A thread of some of the key findings of this report (updating as I read)... https://twitter.com/HumanRightsCtte/status/1326325941203775489

25% of Black voters in Great Britain are not registered to vote compared to a 17% average across the population. The Joint Committee on Human Rights recommends the Government investigates the introduction of automatic voter registration.

Over 60% of Black people in the UK do not believe their health is as equally protected by the NHS compared to white people. The death rate for Black women in childbirth is five times higher than for white women. The NHS regrets this disparity, but has no target to end it.

85% of Black people are not confident that they would be treated the same as a white person by police. The committee says the Government must take on the recommendations from the @DavidLammy + Angiolini reviews into custody deaths and Black people in the Criminal Justice system.

The Committee expects the Government to implement the recommendations from the Windrush Lessons Learned Review *as a matter of urgency*. It also says the Home Office needs a full culture change to ensure "people are treated with humanity".

The Committee's report says it is disappointed that there have been delays in payments to the Windrush Compensation Scheme. "Those affected must receive the compensation that they are entitled to without further delay."

This whole thing is pretty damning, but this bit especially - "We find that the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has been unable to adequately provide leadership and gain trust in tackling racial inequality in the protection and promotion of human rights." Yikes.

The report says the UK needs a new anti-racism body - "The re-creation of a body along the lines of the CRE must now take place, along with a network of bodies at local level to fulfil a role similar to that previously performed by the race equality councils."

Unsurprisingly, there's also a push for better legislation - "The Government should consider whether changes are required to equality legislation to make it more effective as a tool to enforce Black people’s human rights."

The majority of Black people, 75%+, do not believe their human rights are equally protected compared to white people. The report says that this has come about from a mixture of direct and indirect experiences.

Black women are more likely to not believe their health is equally protected by the NHS (78%) than men (47%). And interestingly, Black women (91%) are also more likely to believe than Black men (77%) that they wouldn't be treated the same as a white person by the police.

(btw, "black" is defined in the report as black african, black carribbean, + other groups of black people including mixed race people with black heritage. the report fully acknowledges other ethnic groups experience the effects of racism, but this report is purely black focused)

Suggestions that were given by Black people as to how to improve Black people's human rights included:

- More positive role models in different spheres, including in education, the police, and the media

- Reparations

- Better anti-racism laws

- Reform of the justice system

The Committee pulls out a couple of different examples of reviews and reports about racism, which they examined.

"Too often recommendations made in these reports have not been implemented and where actions have been taken, they have been superficial and not had lasting effect."

Baroness Lawrence ( @DLawrenceOBE), the mother of Stephen Lawrence, is mentioned in this report: "Every time we have a report, they go back to the beginning again and keep repeating the same thing. I am not sure how many more lessons the Government need to learn."

Baroness Lawrence doesn't hold back about the Labour Party either (she's a Labour peer) - "It is not just the
Government of today, but the Government of the Labour Party. How many more lessons do we all need to learn?"

(sorry for the delays in getting this info out, i'm currently in a telly gallery writing questions for a presenter while reading this as well )

The report states that similar issues arise time and time again in different contexts, but lessons aren't learned and applied consistently across the board.

"For example, the lack of representation of Black people at senior levels of organisations is an issue raised consistently in reviews relating to race equality. It crosses all sectors; the judiciary, the police, the civil service, and Parliament, to name but a few."

The report recognises that a failure to act in response to reports and inquiries erodes the trust of Black people in the state.

From Labour's shadow justice secretary @DavidLammy: “What happens is what we see on the streets of the United States. They take the law into their own hands. People get very angry and frustrated."

. @DavidLammy continued: "I fear and worry for the future if we do not get to a place where we are not just kicking these issues into the long grass but are actually comprehensively
implementing reviews that have been recommended after long and careful deliberation.”

The report asks "why has more progress not been made in recent years" and says "it is hard to escape the conclusion that what has been lacking is the sustained political will over successive governments to prioritise implementation of recommendations."

On health: the committee notes the significant numbers of Black people in mental health detention - in 2016/17, known rates of detention under the Mental Health Act among black people were over four times. Rates of Community Treatment Orders - 9 times those of white people.

A quick note because it's getting a number of comments - want to stress that this is *not* a *Governmental* report. This is a parliamentary report from the Human Rights Committee - members of the committee are from both the Commons and the Lords, and it's cross-party.

Something good - deaths in childbirth in the UK have fallen in the last decade, despite a rise in risk factors. But sadly those death figures vary depending on race:

- 7 in 100k white women
- 13 in 100k Asian women
- 23 in 100k mixed race women
- 38 in 100k black women

Even more worrying - the death rate for Black women is rising year on year.

The reasons for this aren't understood fully, but an article in the BMJ argues institutional racism is a factor, and that there's a lack of inclusion of non-white people in research.

In 2019 MBRRACE-UK, a research partnership attached to The University of Oxford, published an annual report which "set out lessons learned to inform maternity care from...morbidity collected between 2015-17"...

Despite warnings that Black women are 5x more likely to die than white women, the report contained no recommendation.

It did commit to further research on the causes of this.

But the 2018 report also noted the issue, and merely concluded that "action was needed".

On our favourite subject, COVID-19: pregnant Black women are currently eight times more likely to be admitted to hospital with coronavirus than white counterparts. For pregnant Asian women, its four times more likely than white counterparts.

The Chief Midwifery Officer, Professor Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent, has put together a four step plan to tackle this problem, including tailoring communications for non-white people, and boosting Vitamin D provisions for darker skinned women.

The report also notes the well-documented disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on Black and other non-white people. The reasons, it says, are yet to be understood, but considerations include public facing roles, multi-generational occupancy, and pre-existing conditions.

On the Criminal Justice System (CSJ): the report quotes Burphy Zumu, part of the team who conducted the polling, as saying:

“Our polling is not saying that 85% of people say that their experience of the police has been 100% negative because of their race...

...we are saying that they feel that there might be mistreatment because of their race.”

In 2018/19, Black people in England and Wales were 9.5x more likely to be stopped and searched than white people.

In 2018/19, Black people in England and Wales were 5x more likely to have force used on them by police than white people.

In 2018/19, Black people in England and Wales were 8x more likely to have tasers used on them than white people.

As of June 2020, 7.7% of the prison population were Black, despite making up only 3.4% of people in England and Wales.

Despite making up only 4% of all 10-17 y/os, this over-representation in the CJS extends to Black children.

The Youth Justice statistics for 2018/19 found Black children were:

- over four times more likely to be arrested than white children...

- almost three times as likely to be given a caution or sentence as white children

- remanded in custody at a higher rate than white children, accounting for a third (33%) of children remanded in youth custody

- given custodial sentences at a higher rate than white children

The @DavidLammy review made 35 recommendations for the Cameron Government in 2016 to address the issue of over-representation of Black people in the CJS.

As of July 2020, Mr Lammy says only six of those recommendations have been implemented.

Just to add, the Committee note that because the Lammy review wasn't implemented in its entirety, not only has there been no progress, the situation has worsened. The number of non-white young people in offenders institutions has risen from 41% to 51%.

On stop and search: between April 2018 and March 2019, for every 1,000 white people, four were stopped and searched by police. For every 1,000 Black people, that number was 38.

The committee notes that, at the heart of this, is the stereotyping of Black people, especially men.

In August 2014, the Home Office under Theresa May published guidance for police forces on the best use of stop and search (BUSS). This was introduced to reduce the use of Section 60 orders (S60 allows officers to search people without reasonable grounds).

BUSS guidance was designed to promote a targeted approach to stop and search and reduce S60 searches. For police forces to comply, it required ethnicity monitoring to examine the impact on non-white communities and young people.

The report notes that as of August 2019, it is no longer Home Office policy to encourage forces to comply with BUSS guidance - though some continue to do so.

(i appreciate this is a very long thread, but we're almost at the end of the report)

Back to the Rona - in May 2020, the Met Police conducted almost 43k stop and searches. 39% were on Black men, 33% on white men. May not sound like a stark difference, but it equates to 27.6 Black men in every 1,000, versus 5.9 white men in every 1,000.

A study from The National Police Chiefs Council found that, between March and May this year, Black and Asian people were 1.8 times more likely to be given a Fixed Penalty Notice under the Coronavirus Act 2020 than white people. Across all non-white groups, the figure was 1.6.

On deaths in custody: while most people who die in police custody are white, the report finds that black people are still over-represented in deaths.
Between 1 April 2019 and 31 March 2020, there were 18 deaths in custody. Three were Black, or 17% of deaths.

"There is also evidence that the use of restraint is disproportionately involved in the deaths of people of Black, Asian and minority ethnicity in police custody."

The charity INQUEST found "the proportion of deaths among people of [non-white] ethnicity in custody where restraint is a feature is over two times greater than it is in other deaths in custody, as is the proportion where use of force
is a feature."

The Committee notes the 2017 Angiolini Review, which looked into deaths in custody following the passing of two black men, Sean Rigg and Olaseni Lewis. Both died after the use of restraint and "the appalling level of delays, obfuscations and institutional blunders that followed."

While the review wasn't explicitly focused in race, it did make several recommend specifically reference institutional racism, race, or discrimination.

The then Govermemnt did not respond to these in its initial response to the report, nor in the progress review in 2019.

On nationality and immigration:the Committee heard evidence arguing that "systemic failings of the immigration system stem from institutional racism at the Home Office" and that it was embedded in "nationality and immigration policy and practice".

The Government has accepted the recommendations given in the Windrush Lessons Leaned Review, but the Committee is concerned that the improvement plan published by the Home Office in September is “long on regrets but short on specifics of...when appropriate changes will be made."

Home Office figures released to the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act have shown at least nine people have now died from the Windrush Generation without receiving any compensation. Less than five people have been offered the top level of "Impact on Life" payments.

"The Home Office urgently needs to rebuild trust with those communities affected by the Windrush scandal by fixing the compensation scheme, including by lowering the standard of proof for evidential requirements to “the balance of probabilities”."

On Democracy: the Committee took evidence from Lord Woolley, founder of Operation Black Vote, about why a quarter of black people are not registered to vote.
"They say to me...'Why engage in this rigged system?'"

More on the EHRC:
The Committee says that it is clear "from our evidence that it is insufficiently visible to the Black community" and that it has long been concerned its powers in relation to human rights "are not fit for purpose".

The Commission has a limited budget, which is "another constraint on its effectiveness". In 2006, the CRE had £90m to deal with just racism alone. The EHRC has a budget currently of £17.1m for all work across all protected characteristics.

It also has no Black commissioners.

And those are the key parts of the report.
The Human Rights Committee is made up of:
@HarrietHarman, Lord Brabazon of Tara, Fiona Bruce MP, @KarenPBuckMP, @joannaccherry, Lord @AlfDubs, @Pauline_Latham, Baroness @SarahLudford, Baroness Massey of Darwen, @dean4watford...

Lord Singh of Wimbledon CBE, and Lord Trimble.

@threadreaderapp unroll