National Health Service: Workforce Race Equality Standard

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, the whole purpose of the WRES is to shine a light on the performance of each trust in the country. The CQC will be including it in its well-led domain from March of this year and has already begun to incorporate it into its inspection processes. As the noble Lord knows, in Bradford where he is the chairman of a trust, we have a huge amount of progress to make.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, what is being done to ensure fair career progression further down the ladder? Unless we get people moving up, we will never have BME medical directors. Further, is he prepared to comment on diversity among the personnel in the recruitment agencies themselves that work for the NHS?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes a good point. In a way the WRES focuses very much on the more senior grades in the NHS, but we need to focus on progression from band 4 into 5 and 6 as well. It is an important point that needs to be taken on board. As far as recruitment is concerned, it is very important that we have people from BME backgrounds on the recruitment panels. Getting the right people is crucial, and if that means going to external recruitment agencies when we have to, we should not rule that out.