Covid-19: BAME Communities

Naz Shah Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) for securing this debate. “Unprecedented” is a word we have heard bandied around a lot in the last few months. The new ways of working and interacting with our communities may be unprecedented, but sadly, the effect of covid-19 on black and minority ethnic communities does have precedent. If the Government had taken the findings of previous reports seriously, not only is it possible that many of these black and minority ethnic deaths could have been avoided, but we would not once again have to be asking the Government to ensure that more people do not lose their lives to this horrible disease.

In 2017, the Lammy review and the race disparity audit were published. Both highlighted the structural inequalities experienced by black and minority ethnic communities. Asian and black households and those in other ethnic minority groups were more likely to be poorer and most likely to be in persistent poverty. The ethnic minority population is more likely to live in areas of deprivation—especially black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi people. Around one in 10 adults from black, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or mixed backgrounds were unemployed, compared with one in 25 white British people. Overcrowding affects ethnic minority households disproportionately. London has one of the highest rates of overcrowding of all regions in England. There has been an increase in the number of ethnic minority households accepted by local authorities as statutorily homeless over the last decade.

The Government will tell us that tackling racism is at the core of their efforts. Last week, I asked the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government how much it spends on tackling racism. The response said that the Department

“paid approximately £219,00 to projects specifically to target racism in the financial year 19/20.”

People across this nation are watching. Black and minority ethnic communities have faced structural racism for decades, and we are having to have the same conversations 20 years on. People are concerned and, rightly, angry. Although I support both Show Racism the Red Card and the Anne Frank Trust, which the Government fund, is this the message that the Government want to give—just £219,000 of the Department’s annual budget is spent on racism, yet the Prime Minister is willing to spend £900,000 on rebranding his plane? Can somebody tell me what kind of message that sends to our country? The message is that this Government care more about the colour of a plane than fighting racism, bigotry and discrimination for people of colour. Is this the message the Government are sending? Is that the Government’s priority? And they wonder why people are so angry.

Morally, the Government’s priorities are not in the right place and nor are they economically. The McGregor-Smith review found that black and minority ethnic career progression could add £24 billion a year to the UK’s economy. If we could tackle racial inequality, we would be billions better-off. Yet I ask the Government how much they are spending specifically on tackling this type of race inequality. If the Minister wants to tell the House how much is spent on trying to retrieve up to £24 billion lost to the economy, I am happy to give way.

On 9 April, I also wrote to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Over the past few months, the Government have published significant material on covid-19 restrictions and guidelines on the Government website, and Ministers have been briefing the nation on air every single day. Yet I have still not received a response, despite me reaching out to the Government to support them in their efforts to reach minority communities. On a community level in Bradford West, the Al Markaz Medics, the Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Bradford Council for Mosques all put out their own communication. It did not come from the Government. Nationally, lot of organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain did what they needed to do for their own communities, but the Government did not. We have had to take it upon ourselves. The Government failed to acknowledge the significant language barriers that exist in communities, despite this being a pandemic where everyone has needed to receive clear messaging.

I am a former commissioner. From my commissioning days, I remember the Rocky Bennett inquiry. In 1998, Rocky Bennett was held down by five nurses. He could not breathe either and he died. The report, published over 20 years ago, made recommendations to the Department of Health to

“cure this festering abscess”—

racism—

“which is a blot upon the good name of the NHS.”

Rocky Bennett was a 38-year-old black man with huge ambitions who had been offered a traineeship with Chelsea.

Structural inequalities are what this comes down to. Even in this place last year, a young man who had grown his Afro for years had to cut it to even be considered for an interview. Structural racism exists in this place. The Government need to listen and stop papering over with more reviews. We know what the issues are. Now is the time for action.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) on successfully securing the debate, and I share the concerns raised by the Black Lives Matter movement about the stark inequalities and injustices that are faced by black people and other ethnic minorities. Covid-19 has been devastating in our communities, care homes and hospitals. So many hearts have been broken by loss, and today we have heard powerful statements from the heart.

This debate is rightly focused on the impact of coronavirus on black, Asian and minority ethnic communities—a point extremely pertinent to my constituency. In her maiden speech, my predecessor, Jo Cox, said of Batley and Spen:

“Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration, be it of Irish Catholics across the constituency, or of Muslims from Gujarat in India or from Pakistan, principally from Kashmir.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 674.]

I quote Jo Cox in the week of the fourth anniversary of her murder, and she is still desperately missed in this place and in Batley and Spen. That quote perfectly describes the diversity of my constituency. That community is already exposed to underlying health conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma, and we now know that there is also a raised risk of death involving covid-19, when compared with people of white ethnicity.

As a proud GMB MP, I know that GMB supports many thousands of ancillary staff, from hospital porters to cleaners, ambulance workers and admin staff, and it has pressed for risk assessments. Sadly, those risk assessments came too late for many staff, and when they did come, they focused on access to PPE and social distancing challenges.

[Naz Shah]

I think my hon. Friend and I might have been on the EveryDoctor briefing together, which highlighted that although BAME staff make up 17% of the NHS workforce, only 11% of them are in senior management, and that figure then drops to 6.4%. A BMA survey stated that 64% of BAME staff felt pressured into working without PPE, compared with 33% of non- BAME staff.

[Tracy Brabin]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful comment, and I will get to that point later in my remarks. We must not allow pressure on people to do their job to affect health outcomes for them and their family, and I thank her for that brilliant intervention.

With all that in mind, plus the fact that Pakistani deaths are 2.9 times as high as deaths among white British people, it sadly seems as though my diverse constituency is at a greater risk of being disproportionately affected by covid-19. It is therefore with some optimism and relief that I note the most recent statistics, which show that the Kirklees local authority area remains one of the lowest affected by covid per size of population, with 179.6 cases per 100,000 people. On Tuesday this week, no new deaths were recorded at Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust over the previous 24 hours. These low figures clearly reflect the sacrifices of the people of Kirklees and of Batley and Spen, who listened to Government advice and followed the guidance to protect our NHS. I would like to thank the leadership of Kirklees Council and of Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, who have worked tirelessly to keep the public and stakeholders informed so that we can all work together to keep people safe.

One serious worry is that the results of the covid testing regime are being held centrally and not shared with the trust, which could make the most of the data in an increasingly fluid situation. That does seem extremely odd. Our NHS trust is the local expert and the institution that people look to to keep them safe, so if it could factor in testing—how many tests are done and in what geographical location—and build a response based on the breakdown and composition of positive results, we would all be better served.

The impact on my community goes further than falling ill. The economic impact also affects my BAME community more deeply than others as we are a large manufacturing region and manufacturing is particularly exposed in an economic downturn. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies data showed only this week, workers in shut-down sectors are more likely than average to be BAME women and part-time workers, with 15% from BAME backgrounds in comparison with the workforce average of 12%. Let us not forget that these are a group of workers already disadvantaged in the labour market, with the ONS showing pre-covid BAME unemployment at 6.3% in January to March 2020, compared with 3.9% of the whole population. Anxiety about money and job prospects will also have a profound impact on their mental health.

As we know, according to the report from Public Health England, racism can make people from BAME backgrounds less likely to ask for help or insist on PPE. Some 90% of the doctors who died during the pandemic were from BAME backgrounds. Doctors from these communities were three times more likely to say that they had felt pressured to work without protective equipment. We must do more to tackle institutionalised racism in the care sector and the NHS. For that to happen, we need to have better data reporting, to support those in low-paid jobs to speak up, to develop a risk assessment for BAME staff members exposed to large numbers of the general public, to deliver culturally sensitive messaging across the community and to intensify health messages around the conditions that can lead to vulnerability.

Before I finish, let me say that each and every one of the statistics has family and friends mourning their loss. I would like to pay tribute to the wonderful, thoughtful and very well liked Dr Nasir Khan, who worked on one of the medical wards at Dewsbury and District Hospital in my constituency. He fell ill with the virus last month and, as a resident of Bolton, was admitted to Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, where he sadly died. His son made a moving tribute to his father. He ended with the words:

“We strive to achieve the greatness that was my dad and fulfil the dreams he has left behind.”

Let us hope that Dr Khan’s sacrifice was not in vain, and that Government will now implement the changes needed to ensure that black, Asian and minority ethnic workers are not allowed to be collateral damage in this fight.