LONDON — U.K. Equalities Minister Liz Truss said Thursday the government will tackle inequality by “leveling up” opportunities rather than relying on “identity politics” and quotas.
Boris Johnson’s Conservatives vowed during the 2019 election campaign to “level up” the country, focusing on investing in regions neglected by successive governments. Speaking at the Centre for Policy Studies think tank, Truss said the government needed to focus on geographic disparities to meet its promises to voters.
This pledge, she said, had helped the party win traditionally Labour-held seats, and Truss demanded action to tackle issues facing white working-class children.
“Whether it’s affirmative action, forced training on unconscious bias, or lectures on lived experience the Left are in thrall to ideas that undermine equality at every turn,” Truss, who also serves in the U.K. Cabinet as Trade Secretary, argued.
Instead, she contended, government efforts should focus on improving schools and ending workplace discrimination. Any effort should be led by “facts” and not “fashion.” There should be no more paying lip service to social problems, Truss said, citing her own experience at her Leeds-based comprehensive school, where she said lessons on race and sexism reduced time “making sure everyone could read and write.”
This fed a “soft bigotry of low expectations, where people from certain backgrounds are not expected to reach high standards,” Truss argued.
Truss’s speech, however, comes after data published Wednesday and analyzed by POLITICO showed a widening gender pay gap in her own department. The gulf at the Department for International Trade has increased more than three percentage points to 15.9 percent in the year to March 2020. The department’s gender pay gap is second only to that of the Treasury, and above the civil service average. A skew towards men as a greater proportion of senior staff did not explain pay disparity within grades.
Truss has also faced criticism from political opponents about the gender balance of her trade advisers. According to data shared with the Guardian by the Labour party, of the 250 trade advisers appointed during her tenure, fewer than a quarter are women and 95 percent are white.
A trade department official defended the disparity, saying the skew towards white men reflected the imbalance in senior business roles.