We need to hear your thoughts on race equality

By Sadiq Khan MP and Sharon Hodgson MP

Over the last four years, the fight for race equality has stalled, or worse, has gone into reverse. Unemployment rates amongst minority ethnic communities are now double those for white Britons. The racial pay gap – between ethnic minority and white people doing the same job – has grown. There has been little progress made in increasing the diversity of the most senior public figures – CEO’s, company boards, the judiciary, in politics or the media – which are still hugely unrepresentative of the British population. Our police forces still don’t represent the communities they are supposed to protect and the use of stop and search powers still discriminates against ethnic minorities. It’s a truly sorry state of affairs.

Tackling race inequality will be one of the highest priorities for the next Labour Government. Tackling wider inequalities is central to Ed Miliband’s mission and this just won’t be possible without also tackling race inequality. We must send a clear message to the British public that ending race inequality will be good for everyone in our society – not just for ethnic minorities. We will be an active Government – with a powerful race equality strategy embedded at the very heart of Government, with real teeth, reaching across all departments. We’ve seen under the Coalition that when the Government steps back and lets the market takes it course, things only go backwards.

We’ve begun to outline the most radical set of polices for tackling race inequality from any opposition ever. We will change the law to allow the police to use more active recruitment strategies to increase their diversity. We will change the rules around stop and search powers to stop their abuse. We will change the civil service fast stream to ensure our public servants truly represent our communities. We will devolve control of Work Programme funding down to the local level so it can be more effectively used to reduce unemployment in ethnic minority communities. And we will increase the ethnic diversity in company boardrooms and in the judiciary. These policies represent real progress, but we must go further.

Today we are holding a roundtable discussion with senior figures who work on issues of diversity, representation and supporting ethnic minority communities. We are asking for their opinions on racial inequality in Britain – about what the main problems are and how we can fix them. What they tell us will be used to form a race equality strategy that will be at the very heart of the next Labour Government. But we need to hear from you too. We need to hear from ordinary people up and down the country about your experiences of inequality and discrimination and about your ideas to tackle race inequality in the workplace and in your communities. Our Race Equality Consultation outlines some of the main areas we are exploring. Please take some time to take a look through the document and tell us what you think. We all need to act together if we are to once and for all end the disgrace of race inequality in this country.

Sadiq Khan MP is Labour’s Shadow Justice Secretary, Lord Chancellor and London Minister. Sharon Hodgson MP is Labour’s Shadow Equalities Minister. You can read and respond to Labour’s Race Equality Strategy here.