Campaigners have requested Prime Minister Boris Johnson to withdraw widely discredited report into racism and should instead implement recommendations of past inquiries.
This was followed by a news report that Downing Street officials rewrote much of the Race and Ethnic disparities’ report, despite electing an independent commission to conduct an investigation into racial inequality in the UK.
The landmark review, which was published last month by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, has been roundly criticised after it found no evidence of “institutional racism”.
According to The Observer, significant sections of the report were not written by the 12 commissioners who were appointed by Boris Johnson last July.
The 258-page document was allegedly not made available to be read in full or signed off by the group, nor were the committee members made aware of its 24 final recommendations. Instead, it is alleged that the finished report was produced by No 10.
Quoting one anonymous member of the committee, who accused the government of “bending” the work of its commission to fit “a more palatable” political narrative.
“We did not read Tony’s foreword,” said the commissioner. “We did not deny institutional racism or play that down as the final document did.
“The idea that this report was all our own work is full of holes. You can see that in the inconsistency of the ideas and data it presents and the conclusions it makes. That end product is the work of very different views.”
The commissioner said that they had been privy only to the section of the report they were assigned and that not much time was given to “something of this magnitude”.
A source involved in the commission told The Observer that “basic fundamentals in putting a document like this together were ignored.”
In a letter to the Prime Minister, groups including Black Lives Matter UK say the government-commissioned report had “provoked national indignation” as it “whitewashes the daily challenges faced by black and minority communities”.
No 10 denied the claim that its officials rewrote parts of the 258-page document.