Boris Johnson should implement previous race review recommendations before starting a new one

Upon becoming prime minister, Boris Johnson professed concern with inequalities across the nation and promised a fairer society. For him, it was ‘levelling up’ and regional disparities. But after weeks of protest and political pressure, it is racial inequality that will be the focus of a new government commission.

For Theresa May, racial inequality was one of the ‘burning injustices’ she pledged to tackle in her first speech as PM outside No.10. A few weeks later she launched the Race Disparity Audit. It reported some difficult truths in October 2017, and May declared that "there is nowhere to hide" and that "these issues are now out in the open". And the initiative lives on: the Ethnicity Facts and Figures website is up to date, and the Race Disparity Unit talked about its work at an Institute for Government event just a few months ago. But Johnson didn’t reference the Race Disparity Audit, or any one of a range of previous inquiries in this area, when he set out his plans. The question is what this prime minister’s initiative will do differently.  

The government should set out exactly what it wants its new commission to achieve – and how

We know relatively little about Johnson’s plan for the new cross-government commission. The government’s own website features only a copy of the original article, eventually liberated from its newspaper paywall. Less than a paragraph of the article’s 1,054 words deals with the announcement. There is no detail – nothing about its terms of reference or its membership.

If the prime minister does want to press ahead with a new inquiry, the government should at least set out exactly what it plans to do and what it wants its cross-government commission to achieve. What form will it take? Who will take part? What questions does it want to ask? What facts is it seeking to establish? And, most importantly, what does it want to change? Has its remit got support from across the political spectrum? These are just some of the most basic questions with which to start, as the Institute has found in previous work on public inquiries and other types of commission.

The government’s new commission on race follows a number of similar initiatives

If, as his article suggests, the prime minister is really concerned about history, there are many lessons to learn from the previous inquiries in this area alone. This year, Wendy Williams completed her review of the Windrush scandal and how the Home Office had mistreated individuals (most of them from the Caribbean) under immigration law. In 2017, in addition to the Race Disparity Audit, there was the McGregor-Smith review (on issues affecting ethnic minorities in the workplace), the Angiolini review (on deaths in custody, including "evidence of disproportionate deaths of BAME people in restraint-related deaths"), the Parker review (on ethnic diversity on boards) and the Lammy review (on discrimination in the criminal justice system). The 1999 Macpherson report on the death of Stephen Lawrence, which pointed to institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police, has lodged in public consciousness more than most.

All of these investigated the issues thoroughly and came up with hundreds of recommendations between them – the huge majority of which were welcomed. However, many are yet to be implemented. The Lammy review, for example, made 35 recommendations, including better data, a more diverse judiciary and sealing criminal records; only 16 have so far been implemented. If the government wants its new commission to be different, it should reflect on the work that has, recently, been conducted in this area. What worked and what did not? How many recommendations have been acted on? The government should start with implementing the recommendations of these previous inquiries, or explaining why it won’t, and build on existing initiatives – rather than announcing threadbare new ones.

The prime minister should commit upfront to implementing the recommendations of this review

Although this commission is not a full-blown public inquiry, the prime minister (and others) should learn from previous inquiries if they want recommendations to stick. Previous IfG reports have called for a permanent inquiries unit in government, designed to ensure inquiries work as well as possible, and for parliamentary select committees to require departments to report on progress against recommendations. The prime minister should also commit upfront to implementing the recommendations of the review and, if there are any the government chooses not to implement, explaining why to parliament.

Given that he has decided a new commission is needed, the prime minister is presumably unimpressed with what previous inquiries achieved. However, hard work, extensive investigation and millions of pounds of public money went into exposing the problems and recommending how to solve them. The prime minister should explain why he is intending to repeat the exercise, what he wants to achieve, and why this commission will succeed where others have not. Otherwise, the public would be forgiven for thinking this latest commission is less to do with a desire for reform, and more about political expediency.