(The Minister for Women and
Equalities): On Friday 12 July, the Prime Minister
announced the creation of the Office for Tackling Injustices.
This is a new organisation that will hold the Government and
wider society to account for tackling key social injustices.
Despite the great progress we have made in promoting fair
treatment for all in the UK, we know that too many of our
citizens are still held back by the injustice of unequal
treatment on the grounds of their socio-economic background,
ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or disability.
The Prime Minister has spoken of her determination to tackle
these ‘burning injustices’. But all Governments should work to
end the injustices that continue to characterise our country for
too many. The Office for Tackling Injustices (OfTI) will focus
minds on how to create a fairer country in the decades to come.
By shining a light on data on injustices and monitoring change,
the OfTI will provide evidence-based challenge to future
Governments and wider society to tackle disparities in social and
economic outcomes. Data is a hard, sometimes uncomfortable fact,
but publishing it and communicating it clearly forces Government
and others to hold a mirror up to their own performance and
challenge themselves to do better.
The OfTI will have a remit covering social injustices relating to
ethnicity, gender, disability, socio-economic background and
LGBT. As well as annually delivering a data-driven report on
progress to Parliament, the OfTI will also publish thematic
studies into issues relevant to its mandate. It will make use of
relevant published data from various public authorities,
monitoring trends and considering the underlying causes and
drivers for them
