Oral Answers to Questions

Janet Daby Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra]

The Secretary of State for Business and Trade has stated that the delivery of the non-disclosure agreement measure is his personal priority. The Government will be consulting on the secondary legislation to ensure that we deliver on protecting workers from the misuse of NDAs in cases of harassment and discrimination. It is a high priority and we will move forward as quickly as possible.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

3. What recent progress the race equality engagement group has made on helping to tackle race inequalities.

[The Minister for Equalities (Seema Malhotra)]

The race equality engagement group, chaired by the wonderful Baroness Lawrence, is determined to tackle race inequalities and barriers to opportunity. Strengthening the Government’s links with ethnic minority communities is crucial. The group has already convened roundtables of experts and those with lived experience of inequalities in entrepreneurship, policing and maternal health. We are meeting with relevant Ministers across Government to discuss its findings and to make sure that we tackle race inequalities wherever they persist.

[Janet Daby]

I represent a hard-working, diverse community, yet the latest Office for National Statistics figures on the median-adjusted pay gap for UK-born black, African, Caribbean or black British employees show that they earn 5.6% less than UK-born white employees. That means that many of my hard-working constituents are not being paid fairly. The Government have committed to enshrine in law the right to equal pay for black and other ethnic minority people. Will the Government say when this welcome manifesto commitment will be met?

[Seema Malhotra]

My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue. The race equality engagement group is engaging with minority communities across the country to tackle inequality. We are committed to our manifesto commitment and to making the right to equal pay effective for ethnic minority people. We are also introducing mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting for large employers. Last year, we published a call for evidence on equality policy, which closed last summer. We are working to analyse the responses and will update the House on our plans soon.