The Home Affairs Committee is currently taking evidence on policing and race, including the policing of the covid-19 lockdown, as part of its inquiry into The Macpherson Report: twenty-one years on. Continue reading
Tag: covid-19
disparate impact of Covid-19: death rates and the Equality Act 2010 – update
Part 2 of the PHE’s Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on BAME groups was finally published on 16 June 2020, a fortnight after Part 1. It makes for chilling reading. Continue reading
Adiatu & Independent Workers Union of GB v HM Treasury
[2020] EWHC 1554 (Admin), Bean LJ and Cavanagh J
Comment
The claimants sought unsuccessfully to challenge the approach taken by the Chancellor to the furlough scheme, arguing in particular that the exclusion of self-employed workers from entitlement to furlough payments and the restriction of payments for non-furloughed workers who could not attend work (because they were symptomatic or self-isolating) to SSP discriminated against self-employed workers contrary to Article 14 EHCR, and indirectly discriminated against women and BAME workers contrary to EU law. They also claimed that the Chancellor had failed to pay regard to the PSED in designing the scheme. Continue reading
the gilded life of the male banker
The Sunday Times reported on 14 June 2020 that men working in financial services were the only group of workers in the UK who had not seen their pay fall. Continue reading
disparate impact of Covid-19: death rates
On 2 June 2020 Public Health England released its report COVID-19: review of disparities in risks and outcomes. The report confirmed that BAME people are dying disproportionately (people of Bangladeshi origin who contract the disease being up to twice as likely as, and people from other BAME groups being up to 50% more likely than, white Britons to die), but neglected to suggest the reasons for the disparity or to make any proposals to deal with it. It has been widely criticised for this failure. Continue reading
disparate impact of Covid-19: race and predicted grades
On 29 April 2020 the EHRC issued a warning to Ofqual that its plan to use predicted grades in place of GCSE and A level examinations in 2020 ‘could deepen the existing inequality in education and put the future of disadvantaged young people at risk if not correctly implemented’ Continue reading
disparate impact of Covid-19: end of furlough
The Guardian reported on 19 May 2020 that charities and social enterprise employers had been informed that Treasury plans to wind down the Covid-19 furlough scheme and to end it in October did not ‘currently include an exemption for vulnerable workers’. The plan, as it was reported at that time, was for employers to fund at least 80% of furloughed workers’ wages by August, with (at present) employers being treated equally irrespective of sector or ability of staff to return for reasons of vulnerability to Covid-19. Continue reading