The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is failing to protect Black people’s human rights, an explosive parliamentary report has found.
Following Black Lives Matter protests in response to George Floyd’s murder earlier this year, the Joint Committee on Human Rights examined racial inequalities in Britain highlighted by the mass demonstrations across health, criminal justice, immigration and democracy.
Equality watchdog the EHRC has been unable to adequately provide leadership and gain trust in the protection and promotion of Black human rights, the panel established.
The EHRC is funded by the government’s equalities office, currently headed by Kemi Badenoch – who recently came under fire for saying white privilege doesn’t exist.
The commission often works with government to influence progress – a failure on its part reflects poorly on the government by default.
The report entitled Black People, Racism and Human Rights makes 20 recommendations. It reads: “This committee has long been concerned that the EHRC’s powers in relation to human rights are not fit for purpose. This undermines its ability to protect Black people’s rights more effectively.”
Moreover, there are no Black people at top-level within the EHRC, which has “left the Black community without a clear visible champion for their rights”.
As it stands, there has been no national organisation whose priority it is to champion race equality since the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) was folded into the EHRC in 2007, 30 years after it was formed. Current shadow justice minister David Lammy said at the time the decision was “a mistake”.
In order to address this issue, the commission has recommended that Black people are represented in the higher echelons of the EHRC and a separate body, similar to CRE, be recreated to tackle systemic injustices.
The EHRC told HuffPost UK there were a number of recommendations in the report that it agrees with.
In the meantime, the cross-party panel has called on the government to set out a comprehensive race equality strategy.
The government recently established the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities which is expected to report before the end of 2020. The commission submitted that it should focus on taking action to reduce inequalities and secure Black people’s human rights, as opposed to more seemingly-futile fact finding.
Crucially, the committee also highlighted an important fact that some people within marginalised communities know well: many government reviews into inequalities have been commissioned over the years but there’s a been a lack of progress in acting upon the findings.
“Whilst the issues of racial inequality have been the subject of repeated reviews, the lack of progress in implementing the findings of those reviews has become a source of intense frustration and concern. Where actions have been taken, they have often been superficial and not had lasting effect,” the joint committee report read.
“Our aim for this inquiry emphatically was not to embark on a new round of fact-finding in areas where the facts are already well established and considered recommendations have been made. Instead we call for action to implement these recommendations and look to how best to overcome the seeming inability for government to act.”
The conclusions of the report, which comes after the EHRC last week launched a review into the racial inequalities faced by health and social care workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, are a sad indictment on British society.
While the death rate for Black women in childbirth is five times higher than for white women and the NHS acknowledges and regret this disparity, it has no target to end it which has been serious cause for concern for campaigners. For the first time in parliamentary history, the joint committee has urged the NHS to rectify this.
In August, HuffPost UK collaborated with Black British lifestyle publication on a series of articles about family and parenting. The flagship news feature addressed the Black maternal mortality rate using exclusive data around the subject collated by Black Ballad and startling anecdotal accounts.
The impact on the Black community of Covid-19 has been disproportionately severe and any lessons learned review or public inquiry into the government’s response to Covid-19 must prioritise consideration of this unequal impact, the committee added.
Further key findings reached include:
The majority (over 75%) of Black people in the UK do not believe their human rights are equally protected compared to white people
Over 60% of Black people in the UK do not believe their health is as equally protected by the NHS compared to white people.
- 85% of black people are not confident that they would be treated the same as a white person by the police.
The committee was appointed by the House of Lords and the House of Commons, the committee consists of six members from each house – half of whom are Tories.
The report was tweeted out at 1am on Wednesday morning and, though parliamentary reports are typically embargoed until 12.01am on any given day, a number of Black campaigners questioned whether the document was deliberately snuck out in the still of the night by the government because of its findings.
A spokesperson for the committee, which is separate from the government, said that committee reports are published under embargo which is always lifted shortly after midnight on the day of publication so as to maximise coverage.
A spokesperson from the EHRC said: “The human rights of Black people and the inequality that still exists in Britain has been in the spotlight during the pandemic and with the Black Lives Matter movement. These are not new problems and we have long been championing the improvements needed for people from ethnic minorities.
“Our unique powers make us well placed to achieve this. We have been calling for a cross-government race strategy to galvanise action and taken an in-depth look at issues such as racism in universities. We have challenged race discrimination through the courts, supporting landmark cases that have had widespread impact.
“This report makes a number of recommendations that we agree with. We will continue our work to help improve the lives of people from ethnic minorities and are constantly looking at our programmes to see what more can be done.”
The EHRC will soon be reporting on its assessment on the government’s hostile environment policies highlighted by the Windrush scandal.