Responding to the Government’s Race Disparity Audit, Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission David Isaac said:
The findings of the race audit do not come as a shock to us. The Prime Minister should be applauded for laying out this information for all to see and we now need to use to the data to set the foundations for real change. Only by taking focused action to tackle race inequality can Britain become a fair country in which individuals can reach their potential and our communities can live and work together to create a strong economy and a cohesive society.
The Government must tackle the significant disparities confirmed by the audit in order to address the entrenched inequality that is so prevalent in our society. Britain needs a comprehensive and coherent race equality strategy with concrete actions in response to these findings.
Mr Isaac’s comments come as the Commission, in partnership with the Runnymede Trust, the Black Training and Enterprise Group, Business in the Community and Operation Black Vote, releases a new Roadmap to race equality. The roadmap is a seven-part plan, which recommends employment, education, housing, health and criminal justice as the priority areas that need addressing in order to best achieve progress in race equality, as well as putting equality and human rights at the heart of a post-Brexit Britain and ensuring strong leadership is in place to deliver change.
The plan says that action should be taken to:
- reduce the ethnicity employment and pay gaps so that everyone has a chance to get a job that matches their abilities and be fairly rewarded for it
- improve educational outcomes so that every child has a fair chance to fulfil their potential irrespective of their ethnicity
- tackle the disproportionate numbers of ethnic minority groups living in substandard, overcrowded and inappropriate accommodation
- improve access to healthcare and health outcomes
- improve trust and ensure fairness in the criminal justice system where ethnic minorities are over-represented both as victims and defendants of crime.
