The Labour Party has urged the government to provide further clarification into the new commission likely to examine racial inequality within the country. On 14th June Prime Minister Boris Johnson had announced that he will be setting up a commission to look at inequality following the surge of protests and tearing up of statues in the wake of Black Lives Matter movement. Johnson in his column in Telegraph had said,
"It was no use just saying that we have made huge progress in tackling racism…There is much more that we need to do; and we will. It is time for a cross-governmental commission to look at all aspects of inequality - in employment, in health outcomes, in academic and all other walks of life."
The establishment of the review is being overseen by the head of the No 10 policy unit, Munira Mirza. Her appointment had faced considerable criticism for her past comments where she had questioned and rubbished the concept of structural racism. Structural racism in Britain remains a serious problem. It has been a month now and Labour has questioned the Government asking who will lead the commission, who its members will be, what its terms of reference are, and what it will be called.
In school Black Caribbean and mixed white and Black Caribbean children have rates of permanent exclusion about three times that of the pupil population as a whole; at work Black workers with degrees earn 23.1 per cent less on average than white workers; and Black people in England and Wales are more than nine times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than their white counterparts.
Speaking about the commission, Marsha de Cordova MP, Labour’s Shadow Women and Equalities Secretary, said,
“Over the last few years this Government has commissioned review after review but done precious little with the recommendations: four reviews in particular give us over 200 recommendations and it is far from clear just how many of those have actually been properly implemented.
"If the Prime Minister really meant it when he said there is much more to do then why doesn’t just get on and do it? We should not have to keep asking to get even the most basic answers about what will happen next.”
