Shillman posed the question – “do [fund investors] want the board of directors and the managers of your companies to spend time and energy on environmental, social and governance issues or do [they] want them to spend all of their time and energy on increasing the value of [their] shares?”  His response: “I’m rather sure that an overwhelming number of them would choose the latter.”  Many would argue the data shows unless you do a good amount of the former, you can’t deliver on the latter.

That said, it would be wrong to describe Shillman as an ESG sceptic – it is rather more complex than that.  He believes the integration of ESG factors in corporate decision making is important and he takes pride in Cognex’s impressive track record in this regard.  But he believes it should be left to companies to determine whether and how they integrate ESG concerns, not institutional investors. 

Shillman wrote the above in his company’s 2018 Annual Report.  There has obviously been a lot of water under the bridge since then.  A new consensus has emerged that the ultimate beneficiaries of funds – citizens – expect large, institutional fund managers to do precisely what Shillman argued against, when it comes to investing their life savings, looking after their pension pots, and so on.  It is clear – the aftermath of Covid-19, and the reaction to the tragic murder of George Floyd in the US, have turbo charged the focus around ESG, and lifted the prominence of the “S” and the “G” in ESG. There is no doubt the #MeToo campaign and backlash against fiscal austerity before 2020 had an impact before this too.

Over summer, we carried out a survey of over 22,000 respondents in 11 markets as part of our ongoing Trust Barometer.  This underlined the importance attached by the public to the ESG profile of businesses today.  It revealed that in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, people want brands to protect the well-being and safety of their employees and suppliers even if it means suffering big financial losses until the pandemic ends (90%).  After the death of George Floyd shone a light on racial injustice and precipitated statements of solidarity with the black community from business leaders, respondents said brands in the U.S. must first get their own house in order by setting an example within their organization (64%), by reflecting the full diversity of the country in their communications (63%) and by making products accessible and suitable to all communities (61%).  The consequences of businesses not meeting expectations now are stark – for example, 60% of all respondents said they will buy or boycott a brand based on its stand on racial injustice. 

Furthermore, investors increasingly do not see ESG integration and financial returns as an either/or choice but two sides of the same coin.  Our latest Investor Trust survey of 607 institutional investors, representing investment firms that collectively manage over $9 trillion in assets, had 54% of respondents stating that ESG initiatives led to a favourable impact on growth and 47% saying it boosts the return on investment.  A good example where a poor ESG profile damages the financial standing of a business is the UK fast fashion chain, Boohoo, which lost a third of its market value in July after controversies relating to its supply chain were exposed.

This is all corroborated by data on ESG funds flows this year.  Refinitiv’s Sustainable Finance Review shows that in the first half of 2020 nearly $200bn in sustainable bonds was issued globally – an increase of almost half, year-on-year, and double the amount raised in H1 2018.  Remarkably much of this growth took place in Q2, when the pandemic was at its worst, with $130bn raised, the highest quarterly amount ever.  Likewise social bond issuance has rocketed  with already more than double the total amount raised in 2020 than for the whole of 2019, driven by capital raising for COVID-19 related recovery efforts. 

This trend is only likely to continue.  Millennials – those born between 1981 and 1996 – were significant drivers of the growth in demand for ESG products, long before the Covid era started and their influence is set to escalate.  According to a 2018 U.S. Trust Insights on Wealth and Worth® survey, 87% of millennial high net investors say a company’s ESG record is an important consideration in their decision about whether to invest or not.  And there is a huge, inter-generational transfer of wealth currently ongoing with around US$24 trillion expected to come under the control of millennials from this year.

So the truth is that in this post-pandemic world, it is actually the free market which is demanding ESG factors are integrated into corporate business decisions – fund managers are simply following the orders of investors.

Having lived through that, it has been refreshing to see so many, particularly in business, waking up to the reality of what has been happening over the decades to so many families of black heritage in the US, UK and elsewhere in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.  There is no denying the impact on all of us of what happened to Floyd. Yesterday, it led protestors – of all races and backgrounds – to tear down a statute of the 17^th century slave trader, Edward Colston in Bristol, the UK’s sixth biggest city.

In the past most business leaders would have run a million miles from an issue like this. Not this time. Many have broken their silence to speak out. CEOs, from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to Zoom’s Eric Yuan, have queued up to condemn what has happened. One can lambast business for only now having acknowledged what has been going after all these years, or you can focus on the positive – welcome their voices to the table and encourage them to do more and act. I prefer the latter.

As John Streur, CEO of Calvert Research and Management – one of the biggest responsible investment companies in the world – said last week, systemic racism is an ESG (environmental, social and governance) issue but the ESG investment community has failed to properly address it. “Responsible investors have come to trust ESG research and investment strategies to avoid investing in corporations that are lagging on taking needed action to address human rights violations and to take real action to drive needed change” he said but “as a group, we are failing to meet these needs.” Streur argues that more forceful action is needed by investors, company leaders and boards. He is right. 

Companies are corporate citizens which pay taxes – this in turn helps fund policing. Nevermind the clear moral imperative to act, business leaders have duty to act when the fundamental human rights of groups in society – which make up substantial numbers of their employees and customers – are being violated, as is the case here.

However, for the plethora of CEOs’ statements to be credible and not to be seen as tokenistic, PR driven gestures, they must be backed by the right action. Predictably, the statements have been followed by scrutiny of what companies have done about race inequalities in their own backyards – for starters, when the statement comes from a CEO on an all white board with an all white executive team, it totally undermines the authority of the company concerned, as Nike has discovered. So what should businesses do? Here are some things to think about (this is not an exhaustive list)…

There is no point making any comment on the outrage of Floyd’s killing and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement unless the whole of the board and senior executive team subscribe to the sentiment and want to do something about it, because without their buy-in, change is unlikely to happen. Stamping out racism – direct or indirect – in any organisation is a collective endeavour.

Be brutally honest about why the firm has only chosen to pipe up about such issues now. In the UK, where fewer CEOs have said anything about the Black Lives Matter movement, CEOs might want to explain why their companies did not speak out after the racist murder of the black teenager, Stephen Lawrence, in 1993 and following the publication of the report of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry in 1999 which found there was widespread institutional racism against black people in Britain. The truth is COVID-19 and modern social media has helped shine a light on continuing race inequalities like never before and it has brought a big reality check to a lot of people.

Look at your own company’s diversity statistics, publish them if you don’t already do so, and come clean about why they are not what they should be, particularly in your boardroom and with regard to your executive leadership team. Don’t be shy of admitting unconscious bias and a tendency to recruit and promote in one’s own image, where that is an issue.  

Over a third of our largest listed companies in the UK are likely to miss the target to have at least one director from an ethnic minority by 2021 according to the government sponsored Parker Review. During my several years of working as a corporate lawyer in the City London – which likes to boast about being the world’s leading, international, financial centre – I was almost always the only face of black heritage in the room. At every gathering of senior business leaders I spoke to as Shadow Business Secretary whilst serving in Parliament, I cannot remember there ever being another black face in the room either. Unless these problems are acknowledged, you can’t address them.

As the Parker Review pointed out, developing candidates for your pipeline and planning for succession in a systematic way is crucial. Companies must put in place systems to identify, nurture and promote people of colour within their workplaces to ensure there is a pipeline of Board capable candidates, and they should ensure their managerial and executive teams reflect the importance of diversity to their organisations. The data in 2020 does not support the nonsense which is parroted about there not being sufficient black candidates for senior roles – there are plenty if you look for them. If your head-hunters tell you there aren’t enough black candidates, get rid of them and find better recruiters. 

The City is surrounded by incredibly diverse boroughs but the workplaces there look nothing like the communities around it in inner-London like Lambeth where I grew up. By all means make donations to charities working to reduce race inequalities and get far more involved in community action initiatives in those areas, but what are you going to do to ensure more young black people from those communities make it into your work places, deal rooms and trading floors? 

Advanced, which is the third largest software company in the UK (I am a non-executive director on its Board) has a recruitment process which is completely non-biased, not based on your CV or background.  We have two tests for candidates to complete from which we recruit and we then focus on internal mobility – training these people through our own training programmes and moving on their career. Last year over 60% of all vacant roles in the business were filled internally through people progressing. More of this kind of thing is needed across the corporate landscape to break down barriers to progress.

Above all, whilst social justice demands there be change, shareholder value does too. In their recently published report on diversity, McKinsey found that in the case of ethnic and cultural diversity, top-quartile companies outperformed those in the fourth one by 36% in profitability.  Put simply: if you allow race inequalities to persist in your company, it will adversely impact on the bottom line.

The role of business in rebuilding out of this crisis and fashioning a new kind of innovation economy where productive businesses, the state, and citizens work together to create wealth, reduce inequalities and ensure that globalisation works for many more people is vital – it would be impossible without enterprise.  You enter public service to make a positive difference to as many lives as possible – the truth is, during my time parliament, I came to realise that there is even more capacity to do this in the private sector, which is why it was always my intention to return to it.

Of course, there are different business models, practices and behaviours.  Since my time as Shadow Business Secretary I have been a vocal advocate of long term value creation, as opposed to the fast-buck, and of firms that not only seek returns for shareholders and investors, but prioritise looking out for other stakeholders – employees, customers, suppliers and communities – as well.  It is for this reason that ensuring environmental, social and governance factors (“ESG”) are properly integrated into corporate decision making is so important. Afterall, business and society are mutually dependent – there is no such thing as a “free” market given that the private sector relies on the state to maintain our roads, provide a digital infrastructure, sustain a national health service and so on.

This perspective is based not only on hard evidence but also life experience.  I was born into a family of entrepreneurs and would have not had the opportunities I had were it not for the power of enterprise.  After leaving full time education, I spent just under a decade working as a corporate employment lawyer – at the coalface of the “S” in ESG – in the City and for industry.  I then spent a decade in various senior roles in Parliament leading on public policy which had ESG at its core.

This is why I am now throwing my energies into working as a strategic corporate advisor to companies on business-critical issues that impact on reputation and their narrative – ESG in particular.

The first steps in this new chapter have involved me working with three companies, mainly in a non-executive capacity, to help their leaderships build value in the long term for investors and shareholders, in addition to delivering for other stakeholders and society as whole. Each seeks to maximise returns for investors but are conscious that this must go hand in hand with delivering shared value for stakeholders and society too.

Advanced is the UK’s third largest software company and I sit on its board as a non-executive director.  Advanced is the UK’s third largest provider of business software and services, with a £254m turnover, over 19,000 customers and 2,400 employees with operations in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, India, Ireland, and the US.  During the pandemic it has paid all staff for their time in isolation, whether sick or at risk but unable to work from home – even those who fall outside of the sick pay policy which include those still within their first six month probationary period.  As a signatory to the Social Mobility Pledge, Advanced has a radical recruitment process which is non-biased and not based on one’s CV or background but on candidates completing two aptitude tests.

Signal AI’s Artificial Intelligence-powered solutions provide communications professionals, compliance and risk experts, in-house and agency teams, and senior business leaders with the information they need to be in the know. The company, for whom I’m working as an advisor, has raised over $49.5 million in investment from four funding rounds and has over 150 employees.  At the start of the lockdown the company gave every employee £200 in order to help them adjust to working from home, and a fruit and veg pack.  They also offered their services free to parts of government to help the country deal with corona virus.

Finally, at the start of the year I was delighted to join Digital Identity Net UK, which is a UK-curated company that provides consumers with a single gateway to the validated identity data held about them by their banks and other trusted custodians of transactional and behavioural data. This empowers the consumer to leverage their identity, decide who has access to it, and how they share it, to build a better quality of digital life.  The founders believe corporate responsibility is entirely compatible with significant revenue and profit generation so the firm will fund a Social Benefit Trust, with a progressively defined portion of profits, to promote wider social benefit by charitable giving There is a special social purpose clause written into the constitution of the company and the investor base is diverse, not dominated by any one individual or organisation.

I am looking forward to working with these great, innovative companies, and with others, investors and shareholders – here and abroad – in building a new stakeholder economy in the wake of the crisis in the months and years ahead.

Instinctively, many corporate leaders will want to steer clear of the rancorous debates which, in the U.S., will crescendo into November’s presidential election. Hiding away, getting on with returning to profit, trying to improve the battered share price and restoring a decent dividend will preoccupy many CEOs. Some will quietly drop commitments to look out for other stakeholders and the environment, citing the pandemic as an excuse.  This would be a huge error, not least because around a third of U.K. workers surveyed don’t have confidence in their firms’ leaders’ approach to navigating the current crisis, with a global survey showing that less than a third of respondents believe CEOs are doing an outstanding job dealing with coronavirus.

When it comes to the pandemic, there have been false comparisons made with times of war.  There are those who predict that once this crisis passes we can look forward to advances similar to those that followed World War II.  The societal changes and post war consensus of the 1940s were a by-product of the shared experience of people of all backgrounds and classes fighting side by side against fascism, leading to a collective demand for greater equality thereafter. It was against this backdrop that the 1945 U.K. Labour administration was elected which went on to create our National Health Service, which is playing such an important role in saving lives today. 

There was also a determination to prevent the world being ravaged again by the division and forces that led to the war. So from 1941 U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Roosevelt led the establishment of the liberal international rule-based order which, ever since, has underpinned liberal democracy and trade across the globe, and guarded against authoritarianism and oppression. This struck a chord with President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” with the idea that nations would work on a multilateral basis to “improve labour standards, economic advancement, and social security.”

However, although we may now be fighting a war of sorts, albeit against an invisible enemy—coronavirus—we have been doing so separately in our own homes, in our own family units. Yes, our incredible key workers are putting themselves at risk to keep us safe but the great mass of our populations have had to stay indoors and abstain from doing things–they have not had to face the horror of leaving home, picking up arms and risking life and death in the same way as the war generation. Furthermore, the experience of coronavirus is not equally shared. For example, in the U.S. and the U.K. it disproportionately kills people of colour, and the people and places with the lowest incomes are the most vulnerable to job losses.  

And, far from precipitating international co-operation akin to what we saw under Roosevelt and Churchill, today we have witnessed countries going it alone, dealing with this crisis in a haphazard and uncoordinated way. The current U.S. President, Donald Trump, has even turned on the very international institution—the World Health Organisation—under whose auspices world leaders should be coming together to solve this global problem.

This is very tricky terrain for the C-suite of any company to navigate.

Many employees will return to work over the next few months hoping they still have a job, only to be told they don’t. 

The U.K.’s Office for Budget Responsibility has this morning published its latest estimate of the total cost of the government’s coronavirus policy interventions: a whopping £123 billion in 2020-21.

Quite rightly there are demands for a new social contract involving key workers being properly rewarded for their incredible work. 

Funding all of this will involve tax increases but who will be asked to pay for them?

Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, says we have seen the equivalent two years’ of digital progression in two months. Great for big tech but this will undoubtedly lead to household names in traditional sectors, like high street retail, going under. Upskilling and training redundant workers to adapt will be essential. We must also guard against further market concentration in the hands of the dominant players that are left standing and a reduction in competition (which is needed for a healthy functioning market). 

So we should use this moment to reform capitalism and foster a new kind of innovation economy where productive businesses, the state, and citizens work together to create wealth, reduce inequalities and ensure that globalisation works for many more people.   

In this context, there will be a lot of scrutiny of business, which has an important role to play, and will be operating alongside a bigger and more active state. But, as ever, opportunist, populist politicians will be looking to exploit this situation for their own cynical ends.

The populist Left will seek to use this moment to impose punitive and extreme measures on enterprise, and implement policies that will certainly not deliver growth or nurture an environment in which under-pressure firms can recover and get people back to work. 

On the populist Right, many of the main protagonists are currently in office. Their knee jerk decision making, based on ideology and emotion as opposed facts and evidence, and their wild policy ideas, have left them exposed as ill-equipped to meet the needs of this moment. President Trump’s suggestion that we inject ourselves with disinfectant provides a good example.

As ever, they will be looking for scapegoats with whom to park the blame for their incompetence.  Our countries do need to build more resilient domestic supply chains for strategic reasons to withstand the type of shock we have experienced. Yet these populists will demand a more drastic approach. There will be calls for deglobalisation and a degree of isolation as a means of protecting citizens, when this crisis has illustrated the importance of co-ordination and collaboration. 

The result—a perfect storm for companies during a pandemic induced global downturn: demands for more red tape, much more regulation, and punitive business taxation at the behest of the populist Left; and, calls for disproportionate restrictions on immigration, more protectionism, and nationalism, at the behest of the populist Right. Both will impede business and trade.

Business needs to see off this threat by acting to ensure that in a post coronavirus world a regulated, social market economy delivers the goods for more people. Everyone must play their part so CEOs need to become more vocal and activist in addressing environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns, not less. They are in a good position to do so. Were it not for their firms’ technologies, enabling us to remain connected to our nearest and dearest, the experience of lockdown would have been a whole lot worse. If companies seize the moment and are in the vanguard of building back a better and fairer economy, those who stand in the way of enterprise will be deprived of the oxygen they need to whip up fear, anger and anti-business sentiment.

The letter sent to Sajid Javid last night is as follows:

Dear Sajid,

Congratulations on your appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

You are taking over at a critical juncture for HM Treasury and for our economy. The prospect of Brexit is already doing real damage to the economy before we have even left the European Union.

And we continue to be saddled with a dysfunctional, unequal economy in which too many people can’t get on and live a secure, happy and fulfilling life. Those who put in the graft are not properly rewarded in 2019. These problems have been severely exacerbated since your party took office in 2015. Therefore, I sincerely hope that as Chancellor you will break from that track record and address these problems.

Brexit and the economy

While you and the new Prime Minister have expressed optimism about Britain’s prospects after Brexit, the country’s foremost economic analysts – and indeed the raw facts – leave no doubt that Brexit is harming our economy in the here and now.

As of this month, the Pound has lost 17% of its value against the dollar since the 2016 referendum.  And the prospect alone that a no-deal Brexit might crystallise under a Boris Johnson premiership sent it to its lowest point of 2019 in June.

The National Institute for Economic and Social Research published a study just this week showing that economic growth has stalled and there is around a one-in-four chance that the economy is already in a technical recession. This comes after the CBI found that our manufacturing industries’ domestic and export orders fell at the fastest rate since the financial crisis in the three months to July.

Surely these indisputable facts must alert you to the serious threat Brexit poses to the UK’s economic wellbeing. Even with a mere 99 days to October 31st, I urge you to act in the country’s interest and push to give the people a final say over Brexit, with Remain on the ballot.

Poverty and inequality

While Brexit is undeniably putting our economy under duress, the factors that largely led to the Brexit vote in the first place are still in place. Are you able to assure the British public that, as Chancellor, you will work to undo the financial squeeze families face up and down the country?

Under your party’s watch, poverty has gone up. The latest available data shows that there are 14.2 million people living in poverty, including 4.5 million children. This is up from 13.4 and 4.2 million respectively in 2015.

Meanwhile, your predecessors have failed to oversee growth in all regions and have not properly invested in the skills of our workforce. The result is that instead of overtaking the EU, like your party claims we will, we are falling behind it: according to Eurostat, of the ten poorest northern European regions, six are in the UK. Our productivity is so poor that it takes the average UK worker five days to produce what his or her German or French counterpart does in four.

During the Conservative leadership race, you proposed scrapping the top income tax rate, a measure that will only benefit the richest. As Chancellor, can you reassure the public that you will prioritise the needs of all Britons – not just the top 1% of earners?

Will you follow the Liberal Democrats’ call for significant investment in public services, skills, and the infrastructure – physical and digital – that our regional economies need to thrive?  Will you take action to put the UK at the forefront of the green economy?  Above all, will you act to ensure that everyone has a stake in the new industries and technologies which are emerging?  At the heart of this must be the vigorous prosecution of a proper industrial strategy

I look forward to hearing your responses to these critical matters, and I hope you will work with us for a prosperous economy that works for all. Good luck!

Yours sincerely,

Chuka Umunna MP
Liberal Democrat Treasury and Business Spokesperson

The Tory membership is in no way representative of modern Britain in its make-up, never mind its views. The ESRC Party Membership Project – run by Professor Tim Bale and others at Queen Mary, University of London – is the most extensive study of the membership of the UK political parties available and they have examined who these members are.

The average age of a UK citizen is 40, over 65s make up around 18 per cent of the population, and those aged between 24 and 18 make up 9 per cent of the population. On this measure, the Tory party is in no way representative. The Project found that the average age of a Tory party member is 57, significantly older, with 38 per cent of Tory party members aged 66 and over, and 7 per cent between 25 and 18 years old.

Tory members are not represented by gender or ethnicity either. The population is split more or less equally between the genders, yet three-quarters of Tory members are men. Whereas around 14 per cent of the population is of an ethnic minority background, just 3 per cent of Tory party members are non-white.

And they are a lot richer than the average Brit too. A large majority of Tory members are drawn from high earners. The average salary in the UK is around £29,500 but 4 out of 10 members put their income at over £30,000 with one in 20 declaring they earn over £100,000. It is no coincidence that Boris Johnson was touting a huge tax cut for the highest-earning 3 per cent in society at the start of the leadership contest.

And this unrepresentative 0.34 per cent of Britain have some pretty extreme views. Jon Stone reported on these pages last week, that they are happy to drive the economy off a cliff and break up the UK to secure Brexit. Sixty one per cent of members are happy to see “significant damage” to the UK if that is the price to be paid for Brexit. Sixty-three per cent said they would be prepared to accept Scottish independence to get Brexit and 59 per cent said the same about a united Ireland.

It gets worse. Today, we learn that 40 per cent of Tory party members think the government should reduce the number of Muslims entering Britain according to a YouGov poll for Hope Not Hate. Just 8 per cent of the party’s members “would be proud of Britain if we were to elect a Muslim as our Prime Minister” and 43 per cent agreed that they “would prefer to not have the country led by a Muslim”. HNH’s campaigns director Matthew McGregor said: “From the grassroots to the great offices of state, Conservative members buy into racist myths, with almost half unwilling to have a Muslim prime minister – and only 8 per cent being proud to have one – and most denying that there’s even an issue to confront.”

This brings me to the man most likely to win the Tory party leadership contest and become prime minister – Johnson. It is quite extraordinary that he should be the frontrunner, not because of the rows he is alleged to have had with his girlfriend but because of his past racist utterances. He has described black people as “piccanninnies” with “watermelon smiles.” Last summer, he compared Muslim women wearing veils to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers.” And, this weekend, none other than Steve Bannon, right-wing populist and former campaign manager to Donald Trump, revealed that he worked with Johnson on his government resignation speech last year. I don’t know whether Johnson is a racist or not – only he can answer that question definitively. But there is no doubt that the aforementioned comments are racist and, at the very least, they reveal a complete disrespect and condescension towards those of a different ethnicity.

Some appreciate the gravity of all of this, like Sky News’ new political editor Beth Rigby, who tackled Johnson about these matters at his first leadership campaign press conference and was jeered by those present for doing so. However, many in the Westminster bubble simply don’t understand the significance and why it matters so much.

I raised Johnson’s racist comments on BBC2’s Politics Live programme last Friday. I was told by Andrew Neil that these past utterances don’t matter in the leadership contest because “people know all that” and are already aware of Johnson’s past racist remarks. On the same programme, one of Johnson’s cheerleaders, Tory Culture Select Committee chair Damian Collins, brushed them aside on the basis that Johnson was twice elected Mayor of multicultural London and therefore they were not such a problem now. The Brexit Party’s new MEP Anne Widdecombe denied Johnson’s remarks were a “big issue”.

But this does matter, which is why I will keep on banging on about it. As a British person of colour, one of the first things that goes through one’s head on hearing such comments is – “if he says that about others, what on earth would he say about my family?” Johnson excuses his disgusting comments by saying his main crime is to speak plainly. “If sometimes in the course of trying to get across what I genuinely think, I use phrases and language that have caused offence, of course, I’m sorry for the offence that I have caused. But I will continue to speak as directly as I can.”

This, to me, is simply not good enough and fails to acknowledge the seriousness of what is at stake. In my view, so many of Johnson’s past comments should disqualify him from the highest office in the land. If he does go on to win this contest and on 25 July visits the Queen and becomes prime minister, I fear it will be another step towards normalising prejudice and hatred in our country. It’s as simple as that.

BCA is the only national heritage centre dedicated to collecting, preserving and celebrating the histories of African and Caribbean people in Britain, yet it has no core funding from the Government, and has seen its funding drop by two-thirds in recent months to an unsustainable level.

Four years of Heritage Lottery Funding has come to an end, resulting in the loss of two thirds of BCA’s revenue funding. This has left the local Council, Lambeth, as BCA’s major funder at a time when Councils across the country are facing unprecedented pressure on their resources. Lambeth Council is a long term supporter of the BCA and remains completely committed to continuing to support BCA, but cannot be expected to plug the current funding gap.

Michael Ellis MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for DCMS, visited BCA in June 2018 and agreed that officials from DCMS would work with BCA as a matter of urgency to address the funding challenges. However, there has been no meaningful follow up with BCA, even following repeated attempt to contact DCMS, and in the meantime BCA had had to undertake a comprehensive internal restructure to respond to the drop in income.

In the letter, the MPs say:

“The BCA is a vitally important institution, which must be supported to address the current funding issues and to achieve a sustainable plan for the future. We are therefore writing to ask that, as a matter of urgency you commit short term funding to sustain the BCA and work with the organisation on a sustainable funding plan for the future, including the establishment of an endowment.”

Paul Reid, Director of the BCA said:

“We call on the broadest spectrum of society from local community, private sector, high net worth individuals, trusts and foundations, through to central government to join our #BackBCA campaign.”

Helen Hayes MP, in whose constituency the BCA is located said:

“The BCA is an amazing organisation with a thirty year history, and its work has never been more important. In this Windrush 70th anniversary year, the Government must step in to place this national organisation on a sustainable financial footing for the future and #BackBCA.”

Chuka Umunna, MP for Streatham and patron of BCA, added:

“Black Cultural Archives is a vitally important institution for the community, and part of keeping our heritage and history alive for the next generation.

“However, in this Windrush anniversary year, the BCA is facing a serious funding crisis. Repeated attempts to reach out to the Government have so far been met with inaction. The Government must act now, before it is too late and this vital pillar of the African-Caribbean community is lost.”

In some senses, my family’s story is a modern British story. My father was 23 when he arrived in 1964 from Nigeria. He had one suitcase and no money. He found a job as a cook in south London, then worked in a car wash. He was ambitious. He saved his money. He took an accountancy course and then he built his own import-export business. He worked damn hard.

My mother was a probation officer and in the early years she supported the family while my father built up his business. Later she set up a catering business, ran a market stall and then became a lawyer.

They both gave me the desire to work hard to provide for my own family. They both put their family, and the welfare of their children, first. They taught me responsibility and love.

Through the incredible stories and experiences of our families – of immigrants who travelled from far and wide to these shores – we have learned those values of working hard, of making a contribution, and of playing fair. I believe these progressive values are deeply rooted in the traditions and institutions of our country.

I was 13 when my father was killed in a car crash and cruelly taken from us. This tragedy taught me that life can be dark and precarious. As you would expect, his death changed my life. I had imagined I would follow him into his business. But that was all gone. So instead I took a different path and trained to become a lawyer. I practised as a solicitor specialising in employment law, acting for companies, entrepreneurs and individuals.

My father’s death taught me that people need one another. We need a society which recognises our mutual obligations, and our need to belong. We share in the good times and we support one another in the bad. These beliefs are what make me a social democrat, they are what make me centre-left. Up until the last couple of years, the centre-left was always considered to be a legitimate part of the Labour tradition.

My social democratic, centre-left beliefs are what drove me to seek to put something back into my community as its member of parliament. Our tradition is one that in office ensured the MacPherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence was established and acted on; which outlawed discrimination not only on the basis of one’s race but on the basis of your religion too; which saw to it that SureStart children’s centres, which disproportionately benefit BAME families, were set up in every community; which instituted the first ever national minimum wage; which put in place the education maintenance allowance; and so much more.

There is now a clear and present danger that this tradition is driven out of our party. Having only been re-elected by their constituents last year, already centre-left MPs are being targeted systematically with motions against them for standing up for these values – for demanding we have a zero tolerance of racism in our party. More motions such as this are expected by colleagues. My message to our leadership: it is within your power to stop this so call off the dogs and get on with what my constituency, one of the most diverse communities in the nation, demands we do – without equivocation, fight this Tory Brexit. That is where all our efforts should be.

Because today we are meeting as parliament seeks to tackle the biggest issue this country has faced since the second world war. An issue that impacts on every policy area like no other, and every family like no other. As we seek to make our way through this mess which the Tories have created, we will need to be guided by our centre-left values more than ever because only those values can provide a route through all of this.

The vote to leave the EU has already had a materially adverse impact on people’s lives and we have not even left yet. Our different diverse communities will be affected more than most, which is why it is so important that BAME voices are heard loud and clear in this Brexit process. This conference could not be better timed.

The handling of Brexit in the two years since the referendum has been an utter shambles. Whether you voted Leave or Remain, nobody said it would be like this and no one voted for such chaos and incompetence.

Food prices have already increased as a result. If we leave without a deal, the chair of one of our biggest supermarkets tells me they will increase by a further 10 per cent. This hammers those on low and middle incomes whose weekly supermarket shop makes up a higher proportion of their spending.

The promised £350m extra per week for the National Health Service is nowhere to be seen. Instead, doctors and nurses from the EU are leaving the NHS in droves just when we have a staffing shortage. Over 10,000 EU health workers have already left and the number of EU nurses joining the register to work in the UK fell by 91 per cent in the last year. Boris Johnson omitted to plaster these devastating consequences on his big red bus.

Businesses are already moving European operations and jobs from here to the continent.

Panasonic has announced it is moving its European head office to Amsterdam to avoid potential tax issues related to the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Airbus warned in June it could move operations out of the UK if Britain leaves without a deal.

Over 10,000 EU health workers have already left and the number of EU nurses joining the register to work in the UK fell by 91 per cent in the last year. Boris Johnson omitted to plaster these devastating consequences on his big red bus.

In short, the gap between what was promised and what has happened, is gaping. Whatever you thought of the claims made and however you voted in 2016, 2018 has proved Brexit in the form it was sold is impossible to deliver.

And what have the Brexiters done, having visited this chaos on us. Of the many Brexit cons few are greater than the idea that this is a fight for the people against the elite. How can it be when even before leaving the EU the average family is now £900 a year worse off?

That may be peanuts to the people leading the charge to the cliff edge. But it is a huge amount of money to the ‘Just About Managing’ families that Theresa May said would always come ahead of the ‘privileged few’. It is a huge amount of money to people in my constituency who cannot make ends meet.

Let me be absolutely clear – it is a privileged few who are the ones pushing hardest for a hard or no deal Brexit, but it will make those ‘just about managing’ families even poorer.

Hard Brexit is a project of the elite. For the elite.

And what exactly have they been doing to protect themselves from the fallout from Brexit? Jacob Rees-Mogg’s City investment firm has shifted money to Ireland amid concerns about being cut off from European investors. Nigel Lawson is seeking residency in France. And Boris Johnson has gone back to his previously £275,000 a year column writing, rather than sticking to the job and delivering what he argued for. He is more concerned with the Tory party leadership.

Which is why we on the left must fight it.

Of course, our different diverse communities already feel all of this. But we have felt something that we thought we would not have to live through again, certainly not in the same way as the first generation who arrived here decades ago like my father: the normalisation of the hatred which this Brexit debate has unleashed.

In Britain, the level of hate crime committed rose by 49 per cent in the weeks following the referendum. This is now backed by a substantial body of academic research showing that the referendum materially increased hate crime in this country during and after it occurred. The UN’s committee on the elimination of racial discrimination concluded that ‘British politicians helped fuel a steep rise in racist hate crimes during and after the EU referendum campaign’. In the evidence they gave to the cross party Home Affairs select committee, Hope Not Hate identified Johnson, Nigel Farage and the campaigns of which they were a part for carrying a heavy responsibility for creating the environment in which this happened.

As a result, a small unpleasant minority felt licenced to engage in and vocalise hate due to the disgraceful nature of the Leave campaigns. Stoking hatred and division will be part of their appalling legacy and our different BAME communities have already paid the price and are still doing so.

In the face of all of this, it would be a complete betrayal of our values for the Labour party to act as a bystander and wave through this disastrous Brexit, for which there is no majority in parliament, let alone the country. It is simply not good enough to adopt a position which refuses to make the case for a People’s Vote on the deal and at the same time leave it on the table as an option in the event of impasse in the House of Commons. That is simply constructive ambiguity continued, which needs to be junked.

An overwhelming majority of our voters and our members, alongside important affiliates – such as Community Union, the GMB and the TSSA – have a clear and unequivocal position: democracy demands the people get the final say on how this country leaves the EU and whether ultimately we leave, given the appalling Brexit we have been saddled with. So let us dump the prevarication, stop using internal factional reasons as an excuse to avoid it, and back a People’s Vote wholeheartedly now.

We owe it to future generations – no other course can ensure progress. Progress is what we are supposed to be in the business of securing, for everyone in this country, regardless of creed, colour, class or background. So let’s do it.