Government’s ethnic minority adviser quits after race report
The Prime Minister’s most senior adviser on ethnic minorities is set to step down from his role at Number 10, it has emerged.
Samuel Kasumu will leave his post as special adviser for civil society and communities and May, Politico first revealed.
In February, Kasumu wrote to the Boris Johnson saying he was considering leaving over “unbearable” tensions within Number 10, according to the BBC.
Downing Street sources rejected suggestions his departure was linked to the findings of a government-commissioned report on race released yesterday.
The report, which found that the UK “no longer” had a system rigged against minorities, was accused of ignoring black and ethnic minority people’s concerns.
Black Lives Matter UK tweeted that it was “disappointed” that the report overlooked disproportionality in the criminal justice system.
Meanwhile, former equality and human rights commissioner Lord Simon Woolley said he had received a “deluge of calls” following the report’s publication, with one woman telling him it could have been “straight out of the 1980s”.
“I had a whole range of feelings, actually — anger, despair, and I think above all sadness, great sadness,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“And it wasn’t just me. I had a deluge of calls, people calling up saying ‘Simon, is this for real? In 2021, are we still having to justify whether structural race inequality exists, rather than tackling it?’