Business secretary Vince Cable has announced his intentions begin a campaign to tackle the lack of ethnic diversity at the top levels of business.
A study, co-authored by the former chair of the equality of human rights commission Trevor Phillips, which looked at the top 10,000 business executives found that more than half of FTSE 100 firms had no ethnic minorities at board level and the ensuing report called for a review on diversity.
Cable, who has previously attempted to address the issue, revealed that he is currently in discussions with Phillips and comedian Lenny Henry, about beginning of the campaign.
“Ethnic minorities are seriously under-represented with just one in sixteen senior management jobs occupied by ethnic minorities,” Cable stated.
“Real progress has been made given that the number of women on FTSE 100 boards now stands at 22% and I now want to deliver the same message on ethnic minority representation.”
Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Ummunna also pledged to tackle the issue. Speaking to City Am, he stated “There is a huge diversity deficit in the boardroom. We have to smash the glass ceiling which exists and is undeniable and we have to break the grip of the old boys network over our boardrooms.”
Cable’s campaign follows in the footsteps of Lord Davis’ 2011 review of the lack of gender diversity in business, which forced the government to increase the number of women in top business positions.
“We will have a series of milestones and events and there may well be some target, which I’m not able to tell you about at the moment as we have to make sure it is clear and deliverable … [Targets are] more difficult with ethnic minorities [when compared to gender], because how do you measure these things? Is a white Turkish person an ethnic minority for being a Muslim? It is quite tricky. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it, because it is quite powerful as a weapon,” Cable stated.
