What actions are the SNP taking on race equality?

The SNP is committed to ensuring Scotland is a place where people from all backgrounds can live and raise their families in peace and where people of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds can follow their religion or belief and achieve their potential.

We will introduce an overarching Scottish Diversity and Inclusion Strategy covering the public sector, our educational institutions, justice system, and workplaces. This strategy will focus on the removal of institutional, cultural and financial barriers which lead to inequalities in relation to gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and social mobility.

We will increase and improve our data collection so that across all our policies we will be able to have a strong evidence base, gauge intersectional inequality, measure outcomes, and recommend improvements, including in our schools.

In 2016 the SNP Scottish Government published the Race Equality Framework for Scotland. We are determined to show leadership in advancing race equality, tackling racism and addressing the barriers that prevent people from minority ethnic communities from realising their potential. The Race Equality Framework for Scotland sets out how Scottish Government aims to progress this ambition over a fifteen year period from 2016 to 2030.

The negative impacts of Covid were disproportionately felt by different groups in society. For our minority ethnic communities, there were both health and financial impacts. That is why we established the Expert Reference Group on COVID-19 and Ethnicity (ERG). We will continue to engage with minority ethnic communities, for example, to promote uptake of the vaccine and to understand and mitigate the impact of covid in minority ethnic communities.

Building on their recommendations, we will develop our next Race Equality Action Plan with stakeholders and ethnic minority communities to reach the objectives set out in our Race Equality Framework 2016-2030.

We will increase the number of minority ethnic people able to benefit from the new Minority Ethnic Leadership and Development Programme we have established with the John Smith Centre.

We will increase support to projects that actively encourage those from a minority ethnic background into positions on public boards to increase diverse representation.

We will bring forward world-leading human rights legislation to reduce inequality and advance the rights of everyone who chooses to make Scotland their home, and ensure human rights are embedded in every aspect of life in Scotland. As part of this, we will incorporate the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination into Scots Law.

We will fund the development of an online programme on Scotland and the UK’s colonial history throughout the world that can be delivered to schools, and we will encourage Local Authorities to adopt the programme in all schools.

Taking the widely acclaimed TIE campaign as a model, we will create a new programme of anti-racist education in schools, including support for teachers’ professional development, allowing every school to access high-quality anti-racist education. To track progress, we will improve the reporting and publication of data on racist incidents in schools.