Posted on February 5, 2013

Tory Plan for Ethnic Count at FTSE Firms

Telegraph (London), January 29, 2013

David Cameron has reportedly told the Cabinet to develop policies to appeal to ethnic communities.

One idea would encourage Stock Exchange-listed companies to state how many ethnic minority workers they employ and how many have been recruited over the past year, the Times reported.

Conservative Cabinet ministers have been told that Mr Cameron’s modernising drive have not changed decades-old antipathy towards the party from ethnic minorities.

Alok Sharma, the Tory party vice-chairman and MP for Reading West, has been charged by Mr Cameron with providing ideas, he told the newspaper.

One idea would involve exerting similar pressure as the Government’s recommendation that at least a quarter of boards of FTSE 100 companies be made up of women by 2015.

Instead it would involve ethnic breakdowns at different levels of seniority, he said.

He told the newspaper: “You could also have some sort of voluntary code for listed companies to say, if you’ve taken on 10 people this year and you had 100 interviews and you had 1,000 people who applied, can we see the breakdown by gender and ethnic balance?”

Kris Hopkins, MP for Keighley and a leader of the 301 group of Tory MPs urging the party hierarchy to reach out to non-traditional Conservative voters, added that the party’s problem with ethnic minorities was still an issue.