Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities

Debate between Diane Abbott and Kemi Badenoch

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

My right hon. Friend is right. I have seen his Select Committee’s report, and those are things we will be working on. He is right to point out the disadvantage that children from white working-class communities face. The commission found that the issues that affect black Caribbean, black African, Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian children when it comes to deprivation and disadvantage also affect white working-class communities, which is why we know that race cannot be the factor that explains many of those disparities. What I can tell him is that the solutions we have put in place will be solutions for all children. That is one of the principles we have for this report: we are not segregating or targeting specific solutions for specific communities; we are going to be looking after everybody.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that recommendation 4 of the report is that the Government wish to:

“Bridge divides and create partnerships between the police and communities”.

Will the Minister explain how she thinks strip-searching black schoolgirls helps to bridge the divide between the police and communities? Is she aware that this is not an isolated incident? The Metropolitan police’s own figures show that in 2020-21, 25 young people under 18 were strip-searched. Most were black or from other ethnic minorities: 60% were black and the rest were some kind of minority ethnic. Only two of the 25 children who were strip-searched were white.

Is the Minister aware of how degrading this strip-search was? It was not just that this schoolgirl was stripped naked. They made her part the cheeks of her bottom and cough. She was on her period. I could give more detail, but I do not want to distress people in this House. It was utterly degrading. She is still traumatised. I must stress that they found no drugs and she has never been accused of taking drugs. How can the Minister sit there and tell this House that that had nothing to do with that young girl’s race, and that the figures I quoted are not striking? Will she assure this House and the wider community that the Government will take notice of whatever comes out of the report into that case, and make sure that the Metropolitan police and schoolteachers will not collude in the mistreatment of young schoolgirls again?

[Kemi Badenoch]

The right hon. Lady is very, very correct to raise the issue of strip-searching. The Home Secretary, I believe, wrote to her shadow and said that the incident is deeply concerning. Strip-searching is one of the most intrusive powers available to the police, because it allows officers to go well beyond a person’s outer clothing. There are safeguards and codes of practice that must be followed when the power is used, so what has gone wrong in this specific instance? That is being investigated. I do not have the full details and I am not able to provide those sorts of answers until an inquiry is finished. What I can tell her is that those figures are startling. No one has said that racism does not exist. No one has said that there are no problems in the system, but what we do ask is that we investigate every single incident and that where we see a trend, we try to understand what is going on. The action plan provides even more things we can do to support communities to hold the local police to account.

The other thing that we stress is that when these things happen we must not forget that every day the police save the lives of young people across the country. They save the lives of young black children, brown children and Asian children—children from all communities. When incidents such as this happen, we must not look at them as representative of every single thing that the police do, even though we will do all that we can to tackle them and reduce the number of times they occur.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Diane Abbott and Kemi Badenoch

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend’s constituency will benefit from the Government’s education investment areas and will invest in areas where educational attainment is weakest. Important initiatives such as that will help us to spread opportunity and level up the country. Equality has an important role to play and my officials are working closely with Departments to encourage focused and evidence-based action.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

On social mobility, does the Minister appreciate that some are concerned about the proposals that would mean that people would not have access to funding for tuition fees unless they meet certain grades at GCSE and A-level? Will that not impact more heavily on poorer families?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her question. The Department for Education will have done an equalities impact assessment on any new policies that it will announce. Those will be taken into account to make sure that people who are most at risk and most vulnerable are not prevented from taking up education in any way.

Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities

Debate between Diane Abbott and Kemi Badenoch

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her question, and I pay tribute to her for setting up the Race Disparity Unit, which has allowed us to carry out so much forensic research.

On the issue of ethnicity pay reporting, the commission pointed to statistical and data issues that affect ethnicity pay reporting, and makes a recommendation as a way for employers to overcome these challenges and report ethnicity pay accurately. As I say, the Government will consider the report in detail, and we will work with colleagues in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to assess the implications of this recommendation for future Government policy and respond in due course. However, I take my right hon. Friend’s comments into account, and will make sure that they are addressed in the Government response.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab) [V]]

The Minister has accused people of criticising the report in bad faith. Is she really saying that Professor Michael Marmot, a world-renowned expert in public health, is acting out of bad faith? Is she really saying that the British Medical Association and other professional associations are speaking in bad faith? It would reflect better on the Minister if she were prepared to engage with genuine criticism by experts.

Nobody denies that there has been progress on racial justice in this country. My parents left school in rural Jamaica aged 14; I am a British Member of Parliament. However, this is widely seen—particularly by people who have been quoted and misquoted—as a shoddy, cynical report that, to quote the UN working group,

“repackages racist tropes and stereotypes into fact, twisting data”.

I say to the Minister that surely black and brown British people who have contributed so much to this country deserve better than this report.

[Kemi Badenoch]

What black and brown British people like myself deserve is better treatment from the Opposition Members who continue to stoke division. Of course I am not accusing Professor Sir Michael Marmot or the BMA of bad faith. The people I accuse of acting in bad faith are the right hon. Lady and her colleagues who are posting pictures of the KKK, and being advertised, as the shadow equalities Minister was, at an event preparing to denounce the report a week before it was even published.

On Professor Sir Michael Marmot and the British Medical Association, I have had meetings with them and we engage with them. We take criticism from them—they are not there to endorse every single thing the Government say; they are there to provide helpful criticism and suggestions where necessary. Sometimes we agree, and sometimes we disagree. Disagreement is not a problem. What we do not want is misrepresentation, which is what the right hon. Lady and her colleagues continue to do.

Covid-19: Ethnic Minority Disparities

Debate between Diane Abbott and Kemi Badenoch

Monday 1st March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I can. We must stress that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and as the vaccine roll-out continues, I urge everyone who is offered one to take the opportunity to protect themselves, their family and their community. It is important that we tackle misinformation in particular. Across Government, we are spending tens of millions of pounds on public health communications, and my hon. Friend will have seen a significant increase in public vaccine communications. The NHS website remains the most trusted health website, and the counter-disinformation unit is rebutting false information, especially where the intent is malicious or dangerous to public health. I thank him for raising this issue.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab) [V]]

The Minister is insistent that the wildly disproportionate rate of infection and death among black, Asian and minority ethnic communities has nothing to do with the fact that they are black, Asian or from a minority ethnic group. Has it occurred to her that the fact that they are more likely to be in overcrowded, poor housing conditions and in the types of job that leave them liable to infection is not random, but is to do with race and ethnicity?

Will the Minister do more in the area of data? First, will she speak to colleagues about having ethnicity routinely put on death certificates? Can we have more information on the Haredi and ultra-orthodox Jewish communities, who have had disproportionate levels of deaths from covid in America? Will she speak to Public Health England to make sure that local directors of public health make constituency-level data, particularly on ethnicity, available to constituency stakeholders, including Members of Parliament?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her question. I wish that she had actually read my reports, because she would have seen that I addressed that not just in the October report, but in the one that came out last week. Recording ethnicity data on death certificates was one of the recommendations in my previous report. It is not something that can be done overnight—it will probably require legislation—but we are on our way to getting it, so that is some good news.

The right hon. Lady also mentioned the orthodox Jewish community—finally someone from the Labour Benches has talked about this community, and I am very pleased that she has. Research from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimated that 64% of the orthodox Jewish community may have had covid-19 in 2020. The researchers said that the reasons behind this high rate of infection are not yet known.

Strictly orthodox families have significantly larger households than the UK average. They also live in areas of increased population density and, in pre-pandemic times, had regular attendance at communal events and gatherings. I use them as an example because this is why it is wrong for us to mix together lots of different groups. The orthodox Jewish community has been more impacted than many of the ethnic minority groups that get a lot of attention in the press, but we do not say that that is due to structural antisemitism. We look at the underlying factors. Where there are multi-generational households, for instance, that is not due to racism, but is often due to cultural factors. We are not going to take grandparents away from their families because of covid. We are going to provide them with guidance to ensure that they can look after themselves safely; that is this Government’s priority.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Diane Abbott and Kemi Badenoch

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am not sure why the hon. Lady has chosen to take that stance. The fact is that many, many respected people think that a universal basic income is not what is right for this country. It lacks the flexibility to respond to changes in income—unlike universal credit—it is less redistributive, and it is certainly not something that we are considering at the moment.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

What steps the Government are taking to tackle the disproportionate number of BAME deaths from covid-19.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

What steps her Department has taken to tackle the disproportionate effect of the covid-19 outbreak on BAME communities.

[The Minister for Equalities (Kemi Badenoch)]

We are very concerned by reports of a disproportionate impact of covid-19 on ethnic minorities. It is important that we understand what is underpinning these disparities and that we have robust and accurate data to do so, in order to take effective action.

[Ms Abbott [V]]

The Minister will be aware that of the 17 doctors who have died from covid-19, 16 are from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. So will she be speaking to her ministerial colleagues in the Department of Health about the NHS surcharge for migrants? It cannot be right that NHS migrant workers, who are frequently BAME, pay twice for the NHS, first in taxation and then through the surcharge—and, increasingly, with their lives.

[Kemi Badenoch]

This is an issue that I personally have taken a keen interest in. It is one of the reasons we have commissioned Public Health England to review exactly what the impact is on ethnic minorities. Specifically on fees for migrants, migrants who are ordinarily resident in the UK already receive their NHS care for free. Many more are exempt from charges, including temporary migrants who pay the immigration health surcharge, and asylum seekers. However, it is important to note that we remain committed to fighting this virus, and that is why we changed our regulations in January to ensure that no overseas visitor or anyone living here would be charged for diagnosis of or treatment for covid.