Tackling racism ‘must be core’ to 10-year health plan

The government’s 10-year plan will fail if it does not tackle racism in the health service, the chair of the NHS Confederation has said.

Lord Victor Adebowale has insisted that addressing it cannot be seen as a “nice-to-do or at the edges of what people consider serious”.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Race and Health Observatory last week he said: “The 10-year plan, I’m just being honest, it’s going to fail unless you deal with [racism]. You cannot engage with the workforce of the NHS unless you do something about the racism because, frankly, they comprise 26 per cent of your workforce.”

He said private sector leaders “if they’ve got 26 per cent of their workforce, looking like various shades of me and feeling like the workforce does at the moment, they would consider that as a serious risk to growth and profit”.

“The 10-year plan will fail if equity isn’t driven in,” he said. “One of the key tests of the plan is that race equity is built in from the beginning. It cannot be seen as a nice-to-do, or at the edges of what serious people consider serious. It has to be at the core.”

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Source: HSJ, 11 November 2024