Decades of failure to act on racism inquiries leaves UK in 'doom loop'

Study finds a majority of report recommendations were never implemented

- Aamna Mohdin Chris Osuh Raphael Boyd

Only a third of the recommendations from major reports commissioned to tackle endemic racism in the UK over the past 40 years have actually been implemented, a Guardian investigation has found.

The analysis - published before the fifth anniversary of the Black Lives Matter protests - has led experts involved in some of those inquiries to demand that the government break the "doom loop" of inaction.

In the face of the rightwing backlash against equalities work, they have urged ministers to act on the hundreds of recommendations that have been ignored.

The Guardian analysed 12 reports into racial inequality commissioned by ministers since 1981, often in response to unrest over events such as the Windrush scandal and the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

Of the nearly 600 recommendations - which span education, business, health, the criminal justice system and community cohesion - analysis found that less than a third had been fully actioned, and that progress on others had been reversed or significantly eroded during years of government austerity policies.

Just under a third of recommendations were not implemented at all. The remainder were only partly implemented - often in symbolic, limited or inconsistent ways - or were too vague or difficult to measure.

Labour MPs said the UK was trapped in "a performative cycle", where a crisis prompted a report to be commissioned to "diffuse anger" and its recommendations were later quietly shelved.

Prof Ted Cantle, a former chief executive of Nottingham city council, led the community cohesion review team after the 2001 riots in northern towns with predominantly white and Asian populations. The analysis suggested that only an estimated 5% of his recommendations had been fully implemented - while more than a third had not been implemented at all.

The rest had been partly implemented or deemed not measurable for this analysis.