Contents
1.	How the Liberal Democrats will work towards race equality	1
1.1	Our values and vision	1
1.2	The Liberal Democrat approach	4
2.	Education and learning	8
2.1	Challenges	8
2.2	Policy proposals	10
3.	Employment and income	16
3.1	Persistent poverty and lack of opportunity	16
3.2	Opportunity for all	17
4.	Health and social care	21
4.1	Challenges	21
4.2	Policy proposals	23
5.	Participation in public life	26
5.1	Challenges	26
5.2	Policy proposals	27
6.	Justice	31
6.1	Inequality before the law	31
6.2	Building a diverse and fair justice system	33
7.	Community and housing	37
7.1	The current situation	37
7.2	Policy proposals	38
8.	Government oversight and legislation	41
9.	Summary of Recommendations	43


1. How the Liberal Democrats will work towards race equality
1.1 Our values and vision
1.1.1 People should be able to build a good life in the UK regardless of their race. However, this is not the reality for too many in our country: ethnic minority groups are more likely to experience poverty and struggle to find adequate housing and they are less likely to fulfil their potential at school and receive adequate health and social care. In the UK today, these issues are most often caused by deep-seated and (normally) unconscious institutional biases that require a sustained and deliberate effort to tackle. The Conservatives and Labour have proved themselves incapable of doing this: the Conservatives are fatally undermined by hostile rhetoric on integration and immigration and Labour treat people as groups and take the votes of ethnic minority people for granted. Liberal Democrats are the only party demanding better: a government committed to ending race inequality that will empower individuals and hold power to account through values of openness, transparency and accountability. 
1.1.2 This commitment to race equality – with other equalities – is a central Liberal Democrat value. Our vision, as stated in the Preamble to our Constitution, is of “a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community” and reject “all prejudice and discrimination based upon race”. While the UK has made good progress towards race equality in some respects, there remains a great deal more to do.
1.1.3 Liberal Democrats celebrate the impact that migration has had on the UK. The UK is an island of migrants and for centuries – in part because of the UK’s colonial history – people of all ethnicities have come to the UK to make it their home. This has enriched our language, culture and society, driven innovation and boosted the economy more widely. Immigration both pre- and post-WW2 – when migrants were invited to help rebuild post-war Britain – has built a healthy multi-racial and multi-ethnic society. The migration of EU citizens has further broadened the UK’s communities.
1.1.4 We deplore the Conservatives’ “hostile environment”. It is an inhuman and futile attempt to achieve the unachievable and undesirable target of reducing immigration to the tens of thousands. It not only makes it hard for anyone who looks or sounds like they might be a migrant to live and work in the UK, but also makes more difficult for people with every right to be in the UK to access employment, housing and healthcare. Denying people services they are entitled to and removing people from their country of residence are severe breaches of human rights. The Windrush scandal is symptomatic of this “hostile environment”. This is why Liberal Democrats would scrap it and prioritise righting the wrongs inflicted upon the Windrush generation and others, including paying reparations to those affected. 
1.1.5 We welcome the Government’s recent Race Disparity Audit – a clear and transparent attitude to the data is an essential first step to tackling the problems. The audit revealed a number of troubling statistics, for example:
* Around one in four children in households headed by people from an Asian background or those in the Other ethnic group1 were in persistent poverty, as were one in five children in Black households compared to one in ten White British households.
* Pupils from Gypsy and Roma, or Irish Traveller background have the lowest attainment of any ethnic group.
* There are substantial differences in participation in the labour market: around one in ten adults from a Black, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Mixed background were unemployed compared with one in twenty-five White British people.
* Home ownership, access to social housing, affordability and the quality of housing varies very widely between ethnic groups. Home ownership is most common among households of White British, Indian, Pakistani, and Mixed White and Asian origin; it is substantially lower among African, Arab, and Mixed White and Black African households.
1.1.6 We are committed to eliminating these inequalities and building a country in which the support needed is available at the right time so that regardless of race or ethnicity, they can take advantage of the opportunities open to them. 
1.1.7 It is important to recognise that for some people the effects of race inequality can be compounded by other inequalities. Where there are inequalities caused by gender identity, sexuality, religion, disability or age these are often multiplied for those from an ethnic minority background. There is evidence that there are specific challenges facing ethnic minority LGBT+ people, who can find it more difficult to come out to their whole family and do not always feel welcome within the LGBT+ community.2  
1.1.8 This paper sets out the policies regarding race equality that would be enacted by a Liberal Democrat government. It is not a document that seeks to comment on race equality within the party. However, for the Party to be plausible on this issue it is vital that the recommendations of Lord Alderdice’s review Race, Ethnic Minorities and the Culture of the Liberal Democrats are taken to heart and implemented. The paper builds on existing party policy on race equality that is set out in policy motion A new approach to race equality (2013), which is based on the findings of the first Lib Dem Race Equality Task Force. 
Lord Alderdice, Race, Ethnic Minorities and the Culture of the Liberal Democrats: 
“The Liberal Democrat Party has traditionally been viewed (and has viewed itself) as the party which stands up for human rights, civil liberties, personal freedoms, equal opportunities, fairness and diversity. As such, the party could be the natural home for those individuals and communities who may have suffered discrimination in some form, and who share its commitment to justice, tolerance, diversity and honesty. At a time when politics globally is becoming more nationalistic, xenophobic, and racist and where ethnic cleansing is a current horror in some countries, there can scarcely be a more urgent liberal priority than to challenge that present cultural drift in what is done as much as in what is said, but this will only be effective if there are changes in aspects of the culture of the party itself.”
1.2 The Liberal Democrat approach
1.2.1 Challenges. While progress has been made towards race equality, reports of open discrimination based on race and/or religion are on the increase. Inequality also manifests itself in less obvious and more complicated ways. The most significant challenges include deep-seated, often unconscious, biases in British institutions. For example, the most senior roles in many fields are dominated by white people and this, in turn, means that young ethnic minority people struggle to find role models to follow, which impacts the types of careers they choose to pursue. Poor outcomes for ethnic minority groups are also entwined with issues around poverty: income is a key determinant of life chances and research shows that – for a range of complex reasons – ethnic minority people are more likely to experience poverty than white people. This means that cuts to services and benefits that affect the poorest will disproportionately impact people from ethnic minority groups. 
1.2.2 There is also an over-arching problem of access – be it to services, justice, funding or information. The current government treats people with suspicion when they approach the state for help and this means that people are unjustly denied access to services to which they should be entitled. Liberal Democrats champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals and prioritise individual rights. When citizens approach the state for assistance, we assume that people are acting in good faith and help them to receive the support to which they are entitled. 
1.2.3 Policy Solutions. The general picture is complicated and each of the six policy areas considered in this paper have their own intricacies. There are, however, a number of over-arching solutions which apply to all areas:
1 Fair processes: a widespread roll-out of name-blind applications, diverse panels adequately trained to address unconscious bias and a network of experts available to provide support across the public sector and business.
2 Targets with teeth: Tackling under-representation with improved monitoring and publication of ethnicity data, public targets, a named individual or role accountable for improving diversity and regular reporting against milestones.
3 Appropriate levels of funding: Ensuring that where cuts to services have a disproportionate impact on ethnic minority groups, appropriate levels of funding are protected.
Fair processes
1.2.4 Having a ‘non-white’ sounding name is a disadvantage when applying for jobs, reducing the likelihood of being invited to interview. Name-blind recruitment, already used widely in the UK, is effective in combatting any unconscious bias. Liberal Democrats would widen the use of name-blind applications: we would make the use of name-blind processes compulsory for any organisation with more than ten employees that is in receipt of public funds (including universities recruiting students) and require companies with over 250 employees to report whether they use this process. We would publish this information alongside pay gap information.
1.2.5 While name-blinding is good practice in the context of paper-based processes, it does not help when it comes to situations that involve a face-to-face interview. It is good practice to ensure that a panel rather than an individual should have the responsibility for making hiring decisions, and that  there are gender-balanced panels for interviews. The same principle should apply for ethnicity. Panels should include people who have an appreciation of the culture and community from which interviewees have come: this regularly happens for white people but is rarer for people from an ethnic minority background. Clearly it is more difficult for organisations to arrange for ethnically diverse panels than it is to do this for gender. So to move towards this, we would require any organisation in receipt of public funds to show that, when an interview panel is convened for any purpose, they have considered the ethnicity of the people appearing before the panel when appointing people to the panel and that the members of the panel have received training in unconscious bias. We believe that unconscious bias training is important in giving people the tools to question their own biases when they are making decisions and arrive at better decisions.
1.2.6 Ensuring the fairness of processes is wider than just dealing with appointments and interviews. When people seek access to services it is important that their culture is understood and catered for. To this end we would establish a network of experts who come from a range of cultures and speak a variety of languages. These would act as consultants who can be brought in to help services cater appropriately for a variety of cultures.
Targets with teeth
1.2.7 Where there is a problem of under-representation of a particular group, our approach is to advocate the adoption of “targets with teeth”. Appropriate targets should be set to address the problem – they should be ambitious and realistic and there should be a fixed timescale with milestones along the way. Targets should be set in partnership with relevant organisations and reflect regional demographics. This is not central government imposing blanket targets: we would work with relevant stakeholders to mutually agree suitable targets. Organisations need to take ownership of delivering these targets and that will only happen if they believe they are realistic as well as stretching. Whenever targets are set there should be a named individual or body that is responsible for meeting the target. By “teeth” we mean transparency and appropriate reporting measures – progress to milestones should be publicly available and reports should be made either to Parliament or to the relevant Minister.
1.2.8 This requires a new attitude towards information around ethnicity. We would promote an attitude of openness and transparency towards data about diversity, ensuring that accurate data is captured by government and businesses and that this is open to researchers and journalists so that institutions can be properly challenged and held to account. This is an essential first step towards race equality.
Appropriate levels of funding
1.2.9 A consistent theme across policy areas is that where there have been cuts to services, these have disproportionately affected people from ethnic minority groups. This is largely because people from certain ethnic minority groups are more likely to live in poverty than White British people are. Where the under-funding of services is disproportionately impacting ethnic minority groups, promoting race equality means being willing to adequately fund these services.
2. Education and learning
2.1 Challenges
2.1.1 A good education empowers children and communities to be the best that they can be, fosters understanding and knowledge and – ultimately – enables people to be free. Education should inspire confident, resilient young people who have the knowledge and skills to tackle the challenges of a rapidly changing world. We believe that access to this is a fundamental right, open to all. The current system falls well short of this. 
2.1.2 The picture of educational inequality in the UK is complicated: there is evidence of race inequality, but this is closely connected with regional and income inequalities. Educational outcomes at 16 give a good indication of where there are the clearest problems. Educational attainment varies greatly between ethnic groups: approximately 77% of pupils with Chinese heritage achieve five or more A*-C GCSEs compared to only 45% of Black Caribbean pupils. Pakistani and White pupils are the other two groups whose average performance is lower than the average for the population as a whole. 
2.1.3 It is difficult to entirely disentangle race, income and regional inequalities in education – ethnicity is just one of the factors. In the more marginal cases of white and Pakistani pupils it is likely that the primary causes of the inequality are regional and based upon family income – rather than race itself causing the inequality. This means that, while this section focuses on tackling race inequality, addressing this in isolation is unlikely to resolve all education inequality.3 However for Black Caribbean pupils the difference between their attainment and the national average is enough to suggest that there is a specific problem related to race that should be addressed.
2.1.4 Part of the problem is likely to be caused by the high rate of exclusions experienced by this group: Black Caribbean pupils are three times more likely than average to be excluded. Exclusions is an area where intersectionality needs to be considered: a black Caribbean boy eligible for free school meals who also has special educational needs (SEN) is 168 times more likely to be permanently excluded than a white British girl without SEN and not eligible for free school meals. Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) children, who are four times more likely than average to face exclusion, are impacted by exclusions to an even greater degree than black children. GRT pupils also have very high absence rates: Gypsy/Roma pupils miss 12.9% of school sessions and Irish traveller children miss 18.1%, compared to an average of 4.4%. Our evidence has suggested that GRT children are often driven from school by discrimination and bullying, and this would explain the unusually high rates of absenteeism.
2.1.5 The lack of ethnic diversity among teaching staff is also likely to play a role. Teachers who resemble their pupils can serve as role models and allies against discrimination, but they too can face discrimination and unfair treatment. Recent research by the Runnymede Trust suggests 60% of current teachers from ethnic minorities are actively seeking to leave the workforce. Part of the problem – a recurring theme across sectors – is that ethnic minority teachers are often given stereotypical projects, eg around Black History Month, rather than wider responsibilities. This contributes to the disproportionately high number who have not applied for promotion.
2.1.6 We must also consider apprenticeships and higher education. While the headline figures for apprentices are not too bad, the level of diversity between different types of apprenticeship can vary wildly and is particularly low in scientific and engineering professions. 
2.1.7 In recent years there has been significant progress in promoting greater race equality in university admissions. HESA’s 2016/17 data shows that there are around 13,000 more black students enrolling in university degrees than there were in the 2012/13 academic year and around 21,000 more Asian students.4
2.1.8 While enrolment statistics are positive for the university sector as a whole, there remains an issue at the UK’s most prestigious universities: seven of the ten worst performing universities in terms of diversity are members of the Russell group. Once enrolled in a university, ethnic minority students do not perform as well as white students: there is a 15% gap between the percentage of ethnic minority and white students receiving first class or upper second degrees and ethnic minority students also have a higher drop-out rate.
2.2 Policy proposals
2.2.1 Problems in the education system need to be addressed at the earliest age possible. This is why Liberal Democrats would treble the early years pupil premium to boost attainment across all ethnicities at the earliest stage. Because ethnic minorities are more likely to experience poverty than the white British group, this would particularly benefit ethnic minority students. To improve the skills of staff, we would require all early years’ settings to have a training programme for staff, with the majority of staff who are working with children to either have a relevant qualification or be working towards one. As part of this, teachers would receive unconscious bias training to help them adequately support all pupils.
2.2.2 In order to reduce the number of exclusions, Liberal Democrats would give local authorities the remit and resources to act as Strategic Education Authorities for all schools in their area, including responsibility for places planning and exclusions. Local Authorities would be responsible for ensuring that every child has a school place (or that suitable arrangements are in place for home schooling) and that if exclusion from a school is necessary there will be a managed move to a new school. 
2.2.3 We would implement the Children’s Commissioner’s recommendations for tackling exclusions, introducing statutory guidance to set out how schools should communicate exclusions to children and their families. We would also review guidance on exclusions so that it includes a requirement for headteachers to demonstrate that they have made adequate attempts to meet the pupil’s pastoral and learning needs over the year preceding any proposed permanent exclusion. The Department for Education would also work with schools to set targets for reducing Black Caribbean and GRT exclusions.
2.2.4 The likelihood of a child being excluded also increases if they have special educational needs or are disabled (SEND). In order to support these children generally as well as SEND children from ethnic minority communities – for whom the problem is greatly exacerbated –Liberal Democrats would provide funding to help cover the costs of Education, Health and Social Care Plans (EHCPs), which are currently met by schools. Lessening this strain on schools’ budgets, would enable them to provide a better level of support to all SEND children, reducing the risk of exclusion.
2.2.5 There is a history of government-backed projects working in schools to improve educational outcomes for ethnic minority pupils. These projects are currently funded under the name of Raising Educational Achievement Projects: these work well in the areas where they operate, but they limit support to just a few areas and there are many pupils who would benefit from this type of support who do not receive it. We propose establishing a national fund for these projects, that would be open to Local Authorities and charities to support them to tackle specific problems that may be contributing to poor outcomes. Because ethnic inequalities in education are connected to regional and income inequalities, this fund would be intended to support local areas to tackle any of the identified inequalities.
2.2.6 There is a lack of diversity among school governors. We would encourage local authorities to work with the schools in their area to establish targets for improving diversity among their governors. We would require public sector organisations to offer two days per year of paid leave for staff to take up volunteering opportunities, such as school governorship. This would widen these opportunities beyond those who already have the time and money to take them up.
2.2.7 There is a question as to whether the school curriculum is equally well-suited to children of all ethnic backgrounds: eg, in the case of history where the subjects taught can prioritise the White British perspective. Liberal Democrats have a long-standing commitment to a broad and balanced curriculum and we do not believe that it is the job of government to determine the curriculum – we reiterate the party policy that this should be determined by an independent Education Standards Authority (ESA).5 We would ensure that the ESA has in its guidance a requirement to enable all students to access a suitable curriculum. We would also support Local Authorities to  take advantage of the greater flexibility of the new framework to run lessons and extra-curricular activities that are tailored to reflect the demographics of their area and which include teaching about our shared colonial history.
2.2.8 To support ethnic minority teachers, we will invest in Careers and Professional Development. We would ensure that there are resources designed specifically to meet the training requirements of ethnic minority teachers and support their progression to and through the leadership grades. We would also fund local authorities to run campaigns to encourage and support members of their ethnic minority communities into the teaching profession. 
2.2.9 Education policy should not be limited just to schools – what goes on in homes and wider communities is a major factor in achievement. It is important to support communities and families so that all children are given the best chance to succeed. Because ethnic minority people are more likely to be affected by poverty than White British people,6 services that support the poorest disproportionately benefit people from ethnic minority groups. To do more to support communities and families – and especially ethnic minority groups – Liberal Democrats would:
* Invest substantially in youth services so that they can deliver a wider range of services, help more young people and provide better training to youth and outreach workers. 
* Increase the level of government support available for pre-school childcare and fund outreach to ethnic minority groups to improve their take-up of support.
2.2.10 To improve the diversity of apprenticeships, we first need to build a clear picture of the problem. This means more detailed monitoring of ethnicity data for apprentices to understand which groups are underrepresented and in what fields. Employers in receipt of the apprenticeship levy must gather ethnicity data and publish this information. In sectors where there are particular issues identified, we will work with the largest employers in the sector and professional bodies to agree targets for improving the situation.
2.2.11 To encourage more students from ethnic minorities to attend Russell Group universities we would support universities to offer a greater number of bursaries to ethnic minority students from state-funded schools by matching the funds that they put towards bursaries themselves. This match-funding would be dependent upon universities adopting targets for increasing the number of ethnic minority students, having a senior staff member responsible for reporting on progress towards the targets and being able to demonstrate that they were conducting suitable levels of outreach to under-represented groups. Outreach should focus on encouraging applications to a range of courses wherever a university’s data shows that certain groups are under-represented on specific courses. 
2.2.12 Diversity of teaching and research staff at universities is also lacking –this can be off-putting to students from ethnic minority backgrounds. The scale of the problem in academia is stark: of the UK’s 14,205 professors only 90 are black and of the 4,735 female professors only 25 are black. Just over half a per cent of the UK’s professors are black. We will work with the university sector to agree ambitious targets to improve this situation. 
To work towards race equality in education, Liberal Democrats would:
* Treble the early years Pupil Premium and invest in unconscious bias training for teachers.
* Establish a national fund for projects that will enable Local Authorities and other organisations to tackle poor outcomes for particular groups.
* Ease the pressure on school budgets and support SEND children by helping to fund education, health and care plans.
* Reduce the number of exclusions by returning the duty of school place planning to Local Authorities and requiring headteachers to make adequate attempts to cater for pastoral needs of pupils and report on them before excluding them.
* Ensure that Local Authorities take advantage of the more flexible Lib Dem curriculum to run lessons and extra-curricular activities that match the demography of their area.
* Invest substantially in youth services to deliver a wider range of services, help more young people and provide better training to youth and outreach workers
* Improve monitoring of the ethnicity of apprentices and work with sectors that have underrepresentation of particular groups to tackle the situation.
* Support universities to offer a greater number of bursaries to ethnic minority students, with funding dependent upon suitable levels of outreach.
* Targets with teeth for increasing diversity among university teaching staff.


3. Employment and income
3.1 Persistent poverty and lack of opportunity
3.1.1 Income inequality is one of the key determinants of people’s life chances. The UK poverty rate is twice as high for people from ethnic minority groups as it is for white groups.7 There are a variety of drivers for this.
3.1.2 First, there are higher unemployment rates among certain ethnic groups. Even though employment levels are generally rising, some groups are increasingly likely to experience unemployment – this is particularly marked for White Gypsy/Irish Traveller groups, African groups and Mixed White and Caribbean groups. Women from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds have much higher levels of economic inactivity than others, often because they take on caring responsibilities. Of Pakistani men who are economically active, 26% are self-employed and many of these are trapped in low pay. Research suggests that this group often find themselves in self-employment due to wider labour market barriers – this problem is best addressed by tackling barriers in the wider labour market.
3.1.3 When people from ethnic minority backgrounds are in work, certain groups are more likely to be poorly paid. This is partly because some groups are concentrated in low-pay sectors where there is little opportunity for progression. Some groups – Bangladeshi workers – are more likely than others to earn less than the Living Wage, whichever sector they work in. People’s migration status has an impact on pay too: the Conservatives’ hostile environment has made it much harder for people to seek work and progress in it and this increases the risk of persistent poverty. African, Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups are at particular risk of getting stuck in persistent poverty.
3.1.4 The flexibility of modern work, especially in the gig economy, also presents a challenge. Historically high employment rates mask both underemployment and the precariousness nature of many jobs. The casualisation of work has had particular impact on disabled people and ethnic minority groups. The prevalence of casualisation and underemployment among ethnic minority workers lessens their chances of progression, as temporary workers are less likely to gain access to in-house training or to be able to access networks within organisations that facilitate advancement, and less likely to gain experience in key roles in an organisation's career ladder.
3.2 Opportunity for all
3.2.1 A Liberal Democrat government would immediately and fully implement the recommendations of the McGregor-Smith Review of Race in the Workplace.8 This means that we would:
* Legislate to ensure that all organisations in receipt of public funds and all organisations that employ more than 250 people must gather data about the ethnicity of their employees, publish aspirational targets and publish data annually to show progress towards these targets.9
* Ensure that when the targets are published, there is also a senior role identified whose holder will be accountable for meeting the targets – if the targets are not met, a short explanation must also be provided.
* Work with experts to develop a comprehensive unconscious bias training toolkit that would be made available for free to anyone who wishes to access it. We would make the provision of unconscious bias training to all members of staff a condition of the receipt of public funds.
* Work with Business in the Community to develop an online portal of best practice and fund an awareness-raising campaign that would direct businesses to this resource.
3.2.2 This approach will hold employers to account, but it is also important to work with employees to empower them to demand better of employers. We would invest in employment support services and job centres to enable them to improve the quality of advice and support available and to help people from the ethnic minority groups identified as facing issues access higher-paid and better-quality work. We would provide funding to establish community-led employment services in areas where there are especially vulnerable communities.
3.2.3 We would ensure that fair processes are used in recruitment. As detailed in §1.2.4-5 this means a widespread roll-out of the use of name-blind applications and diverse panels. We believe that there is potential for the use of machine learning in recruitment to improve diversity – it may provide a way to sift through applications without a human bringing their biases to the process. However, this is an area where we need to be very cautious: this could codify and entrench prejudice and make the situation worse. We would introduce a kitemark scheme for algorithm-based recruitment tools for programmes that pass a rigorous assessment for bias. Any organisation using such a recruitment tool would need to use a kitemarked programme before they could be awarded any government funding or contract.
3.2.4 Lack of English language skills can contribute to people becoming trapped in persistent poverty. We would establish a national strategy with a funded requirement for every local authority to publish a Language Needs Assessment that would identify the requirements for ESOL (English as a Second Language) provision in the area, identify target groups and plan outreach, encourage closer collaboration between communities, schools and local authorities and provide asylum seekers and refugees with low levels of English with a minimum of six months free ESOL classes from the point at which they apply for asylum.10 This would include working with children in a school setting for cases where poor English-language skills are negatively impacting performance.
3.2.5 People who care for their family members are hugely important –their efforts greatly reduce the strain on social care services. We would increase the amount people can earn before losing Carer’s Allowance from £110 to £150 a week, and reduce the number of hours’ care per week required to qualify for the allowance. 
3.2.6 We reiterate the migration policy set out in policy paper 131 A Fair Deal for Everyone: Prosperity and Dignity in Migration (2018). Liberal Democrats would end the hostile environment and remove from employers the threat of legal action for employing people who do not have the right to work in the UK, if they have conducted the most basic of ID checks. Moving policy-making around people migrating to the UK to work from the Home Office to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy would help ensure that the value of migrants to business was fully reflected in the UK’s visa policies, and the move towards a case-worker model of support for applicants would help encourage people into work.
3.2.7 We also support the proposals of policy paper 133 Good Jobs, Better Businesses, Stronger Communities (2018) for protecting the rights of people working in the gig economy. We would encourage gig platforms to allow workers to carry approval ratings with them and review the rules concerning pensions, in the spirit of auto enrolment, so that those in the gig economy don’t lose out, and portability between roles is protected.
To reduce the disproportionate levels of poverty among ethnic minority communities, Liberal Democrats would:
* Require organisations to publish ethnicity data for their employees, set targets and transparently report on progress.
* Develop a comprehensive unconscious bias training toolkit and make provision of such training for staff a condition of any public funding.
* Invest in employment support services and job centres to improve the level of advice and support available to people.
* Work with Local Authorities to establish a national strategy for teaching English as a Second Language that would focus on outreach to hard-to-reach groups.
* End the hostile environment and move towards a case-worker model of support for people seeking to move to the UK.


4. Health and social care
4.1 Challenges
4.1.1 The UK’s health and social care services are under extreme pressure and this is impacting the service that they can provide to the most marginalised populations. The NHS and its staff work tirelessly to provide the best service possible and the challenges identified in this section are caused by the Conservatives’ failure to properly fund health and social care. The health service should also be praised for making data available – this is a vital first step towards addressing some of the problems faced by ethnic minority people.
4.1.2 Studies have shown that life expectancy differs substantially between different ethnic minority groups. This is particularly marked when considering the disability-free life expectancy (which is the average age that an individual is expected to live free of disability), which ranges from 67 years for Chinese women to 55.1 years for Pakistani women. 
4.1.3 Some ethnic minority patients are affected even more than others. Among GRT populations, life expectancy is 10-50% shorter than for the general population. Contributing factors include: GPs’ insistence on having proof of identity and permanent address, ‘anticipation of discrimination’ based on ethnicity, and healthcare professionals’ lack of knowledge, confidence and expertise’ in different cultures.
4.1.4 Understanding cultural attitudes towards diseases and the medical profession is vitally important. For example, the attitude of Chinese and South-East Asian communities towards cancer is substantially different from that of other groups and this can affect whether they present for treatment; there are cultural taboos among married GRT women around being touched by males – even doctors – and they do not necessarily know that they can always request female doctors.
4.1.5 Mental health outcomes are disproportionately poorer for ethnic minority patients. African-Caribbean mental health patients are prescribed higher doses of medication, are more likely to be diagnosed with severe mental illness, and are three to five times more likely than any other group to be admitted to hospital for schizophrenia. Black patients are less likely to have GP involvement in the pathway to their first psychotic episode, have lower referral rates than average to secondary mental health service, and are twice as likely to experience criminal justice involvement in their first episode .11 Black African women are seven times more likely to be detained under mental health legislation in England than White British women.
4.1.6 There is also evidence of different outcomes for pregnancy and infant mortality. There are variations in premature births, which ranges between 6-10%, for different groups. and there are differences in infant mortality rate which is 3.3% for White British people and over 6% for Black African or Caribbean and Pakistani people. The causes of this are complex, with some research suggesting that the issue is linked to poverty.
4.1.7 While Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is illegal in the UK, a substantial number of women in the UK have been affected by the practice. The highest prevalence rates are estimated to be in London where it is estimated that just over 2% of women and girls in this age range have been affected by FGM. Most of these cases are people who have come to the UK already affected by FGM, but for some it will have either happened or been arranged in the UK. For those affected it is important to ensure that there is help available for them to deal with the consequences of FGM and to safeguard any children or relatives that might also be in the country.
4.1.8 Representation of ethnic minority groups among NHS senior leadership has declined overall. There is a good level of diversity among staff in more junior roles in the health service. Currently a third of the total NHS workforce is from an ethnic minority background, but this figure drops to 6% for the senior leadership. That there is a systemic issue is suggested by recent research from the Royal College of Physicians, which has shown that, even though white British doctors apply for fewer posts than their ethnic minority colleagues, they are both more likely to be shortlisted and more likely to be offered a job.
4.1.9 The problem at senior levels in the NHS seems to be getting worse: ethnic minority membership of English NHS Trust Boards’ fell from 8.7% in 2006 to 5.8% in 2013; ethnic minority chief executives and chairs in fell from 5.3% in 2006 to 2.5% in 2014.12 
4.1.10 Health and social care is an area where there are other important intersectional issues relating to age. sexuality and gender identity. The over-65 ethnic minority population is forecast to increase substantially over the next thirty years: it is expected to reach 2.7 million by 2051. This means that health inequalities will have an increasing impact as an increasing number of people from ethnic minority backgrounds access health and social care. The LGBT+ group is another that experiences health inequalities and it is likely that this group is left at greater risk of poor health outcomes.
4.2 Policy proposals
4.2.1 We will explore working with the NHS, local authorities and third sector organizations to introduce a network of experts with knowledge of different languages and cultures to work with local NHS Trusts. This will utilise translation skills for the benefit of NHS and local authority ethnic minority patients and service users. 
4.2.2 We would increase funding for research into tackling stigma within ethnic minority communities in a group-specific way, rather than assuming one approach works for all communities. We would fund research into the specific mental health service needs of smaller minority groups and invest in public information campaigns to ensure that all groups know what they can expect of the health service.
4.2.3 We would work with local authorities to encourage and hold mental health services to account in developing programmes that provide sensitive and tailored care. We would also ensure regular research is conducted into the mental health needs of different ethnic minority communities within the UK, so we can ensure there are tailor-made solutions emerging from commissioners, providers, local authorities and NHS England. We will ensure further research focussed on tackling stigma within different groups for mental illness.
4.2.4 We will ensure statutory bodies that are regularly inspected by the CQC or other appropriate bodies, provide training of professionals working in mental health services that addresses issues of racial bias and cultural competence. We believe that there is also a role for the charitable sector in delivering healthcare and would invest in outreach to a wider range of charities – especially those that work in ethnic minority communities – and support them to bid to deliver services.
4.2.5 The NICE guidelines do not currently reflect the fact that different ethnic groups may experience different health conditions in different ways and that certain groups are more likely to be affected by certain conditions. We would review these guidelines to ensure that they account for any such differences and audit the guidelines against international best practice. Where there are specific health challenges – eg, in the case of infant mortality – we would work with NHS Trusts to introduce suitable targets.
4.2.6 Dealing with FGM involves the health service but requires work across agencies. In order to protect UK girls who are at risk of FGM, we would ensure adequate training of teachers, social workers, police officers and health workers. We will encourage schools in areas where the practice is prevalent to include FGM in PSHE classes. For cases where FGM is not prevented, or where affected women have moved to the UK, we will ensure that these groups are trained to support affected women. We will ensure that psychiatric staff are trained to deal with the psychological trauma caused. 
4.2.7 We will support and build on the recommendations of Roger Kline’s Snowy White Peaks report for senior NHS management. We would clarify who is to be held accountable for lack of diversity in senior NHS management. We would work with NHS England to commission a strategic analysis of racial discrimination in the NHS and require name-blind recruitment where possible. We would move towards comparative benchmarking of NHS Trusts' disciplinary and grievance data by protected characteristics. 
To tackle health inequalities, Liberal Democrats would:
* Establish a network of experts who can support NHS services in understanding different cultural attitudes towards diseases.
* Fund public information campaigns to tackle stigmas within specific communities.
* Conduct regular research into the different mental health needs of different ethnic minority communities within the UK.
* Ensure that training of mental health staff addresses issues of racial bias.
* Routinely audit NICE guidelines against international best practice.
* Implement the recommendations of Roger Kline’s report into the lack of diversity in senior management in the NHS and commission a strategic analysis of racial discrimination in the NHS.
5. Participation in public life
5.1 Challenges
5.1.1 Across the public sphere – in politics, arts and the media – there is a lack of diversity. It is too difficult for ethnic minority people to participate in public life.
5.1.2 This is particularly marked in Parliament, where only 8% of MPs have an ethnic minority background, which is well below the figure for the population as a whole. The situation is even worse at the council level, where only an estimated 4% of councillors are from an ethnic minority. At the parliamentary level, campaign costs are prohibitive for many prospective candidates. In 2014, it cost £34,400 to become an MP, while the average MP salary was around £67,060, giving incumbents a financial advantage over their challengers.13 Ethnic minorities also lack access to networks of political elites.
5.1.3 Part of the problem may be that underrepresentation at the highest levels discourages ethnic minority people from political participation. Black people, for example, are four times less likely to be registered to vote,14 and thirteen times more likely to feel that politics does not represent them or reflect their concerns than their White counterparts. 
5.1.4 The problem is wider than just politics. The arts and media sectors play a crucial role in the cultural life of the UK and ethnic minority people contribute greatly to theatre, film, TV, art etc when they are given the chance to, but many cannot. Unpaid internships sift out many students early on, because they cannot afford to support themselves. Those lucky enough to secure a job become frustrated with being pigeon-holed into certain topics, which limits career paths. This is a particular issue among ethnic minority journalists, who are often asked to focus on equality-related topics, and means that many leave the profession in frustration, which is surely a factor in 94% of journalists being white. 
5.1.5 Across the public sphere, networking and who-you-know is vitally important. Evidence from BECTU (the Media and Entertainment Union) suggests projects specifically for ethnic minority people that work to grow their networks have been cut since the introduction of the Equalities Act in favour of projects that cater for all protected characteristics. This has meant that fewer ethnic minority people have benefited from these projects and a feeling that diversity in, eg, the broadcasting sector has gone backwards.
5.2 Policy proposals
5.2.1 Tackling the problems around political participation is far from straight forward and, to an extent, it is the responsibility of political parties to make greater efforts to engage and involve people from ethnic minority communities – this is in their own interest as well. It is outside the scope of this group to make recommendations for the Liberal Democrat party specifically, but the working group endorses Lord Alderdice’s report Race, Ethnic Minorities and the Culture of the Liberal Democrats as a means for the Party to become a natural home for people from ethnic minority communities who share our values and beliefs.
5.2.2 There are, however, some steps that a government could take to improve the situation. Currently, political parties are prevented by law from using all-ethnic-minority shortlists to select candidates in the same way as they can use all-women shortlists and all-disabled shortlists. We reiterate the existing party policy and would legislate to remove this restriction so that all-ethnic-minority-candidate shortlists could be used.
5.2.3 The low levels of voter registration among some ethnic minority groups suggests that there is a widespread feeling that decisions at both council and parliamentary levels are too far removed from the concerns of ethnic minority communities. We would ensure that every significant policy decision made by councils and government departments is informed by an Equality Impact Assessment. We would require councils and government departments to consult local ethnic minority community groups and BAME Forums as part of this process. We would also scrap the government’s trials of requiring voters to bring identification with them to vote: all the research around this shows that this only serves to suppress the number of ethnic minority voters to solve a problem that has negligible impact.
5.2.4 The lack of adequate networks is a problem that upon impacts ethnic minority people who are looking to get involved in politics but is a much wider problem that also limits people’s access to work in the arts and the media. We would encourage organisations to offer projects and services that are solely intended for people with individual protected characteristics and encourage BAME candidate to take part. This would enable trade unions, membership organisations and employers to work more proactively to expand the networks of ethnic minority people.
5.2.5 Before people look to get involved in public life, they need to see a career in or around politics, the arts or the media as the type of work that they can do. Evidence from the Patchwork Foundation emphasised the powerful effect of self-deselection: people don’t pursue certain careers simply because they see types of work as not being for people like them. It is vitally important that people are made aware from a young age of the rich and varied impact that ethnic minority people have had on public life in the UK. To this end, we will:
* Make funding available for projects to promote role models currently active in politics, arts and the media.
* In schools include teaching on citizenship as part of a “curriculum for life”: ensuring that there was safe space for recognising and understanding the experience of ethnic minority people in the UK.
* Increase the level of government arts funding that is targeted at art forms that aren’t seen as typically White to increase the number of opportunities for ethnic minority people to see more relevant art or performances.
* Run a national competition to select a series of ethnic minority people to celebrate with plaques, statues or memorials around the country.
5.2.6 Introduce a day to celebrate the positive impact of ethnic minority people throughout the history of the UK. Our general approach of greater openness and transparency around ethnicity data will have the effect of increasing visible diversity in public life. Any organisation that works in politics, the arts or the media that receives public funds – including through being commissioned by broadcasters in receipt of public funding – will be required to monitor ethnicity information. We would ensure that diversity data is included in paperwork submitted for film certification and would monitor progress in the film sector. Employers with more than fifty full-time equivalent members of staff will be required to individually publish their ethnicity data. In broadcasting, for example, diversity information is currently only available by genre (eg BBC drama), which is ineffective as a means to understanding where there are issues.
To boost participation in the public sphere, Liberal Democrats would:
* Legislate to allow all-BAME shortlists for candidates for public office
* Ensure that relevant representative groups of ethnic minority communities are fully consulted as part of Equality Impact Assessments.
* End the voter ID trial in England so that nobody needs to show ID at polling stations in order to vote.
* Allow trade unions, membership organisations and employers to run projects aimed solely at helping ethnic minority people build their networks.
* Promote ethnic minority role models by funding relevant projects and a wider range of arts programmes, running a national competition to identify ethnic minority people to celebrate with statues and creating a day to celebrate the positive impact of ethnic minority people throughout the UK’s history.


6. Justice
6.1 Inequality before the law
6.1.1 There is a great deal of evidence of inequality at each stage of the criminal justice system: from policing, through to sentencing, time spent in prison and in the parole process. 
6.1.2 The problem starts with arrest rates. Arrest rates are generally higher across all ethnic minority groups than they are for the White group and Black and Mixed ethnicities are arrested at much higher rates: a black person is more than three times more likely to be arrested than a white person. This means that the cases that are passed onto the CPS, courts and prison system are already skewed towards particular ethnicities.
6.1.3 This impacts the perception of the police in certain communities and affects people’s view of the system as whole. Grievances over policing tactics – especially the disproportionate use of Stop and Search, whereby you are more than eight times more likely to be stopped and searched if you are black than if you are white, even though you are less likely to be in possession of drugs– have a hugely negative bearing on trust in the criminal justice system as a whole. Lack of trust in the system is utterly corrosive: if people believe that the system is set against them they are far less likely to believe that an admission of guilt will lead to lighter sentences – even when the promise is from their own solicitor – which contributes to higher rates of “not guilty” pleas and tougher sentences among defendants from ethnic minority communities.
6.1.4 This lack of trust also makes it much less likely that people from ethnic minorities will want to work within the criminal justice system. So, only 6% of police officers, 6% of prison officers and 7% of the judiciary are from an ethnic minority. At more senior levels, there are no ethnic minority people on the Supreme Court and – shockingly – the parole board does not have a single black person sitting on it.
6.1.5 When people lack trust in the criminal justice system, they are less likely to approach the police for help. This is exacerbated by the Conservatives’ hostile environment, which deters ethnic minority people from approaching the police because they fear how they will be treated – particularly in those cases where people are dependent on their spouse for their migration status. This is a problem in the case of domestic abuse as it increases the chance that the person experiencing abuse will fear approaching the authorities and continue to be a victim. There is also evidence that ethnic minority LGBT+ people are more likely to be victims of domestic abuse than white LGBT+ people.
6.1.6 There is also disproportionality in the treatment of ethnic minority groups in prison with regards to use of force, use of incentives and earned privileges and use of segregation units. This has an impact on rehabilitation and means that ethnic minority prisoners are less likely to be in employment, education or training when they leave prison. 
6.1.7 The number of recorded hate crimes motivated by race has risen sharply over the past three years: police recorded 71,251 hate crimes motivated by race in 2017/18, which is up from 42,862 in 2014/15. Part of this rise will be due to an increased willingness to report crimes, however the definite spikes after the Brexit referendum and terrorist attacks of 2017 suggest that they do correspond to a greater number of incidents of hate crime. 
6.1.8 There are wider questions of justice that go beyond the criminal justice system. For example, there is currently a legal loophole about airport delays caused by security or border officials, which mean that people cannot claim insurance or assistance if they miss their flight due to being detained by airport security. This disproportionately impacts people from ethnic minority groups, who are more likely to be delayed by border control and miss their flight home. 
6.2 Building a diverse and fair justice system
6.2.1 The Lammy Review15 is a comprehensive and wide-ranging independent analysis of the problems in the UK justice system and we support the recommendations of this report. We take the following recommendations to be the most important:
* Data on ethnicity should be recorded uniformly across the criminal justice system in accordance with the census in order to enable greater scrutiny and deeper analysis of trends. All datasets on ethnicity should be published by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ).
* Where it is practical and where ethnicity is not relevant to the crime, all identifying information should be redacted from case information passed to the CPS, to enable them to make race-blind decisions.
* If criminal justice agencies cannot provide an evidence-based explanation for apparent disparities between ethnic groups, then reforms should be introduced to address those disparities. The principle of “explain or reform” should apply to every institution in the criminal justice system.
* To ensure that interventions in cases should be provided before pleas are entered, we would roll out a deferred prosecution model pioneered in Operation Turning Point for both adult and youth offenders.
* Extend the Open Justice initiative so that it is possible to view the sentences for individual offences at individual courts, broken down by demographic characteristics.
* The MOJ and the Parole Board should report on the proportion of prisoners released by offence and ethnicity. This data should also include the proportion of each ethnicity who go on to reoffend.
6.2.2 To promote greater diversity within the criminal justice system, we propose that police, prison service and judiciary adopt targets for improving the diversity of their workforce. We support the recommendations of the Increasing judicial diversity (2017) report by JUSTICE, which proposes that the UK Supreme Court should appoint one person who is not white by 2020 and another by 2026 and that by 2026 there should be at most seven individuals on the Supreme Court who are both white and male. A Liberal Democrat government would work with the organisations in the criminal justice system to set similar – realistic but ambitious – targets, ensure there is an individual responsible for delivering them and require reports on progress to be given before Parliament.
6.2.3 Regarding Stop and Search, we are entirely opposed to the disproportionate use of this power. There should be transparency around the data on the ethnicity of the people over whom this power is exercised so it is clear whether it is being used proportionately. Proportionate use of Stop and Search should be a key target for the police. We also note that Liberal Democrat policy to legalise cannabis would mean that the smell of cannabis could no longer be used as a grounds to stop and search anybody, and this should reduce the disproportionality, 
6.2.4 Liberal Democrats believe that rehabilitation is a key part of the criminal justice system: when people are in prison, the prison system should be working to help get people ready for a productive life outside of prison, meaning that educational facilities and projects need to be properly funded. But often the best way to rehabilitate people is to take measures that prevent people going too deeply into the criminal justice system in the first place. This means championing restorative justice and greater use of cautions for both men and women, and referrals to treatment rather than over-hastily criminalising people. To tackle the epidemic of knife crime we would pursue a public health approach that would coordinate across health, education and youth services. This has been piloted in Glasgow and has been shown to be very effective in reducing violent crime. In those situations where prosecution is appropriate, we would ensure that when sentencing people, the question of the potential risk posed to the community is the major factor that courts consider and prefer tough community sentences to short prison sentences.
6.2.5 These measures are intended to help build trust in the criminal justice system and give ethnic minority victims of crimes – including of domestic abuse – greater confidence in approaching the police. This will also be helped by the Liberal Democrat pledge to end the hostile environment, so that people can contact the police without any fear of being reported to Immigration Enforcement.
6.2.6 We recognise that the effects of hate crime go well beyond physical harm to victims. Hate crime can inflict lasting psychological damage, divide communities and beget further violence. Preventing hate crime is not just a matter for lawmakers and law enforcement: we all have a role to play. Politicians, commentators and others in public life must never engage in the stereotyping, scapegoating and demagoguing that inflames hatred. Liberal Democrats are committed to exposing and confronting such prejudice wherever we find it. This means working to support the campaigns of organisations such as Hope Not Hate, the Anne Frank Trust and Show Racism the Red Card.
6.2.7 To address the injustice of ethnic minority people being more likely to miss flights due to being detained and being unable to access help, Liberal Democrats would develop improved codes of conduct and practice with the Association of British Insurers to encourage travel insurers to stop exempting security/border delays from their coverage. We would explore with the travel industry if the current provision of alternative flights and accommodation for UK travellers after airline-caused delays can be extended to those missing flights due to security checks. And we would collect statistics (with protected characteristics details) on those who miss flights after being checked and/or delayed at UK airports by security checks by UK or foreign officials and report these to Parliament regularly.
To ensure true equality before the law, Liberal Democrats would:
* Require the judiciary, prison service and police to set targets for improving the diversity of their work force, have people responsible for meeting these targets and to report to Parliament on the progress towards these targets.
* Ensure that data is gathered in a uniform manner across the criminal justice system.
* As far as possible, redact all information about ethnicity on cases that are passed to the CPS.
* Establish as a target for the police that they should be using Stop and Search proportionately.
* Take a whole-system approach to rehabilitation: diverting people from the criminal justice system towards in the first instance, seeking to avoid prison sentences for people who are not a risk to their community and investing in appropriate education facilities.
* Ensure that people travelling abroad are protected from discrimination on the basis of their ethnicity and ensure that they are properly compensated if they are, eg, forced to miss flights due to profiling.
6.2.8 

7. Community and housing
7.1 The current situation
7.1.1 The UK’s diverse communities are the product of migrants being invited from the Commonwealth, refugees from war-torn countries and free movement from the EU. Access to a secure and affordable home is essential for everyone to fulfil their potential. Inadequate housing has knock-on effects for educational and health outcomes, while safe and secure housing will help communities thrive and better contribute to British society.
7.1.2 Larger cities tend to have attracted a greater proportion of people of ethnic minority heritage. How well they have been housed and integrated into the local population has varied over time and as a result of changing policies. Liberal Democrats believe that communities should be free to choose to live in close proximity with others of similar cultural background, but they should not have to lead segregated lives.
7.1.3 Ethnic minority people do not have the same freedom to choose where they live in the UK as White British people do: it is especially difficult for ethnic minority groups to choose to move to rural areas. The 2011 census suggested that the minority ethnic population of rural areas was only 2.6%, compared to 16.7% in urban areas. It is difficult for people to be a small and visible minority and there is evidence that ethnic minority people are more likely to be attacked on racial grounds than those who live in urban areas. This, and the lack of access to culturally-specific services in rural areas, make it a difficult decision for ethnic minority people to move there.
7.1.4 Liberal Democrats want everyone to be able to live in homes in safe, clean and well-integrated neighbourhoods. But according to the 2011 census, ethnic minority groups had a higher level of overcrowding than White British in all English and Welsh districts and this has especially worsened for Black communities. There is also a problem in Scotland, where ethnic minority households are nearly four times more likely to experience over-crowding than White households. 
7.1.5 Following decades of under-investment in social housing, the number of homeless have also increased. One in three homeless households are non-white, as compared to one in seven in the general population. In the past five years, homelessness has risen five times faster among ethnic minority than White British people.
7.1.6 Housing improvements among minority ethnic households in England not only have a significant positive impact on health and wellbeing, but also make economic sense as they reduce financial costs for the NHS and society as a whole.16 
7.1.7 Local authority data is essential in properly assessing the differing needs of the different communities today. The Grenfell disaster was a wake-up call for local government to pay more attention to the quality of social housing provided and exposed the blatant neglect of the largely BAME tenants’ needs as well as of the latter’s lack of leverage and a voice.  
7.2 Policy proposals
7.2.1 The UK needs to build more social and affordable housing to keep pace with demand, which is why Liberal Democrats are committed to working with Local Authorities and housing associations to build at least 50,000 new social homes for rent per year, rising as soon as possible to 100,000 per year. In the case of settlement of refugees, we would pursue a limited dispersal policy to ensure local authorities share the responsibility of accommodating them but also receive sufficient funding to provide supporting services.
7.2.2 BAME housing associations have roots stretching back more than 30 years and the sector offers and delivers dedicated, culturally sensitive and value for money services to tenants and communities. The ethnic minority housing sector remains important despite reductions in the number of ethnic minority tenants in some associations. The needs of different ethnic minority communities may not be met through the market or the mainstream housing sector.17
7.2.3 For greater social integration and community cohesion we will increase funding for youth services and to ethnic minority community centres which are able to provide advice, supporting services and culturally-sympathetic activities especially for migrants who have difficulty accessing mainstream services.
7.2.4 In order to give people of all backgrounds a more equal choice about where to live in the UK, we support the proposals of policy paper 129 A Rural Future: Time to Act. We support the call to introduce flexible community hubs and ensure that they host culturally-specific services that support local ethnic minority communities and assure other ethnic minority groups that they can access services they need even in rural areas. 
7.2.5 The problem with increase of rough sleepers must be tackled in a holistic way, tackling the root causes, which may be due to a composite of problems such as irregular immigration status, joblessness, drug or mental health issues and cuts to support services by the government. We will need to work on homelessness prevention, fund age-appropriate emergency accommodation, and ensure that local authorities have at least one provider of the Housing First model of provision for long term, entrenched homeless people.  
To tackle housing inequality and strengthen communities, Liberal Democrats would:
* Increase free or subsidised English language classes to immigrant populations.
* Encourage local authorities and Housing Associations to build more social and affordable housing.
* Strengthen the equality duty for mainstream housing associations and tenant management organisations and increase support for specialist BAME housing associations as well as BAME community centres.
* Improve protections against rogue landlords through mandatory licensing and allow access for tenants to the database of rogue landlords and property agents.
7.2.6 

8. Government oversight and legislation
8.1.1 In order to implement the policies in this paper, we need to think about the way in which the government conducts its responsibility to work towards race equality. Currently the responsibility for race equality sits under the Minister for Women and Equalities, which is an additional responsibility given to a Secretary of State. At the time of writing the responsibility sits with the Secretary of State for International Development, but it has previously sat with the various other cabinet ministers. This means that the work of promoting equality moves between departments and is never a minister’s sole focus, so work in this area is not given due emphasis.
8.1.2 The challenge of tackling race inequality is complex and multifaceted. It is hopeless to tackle each strand in isolation: a comprehensive race equality strategy needs to be rolled out across government with a minister responsible for delivering it. And we do not believe that race equality can itself be tackled in isolation – there is a wide variety of ways in which other inequalities are intertwined with race inequality.
8.1.3 We would, therefore, make Minister for Race Equality a permanent Cabinet-level post in its own right and make it the sole responsibility of a single minister. The ministerial office would be based in the Cabinet Office – which is the most appropriate place from which to conduct cross-departmental work – where we would establish appropriate and permanent support for the role. It would clearly be especially important that the ethnicity of the staff supporting this minister reflects at all levels the diversity that they will aim to encourage elsewhere.
8.1.4 Among their other responsibilities the Minister would lead the development of a comprehensive, co-ordinated and long-term strategy to work towards race equality.18 They would chair a cross-departmental Race Equality Panel, composed of senior representatives from every department who are responsible for driving the work in their respective areas. They would be primarily responsible for working across all organisations to drive improved data gathering about ethnicity and increased transparency. Progress towards targets would be reported to this Panel, which would decide on next steps. 
8.1.5 When new spending is announced in the Budget, the new minister will have a responsibility to work with the Treasury and the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to assess the equality impact of all announcements before they made. We would release equality assessments alongside the Budget. We would invest in the EHRC to ensure that they are adequately funded to carry out their existing duties as well as these additional ones. As with other organisations in receipt of public funds, we would expect the EHRC to set targets for improving representation of ethnic minority groups at senior levels of the organisation and to regularly report on progress towards them.
To put race equality at the heart of our agenda, Liberal Democrats would:
* Develop a comprehensive cross-government strategy for race equality.
* Make Minister of State for Race Equality a single, Cabinet-level, post and base the role permanently in the Cabinet Office.
* Review funding for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to ensure that it’s able to properly carry out its duties
9. Summary of Recommendations
The Liberal Democrat approach to promoting race equality is characterised by:
* Fair processes: a widespread roll-out of name-blind applications, diverse panels adequately trained to address unconscious bias and a network of experts available to provide support across the public sector and business.
* Targets with teeth: Tackling under-representation with improved monitoring of ethnicity data, public targets, a named individual or role accountable for improving diversity and regular reporting against milestones.
* Appropriate levels of funding: Ensuring that where cuts to services have a disproportionate impact on ethnic minority groups, appropriate levels of funding are protected.
To work towards race equality in education, Liberal Democrats would:
* Treble the early years Pupil Premium and invest in unconscious bias training for teachers.
* Establish a national fund for projects that will enable Local Authorities and other organisations to tackle poor outcomes for particular groups.
* Ease the pressure on school budgets and support SEND children by helping to fund education, health and care plans.
* Reduce the number of exclusions by returning the duty of school place planning to Local Authorities and requiring headteachers to make adequate attempts to cater for pastoral needs of pupils and report on them before excluding them.
* Ensure that Local Authorities take advantage of the more flexible Lib Dem curriculum to run lessons and extra-curricular activities that match the demography of their area.
* Invest substantially in youth services to deliver a wider range of services, help more young people and provide better training to youth and outreach workers
* Improve monitoring of the ethnicity of apprentices and work with sectors that have underrepresentation of particular groups to tackle the situation.
* Support universities to offer a greater number of bursaries to ethnic minority students, with funding dependent upon suitable levels of outreach.
* Targets with teeth for increasing diversity among university teaching staff.
To reduce the disproportionate levels of poverty among ethnic minority communities, Liberal Democrats would:
* Require organisations to publish ethnicity data for their employees, set targets and transparently report on progress.
* Develop a comprehensive unconscious bias training toolkit and make provision of such training for staff a condition of any public funding.
* Invest in employment support services and job centres to improve the level of advice and support available to people.
* Work with Local Authorities to establish a national strategy for teaching English as a Second Language that would focus on outreach to hard-to-reach groups.
* End the hostile environment and move towards a case-worker model of support for people seeking to move to the UK.
To tackle health inequalities, Liberal Democrats would:
* Establish a network of experts who can support NHS services in understanding different cultural attitudes towards diseases.
* Fund public information campaigns to tackle stigmas within specific communities.
* Conduct regular research into the different mental health needs of different ethnic minority communities within the UK.
* Ensure that training of mental health staff addresses issues of racial bias.
* Routinely audit NICE guidelines against international best practice.
* Implement the recommendations of Roger Kline’s report into the lack of diversity in senior management in the NHS and commission a strategic analysis of racial discrimination in the NHS.
To boost participation in the public sphere, Liberal Democrats would:
* Legislate to allow all-BAME shortlists for candidates for public office
* Ensure that relevant representative groups of ethnic minority communities are fully consulted as part of Equality Impact Assessments.
* End the voter ID trial in England so that nobody needs to show ID at polling stations in order to vote.
* Allow trade unions, membership organisations and employers to run projects aimed solely at helping ethnic minority people build their networks.
* Promote ethnic minority role models by funding relevant projects and a wider range of arts programmes, running a national competition to identify ethnic minority people to celebrate with statues and creating a day to celebrate the positive impact of ethnic minority people throughout the UK’s history.
To ensure true equality before the law, Liberal Democrats would:
* Require the judiciary, prison service and police to set targets for improving the diversity of their work force, have people responsible for meeting these targets and to report to parliament on the progress towards these targets.
* Ensure that data is gathered in a uniform manner across the criminal justice system.
* As far as possible, redact all information about ethnicity on cases that are passed to the CPS.
* Establish as a target for the police that they should be using Stop and Search proportionately.
* Take a whole-system approach to rehabilitation: diverting people from the criminal justice system towards in the first instance, seeking to avoid prison sentences for people who are not a risk to their community and investing in appropriate education facilities.
* Ensure that people travelling abroad are protected from discrimination on the basis of their ethnicity and ensure that they are properly compensated if they are, eg, forced to miss flights due to profiling.
To tackle housing inequality and strengthen communities, Liberal Democrats would:
* Increase free or subsidised English language classes to immigrant populations.
* Encourage local authorities and Housing Associations to build more social and affordable housing.
* Strengthen the equality duty for mainstream housing associations and tenant management organisations and increase support for specialist BAME housing associations as well as BAME community centres.
* Improve protections against rogue landlords through mandatory licensing and allow access for tenants to the database of rogue landlords and property agents.
To put race equality at the heart of our agenda, Liberal Democrats would:
* Develop a comprehensive cross-government strategy for race equality.
* Make Minister of State for Race Equality a single, Cabinet-level, post and base the role permanently in the Cabinet Office.
* Review funding for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to ensure that it’s able to properly carry out its duties.
9.1.1 

Eradicating Race Inequality
Policy Paper 135
This paper has been approved for debate by the Federal Conference by the Federal Policy Committee under the terms of Article 8.4 of the Federal Constitution.
Within the policy-making procedure of the Liberal Democrats, the Federal Party determines the policy of the Party in those areas which might reasonably be expected to fall within the remit of the federal institutions in the context of a federal United Kingdom. 
The Party in England, the Scottish Liberal Democrats, the Welsh Liberal Democrats and the Northern Ireland Local Party determine the policy of the Party on all other issues, except that any or all of them may confer this power upon the Federal Party in any specified area or areas. 
The Party in England has chosen to pass up policymaking to the Federal level. If approved by Conference, this paper will therefore form the policy of the Federal Party on federal issues and the Party in England on English issues. In appropriate policy areas, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland party policy would take precedence.


Working Group on Race Equality
Note: Membership of the working group should not be taken to indicate that every member necessarily agrees with every statement of every proposal in this paper.
Merlene Emerson (Chair)
Baroness Hussein-Ece
Sam Al-Hamdani
Susannah Austin
Hina Bokhari
Brendan d’Cruz
Kishan Devani
Andrew de Whalley
Neville Farmer
James Jennings
Susan Juned
Dr Mohsin Khan
Tahir Maher
Dr Bablin Molick
Meher Oliaji
Marisha Ray
Pramod Subbaraman
Staff
Jonathan Everett
Elisa Ron
Further copies of this paper can be found online at www.libdems.org.uk/policy_papers

1 The “Other ethnic group” category is used for everyone who doesn’t fall into one of these categories: “White”, “Indian”, “Asian Other”, “Pakistani/Bangladeshi” or “Mixed/Multiple”
2 Stonewall, LGBT in Britain: Homes and Communities, 2018.
3 Wider Liberal Democrat policy for ensuring the best educational outcomes for all children is set out in policy paper 128 Every Child Empowered (2018)
4 House of Commons Library, Millennials Briefing Paper (2017)
5 Policy paper 128 Every Child Empowered (2018)
6 See §3.1.1.
7 Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Poverty and Ethnicity in the Labour Market (2017)
8 Baroness McGregor-Smith, Race in the Workplace: The McGregor-Smith Review (2017)
9 This is also advocated by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission in Measuring and reporting on disability and ethnicity pay gaps
10 We support the entirety of the policy motion Learning to communicate in English (2017)
11 Lankelly Chase - Ethnic Inequalities in Mental Health: Promoting Lasting Positive Change, Feb 2014
12 NHS England: Snowy White Peaks of the NHS, 2014
13 The Spectator: It costs £34,000 to become an MP. No wonder they expect higher pay (2014).
14 The Runnymede Trust: Integration is not a one-way process (2018).
15 The Lammy Review: An independent review into the treatment of, and outcomes for, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals in the Criminal Justice System (2017)
16 Race Equality Foundation, The Housing Conditions of Minority Ethnic Households in England (2014)
17 BME National, Deep Roots, Diverse Communities, Dedicated Service: The Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Housing Sector’s Offer (2017)
18 This is called for in the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s Healing a Divided Britain.
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1.1.7 
Eradicating Race Inequality
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Eradicating Race Inequality
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2	Policy Paper 135
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Spring Conference 2019	1
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