>>Simon Stevens, Chief Executive, NHS England: The National Health Service has for decades,
depended on the talents of all of the people of this country, and indeed many from overseas
who come and devote their professional careers to supporting patients in this country. The
fact is that 1 in 5 of our staff in the National Health Service are from black or minority
ethnic communities, but often, the treatment that they get at work does not correspond
to the Values that the NHS represents. So the reason that the Workforce Race Equality
Standard matters is threefold. First, because, statement of the obvious,
we should treat people with respect and fairness. That goes with human rights and that goes
deep to the core of what each of us believe. But actually, there are two other really important
reasons as well. The second of the three reasons is that we’ve a huge reservoir of talent
that we are not fully tapping into by virtue of the barriers that we place in the way of
the contributions that the 1 in 5 of our staff can make, and so when you think about the
promotion prospects the support that people get, you see the stratification if you like
that occurs, the direct and indirect discrimination across the National Health Service, and so
if you want to make the full use of the hundreds of thousands of people from diverse backgrounds
in the National Health Service, then we’ve got to tackle workforce race equality.
But there’s a third reason as well, which is that if we are in the business of reducing
health inequalities, which we are, then we have to be more sensitive and open to the
different needs, the different ways of engaging, the different preferences that all of the
communities that we are here to serve represent. And the fact is that often some of the most
dissatisfied people with the care that they get, often the people who find services hardest
to interact with, and as a result miss out on prevention opportunities and end up, say
getting their cancer or mental health treatment much later, often when it’s much harder
then, to give them a good outcome. Those are people who miss out because the way in which
our care is provided is not sufficiently grounded in the communities that we are here to serve.
So tackling the diversity of our workforce will also have an impact on our ability to
reduce health inequalities.
>>Yvonne Coghill, WRES Co-Director, NHS EnglandThe Five Year Forward View
is a policy that we have within NHS England. It is an important
policy, it is an important strategy. Without having black and minority ethnic people at
the very centre of our thinking, it would be very, very difficult to deliver on the
Five Year Forward View, which is looking at different models of care. Looking at different
models of care means that you have to be innovative, creative and think in a different way. If
we are looking at thinking in a different way, we need a diverse workforce to be able
to do that, and having black and minority ethnic people in all sections of the NHS,
at all levels, is absolutely fundamental and key to us making sure that the Five Year Forward
View is delivered, and high quality patient care comes as standard to all our patients
across the whole of the NHS.
>>Professor Sir Malcolm Grant CBE, Chair, NHS England: Workforce Race Equality
is critical to the success of any organisation in the 21st century,
it’s not just the NHS. If you look across all the major corporate enterprises in the
UK and internationally, everyone of them, I think, is starting to get the message that
Workforce Race Equality and diversity just has to triumph, in terms of the service that
an organisation can provide to its customers. And for us, we know that there is a strong
correlation between diversity of our workforce and the outcomes for patients, and the quality
and safety of the delivery of healthcare in the NHS. What I would like to see us being
able to do with these standards and with the indicators that are built into them, is a
change in mentality, is a change in strategic approach to workforce matters, and if the
standards can deliver that for us then that is a major step forward. I endorse them wholeheartedly
from that point of view, but don’t, just don’t let them become tick boxes and grindingly
boring duties that have to be undertaken. This is much more imaginative and much more
strategically important than that.
>>Lord Victor Adebowale, Non-Executive Director, NHS England: Workforce Race Equality
is crucial in the NHS for the following reasons. A significant
number of the NHS employees, the people that work for the NHS, are BAME, and we need to
ensure that we are a good employer. It’s not rocket science, we need to be a good employer.
We have neglected race as a factor in both the delivery of health and social care services
and in employment practices within the NHS for far too long, and is it’s starting to
show. It’s starting to show in terms of leadership, it’s starting to show in terms
of outcomes, and it’s starting to show in terms of morale. It’s too costly for us
not to, and it’s immoral not to.
So, it’s about fairness, yes, but it’s also about capitalising on the huge talents
of our whole workforce, and in so doing, it’s about tackling the deep health inequalities
that still exist in our country. So this is not a tick box exercise, this is about looking
at the NHS, all of our performance in the mirror and saying we can do better. There
are employers across the country, there are parts of the National Health Service that
have done fantastically well, there are other parts that have still got a lot of progress
to make. So thank you for your leadership in this, it will be strongly noticed and warmly
welcomed by our fellow staff in the National Health Service and by the patients and the
people that we are all here to serve.