Windrush scandal made ethnic minority people ‘fearful’ of using cancer services

Fears that their data would be shared with the Home Office following the Windrush scandal left some people from ethnic minorities afraid to access cancer services during the pandemic, an NHS England document has revealed.

The paper from the West Midlands Cancer Alliance said there was a “perception” the government was “accelerating immigration removals” and that, as a result, “individuals (particularly those affected by the Windrush scandal) are then fearful of accessing cancer treatment and may not participate in screening programmes for fear their information will be inappropriately shared with the Home Office”.

The news comes after figures released last week showed the fall-off in referral and treatment of Black-British patients for cancer during the early stages of the pandemic was sharper than for their White-British counterparts.

Referrals and first treatments for cancer dipped across the board in April last year.

However, by July, White patients were receiving 77 per cent of the treatment volumes they had done 12 months before. The figure for Black patients was 67 per cent. This 10 percentage point difference continued in August and September, as treatment volumes for White-British patients recovered to 83 and 91 per cent respectively. Parity was achieved from October to December 2020, the latest period for which data is available.

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Source: HSJ, 22 April 2021