Institutional Racism

EDM number 1366 in 2007-08, proposed by John McDonnell on 21/04/2008.
Categorised under the topics of Central government, Equality and Racial discrimination.

That this House notes that as one of its final actions the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) produced a report identifying 15 Government departments that failed properly to implement the provisions of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 - legislation designed to tackle institutional racism - and recommended enforcement action against them; further notes that job cuts in a number of the Government departments referred to in the report have had a negative and disproportionate impact on race grounds, and that despite this at least one department has proceeded to make staff compulsorily redundant before conducting a race equality impact assessment; is concerned that 10 years after the publication of Sir William McPherson's report on the death of Stephen Lawrence which identified the need to tackle institutional racism, sufficient progress has not been made in central Government departments; is further concerned that failure to take robust action will render the review of race equality schemes for the 2008 to 2011 period meaningless, resulting in the continued entrenchment of inequality; and calls on the new Equality and Human Rights Commission to pursue legal enforcement against those departments that have not taken urgent action to become compliant as a result of the CRE's report.

This motion has been signed by a total of 41 MPs.