An Avoidable Crisis: The disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities (October 2020)

Summary

This report is the product of a review by Baroness Doreen Lawrence, commissioned by the Labour Party, into the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.

In her introduction to the report, Baroness Lawrence says:

"Black, Asian and minority ethnic people have been overexposed, under protected, stigmatised and overlooked during this pandemic – and this has been generations in the making. The impact of Covid is not random, but foreseeable and inevitable – the consequence of decades of structural injustice, inequality and discrimination that blights our society. We are in the middle of an avoidable crisis. And this report is a rallying cry to break that clear and tragic pattern."

Content

The report calls for urgent action and includes several recommendations:

• Recommendation 1: The Government must go further and set out an urgent plan for tackling the disproportionate impact of Covid on ethnic minorities this winter
• Recommendation 2: A national strategy to tackle health inequalities
• Recommendation 3: Suspend ‘no recourse to public funds’ rule during the pandemic and initiate a review
• Recommendation 4: Ensure Covid-19 cases from the workplace are properly recorded
• Recommendation 5: Strengthen Covid-19 risk assessments to ensure consistency and to give workers more confidence
• Recommendation 6: Improve access to PPE in all high-risk workplaces
• Recommendation 7: Give targeted support to people who are struggling to self-isolate at home
• Recommendation 8: Ensure protection and an end to discrimination for renters
• Recommendation 9: Raise the local housing allowance and address the root causes of homelessness
• Recommendation 10: Urgently conduct equality impact assessments on the Government’s support schemes to make sure Black, Asian and minority ethnic people are able to access the support they need
• Recommendation 11: Develop and implement a clear plan to prevent the stigmatisation of communities during Covid-19
• Recommendation 12: Urgently legislate to tackle online harms
• Recommendation 13: Ensure everyone can access Covid-19 communication
• Recommendation 14: Collect and publish better ethnicity data
• Recommendation 15: Implement a race equality strategy
• Recommendation 16: Ensure all policies and programmes help tackle structural inequality
• Recommendation 17: Introduce mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting
• Recommendation 18: End the ‘hostile environment’
• Recommendation 19: Reform the curriculum to fight the root causes of racism
• Recommendation 20: Take action to close the attainment gap.

Follow the link below to read the full report and more detailed version of the recommendations.