Transcript

and the council, you know, build on what it's doing to be inclusive in the way it delivers service. Who else in Newham, in the schools, in culture, in business should be playing a part in inclusion and belonging? What can citizens do? So that's the challenge we face, I think, to hear, to engage, to reflect back and then hopefully to offer some practical ideas about how to make useful forward progress, you know, in challenging times. So thank you very much for the invitation to do this and I look forward to hearing your questions too. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any questions from members to Sandra Katwala? Councillor Sabia Kamali? Thank you for that. How does your approach to fostering inclusion and belonging different from the current council strategy, particularly in addressing the impact of ethnicity, faith and other protective characteristics? Where do you believe the council has failed and fallen short in genuinely engaging with residents and stakeholders? What specific gaps exist in its current approach to tackling hate and discrimination and what bold, tangible action should be taken to ensure real accountability and last change takes place? Thanks. I hope by the time we've done the work we'll be able to answer all of your questions about what's gone right, what's gone wrong, what needs to change. I think we'll obviously build on what's already happened. I think one of the reasons the council has embarked on this comes out of the LGA corporate peer challenge to say, we know Newham has got a lot of experience here, we know it's important, but you should also elevate its prominence. You should also reflect, I think, that, you know, the pace of change speeds up, that the economy, international events are making this tougher. So I don't have an answer as to what would we critique, what would we support, but we are engaging with the data, we're engaging with the council officers, we're engaging with people outside the council to build the evidence. But I think at the end of this discussion engagement phase, we'll have a better balance of what's going right, what needs to change, and then we'll have the challenge of making the kinds of recommendations to the different actors that can bring about change. It might be the council, it might be the police, it might be other actors that need to do what you're saying, which is make people really feel that inclusion and belonging is very central, and that, you know, it's obviously an important issue in a place like this, but people want to see that priority recognised and reflected in impactful things that make a difference. Thank you, I look forward to your report. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Sabia Kamali. I'll invite Councillor John Gray to ask his questions. Yeah, Councillor John Gray, West Ham Ward, and thank you for a really, really good presentation on an important subject. My question regarding inclusivity is regarding social economic class, which now, of course, the new Labour government is going to introduce a duty on local authorities to actually take steps to tackle social economic class. And again, as it was mentioned before about those, you know, disgraceful riots that took place last year, you know, as somebody from a working class background, I was ashamed that members of my class were acting in such a way. And, you know, but, you know, but, you know, it's very easy just to shout racist at them, shouting, calling somebody a racist doesn't stop them being a racist, you have to be able to, to, to deal with the arguments, you have to address the underlying economic issues behind, racists have always used unemployment, bad housing, poverty, as an excuse to discriminate. So, um, of course, also for black, disabled women, due to intersectionality, you know, they suffer the most as well from inequalities in the social economic class. And for a borough like Newham, where there are huge differences in wealth, I welcome your thoughts on what work you can do to address this important issue. Thank you. Thanks. I think it's a, I think it's a very well made, a well made point. I think, I think in Newham, you're well beyond this idea that inclusion is about, you know, minorities joining something else. It's an everybody issue. But I think, I think you're exactly right that, you know, when people play a kind of competing grievances game, is it, do you care about ethnic diversity or do you care about gender or do you care about social class? To get it right, you know, it's a majority experience, you know, being from a minority or non-white background, it's a majority experience in Newham, but all of these things affect everybody. So we've got to integrate those points. I think, you know, we're hearing about a backlash against inclusion. You know, we don't live, thankfully, in Donald Trump's America. We don't want that kind of backlash, but it's a chance to say, if we're going to get this right here, we've got to reflect, you know, the intersectionality, the experience of class and belonging. There's a white working class. There's an Asian and black working class. There are shared interests there. There are attempts to divide those interests as well. So I think, I think we've got to, we've got to reflect that in the way we hear from people. You know, you've got the opportunities of economic change and that people feel left out of those opportunities as well. Well, thank you for your time with us, Sondra Katwala. Is there any other you'd like to ask questions? If I may, I've got two questions. Sondra, what is it that we can be doing as elected representatives to help support the engagement with the work of the commission, yourself and other commissioners? And perhaps you could kindly just provide a bit more of an overview around the approach the commission is going to be taking. And then my final question was in relation to issues of intersectionality and how you anticipate that being addressed in a place that, in so many different ways and with so much richness and depth, is a genuine melting pot of a borough of wonderful people demonstrating the brilliance of connected communities. But also, in these ominous times, how we hold people together during times of challenging crisis. And what are some emerging thoughts in your mind that will help frame the conversations that you're looking at having, including those difficult conversations? Thank you. Yes, on the practical point, we'll start with an open survey. We'll also start with engagement. You know, we'll also get out in the streets. We've got some support as well from students and master's students to help us do this. We'll have a call for evidence for those who are civic stakeholders and have expertise at that level. We'll be trying to hear, you know, from individuals as well. I think counsellors can help by, you know, hosting something yourselves, giving us your information, call of evidence, holding things, you know, at the hyper-local level that you can do, encouraging people to do it. So we'll share that information so you can do that. And I think the intersectionality challenge is obviously absolutely central to this. And it's about how we link up with the other work that you're doing on fairness. We don't try to fix everything to fix something. But we've got to be cognizant of all of those issues and how they interrelate in order to make useful recommendations. So, you know, I don't want to give too much of my view because I want the commissioners that we recruit to come to a view together about what this means now. But I think the way in which those issues intersect is something our group will bring a lot of lived experience and professional experience to. And hopefully we can come up with a way of talking about that that makes this an everybody issue, not an issue for specific groups and specific people. Thank you. Are there any other members who still ask any questions? No? No, in that note, thank you for your time with us, Sondra Kattwala. We know that you are extremely busy and we appreciate your time. Thank you. I'm now moving to item 13. Questions, members' questions under rule 12 of part of 4 of the Constitution. I can confirm, I can inform that chamber that there are four questions received and accepted by the Chief Executive. The questions with the published responses can be seen on the wardrobe paper published earlier today. The questions are from Councillor Chantal Federer, Nate Higgins, Joshua Garfield.