The Department recognises that there are stark inequalities for women and babies, and that they should receive the high-quality care they deserve, regardless of their background, location or ethnicity.

A number of interventions specifically aimed at addressing maternal and neonatal inequalities are underway. These include the Perinatal Equity and Anti-Discrimination Programme, delivery of an inequalities dashboard and projects on removing racial bias from clinical education and embedding genetic risk equity. Additionally, all local areas have published Equity and Equality action plans to tackle inequalities for women and babies from ethnic minorities and those living in the most deprived areas.

An important aspect of both the National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation and the National Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce announced in June, is to address inequalities in maternal and neonatal care and promote health equity in the delivery of those services.

We are putting in place immediate actions to improve safety across maternity and neonatal care, which includes the implementation of the Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle in all Trusts to reduce the rates of stillbirth, preterm birth and neonatal care.

NHS England is also introducing a Maternal Mortality Care Bundle to set clear standards across all services, and address the leading causes of maternal mortality. Women from Black and Asian backgrounds are more at risk of specific clinical conditions that are the leading causes of death. This bundle will target these conditions, and we expect a decline in deaths and harm.

This Government remains committed to tackling all areas of disparities in this country, including in employment.

Ethnicity pay gap reporting is just one type of tool to assist employers in doing this and it may not always be the most appropriate mechanism for some types of organisations. Therefore, as set out in the “Inclusive Britain” report, which was published in March 2022, the Government will not be legislating to make ethnicity pay reporting mandatory at this stage. Government published guidance in April 2023 to support employers who wish to report voluntarily.

The economic impacts of Covid-19 are still playing out and it is difficult to draw firm conclusions as to whether any groups have been disproportionately impacted.

The ONS publish official data on ethnicity pay and the first set of data covering the pandemic will be published in due course. Data for 2019 is available here:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/ethnicitypaygapsingreatbritain/2019.

The latest MBRRACE-UK report on maternal deaths occurring in 2017 to 2019 identified a small decrease in the maternal mortality rate for women from black, Asian and mixed ethnic groups. However, there was no substantive change in the disparity in mortality rates between women from black ethnic groups or women from Asian and white ethnic groups.

On 23 February 2022, we announced plans to establish a Maternity Disparities Taskforce to tackle disparities and reduce maternal and neonatal deaths by improving access to effective pre-conception and maternity care for women from ethnic minorities and those living in the most deprived areas. The Taskforce will bring together experts from across the health system, Government departments and the voluntary sector.

On 6 September 2021, NHS England and NHS Improvement published guidance for Local Maternity Systems, which focuses on actions to reduce disparities in health outcomes for women and babies from black, Asian and mixed ethnic groups and those living in the most deprived areas. This includes an investment of £6.8 million to support the implementation of local action plans.

The Government is committed to building a fairer Britain and ensuring that equality and opportunity is available for all.

Overall, individuals on zero-hours contracts represent a very small proportion of the workforce – just 3%. For this small group, this may be the type of contract which works best for them. The majority of people (62%) on zero-hours contracts say that they do not want more hours.

Zero-hours contracts remain an important part of the UK’s flexible labour market, for both employers where there is not a constant demand for staff and for individuals who may need to balance work around other commitments such as childcare and study.

It is unlawful for a landlord to seek to end a tenancy based on an individual’s ethnicity, or any other protected characteristic.

As private landlords are not required to record when they serve a notice of possession, it is not possible to break down the volume of notices served by ethnicity. Upon the expiry of a possession notice, a landlord can make a claim for possession in the county court if the tenant does not vacate the property. Landlords are not required to record the ethnicity of the tenant(s) against whom they are making a claim.

The Department gathers a range of evidence to understand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on renters. In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Department commissioned the Household Resilience Study – a follow-up to the English Housing Survey, conducted in 3 waves between June 2020 and May 2021. The research collected examines how households have been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, and includes information on protected characteristics, including ethnicity.

The third and final wave of the survey was run in April-May 2021 and published in October 2021. Data tables and a report of the main findings are provided on Gov.uk: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/household-resilience-study-wave-3.

We consider the impact of all decisions on those with protected characteristics, including on different ethnicities, in line with the Public Sector Equality Duty.

The information is not available in the format requested. The National Institute for Health Research does not routinely collect data on the sex, age and ethnicity of participants in clinical research studies. However, data on ethnicity was collected at a national level for a subset of COVID-19 vaccine studies between July 2020 and May 2021. During this time, 2,416 people from ethnic minority groups took part in studies for the development of COVID-19 vaccines. There were also three paediatric and adolescent studies into COVID-19 vaccines which recruited 425 participants.

Work is underway to gather more data on the characteristics of research participants, including their ethnicity, as part of the National Institute for Health Research’s strategy ‘Best Research for Best Health: The Next Chapter’.

The Secretary of State regularly discusses a wide range of issues with Cabinet colleagues.

The Ministry of Justice recognises the importance of encouraging diversity in the judiciary and legal professional bodies. The Lord Chancellor is a member of the Judicial Diversity Forum (JDF) and works closely with the Lord Chief Justice, Chair of the Judicial Appointments Commission and other members of the JDF, including the three relevant legal professional bodies, to address barriers to achieving greater diversity in the judiciary. In September 2020, JDF members published a summary of a wide range of actions they are undertaking at different career stages, collectively or individually, to help increase diversity in the judiciary. The JDF will publish a one-year update to the action plan this Autumn.

Statutory responsibility for encouraging an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession sits with the approved regulators, overseen by the oversight regulator, the Legal Services Board. The Government is committed to supporting a diverse legal profession and working closely with the professional bodies, regulators and key stakeholders to encourage greater diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

This Government’s Plan for Jobs is delivering a comprehensive package of support for all young people – including education leavers and those from an ethnic minority – which DWP is providing in collaboration with the Department for Education, schools and other partners.

For young people from all backgrounds, the DWP Youth Offer is the wrap-around support programme, helping young people access so much of the positive provision stood up as part of the Plan for Jobs. The Youth Offer includes Youth Hubs, which are co-located and co-delivered with our network of external partners to offer a range of skills and work-related services to help young people access the labour market.

The Government has also implemented a range of measures to help deliver on our commitment to provide all young people with opportunities to develop skills that will enable them to secure jobs in productive and fulfilling careers, including help for young people through Kickstart. Jobs from the Kickstart Scheme are open to 16–24-year-olds, who are claiming Universal Credit, and are at risk of long-term unemployment. Young people can speak to their work coach to find out more.

We have supported the development of the Department for Education’s Graduate Employment and Skills Guide that is published on the Office for Students website. The guide is designed to help final-year students and recent graduates by signposting to a range of public, private and voluntary sector opportunities. In addition, the Apprenticeship Support and Knowledge (ASK) programme provides targeted local and regional support on NEET prevention to raise young people’s aspirations and support their post-education progression.

DWP recognises the need for targeted support to help ethnic minority job seekers into work. We work with a range of partners and employers in this area, including on a national programme of mentoring circles.

We recognise the need to address gender disparities in AI. In 2019, DCMS via the joint DCMS/BEIS Office for AI worked with the Office for Students and DfE to deliver new conversion course Masters courses at Universities across the country, with scholarships for people from underrepresented backgrounds, including women, black, and disabled students. The programme launched last September and the cohort of 1265 students that started included, 40 per cent women, one quarter black students, and 15 per cent disabled students. For those receiving a scholarship, the figures were even more encouraging – with 76 per cent of scholarship students going to women, 45 per cent of the students identifying as black and 24 per cent as being disabled. The upcoming National AI Strategy, being led by the Office for AI, looks to double down on such commitments to further improve diversity.

In addition to improving diversity via the conversion course Masters programme, in 2019, DCMS partnered with the World Economic Forum to create guidelines for responsible public sector procurement of AI systems. In June 2020, the guidelines were published on GOV.UK and operationalised through Crown Commercial Service’s AI Marketplace, launched September 2020. The Guidelines, which build on the Government’s Data Ethics Framework, recommend that AI procurement in Government be conducted by diverse teams, and stipulate that specific steps be taken to ensure the Public Sector Equality Duty is upheld – including performing an equality impact assessment alongside data protection impact assessments. Crown Commercial Services have implemented a baseline ethical standard for suppliers to be added to the procurement system. These concrete interventions are intended to mitigate against gender or racial bias being incorporated into AI systems procured into the public sector, which at 40% of the economy, sets the standard for AI suppliers in the wider economy.

The Government’s Data Ethics Framework and ‘Guide to Using AI in the Public Sector’, alongside other area-specific guidance available on GOV.UK, support the ethical and safe use of algorithms in the public sector.

Further to this, as part of our commitment in the National Data Strategy, the Cabinet Office are exploring appropriate and effective mechanisms to deliver more transparency on the use of algorithmic assisted decision making within the public sector and to monitor their impact; and are working with leading organisations in the field of data and AI ethics to do so.

The Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, in their report into algorithmic bias, make a number of recommendations to Government to reduce or mitigate the propensity for algorithms to encode bias. The Government is currently reviewing those recommendations.

The National Curriculum is a framework setting out the content of what the Department expects schools to cover in each subject. The curriculum does not set out how curriculum subjects, or topics within the subjects, should be taught. The Department believes teachers should be able to use their own knowledge and expertise to determine how they teach their pupils, and to make choices about what they teach.

As part of the National Curriculum for history, pupils should be taught about different societies, and how different groups have contributed to the development of Britain, and this can include the voices and experience of Black people. The flexibility within the history curriculum means that there is the opportunity for teachers to teach about Black history across the spectrum of themes and eras set out in the curriculum.

The Department has discussed Black history with a number of organisations and we welcome the profile given to the importance of teaching Black history by bodies such as the Runnymede Trust, The Black Curriculum, Fill in the Blanks, and many other groups and individuals over the years. The Department will continue to explore what more we can do to support the teaching of Black history.

The Department, together with the National Health Service (NHS) and Public Health England, is providing advice and information at every opportunity to support those getting the vaccine and to anyone who might have questions about the vaccination process.

The Department, alongside the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and NHS England are holding regular meetings with local authorities, faith leaders and black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) organisations to provide advice and information about COVID-19 vaccines and how they will be made available.

The communications plan includes targeted information and advice via TV, radio, and social media, translated into 13 languages. Print and online material, including interviews and practical advice, will also appear in 600 national, regional, local, and specialist titles, including BAME media, to maximise reach.

Through Public Health England’s Beyond the Data review, stakeholders said that some black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities felt that they receive different treatment when compared with white patients and that this has further exacerbated fear within BAME communities and reluctance to seek medical care.

We are concerned that COVID-19 has had a disproportionate effect on people from BAME backgrounds. The Minister for Equalities (Kemi Badenoch MP) has been tasked to lead the Government's work tackling this issue. With the support of the Race Disparity Unit, the Minister is also reviewing the effectiveness and impact of current actions being undertaken by relevant Government departments and their agencies to directly lessen disparities in infection and death rates of COVID-19.

The Government considers the equality impacts of individual policies on those with protected characteristics carefully and consistently, in line with both its legal obligations and its strong commitment to equality; and there are internal procedural requirements and support in place for ensuring that such considerations inform decisions taken by Ministers.

No such assessment has been made.

The Government’s COVID-19 response has been a cross-Government effort, involving thousands of people who have worked tirelessly as the UK faces unprecedented challenges. Planning and decision making has touched almost all of Government, with women and ethnic minorities represented at all levels.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor MP) on 1 July 2020 to Question 59534.

The Government is committed to ensuring people from all backgrounds and regions benefit from the Government’s access to finance schemes. A diverse and inclusive ecosystem is good for entrepreneurs, companies, investors, and society as a whole.

The Department’s Ministerial team is also actively engaging with the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) business community on a regular basis to cover multiple issues, including access to finance.

The Future Fund provides government co-investment to innovative businesses. As of 5 July, 376 convertible loans worth a total of £380 million have been approved under the scheme. The British Business Bank (BBB) published diversity data for the Future Fund on 23 June 2020, which showed that companies with BAME-only and mixed ethnicity management teams accounted for over 55% of applications, valued at £118.5m, and that 79% of funding had been issued to companies with mixed gender management teams.

The Future Fund is also a signatory of the Investing in Women Code and encourages co-investors to do the same.

The British Business Bank’s Start Up Loans programme had delivered more than 73,600 loans to entrepreneurs by the end of May 2020, providing more than £609 million of funding. Of these, 40 per cent of these loans have gone to women, and 25 per cent of the total were to applicants from a BAME background.

The Government’s loan schemes to support businesses affected by Covid-19, including the Bounce Back Loan schemes, are open to all businesses which meet the eligibility criteria, including those owned by women as well as those owned by people from a BAME background. We will monitor the implementation and take up of the schemes.

We have all been struck by the conclusions of Public Health England’s report and will continue to help protect those most vulnerable to COVID-19 based on the best possible analysis available to us.

We are determined to get to the bottom of the report’s findings in a proper and scientific way and have already asked the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Equalities, (Kemi Badenoch MP), to take forward work to fill the gaps in our understanding, review existing policies and guidance and amend or develop new policies where needed and where the evidence supports us doing so. The Terms of Reference for that work can be found at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/next-steps-for-work-on-covid-19-disparities-announced