Please note that links to the old Parliamentary intranet have been removed as of October 2023. Please use search on ParliNet to find relevant current details, if available.
https://parlinet.parliament.uk/house-of-commons-members-staff/
Early in April, Passover, Easter and Ramadan will coincide. To celebrate this, ParliREACH is holding a virtual event on Thursday 30 March from 12pm to 1pm with Muslim, Christian and Jewish colleagues willing to share their personal experience of these religious festivals.
Please see this post on the intranet for further information
ParliREACH is a Workplace Equality Network (WEN) established to increase awareness and appreciation of race, ethnicity and cultural heritage issues in Parliament.
It aims to provide a platform where under-represented groups can find support and where equality objectives can be progressed.
ParliREACH welcomes anyone who feels that the group will allow them to gain support or voice concerns, regardless of whether you share a relevant protected characteristic.
Please see the ParliNet page.
Workplace racism and discrimination are more talked about now than they have ever been in recent memory. There exists a plethora of organisations and institutions whose purpose it is to draw our attention to racism at work, often shining light to reveal discrimination in places we did not expect. One place that we may not expect to find racism is in the civilised chambers of Whitehall.
2019 saw the highest number of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) MPs elected to parliament. This means that Westminster now has 65 BME MPs. However, despite this historically diverse field many BME MPs and parliamentary workers still feel as though they suffer from racial discrimination.
In an interview for ITV Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West, recounted an incident where she was told whilst working in parliament that she should “go home”. In a similar and equally disturbing event, Afzal Khan, the Labour MP for Manchester Gorton, was told to “go back to Pakistan”. In the same ITV interview Tullip Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn, recalled an exchange she had with a colleague in which her fellow member of parliament had implied that Asian families are more likely to kill their female children than families of other ethnicities.
A recent report commissioned by ParliREACH, a workplace equality network that was set up to provide a forum for BME people who work in parliament, found numerous examples of racial discrimination within Westminster’s halls.
Continue reading
