{"id":85573,"date":"2017-10-20T10:24:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-20T10:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=edcd7a46622c45d437f679dded845796"},"modified":"2017-10-20T10:24:00","modified_gmt":"2017-10-20T10:24:00","slug":"speech-a-beacon-for-the-black-business-leaders-of-tomorrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=85573","title":{"rendered":"Speech: A beacon for the black business leaders of tomorrow"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Good afternoon everyone, and thank you to the Black British Business Awards team for inviting me to join you all here today (19 October 2017).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a real honour to be here.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s a pleasure to be back in the City. I spent many happy years working in finance, including just up the road at Deutsche Bank.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fair to say that bankers aren\u2019t the most-loved people in Britain.<\/p>\n

When I left banking to become a politician I got the feeling I was the only new MP who was moving into a more popular profession!<\/p>\n

I might go for the hat-trick next, become an estate agent!<\/p>\n

That business background has followed me throughout my political career.<\/p>\n

A lot of people were angry when I first joined the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Culture.<\/p>\n

They said \u201cWhat does this banker know about the arts?\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, I think they said \u201cbanker\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

Still, at least they knew who I was.<\/p>\n

Some guy came up to me a little while back, wanted to shake my hand, take a selfie.<\/p>\n

I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, had a nice little chat.<\/p>\n

And as he walks off he\u2019s on the phone to his mate and he says \u201cI just met Sadiq Khan!\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve no idea who he was.<\/p>\n

I mean, white people, they all look the same, don\u2019t they?<\/p>\n

Anyway, as I say, it\u2019s a pleasure to be here today celebrating the very best of Black British Business.<\/p>\n

I shall be tweeting about it later.<\/p>\n

And, when I do, I know that at least one person will reply asking why there\u2019s no White British Business Awards!<\/p>\n

They will, of course, be missing the point.<\/p>\n

You just have to look at the nominees here today to see the incredible contribution that black men and women make to British businesses of all shapes and sizes.<\/p>\n

Yet you\u2019re still woefully under-represented at higher levels and in boardrooms.<\/p>\n

And, as research shows, most companies lack a coherent strategy to help people from ethnic minorities overcame the barriers that stop them moving up from middle management.<\/p>\n

As one of the finalists here today put it:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe system was not designed by people of colour and it\u2019s not designed for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to think things are better than they used to be.<\/p>\n

30-something years ago, when I was first applying to join some of the big British merchant banks, it wasn\u2019t the easiest business for someone like me to get into.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d walk into an interview and the panel would all kind of recoil in shock.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t imagine why.<\/p>\n

Must\u2019ve been my haircut\u2026<\/p>\n

But for all the progress that has been made there is still, obviously, a long way to go.<\/p>\n

We need the business world to do more.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month the government published an unprecedented collection of data<\/a> on racial disparities.<\/p>\n

It showed how well \u2013 or badly \u2013 people from different ethnic groups are served by the public sector.<\/p>\n

The first step to overcoming a problem is to admit that you\u2019ve got one and get a grip on exactly how it presents itself.<\/p>\n

This data release will help the public sector do that, and I\u2019d urge private businesses to follow the same approach.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not enough to say you don\u2019t discriminate, to say you\u2019re an equal opportunities employer.<\/p>\n

You should show it through your actions.<\/p>\n

You should recruit from a wider base, create talent pathways, acknowledge and confront unconscious bias.<\/p>\n

And the next generation, the stars of tomorrow, need to know that business is a viable, welcoming, rewarding career path.<\/p>\n

That is why we have the Black British Business Awards.<\/p>\n

That is why we need the Black British Business Awards.
\nBecause the achievements of the nominees and winners here today are worthy of celebration in and of themselves.<\/p>\n

But, more than that, they can serve as a beacon to young black people right across the country.<\/p>\n

They show what is possible.<\/p>\n

What can be done.<\/p>\n

And to the wider business world, the Black British Business Awards show how out of date the stereotypes are.<\/p>\n

They prove that overlooking people of colour isn\u2019t just bad practice, but bad for business.<\/p>\n

They demonstrate what a company is missing out on if they fail to recruit and retain talented black men and women.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot to celebrate today, and a lot more still to do.<\/p>\n

But I believe that, together, we can overcome the systemic issues that still create racial barriers for too many people in this country.<\/p>\n

We owe it to ourselves.<\/p>\n

We owe it to the next generation.<\/p>\n

And we owe it to the generations who came before us.<\/p>\n

Because if there\u2019s one thing that unites most of us here today, it\u2019s the debt we owe to those who came before us.<\/p>\n

For my generation it\u2019s our parents, for many of you it\u2019ll be your grandparents, maybe even your great-grandparents.<\/p>\n

My parents came to Britain from Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Maybe yours came from the Caribbean, or from Africa or elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Wherever they came from, they came here because they wanted a better life.<\/p>\n

A better life not just for them, but for their children and their children\u2019s children.<\/p>\n

They wanted the next generation to have opportunities they had only dreamed of.<\/p>\n

And they were willing to give up everything they had, leave their families behind, and move thousands of miles to a country that was unfamiliar, often unwelcoming\u2026 and extremely cold!<\/p>\n

They came here and they worked and they worked.<\/p>\n

And they laid a path for us to follow.<\/p>\n

I know that I\u2019m only here today because of the values I learned from my parents, from the example they set me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard similar tales again and again from members of almost every ethnic minority group.<\/p>\n

So, just as previous generations inspired us, fought for us, cleared the way for us, let us do the same for business leaders of tomorrow. Thank you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid speaks at the fourth annual Black British Business Awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}