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The Labor Party accused Liz Truss of setting an “appalling standard” on equality in government after it emerged that of the more than 250 business advisers she has appointed, less than a quarter are women and 95% are white. .
The analysis comes before Truss, who is the minister for women and equality, as well as the secretary for international trade, announced a shift in the government’s equality priorities, away from gender and race.
In his Thursday afternoon speech, Truss said the equality debate had been “dominated by a small number of unrepresentative voices, and by those who believe that people are defined by their protected characteristic. “
Data compiled by the office of Emily Thornberry, shadow secretary for international trade, shows that since mid-July, Truss has appointed 253 people from outside of government to new trade-related advisory roles. Of these, 63 (24.9%) are women, 240 are white, 12 are Asian and one is black.
Simon Woolley, founder and director of Operation Black Vote, said that Truss’s speech was part of “a clear trajectory that seeks to minimize the reality of persistent racial inequality.”
“Laundering the fight against institutional racism is in turbo mode right now.” Woolley said. “There are elements of this government that are not neutral in this regard. They are backing down hard, creating fake culture wars, pitting north against south, white against black, all in a historic moment when we could make the most fundamental positive change regarding racial equality ever seen. “
The external appointees labor tally includes nine members of the new Board of Trade, including former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, and four non-executive directors from his department.
It also covers 24 members of a strategic business advisory group; 205 members of trade advisory groups (GAT), in 11 sectors of the economy; 15 members of a trade and agriculture commission; and four members of a union advisory group.
While this totals 261, eight people have more than one role, so it covers 253 different people.
The only black person named is Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian economist and writer, who is among the four new non-executive directors of the Department of International Trade. These were the only roles of the 253 performed through competitive hiring. Figures show that of the 11 TAGs across the industry, five have only white members.
None of the appointments fall into the category of what are known as regulated appointments under Cabinet Office rules, so they would not count toward government equality goals. These establish that by 2022 half of the designated persons should be women and 14% of black, Asian and ethnic minority origin.
Thornberry said: “It’s no wonder Liz Truss wants to get rid of government goals related to gender and race when she has set such an appalling standard in recent months on the representation of women and ethnic minority groups.
“We all know that the boardrooms from which many of these appointments have been made are not representative of the country as a whole, but as Minister for Women and Equality, Liz Truss has a duty to challenge that under-representation and the discrimination that underlies it. , not just to reflect it on his own quotes. “
Truss’s speech, before the think tank at the Center for Policy Studies, promised a greater focus on issues such as geographic and class divisions, saying that the existing discourse had been dominated by the left, “captured as they are by politics. identity, noisy pressure groups and the idea of lived experience “.
Such a worldview, he argued, says that “if you are not from an ‘oppressed group’, then you have no right to have a say and that this debate is not for you.
Shadow Attorney General David Lammy said Truss sought to create a separation where it did not exist. He tweeted: “Liz Truss’s attempt to separate class from race is divisive garbage.”
A source from the Department of International Trade said that Truss had recently appointed women to two main roles – chief of commerce for the United States and chief executive officer for trade policy implementation work – and that the advisory appointments were unpaid.
More broadly, they said, the advisers tended to reflect the relevant industries whose advice was needed. “It’s no wonder there is a bias towards white males, because that reflects the boards of directors and businesses right now,” they said.
Five of the nine Board of Trade appointments made by Truss were women, they added.
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