The Green Party has condemned the summary of a report from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities as a deliberate attempt to whitewash institutional racism.
The members of the Commission, set up in the wake of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, were chosen by no. 10 advisor Munira Mirza, and its report confirms her view – and that of the Prime Minister – that the UK is not in the grip of institutional racism.
Cleo Lake, former Lord Mayor of Bristol and the Green Party’s candidate for PCC for Avon and Somerset, said: ‘The report seeks to deny their [people of colour’s] reality and signals to white people that they have no need to change their behaviour.
‘The report’s conclusions fly in the face of a series of reports that find that people of Afrikan descent in particular face huge barriers at work, are ten times more likely to be in prison, are routinely subjected to vile abuse, and deal with a hostile police force on a daily basis.
‘Those reports have clear recommendations. Rather than using a new report to whitewash the reality of institutional racism, the government should act on those recommendations.’
Benali Hamdache, Green Party list candidate in the upcoming London Assembly elections, has echoed Lake: ‘The government has gaslighted us and our lived experience. Backwards. Shameful. Contemptible’.