EQUALITIES DATA COLLECTION AND MONITORING

The Labour Party needs comprehensive equality monitoring. There should be anonymous equality
monitoring at all national and regional events. It is a continuous process. Currently we do not have
good enough data on the participation of BAME, disabled and LGBT+ members although we
believe there has been a significant increase in the number of BAME and disabled members in
recent years.
Both BAME and disabled members say they expect the Labour Party to know who they are and for
this information to be held on our central membership system so we can have a dialogue with
them, contact them about events, training and policy discussion and develop networks.
Labour currently asks members when they join whether they are BAME, disabled and/ or LGBT+
and holds that information on the membership system. Work is being undertaken to ensure that it
will be possible for this information to be put on the membership system at any time. It is
envisaged this work will be completed in 2018. This will enable the Labour Party to ask BAME and
disabled members to self-define. All of this of course must be done in a way which is compliant
with data protection legislation and the right to privacy.
Once we have the technology in place there should be a concerted attempt to ask BAME members
and disabled members to self-define.
The consultation we have had with LGBT Labour and others in the LGBT+ community is that there
are different views as to whether LGBT+ data should be held on the membership system. Work is
continuing to enable this data to be held on the membership system should we wish but the
Review recommends that LGBT+ data is not held on the membership system.
This does not stop anonymous equality monitoring which should be carried out routinely at
Labour events.
More comprehensive equality monitoring will enable the Party to identify potential barriers to
participation and look at potential positive action.

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