Thank you for the opportunity to come and talk to the committee. We are delighted that you are conducting your inquiry. It is exactly the right issue to consider and this is a really good time to hold the inquiry, so we were pleased to see that you were taking it on.
You have our written submission and the draft report that Maggie Kelly has written for us; the report will be published early in the new year. I will not go over all of that; rather, I thought that it might be useful if I highlight some of the key actions that the evidence suggests could be taken to reduce the disproportionately high poverty among some ethnic minority groups in Scotland, as well as to think about how to make work a better route out of poverty than it is for many people across different ethnic groups.
Our evidence suggests that the drivers of the high poverty in ethnic minority groups are part of a broader set of drivers for high in-work poverty across Scotland and many other parts of the United Kingdom. That set of issues is not separate but is very much central to the overall goal of reducing in-work poverty. In particular, the key issue is the poor quality of work opportunities that many people have. Pay is important, but that is not just about low pay; it is about jobs that do not give people opportunities for training or progression and the high number of people who get stuck in entry-level, low-paid jobs.
We have seen from our research and the analysis in Scotland that some ethnic minority groups are disproportionately concentrated in the sectors with those problems, and particularly in care, retail and hospitality. Therefore, having an approach to those sectors with a key focus on ensuring that ethnic minority people within them benefit would be one of the best ways to tackle this set of issues. There are also two additional issues for ethnic minority groups, on top of the broader drivers of in-work poverty—they are racism and discrimination and, for some groups, provision of English as a second language and English language speaking.
What are the big levers to address that set of problems? The first one that we want to focus on is the fair work convention. The issue should be at the forefront of what it is doing. We want it to set out a programme of action to promote equal opportunities and better work opportunities across ethnic groups.
The second lever is sector-specific action plans to raise the quality of work, to raise pay and to improve training, development and progression opportunities, particularly in the big low-paid sectors. We suggest that the focus be on the care, retail and hospitality sectors.
The third lever is employment services, which I know is a big focus of the committee’s inquiry, and rightly so. Employment services need to do two big things differently. First, whether they are in the public, private or voluntary sector, their goal should be to get people into work that leads to decent pay and takes them out of poverty. Despite all the progress in the past few years, many employment services still focus on getting people into a job and, to some extent, that can be any job. Our research suggests that that approach leads to people getting stuck in in-work poverty and needing tax credits, and they never progress. There must be a reorientation of the incentives and the targets for employment services, which should aim to get people into jobs that have potential for earnings progression.
The second big issue for employment services is that there is little for people who are already in low-paid work. Once someone is in low-paid work, they can be stuck there. Assuming that they have basic skills, there is little on offer to help and advise them and support them to take the next steps. Employment services need to develop an offer for people who are in low-paid work.
The next lever, which Maggie Kelly can say a little more about later, is investment and procurement. Big steps are being taken by the Scottish Government, local authorities and through the new city deal in the west of Scotland and, despite austerity, a lot of public money is being spent in investment and through procurement. That could be leveraged much more than it is in order to create better quality jobs and to demand that people who receive any public money to do things create good-quality jobs and take active steps to open them up to groups that are shut out.
The next lever is apprenticeships. We have had the Wood commission and we support its recommendation that there be targets for the take-up of apprenticeships across ethnic groups and thinking about gender. However, those targets must be for successful completions and not just for people taking up apprenticeships, and the quality of apprenticeships needs to rise up the agenda. Throughout the UK, the big expansion in the quantity of apprenticeships has to some extent come at the cost of their quality. A fair number of apprenticeships out there do next to nothing for the career prospects of the apprentices or the economy to which they are supposed to be contributing.
Our research on the issue has led us to say that we need the quality of apprenticeships to be addressed, probably before we see any further big expansion. That is a particular issue for the committee’s inquiry because some of the research has suggested that young people from ethnic minority groups are not only not taking up apprenticeships and not achieving them to the same degree, but being shut out of the higher quality apprenticeships that lead to higher pay. That is also more true for young women than it is for young men.
There are a further two actions that need to be taken. The first is to think about English as a second language. Our research suggests that speaking good English can reduce a person’s risk of being in poverty by 5 percentage points. That is a big effect. The lives of people and groups whose English is not to a high standard could be transformed by getting their English up to a good standard. However, the key point is that many of those people are already in low-paid work. English for speakers of other languages provision for people who already have jobs is patchy, so it is difficult for those people to get English language provision to take them on to another step. There needs to be investment and more action there.
We also need to think about racism and discrimination. A lot of the research suggests qualitatively and quantitatively that people from some ethnic minority groups experience a significant level of racism and discrimination, and that that is directly tied to people not being able to access good-quality jobs, services and all the other things that they need to take them out of poverty.
A lot of the debate is, rightly, about the new powers that are coming to Scotland. There are some fantastic opportunities within them for the agenda that we are discussing, in particular the fact that powers over employability are to move to Scotland. There is a real chance to do something that is different and better than what has gone before. However, a lot of what we are talking about is within the current powers. It is really important that we see action now, and not just a debate about what we can achieve with the new powers.