Covid-19: Ethnic Minority Disparities Debate

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Department: HM Treasury
Monday 1st March 2021

(3 years ago)

Commons Chamber
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Kemi Badenoch Portrait Kemi Badenoch
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My right hon. Friend raises a very good point. I congratulate all of her constituents who are doing important work in the community by raising awareness of what is happening with covid-19, and ensuring that people have access to the best advice and guidance. It is critical that we continue to support those community champions. That is one of the reasons that we are funding the community champions scheme, which ensures that we improve the reach of official public health guidance and other messaging or communications about the virus into those hard-to-reach areas.

Wera Hobhouse Portrait Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD) [V]
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In the year to September 2020, the drop in employment for people from ethnic minorities was 26 times higher than for white workers. Unless the Government take meaningful action to address workforce inequalities, including the ethnicity pay gap, the fall-out from covid will make these glaring inequalities even worse. May I ask again: will the Government finally commit to bringing forward the long-awaited ethnicity pay gap reporting?

Kemi Badenoch Portrait Kemi Badenoch
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I believe that we have answered this question before; if memory serves me correctly, I think I have written to the hon. Lady on this subject. It is something that the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities is looking at. The commission will be reporting shortly and will be able to give a statement on ethnicity pay reporting. I would like the hon. Lady to send me her statistics about workforce inequality; they are not statistics with which I am familiar, and it would be very interesting to look at the evidence base on that.