News

Legislation will never improve the performance of local councils on race equality unless it is rigorously enforced.

Few black workers will be surprised at the findings of Community Care's survey which found that only a handful of English local authorities had produced a race equality scheme by the deadline set under the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000.

Local government pays great lip service to equality but in reality black staff are routinely denied support, information and opportunities, and black people's needs are often misunderstood by the services provided by councils.

Both workers and service users have to turn to their own communities to find support and have a voice, forming networks which remain apparently invisible to statutory services, which continue to ignore their needs. Those independent black groups are in turn denied adequate, sustained funding and structures. They are also stereotyped as negative, trouble-making, and predictable.

Our survey findings come as the Audit Commission released a critical report on race equality policies in local government. That 40 per cent of councils have failed to meet the first of five levels of the Commission for Racial Equality's good practice standard is unacceptable. Naturally the CRE chairperson Gurbux Singh, is "deeply concerned". But what can actually be done?

Enforcement and monitoring of the Race Relations Amendment Act must be strengthened. But this is not enough. To ensure that race equality is given the priority it needs within local government requires a strong, clear lead from central government.

Such a lead is lacking. Despite its pledges to tackle social exclusion, the government's concept of inclusion is made ridiculous by the exclusion of asylum seekers and their families. The treatment of asylum seekers makes it impossible to take the government's response to race issues seriously. For example, a broad consensus emerged after the hostility and violence that broke out in northern towns, that segregation - particularly in schools - fuelled those crises in race relations. Yet child asylum seekers in the new detention centres will not be allowed attend local schools for fear of "swamping" them, in the words of home secretary David Blunkett, who is responsible for asylum policy.

And unaccompanied refugee children are to be added to the dispersal scheme which will further intensify their sense of exclusion.

Now the government has removed the basic safety net of an appeal against refusal of asylum, asylum seekers will forced to leave the country if their application for asylum fails, and make an appeal from elsewhere, if they can find the legal advice, language support, financial resources - and, of course, a safe environment from which to do so.

A poll for the CRE has found that nine out of 10 people believe being British isn't about being white. But neither the government nor most councils are vigorously pursuing equality. Worse, the government is actively pandering to the remaining 10 per cent of people, with its policies on asylum becoming ever more extraordinary.

It is cause for celebration that the first black cabinet minister, Paul Boateng, has been appointed. But until equality legislation is implemented in a way that forces both local and central government to act, and until people can enter this country knowing they are coming to a land where inclusion means inclusion for all, Boateng's appointment will not be a sign of much more than his own achievement.