The first meeting of a Lib Dem taskforce to suggest policies for tackling racial inequality got underway on Wednesday, and met with the race equality minister Andrew Stunell (pictured).
The Race Equality Taskforce was set up by Nick Clegg following calls for the Lib Dems to flesh out their approach to addressing unequal racial outcomes following the Deputy Prime Minister’s Scarman Lecture last November.
The taskforce, chaired by Baroness Meral Hussein Ece, will hold six evidence-gathering sessions on a variety of topics between now and June before reporting to the Federal Policy Committee, Federal Executive and the Parliamentary party.
The group will look at how to advance race equality in the following areas: education and early years; the justice system; health and well-being; the career ladder, local communities and democracy; and the media.
Members of the taskforce include Lewisham councillor Duwayne Brooks, GLA candidate Merlene Emerson, EMLD chair Issan Ghazni and yours truly.
Stunell spoke about his recently-launched integration strategy. I remain as critical about it as I was last month, not least its’ failure to mention racism. I see Stunell’s boss, Eric Pickles, was in the Daily Mail this morning, once again pumping out a quasi-nationalistic messages that paint immigrants as unwilling to fit in when the opposite is true. Thankfully one of my local MPs, Tom Brake, was quoted at the end of the article giving a balanced view.
I asked Stunell why his paper failed to address racism and suggested that it was naive to believe the coalition’s approach will get all communities to “flourish” together if a key barrier that prevents such flourishing remains unmentioned. I didn’t get a satisfactory answer, which underlines the reason why the taskforce is needed in the first place.
I aim to keep this blog updated with developments concerning the taskforce.
cllrlesterholloway.wordpress.com 
You can bring in proper laws for a start…
The new “Equality Act ” passed in 2010 and became “law” in 2011 which is supposed to be a one law covers all ( sub groups) where they are supposed to uphold fairness and abolish discrimination – covers nothing as (i) Judges are not even in the list of those that should be upholding fairness and abolishing discrimination ( b) of those that are in the list ( e.g local councils) section 156 states – if they do not uphold fairness and abolish discrimination nothing will be done .
The old section 19 c RRA 2000 where judges can discriminate against blacks and ethnic minorities is found in Schd 3;3 of the new act..