The British Medical Association has claimed that the Sewell report ‘ignored well-documented’ evidence of structural racism.
The doctors union refuted the report’s overall findings and said the government-appointed Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED) missed opportunities to identify effective solutions to tackling racial inequality.
The response states that the CRED report’s findings do not give a true picture of the barriers, including factors related to institutional racism - racist, or discriminatory processes, policies, attitudes or behaviours within the healthcare sector - faced by many people from ethnic minority backgrounds. The BMA says the Commission is missing opportunities to identify effective solutions to tackle racial inequalities within the UK.
The BMA analyses the CRED race report’s doctor-specific findings based on preceding research and well-documented disproportionate outcomes and negative experiences of many doctors from ethnic minority backgrounds in education, training, and the workplace.
The response also critiques the elements of the report that relate to inequalities in health, such as the fact that the 85 per cent of the doctors who died from coronavirus were from ethnic minority backgrounds, and the ongoing disproportionate impact that the pandemic has had on people from some ethnic minority groups.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, BMA chair of council, said: “The way in which the authors chose to analyse the data and evidence submitted to the Commission questions the validity of the entire report. They made sweeping statements of success and as such showed little acknowledgement of the indisputable disparities in experiences and outcomes for doctors from ethnic minority backgrounds. When the NHS began in 1948, short-staffed positions were filled with staff from UK colonies and former colonies. As such the NHS has always been more racially diverse than the UK population itself. While the report celebrates this diversity, it ignores the lived experience of many ethnic minority healthcare workers as well as the wealth of evidence which shows that for these staff working in the NHS has been, at best, unfair and unequal. There simply hasn’t been enough progress made here.
“What the evidence does show is that structural racism is prevalent in the NHS. A recent BMA survey, which was submitted to the Commission by the BMA, found that 16.7 per cent of ethnic minority staff compared to 6.2 per cent of white staff reported experiencing discrimination at work from a manager, team leader or other colleagues as well has reporting twice the level of bullying and harassment. Race disparities in the pass rate of postgraduate exams; unequal opportunities to progress into more senior roles; and the fact that several studies have shown there is a significant pay gap between doctors from an ethnic minority background compared with doctors from a white background, all demonstrate continued systemic racism. So the authors’ decision to ignore the well-documented facts presented to them, failed to use the Commission as an opportunity to address the root causes and provide a plan to create a post-racial society in the UK – which by their own admission, the UK has not yet reached.
“The documentation of racism occurring at a systemic level within the NHS is enormous, tough to process, very often not addressed and assumed to be part of the job for ethnic minority doctors and healthcare workers. This should not be the case and it is hard to comprehend how the CRED race report failed to see this. Having missed an opportunity with this report we’d strongly urge the government to take the BMA’s response seriously and begin to tackle structural racism within the health service so that the values of fairness and equity we ascribe to patient care applies equally to those that work within the NHS. We hope that Sajid Javid, the first Health Secretary at Westminster from an ethnic minority background, will press forward in making the changes needed to address the structural racism within the healthcare sector.”
