Our BAME manifesto will extend opportunity to people from all backgrounds

Today Labour has set out our better plan to break down the barriers that still face many people from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Although we have made huge progress as a nation since my parents first moved to the UK in the 1960’s, there is mounting evidence that things have gone backwards under the Coalition. Our BAME manifesto starts from the basis that Britain only succeeds when all working people succeed.  Too often in Britain today that’s simply not the case for black and ethnic minority communities.

When my parents moved to London they were regularly confronted with signs saying ‘no blacks, no Irish, no dogs’. Enoch Powell was touring the country and the Tories were putting out leaflets saying “if you want a n***** for a neighbour, vote Labour”. Thanks to Labour’s strong anti-discrimination laws from the 1960’s onwards, things have improved massively since then. My teenage daughters experience far less discrimination than I did when I was their age.

But the Coalition have taken their foot off the pedal, and things are now going backwards. Long-term unemployment for young people from an ethnic minority background has increased by almost 50 per cent in the last five years. If you’re under 25 and black you’re now twice as likely to be out of work as your white friends and neighbours. And ethnic minority communities are still over-represented in minimum wage jobs, and are more likely to earn less than the living wage, with half of the Bangladeshi community earning below the living wage

We can and must do better than this. Labour’s BAME manifesto outlines our plan to tackle the race inequalities that hold people back. Our Compulsory Jobs Guarantee will offer a paid starter job to every young person who’s been claiming Jobseekers Allowance for over a year, work they’d have to take or risk losing benefits. Our plan will give more than 3,200 young black and minority ethnic people who have been abandoned by David Cameron the chance to earn, learn and fulfil their potential. Our plans to raise the National Minimum Wage to more than £8 an hour by October 2019 and ban exploitative zero-hours contracts will help close the BAME pay gap. We will introduce a cross-government race equality strategy to drive progress across every area of government.

We will improve the representation of ethnic minority Britons in public life. From the boardroom to Parliament, representative institutions make better decision for everyone in society. We will act to improve representation in the boardroom, the police, the judiciary, the civil service and not least, in Parliament.

And we will build stronger and more cohesive communities. The next Labour government will take robust action against hate crime. We will make these crimes visible, by ensuring hate crimes are clearly marked on the criminal records of perpetrators, and producing new guidance from the Sentencing Council to ensure the appropriate use of sentencing for aggravated hate crimes, particularly for repeat offenders. And we will make sure hate crime is properly recorded, including incidents of Islamophobia, as is currently the case with other types of crime. We will review police and CPS guidance to ensure anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other hate crimes on social media are adequately covered. And we will challenge social media companies to take more responsibility to prevent harassment and hate crimes prosecuted through their sites.

Our values are rooted in the fundamental truth that whatever your background, wherever you’re from in Britain, you should have the means and opportunity to fulfil your potential. And that’s what our BAME manifesto is about. It is a plan for a more equal, fair and just country. A plan that extends opportunity for our young people and tackles the discrimination that holds people back; a plan for better public services with the police and judiciary more representative of the communities they serve, a plan for stronger communities where prejudice is dealt with, rather than ignored and a country that fights for human rights and social justice abroad.

Sadiq Khan is Shadow Justice Secretary and London Minister