Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, what comparative assessment she has made of the difference in the reported level of in-person bullying against BAME people and the reported level against non-BAME people.

The Equality Act 2010 prohibits certain forms of conduct – including harassment – in employment and the provision of goods, services and public functions. Harassment is defined as unwanted conduct related to someone’s protected characteristics and which has the purpose or effect of violating their dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them. However, “bullying” is not a term used in the Act, and incidents of “bullying” are not recorded.

The Equality Advisory and Support Service, a Government-sponsored helpline that offers free advice and support to people who feel that they have been victims of unlawful discrimination, records and makes available statistics on all the customer contacts that it receives.

Between 1 October 2016 - when the current service provider took over running the contract - and 28 February 2018, the Service recorded 1443 customer contacts concerning harassment across all the protected characteristics covered by the Act, 310 (21%) of which were related to race.