Public outrage over the case of the black schoolgirl who was strip-searched by police shows that Britain is “a country that cares about ethnic minorities”, the equalities minister has said.
Kemi Badenoch was challenged over the case of Child Q as she sought to defend the government’s new Inclusive Britain strategy – based on the highly-controversial Sewell report which denied the existence of structural racism.
Labour said the government’s new strategy to tackle racial inequality “fails to deliver” for black children – citing the case of Child Q, the black schoolgirl who was strip searched by the Metropolitan Police.
Shadow equalities minister Taiwo Owatemi said: “This strategy fails to deliver for Child Q, a 15-year-old black girl from Hackney who faced the most appalling treatment at the hands of the police, with racism very likely to have been an influencing factor.”
However, Ms Badenoch replied: “What we do know is that everybody is rightly appalled and outraged by what happened to Child Q. That is an example of a country that cares about ethnic minorities, and about children in the system.”
Three Met officers are now under investigation for misconduct over their roles in either conducting or supervising the strip-search of a black schoolgirl in Hackney – with an official report finding that racism “likely played a factor”.
The minister of equalities described the case as an “appalling incident” and said she was glad the Met had apologised, and the Independent Office for Police Conduct are now investigating the issue.
Ms Badenoch told MPs: “We have systems in place to ensure that when things go wrong we correct them. What we cannot do is stop any bad thing from happening to anyone in the country at any time.”
Labour’s Diane Abbott, the MP Hackney North and Stoke Newington, challenged the minister to explain why she believed structural racism did not exist.
Pointing out the government’s strategy sought to “bridge divides” between the police and communities, Ms Abbott added: “Will the minister explain how she thinks strip searching black schoolgirls helps to bridge the divide between the police and communities?”
Ms Badenoch responded: “No-one has said racism does not exist. No-one has said there are no problem in the system … This action provides even more things we can do to support communities to hold local police to account.”
The equalities minister added: “We mustn’t forget that police are saving the lives of young people all across this country – they save the lives of young black children, brown, Asian, all communities.”
Ms Badenoch said she believed that the UK is “fairest and most open-minded country in the world” as she set out the new strategy by Boris Johnson’s government – and insisted that “most of these racial disparities are not driven by individual acts of prejudice”.
Labour said the strategy was “hopelessly ineffectively and short-sighted” since it was based on flawed Sewell report.
“If both the Sewell report and this strategy fails to identify the root causes of racial and ethnic disparities then how can either of them hope to tackle them?” asked Ms Owatemi.
The Labour frontbencher said the government’s policies were “too weak and too slow” and would “fail to deliver” – condemning the failure to bring in mandatary ethnicity pay gap reporting for businesses.
Commitments in the Inclusive Britain strategy include revamping the history curriculum. There was no mention of slavery, however, with the government promising to set up “a diverse panel of historians to develop a new knowledge-rich model history”.
