Diversity and inclusion in the NHS is being hampered by “misguided approaches” such as promoting “anti-whiteness”, the Health Secretary has said.
Wes Streeting said he wants to get back to the fundamentals of what equality means and that he stands by diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies at a time when they are under attack.
Speaking at an event hosted by Macmillan Cancer Support to mark World Cancer Day, Mr Streeting said inequality in areas such as cancer care needs to be tackled.
He added: “We’ve got to deal with these challenges against the backdrop at the moment, let’s be honest, where equality, diversity and inclusion is under a lot of spotlight and discussion.
“Now, I could get quite a lot of plaudits from quite a lot of people across the country… ‘You know what? NHS, tough times, I’m going to scrap all of those equality, diversity and inclusion people. We’ll save loads of money doing that, and we’ll divert the money into actual patient care’.
“Except, ask black nurses about their experiences of being bullied in the workplace in an organisation that has had black people in it since it was founded pretty much… Empire Windrush, NHS foundation, same year, that generation built the NHS.
“You look at outcomes: prostate cancer, black men twice as likely to die of prostate cancer than white men, black women three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. We’ve got some real racial inequalities here.”
Asked by BBC journalist Nick Robinson if this was a political fight he was willing to have, he said: “Yeah, but I also need the profession to help.
“And sometimes there are some really daft things being done in the name of equality, diversity and inclusion, which undermined the cause.
“For example, there was one member of NHS staff who was merrily tweeting a job ad online and saying part of her practice was anti-whiteness.
“And I just thought, ‘What the hell does that say to the bloke up in Wigan who’s more likely to die earlier than his more affluent white counterparts down in London?’
“We’ve got real issues of inequality that affect white working class people.”
Mr Streeting said the “ideological hobby horses need to go”, adding that “what’s been lost, I think, with some well-meaning but misguided approaches to equality, diversity, inclusion – the clue is in the name – it’s equality, it should be applicable to everyone.
“And where we see health inequalities, whether they affect men and women, black people, white people, rich and poor, we’ve got to be take a much more evidence-based approach to those inequalities, and say if you’re on the wrong end of the stats, we want to deal with that to make sure we get equality of outcome.
“And I was really frustrated just last week to see the Government’s commitment to have a men’s health strategy juxtaposed against women’s health, as if by focusing on the inequalities that affect men or the issues that affect men, that somehow we’d be deprioritising women.
“I don’t think that’s how my sister would feel about my health, and it’s certainly not how I’d feel about her health.
“So I think we’ve got to take a much better approach to this issue.
“Part of what I’m doing is kind of trying to win again the fundamental arguments for equality, diversity and inclusion when they’re under attack.”
Mr Streeting also said being listened to as a patient is “a cultural change that’s needed in the NHS”.
“It affects people with a wide range of conditions, but it also affects people with cancer, especially if they are from a community or a background where cancer is less prevalent, or where certain types of cancer are less prevalent.
“It also applies, I think, frankly, to lots of women for whom cancers and other conditions they might be suffering from are actually very prevalent.
“If the clinician isn’t listening to you, they’re more likely to to lose sight of what’s really going on.
“If you’re making assumptions about the patient in front of you, particularly young people with cancer, because you’ve got a lower risk profile – don’t dismiss what the patient in front of you is telling you about their lived experience of change that they have noticed or experienced.
“Ask the questions, be inquisitive, do the investigation, and don’t provide false hope or false reassurance – ‘oh that’s not going to be cancer, you can’t have cancer. It’s low risk, it’s not low risk’.
“So part of this is about systems and policy change, but this is also about culture and an NHS that listens to its patients.”