Black and Minority Ethnic People: Workplace Issues — House of Lords, 2016-05-03
Topic: Civil Rights
Victor Adebowale (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, it is a great pleasure to speak in this debate. I congratulate the Minister on calling the debate, and indeed the noble Baroness, Lady McGregor-Smith, on leading the review. I do not think that I have had the chance to welcome her to the House, so I say hello and welcome I want to say a few things. As we all know, the UK is a diverse and multicultural society, despite the grumblings of my good friend Trevor Phillips, who imagines that multiculturalism is a bit like putting milk in coffee and that you can un-mix it. It is what it is, and we need to start there. I am a non-executive at NHS England and the chief executive of a care organisation—one of very few of reasonable size. The great noble Baroness, Lady McGregor-Smith, is a notable business woman with a stellar track record, and there are many Members of this House whose track record is admirable by any standard. But one must consider that these are the exceptions that prove the rule It is important that we understand something. In the Minister’s opening address, she made the point that hard work and ambition should be the ticket to success. That needs to be corrected, in my view. I know many, many talented, hard-working BME community members whose dreams and careers have been thwarted by nothing less than racism. We have to face that head on. Given the statistics quoted by both the noble Baroness, Lady McGregor-Smith, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, I do not think that we can simply say to a number of our communities that hard work and ambition will get you there. It will not. The exceptions that prove the rule make that point admirably. We have to address the unfairness in the system Let us start with the title of this debate: to take note of the issues faced by black and minority ethnic people in the workplace. As has been pointed out, there are many members of black and minority ethnic communities who would love to experience the workplace but who have been discriminated against, which has led them to not be in the workplace. I must add that they are then victims of, in my view, a pretty cruel welfare system which considers that poverty in itself is an incentive. They are disproportionately represented in virtually every misery statistic that I have worked with over a 30-year career in public services: in homelessness, among children in care and in the criminal justice system. They are not overrepresented in the senior echelons of public, private or not-for-profit service delivery. That is unacceptable The Prime Minister’s pledge to increase the BME employment rate by 20% as part of the Government’s BME vision is welcome—but I have to say right now that that is going to be a challenge. Mr Cameron stated: "For too many people, even a good education isn’t enough. There are other barriers that stand in their way". I wish he had just said "racism". He said: "Do you know that in our country today, even if they have exactly the same qualifications, people with white-sounding names are nearly twice as likely to get callbacks for jobs than people with ethnic-sounding names?" There can be only silence at that, because where I come from, the response to the speech was, "No ****, Sherlock". The fact is that we have known about this challenge for many years. Successive Governments have known about this challenge for many years, as they have known about the disproportionality in employment rates between young BME people and their white counterparts This debate has a sense of urgency underpinning it because the demographics are not in our favour. If you look at the fastest-growing population in most of our major conurbations, you will see that they are people who look like me, the noble Baroness, Lady McGregor-Smith, and others in this House. This is not a challenge for BME groups. It is not a matter of morality, even—you do not have to care about any of this. This is a matter of economic survival and the sustainability of the country. We need to break barriers. The barrier to getting a job is challenge enough: 40% of jobs are not advertised. It is about "the network"; it is about who you know and how you know them; it is about access to the choice experiences that might get you into our media, our judiciary and our politics. It is all word of mouth. If you are in the network, you are in; if you are not, you are not. And although there are exceptions that prove the rule when these networks have worked for BME groups, the generality is that the opposite is the case. That is why we are having the debate I want to move to an age where there is no debate; where I can say that I am a black leader and it will be seen not as a political statement but a fact. We need to break down significant barriers. The recruitment process itself, where staff hire in their own image, limits people from BME communities entering the workforce in the first place. While there have been improvements, the statistics speak for themselves and they are not good enough. Sir Lenny Henry has commented on this in relation to the arts, both in administration behind the cameras and in front of the cameras. Look at the administrators and performers in the classical arts. The lack of BME representation is shameful. The work being done around women on boards is laudable. But the question I often ask myself is: which women? Where public money is concerned, there are questions that need to be asked of leaders, whether they be black or white, as to how they are managing the use of my tax money in making decisions as to who should lead the public services that we pay for The second barrier is lack of progression. After getting a job, being promoted within it is a major challenge. My experience as a board member of NHS England led me to help set up the workforce race equality strategy. As a result of information brought to the attention of the NHS by Yvonne Coghill, we now know that there is a direct correlation between BME leadership of hospitals and care organisations and the quality of care on the ground. Much work needs to be done. It was a real struggle setting up the workforce race equality strategy, because there was a lot of resistance. It was seen as a political intervention rather than one of good management and leadership I will end by making three requests. Although I welcome the review—it is long overdue and I hope that it receives cross-party support and engagement—there are three things that we need to do if we are to take this seriously. The first is that we should set up a structured way of observing government expenditure and intervention across departments and their influence. We must ask whether we are spending government money and using government leadership appropriately to lead the way. We should look at some of the initiatives that are currently out there and ask them to support such a cross-government observatory Secondly, the Government in setting up and holding inspectorates to account should require those inspectorates to ask simple questions. This is not about quotas and it is not about setting targets—although the notion of targets within businesses is to be welcomed. This is about asking leaders of public, private and not-for-profit organisations, particularly where they receive government funding, "What are you doing in this area?". Where there are departments—and there are departments and institutions funded by government or receiving large amounts of money through tenders to government departments—which have never had a BME leader, the question should be asked as to why. There have been black people in this country since Roman times. We need a good answer So the future of this country lies in the things that we have not discussed. We have not discussed race enough and we have not been serious enough about the things that we need to do to provide a truly equitable society, a truly prosperous country and true economic prosperity for us all.