My Lords, the case for minority ethnic pay gap reporting is not only a profoundly moral one, it is intensely practical. Every person, regardless of their ethnicity or background, should be able to fulfil their potential at work. That is the business case as well as the moral case:
“Diverse organisations that attract and develop individuals from the widest pool of talent consistently perform better.”
Those are not my words. I am adopting them, but they are the words of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, and they ring true.
The Government’s own review Race in the Workplace, conducted by the noble Baroness, Lady McGregor-Smith, estimated that having full representation of ethnic minority workers in the labour market would help reduce poverty across the country significantly and benefit the UK economy to the tune of about £24 billion a year—that is about 1.3% of GDP. The reality is that poverty is a fact of life for all too many in the black and ethnic minority communities. BAME groups experience a poverty rate that is twice as high as that of their white counterparts. Research indicates that poverty rates are about 50% for Bangladeshi groups, 47% for Pakistani groups, 40% for black groups, 35% for Chinese groups and 25% for Indian groups, compared with 20% for white groups in the UK.
The poverty is real. The challenge to British industry to improve its productivity, and to grow our economy in a post-Covid world, is also all too apparent; hence the need for the Government to act now on this issue, given that they consulted on the ethnic minority pay gap as long ago as October 2018. They closed that consultation in 2019, yet no response has ever been published. That is really inexplicable, given the degree of public concern about this issue.
Dianne Greyson is to be congratulated on her campaign, which produced over 130,000 signatures. That was what led to the debate on the issue in the other place. The Office for National Statistics has demonstrated only too clearly the need for the better collection of data. In addition, we now have the Confederation of British Industry, the Trades Union Congress and the Equality and Human Rights Commission all making the case for better data and for mandatory reporting in this area. The reason they do so is that if we do not successfully address the challenges of diversity in the workplace and the damage done to our economy by not securing the proper, fair and equitable promotion and retention of black and ethnic minority workers, with decent and fair rewards, the price to pay is all too high.
The challenge for the Government is to come up with a response to the questions raised. It really is not good enough to put this in the “all too difficult” box. Yes, we know there are challenges and trade-offs to be made in obtaining data that takes this issue forward; however, as the advances that resulted from the collection of data on gender have demonstrated, we know that, where we do have data, the transparency and the light of publicity thrown on glaring disadvantage and disparity change the situation on the ground—which gives hope to those currently prevented from realising their full potential.