Women and Equalities Committee Launches COVID-19 Inquiry "Unequal impact: Coronavirus (Covid-19) and the impact on people with protected characteristics"

The Women and Equalities Committee wants to hear about the different and disproportionate impact that the Coronavirus – and measures to tackle it - is having on people with protected characteristics under the Equality Act.

This includes LGBT+ people!

You can find the call for the evidence in full below:

The Committee has been concerned to hear that people with protected characteristics are disproportionately affected by Covid-19 and the Government’s response, including the emergency Coronavirus Bill.  We are particularly interested to hear about what impact these measures have had, and will continue to have, and whether the Government’s aim to support workers and people more widely have considered all relevant equality impacts.  The Committee is calling for written submissions about:

Your experiences. We want to know:

  1. How people have been affected by the illness or the response to it

  2. If there have been specific impacts on people due to them having a protected characteristic

  3. Whether there may be unforeseen consequences to measures brought in to ease the burden on frontline staff, for example relaxing the measures under the Mental Health Act and Care Act)

Reviewing the measures

The Government has said current measures will be reviewed in three weeks’ time, and measures in the Coronavirus Bill be voted on again in 6 months’ time.

  1. What needs to change or improve, which could be acted on in three weeks’ time;

  2. What needs to change or improve, which could be acted on in 6 months’ time.

You can comment from a personal, organisational or expert opinion, or a mixture.

We would like to hear from you by 30 April 2020. If you cannot get it to us before then, please don’t worry, as it will still be useful to us if you submit it later. The sooner you can get it to us, the more likely the Committee can use it to press the Government to reconsider the current measures at the three-week review

We know that some impacts will be immediate, and others will be felt further in the future. We will look to follow-up this work in 12 months’ time to build a more complete picture of how people with protected characteristics have been affected.  

 Your submission

If your submission is accepted by the Committee, it will usually be published online. It will then be available permanently for anyone to view. It can’t be changed or removed.

If you have included your name or any personal information in your submission, that will be published too. Please consider how much personal information you want or need to share. Your contact details will never be published.

Decisions about publishing evidence anonymously, or about accepting but not publishing evidence, are made by the Committee. If you want to ask the Committee to keep your evidence anonymous (we’ll publish your evidence but not your name or personal details) or confidential (the Committee will read your evidence but it won’t be published) then please tick the box on the form. This lets the Committee know what you would like but the final decision will be taken by the Committee.

We can’t publish submissions that mention ongoing legal cases – contact us if you are not sure what this means for you.

Please feel welcome to discuss any questions with the Committee staff on [email protected]; 020 7219 6123