UK must stamp out racial discrimination, says Theresa May

Theresa May will today state that the UK has to do more to achieve greater racial equality and end racial disparity, after a review showed “significant divisions” in the way ethnic minority people are treated.

The data, published this afternoon, offers an “unprecedented insight” into how people from different minority background face a “postcode lottery of outcomes”, writes The Independent - with the unemployment rate for ethnic minorities almost double that for white adults in the UK.

The Prime Minister is expected to call on British institutions to “explain or change” the disparity.

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The newly released figures show, among other things, that black Caribbean pupils were being permanently excluded from school “three times as often as White British pupils”. And people of Indian, Pakistani and white British descent are more likely to own their own homes compared with black people and those from Bangladesh.

In her statement on the review, May will reportedly say: “People who have lived with discrimination don't need a government audit to make them aware of the scale of the challenge.

“But this audit means that for society as a whole - for government, for our public services - there is nowhere to hide.”

David Isaac, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said the report must be used tackle the “entrenched inequality” in the UK, and to “set the foundations for real change”.