Marsha De Cordova

Individuals who experience discrimination in the workplace can access justice through an Employment Tribunal, under the Equality Act 2010. While the time limit for bringing a claim is three months from the last incident, tribunals have the discretion to provide extensions where they consider it ‘just and equitable’ to do so.

The Government Equalities Office consultation on sexual harassment in the workplace recently considered the impact of the three month time limit where it applies to Equality Act based cases. In our July 2021 response to that consultation, we committed to keeping the extension of the 3 month limit under review.

A research report into barriers facing disabled candidates was commissioned in December 2018. We intend to publish the report alongside an evaluation of the EnAble Fund in due course.

A research report into barriers facing disabled candidates was commissioned in December 2018. We intend to publish the report alongside an evaluation of the EnAble Fund in due course.

As has been the case under successive Administrations, it is not government policy to comment on security procedures in government buildings.

I refer the Hon. Member to the Cabinet Office guidance to departments on use of private emails.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer to Question 14209.

As Minister for Equalities, I frequently discuss with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and other Ministers the impact of COVID-19 on ethnic minority people and how the government should respond to this.

The new regulations on vaccinations for care home staff follow an extensive consultation with the social care sector, staff, residents and their families.

The UK is using our Presidency of the G7 this year to champion women’s and girls’ rights at home and around the world, with the independent Gender Equality Advisory Council (GEAC) bringing solutions, expertise and new voices to the heart of G7 discussions.

The GEAC presented its recommendations to G7 Leaders at the G7 Leaders’ Summit this month, with a strong call to action so women can build back better. In the coming months, the GEAC will produce a report setting out their recommendations in further detail.

We have rolled out unprecedented levels of economic support to protect jobs for both women and men, including the Self Employment Income Support Scheme which has received nearly 2.1 million claims from self-employed women, as of January 31 2021. As we look to build back better, we can see that COVID-19 has given us an opportunity to reform our approach to work, and we are committed to further encourage flexible working and consult on making it the default.

We recognise the pressures faced by those balancing work with caring responsibilities, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and we know that often the majority of these pressures fall on women. This Government continues to support families with their childcare costs and we have spent over £3.5 billion in each of the past three years on early years entitlements, and last November the Chancellor announced a £44 million investment in 2021-22 for local authorities to increase hourly rates paid to childcare providers. At the election last year, we pledged a new £1 billion fund to create more high-quality affordable childcare, including before and after school and during the school holidays.

We will be publishing a new Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls strategy in 2021 to better target perpetrators and support victims of these crimes, and appointed Nimco Ali OBE as the Independent Government Adviser on Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls.

I will shortly be saying more about the action the Government is taking to ensure women can build back better in the recovery.

We are clear that the Equality Act 2010, which provides protection against direct and indirect discrimination across a range of fields, including employment, service provision and housing, already offers some protection for single parents.

Given that significantly more women than men, and disproportionately more members of particular ethnic groups, have single parent responsibilities, employers in particular must ensure that their rules and practices which may affect single parents do not indirectly discriminate on grounds of sex or race. We continue to keep the effectiveness of the Act under review.

The Government recognises that homelessness amongst LGBT people is an important issue and is determined to understand it better.

The research on LGBT homelessness aims to improve understanding of the needs of people who are homeless and LGBT. It also looks at how housing and support services are being delivered to LGBT people and how they can be improved to better meet their needs. The research takes into account the experiences of LGBT people of a range of ages and with experiences of different forms of homelessness.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities published the report of its findings on 31 March 2021. The report can be read on GOV.UK.

The Government is considering the Commission’s recommendations and will respond in due course.

The Government consultation on Sexual Harassment in the Workplace focussed on ensuring that laws to protect people from harassment at work are operating effectively.

We have considered the responses received and listened carefully to the experiences shared through this consultation. We will be setting out the Government’s response shortly.

All departments ensure that equality considerations are at the heart of their decision-making; this is key to the Government’s commitment to delivering equality of opportunity for all as well as complying with legal requirements under the Public Sector Equality Duty. My officials in the Equality Hub provide advice to departments to assist with this.

We also work with other departments to ensure they publish substantive equality objectives, as part of their departmental plans, that relate to their policy and service delivery responsibilities. Publishing equality objectives as part of core departmental planning processes means that performance against these objectives is measured and that we are advancing equality across Government.

I refer the Hon. Member to the answer given to PQs 115573, 115574, 115575 answered on 19 November 2020.

The government continues to assess all of the latest data and evidence about the impact of COVID-19 on different ethnic groups, including the findings of the Office for National Statistics’ analysis on which the BBC article of 9 February was based. This has been summarised in my latest report to the Prime Minister and Health Secretary, which I sent to you on Friday 26 February.

We have taken a number of steps to improve health outcomes for ethnic minority groups, including providing additional funding to the Public Health England Better Health campaign in order to reach Black African, Black Caribbean, Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups. This is in addition to existing efforts within the COVID-19 campaign to engage ethnic minorities. To mitigate the economic effects of COVID-19 we introduced an unprecedented package of support – including boosts to Universal Credit, the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme and the Kick-start Scheme – helping to protect incomes, jobs, and support those most in need.

Uptake of vaccines is the best way to protect people from COVID-19 and will save thousands of lives. The government has launched a multi-channel communications campaign to encourage uptake of vaccines among ethnic minority groups and to counter misinformation. We have also provided over £23m in funding to the Community Champions scheme which is enabling local authorities to use trusted local voices to encourage vaccine uptake.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities aims to provide its full report to the Prime Minister by the end of this month. The Commission then intends to publish its results on gov.uk in due course.

I will very shortly be publishing my second quarterly progress report to the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary.

The Equality Data Programme will continue to consider data on a wide range of personal characteristics including ethnicity, age, sex and disability. In addition, we will also consider factors such as socioeconomic status and geography to give a holistic picture of equality.

The socio-economic duty in the Equality Act is, as the legislation stands, a “due regard” duty, and therefore similar in form to the public sector equality duty, which is also a “due regard” duty.

The way that the public sector equality duty is used by some public authorities, as a tick-box exercise, has been criticised on various occasions, including in the 2013 Hayward Review of the Duty; by the 2015-16 House of Lords Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability; and in a number of court judgments, for instance London and Quadrant Housing Trust v Patrick (2019).

For these reasons this Government, like its Conservative predecessors, thinks that it is better to focus on specific policies and practical actions that will deliver real change in tackling poverty and promoting social mobility – for example in education, through a reformed welfare system, and in following through on our manifesto commitment to greater developmental devolution in England and rebalancing the economy with the introduction of schemes such as the Towns Fund.

My first quarterly report to the Prime Minister and Health Secretary of 22 October summarised the evidence available at the time on the role of various factors in increasing the risk of Covid-19 infection and mortality for different ethnic minority groups. This included risk factors such as occupation, population density and household size.

I will shortly be publishing my second quarterly report providing updates where there is further evidence. This will include updates on the role of household composition, geography and occupation in Covid-19 infection rates.

My first report to the Prime Minister and Health Secretary of 22 October summarised the current evidence which shows that a range of socioeconomic and geographical factors such as occupational exposure, population density and household composition, coupled with pre-existing health conditions, contribute to the higher infection and mortality rates for ethnic minority groups. This is stated in the executive summary of my report and in paragraph 20.

As also stated in my report, a small part of the excess risk remains unexplained for some groups, although there is no evidence thus far suggesting that ethnicity on its own is a risk factor. The Race Disparity Unit has been conducting further analysis of risk factors, which I will summarise in my second quarterly report in the coming weeks.

In compliance with the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED), Whitehall Departments routinely undertake equality assessments of policy and operational changes.

The documentation produced as part of these assessments is often informally referred to as an ‘equality impact assessment’ but production of an equality impact assessment is not a legal requirement, and different documentary formats may be appropriate depending on the function in question.

There is no statutory requirement to publish assessments and there are certainly assessments that are not published. Decisions on publication are a matter for the public body concerned, given the particular circumstances.

There are no plans to implement the socio-economic duty for English and cross-border bodies. Such a general “due regard” duty has the potential to become a tick-box exercise, complied with to minimise the risk of legal challenge rather than to promote real change in social mobility.

The Equality Data Programme will include aggregated, and individual-level, data across a range of themes. We will focus on the themes that matter to individuals’ lives such as the economy, health, education, justice and living standards. We will consider data on a wide range of personal characteristics, including socioeconomic status and geography.

The government believes that the protection of single-sex spaces, as provided for in the Equality Act, is important. The Act makes clear that providers have the right to restrict the use of spaces on the basis of sex, and exclude transgender people, with or without a Gender Recognition Certificate, if this is justified.

At this stage, we are not proposing further legislative guidance but we will keep this under review. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is independent of the government and makes its own decisions in relation to drafting the guidance that it creates and publishes.

Transphobia and misogyny are completely unacceptable and have no place in British society. We are determined that everyone in the UK should be free to live their lives and fulfil their potential regardless of their gender identity or sex.

Misogyny is not a hate crime in law, therefore no data is held about specific incidents. The Government has heard concerns about the coverage and effectiveness of existing legislation and asked the Law Commission to undertake a full review of hate crime legislation, which is due to report in early 2021. This includes considering whether there should be additional protections against misogyny or ageism for example, and bring parity to the law by making sexual orientation and transgender hate crimes aggravated offences. We will respond in full when it is complete.

We have funded multiple projects aimed at tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic hate crime and have taken steps to bolster the police response to hate crime through supporting additional police training. We have also invested £4m to support schools to tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying.

We want transgender people to be free to live and to prosper in modern Britain. We have looked carefully at the issues raised in the consultation, including the impact of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 on trans people. It is the Government’s view that the balance struck in this legislation is correct, in that there are proper checks and balances in the system and also support for people who want to change their legal sex.

We will make the gender recognition certificate process kinder and more straightforward. We will cut bureaucracy by enabling applications via gov.uk and reduce the fee. We are working with the Ministry of Justice, who lead tribunal fees policy, to agree the new fee level and plan the implementation of this change. We will be consulting relevant stakeholders to ensure implementation works from an operational perspective, but will not be consulting more widely since the GRA consultation provides evidence on people’s views of the fee.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities will engage across Government, and with as broad a range of public bodies, the voluntary and private sectors, and members of the public as is possible over the course of its duration.

The Commission will be launching a public call for evidence in due course. Organisations or individuals seeking to submit evidence to the Commission can already do so if they wish - contact details are published on its website. No discussions have been had about organisations to exclude from consultation.

Finally, on 10 August the Minister for Equalities, Kemi Badenoch MP, wrote to all of the stakeholders who participated in the Public Health England review thanking them for their contribution and asking whether they wished to be involved in future engagement. A number of the stakeholders responded positively to this and the Race Disparity Unit has included them in its ongoing engagement strategy.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities will engage across Government, and with as broad a range of public bodies, the voluntary and private sectors, and members of the public as is possible over the course of its duration.

The Commission will be launching a public call for evidence in due course. Organisations or individuals seeking to submit evidence to the Commission can already do so if they wish - contact details are published on its website. No discussions have been had about organisations to exclude from consultation.

Finally, on 10 August the Minister for Equalities, Kemi Badenoch MP, wrote to all of the stakeholders who participated in the Public Health England review thanking them for their contribution and asking whether they wished to be involved in future engagement. A number of the stakeholders responded positively to this and the Race Disparity Unit has included them in its ongoing engagement strategy.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities will engage across Government, and with as broad a range of public bodies, the voluntary and private sectors, and members of the public as is possible over the course of its duration.

The Commission will be launching a public call for evidence in due course. Organisations or individuals seeking to submit evidence to the Commission can already do so if they wish - contact details are published on its website. No discussions have been had about organisations to exclude from consultation.

Finally, on 10 August the Minister for Equalities, Kemi Badenoch MP, wrote to all of the stakeholders who participated in the Public Health England review thanking them for their contribution and asking whether they wished to be involved in future engagement. A number of the stakeholders responded positively to this and the Race Disparity Unit has included them in its ongoing engagement strategy.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities will engage across Government, and with as broad a range of public bodies, the voluntary and private sectors, and members of the public as is possible over the course of its duration.

The Commission will be launching a public call for evidence in due course. Organisations or individuals seeking to submit evidence to the Commission can already do so if they wish - contact details are published on its website. No discussions have been had about organisations to exclude from consultation.

Finally, on 10 August the Minister for Equalities, Kemi Badenoch MP, wrote to all of the stakeholders who participated in the Public Health England review thanking them for their contribution and asking whether they wished to be involved in future engagement. A number of the stakeholders responded positively to this and the Race Disparity Unit has included them in its ongoing engagement strategy.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities will engage across Government, and with as broad a range of public bodies, the voluntary and private sectors, and members of the public as is possible over the course of its duration.

The Commission will be launching a public call for evidence in due course. Organisations or individuals seeking to submit evidence to the Commission can already do so if they wish - contact details are published on its website. No discussions have been had about organisations to exclude from consultation.

Finally, on 10 August the Minister for Equalities, Kemi Badenoch MP, wrote to all of the stakeholders who participated in the Public Health England review thanking them for their contribution and asking whether they wished to be involved in future engagement. A number of the stakeholders responded positively to this and the Race Disparity Unit has included them in its ongoing engagement strategy.

I am pleased to confirm that my letter to the Honourable Member for Battersea on ethnicity pay reporting was dispatched on 2 July.

I refer the hon. Member to the Written Ministerial Statement made by the Prime Minister on 16 July 2020.

The new Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities announced on 14 June will examine continuing race and ethnic disparities in Britain. The aim of the Commission is to set out a new, positive agenda for change - balancing the needs of individuals, communities and society, maximising opportunities and ensuring fairness for all. The Commission will be chaired by Dr Tony Sewell (CBE).

A list of commissioners and the Commission’s ambitious Terms of Reference, has been placed in the library of both Houses. Commissioners will be supported by a secretariat in the Cabinet Office Race Disparity Unit and will submit their report by the end of the year.

I refer the hon. Member to the Written Ministerial Statement made by the Prime Minister on 16 July 2020.

The new Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities announced on 14 June will examine continuing race and ethnic disparities in Britain. The aim of the Commission is to set out a new, positive agenda for change - balancing the needs of individuals, communities and society, maximising opportunities and ensuring fairness for all. The Commission will be chaired by Dr Tony Sewell (CBE).

A list of commissioners and the Commission’s ambitious Terms of Reference, has been placed in the library of both Houses. Commissioners will be supported by a secretariat in the Cabinet Office Race Disparity Unit and will submit their report by the end of the year.

I refer the hon. Member to the Written Ministerial Statement made by the Prime Minister on 16 July 2020.

The new Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities announced on 14 June will examine continuing race and ethnic disparities in Britain. The aim of the Commission is to set out a new, positive agenda for change - balancing the needs of individuals, communities and society, maximising opportunities and ensuring fairness for all. The Commission will be chaired by Dr Tony Sewell (CBE).

A list of commissioners and the Commission’s ambitious Terms of Reference, has been placed in the library of both Houses. Commissioners will be supported by a secretariat in the Cabinet Office Race Disparity Unit and will submit their report by the end of the year.

The Public Health England (PHE) report, “COVID-19: review of disparities in risks and outcomes”, published on 2 June 2020, looks at the COVID-19 mortality rates of different ethnic groups. This rapid review necessarily had some gaps, and as Minister for Equalities, I am now leading further work to build on this by, for example, driving forward work examining the impact of factors such as sub-categories of occupation and co-morbidities; analysing the key drivers of disparities in COVID-19 outcomes, the relationships between different risk factors, and what can be done to close the gap. This work is supported by the Race Disparity Unit in the Cabinet Office.

‘Beyond the Data: understanding the impact of COVID-19 on BAME groups’, is a separate piece of work that was carried out by the PHE; PHE engaged with a significant number of individuals and organisations within the BAME community to hear their views about the impact of COVID-19 and this informed ‘Beyond the Data’ which was published on 16 June 2020.

In recognition of the unprecedented uncertainty and pressure facing employers due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the Government and the Equality and Human Rights Commission suspended enforcement of the gender pay gap reporting deadlines for 2019/20. However, employers can still choose to report their data and we have carried on providing support to those who need it. Over 5,500 employers have reported to date and more continue to do so.