National Health Service: Workforce Race Equality Standard

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made to improve race equality at senior management and board level in the National Health Service since the introduction of the National Health Service Workforce Race Equality Standard.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)]

My Lords, It is outrageous that we have so few people from BME backgrounds in senior management and on NHS boards. We need to take action to improve the experiences of BME staff and their representation.

NHS trusts submitted their baseline data against the workforce race equality standard indicators in July 2015, and NHS England will publish an analysis of those data in April. Reports will then be published annually, outlining the progress that NHS organisations are making.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord for that reply. Can he say why, since the report by Roger Kline on the,

“snowy white peaks of the NHS”,

progress in ensuring that senior management and trust boards are more equal has been so disappointing? It does not reflect the diverse workforce and local populations. Will he ensure that trusts walk the walk and use NHS Executive Search rather than commercial recruitment agencies which all too often, apart from a few exceptions, present all-white shortlists, normally with no people with disabilities, drawn from a very narrow pool for senior positions at enormous financial cost to the health service?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I shall give the House a few figures. Some 22% of all staff in the NHS are from BME or minority ethnic backgrounds, 28% of all doctors and 40% of hospital doctors. Yet only 3% of medical directors are from BME backgrounds and 7% are in senior management roles. We have two chief executives and six chairmen from BME backgrounds out of 250 trusts. So the performance across the NHS is, as the noble Baroness has mentioned, absolutely terrible and we have to take some serious action to change it. The noble Baroness has given one example but I think that there are many others. The NHS workforce race equality standard is a new initiative which, by introducing some transparency into the health service, will improve matters.