive discrimination in assisting them to apply for promotion and in developing their talents and opportunities within the workplace. We need to outlaw unfair employment practices and the systems that somehow always manage to pay BME employees less than their white colleagues, whether by bonuses, by pay grades, by access to special payments or access to overtime, by training opportunities or by proper recognition for their contribution.

As the noble Baroness, Lady McGregor-Smith, said, we need to ensure that there are role models at every level—among supervisors, union officials, managers, directors, Permanent Secretaries, safety reps, chairs of boards or any other elevated role, so it is clear that those positions are open to all. Those role models must start at the top, as others have said. Indeed, a target of no all-white FTSE boards by 2020 would be a worthwhile start. Today, as cited by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, and others, 98% of FTSE 100 chairs being white is simply no reflection of the customers or the workforce of any of those companies. Just as the Companies Act now requires a breakdown of female employees on the board or in senior positions as well as in the wider company, we need to do that for ethnicity as well. Until businesses are confronted by their own poor record, they are unlikely to champion change.

As with any problem, we must start with ourselves. That means the public sector, funded by 100% of taxpayers, who come in all shapes, sizes, and colours, and in two genders. Yet the senior people they fund do not look or sound like them, as my noble friend Lord Morris said. The executive body of the Civil Service is completely white—and 85% male—while Whitehall’s corporate management board and ministerial team are similarly wholly white: and that team is responsible for diversity in the Civil Service.

This is not a matter of the skills and expertise not being available or a problem that can be sorted by education and training. As the 2014 research undertaken in the Civil Service, quoted by my noble friend Lady Warwick, showed,

“cultural and leadership climates are the main barriers to the progression of talented BAME staff”,

and:

“Unconscious bias and discrimination … means there is not always equal access to promotions … and secondments”.

Therefore, while we warmly welcome the noble Baroness’s review—no pressure there, of course—on increasing progression in the labour market by people from minority backgrounds, we must also look to our own workforce, within the Civil Service and the wider public sector. As the noble Baroness, Lady McGregor-Smith, said on her appointment:

“It has never been more important to … capitalise on the … talents of every individual in the workplace, regardless of their background”.

That applies to the public sector, with its myriad demands. As the TUC said, any loss of fair BME representation,

“is a huge waste of talent. Companies that only recruit from a narrow base are missing out on the wide range of experiences on offer from Britain’s many different communities. The government’s taskforce on racism must make it harder for discriminating employers to get away with their prejudices”.

As my noble friend Lady Howell said, it is time we stopped telling young people from different ethnic backgrounds that all they need to do is to get better qualified and all will be fine. No; we must get better at recruiting, promoting and paying these youngsters. As the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, said, it is not their effort alone—it is effort on the part of the rest of us.

As regards the focus of the noble Baroness’s review, its objectives are worthy: increasing by 20% the proportion of apprenticeships taken by people from BME backgrounds; increasing by 20% the number of BME students at university; ensuring that 20,000 start-up loans are awarded to BME applicants by 2020; increasing by 20% BME employment; and increasing the diversity of the Armed Forces, which has been mentioned, and the diversity of police recruitment. In that list there is no mention of discriminatory employment practices, yet just last month, as the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, and other noble Lords have said, the TUC showed that BAME workers with degrees are two and a half times more likely to be unemployed than white graduates. Indeed, at every level of education, jobless rates are much higher for BAME workers. Even those with A-level equivalents are three times more likely to be unemployed than their white counterparts, and those with GCSE equivalents and basic-level qualifications are twice as likely to be out of work. Across the workforce, the employment gap between the overall population and ethnic minorities is 11 percentage points, which we should all be ashamed of.

I am therefore delighted that the Prime Minister has set the goal of increasing by 20% the number of BME students in higher education and that the Government will require universities to publish admission and retention rate by gender, ethnic background and disadvantage. However, while I welcome action to get more BAME people into apprenticeships and universities, we must make sure that that does not just delay the discrimination until after graduation, when they then find it harder than their white contemporaries to find jobs.

The review also does not appear to cover remuneration where—to take just graduates, which other noble Lords have mentioned—black workers with degrees are paid nearly a quarter less than their white peers. More widely, not only are ethnic minorities more likely to be unemployed but those in work are more likely to be in accommodation and food services, retail, transport, health and social work—the low-paid sectors—and less likely to be in manufacturing and construction.

There is much work—and a lot of knowledge—in this area, and there are many activists making a difference, but, as with the Ethnic Minority Employment Stakeholder Group, to whose work I pay tribute, the time simply for their advice has gone. We need to take action, not just take note, as my noble friend Lord Morris said, on the recommendations that are already there.

My questions to the Minister are as follows. Will the Government develop a race equality strategy, not just with targets but with adequate resourcing? Will they use public sector contracts to improve companies’ race-equality practices, as suggested by my noble friend Lord Parekh and others? Will they ensure that anonymised or name-blind application forms are used across the public sector, as UCAS is now considering, and will they encourage private sector employers to do the same? Finally, will the Government require employers to include staff ethnicity figures in annual reports, alongside pay analysis across equality strands?

In the debate earlier today, as we finished the Trade Union Bill, we noticed that the Bill would require any publicly funded organisation to document the amounts of facility time, safety work and learning reps activity, so we think that asking for an annual breakdown of workforce numbers should not be too much to ask.

I thank the Minister for bringing forward this debate, and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady McGregor-Smith, on her appointment and wish her well. I think that she must already feel a lot of expectations on her shoulders.