Theresa May Instructs Police, NHS Gp's, Public Sector To Stop Racial Discrimination in Service Delivery
Politics / UK Politics Aug 28, 2016 - 06:23 AM GMTBy: Nadeem_Walayat
The whole spectrum of the public sector from the Police, to the NHS, to education is not governed by the pursuit of excellence for all recipients so as to maximise competitive advantage and increase market share but instead operates under the fundamental principles of delivering that which is free at the point of delivery. In which respect whether someone gets good or bad service is dependant upon the public servants own prejudices, usually dictated by stereotyping, the mass media and what's said in the gossip columns or on social media.
In which respect the new Tory Leader and Prime Minister delivered a shot across the public sectors bow to bring about an end to injustice and racial disparities in the delivery of public services that many people outside of the groups of society that public sector servants favour over those that they deem to be less deserving, after all equality is entirely subjective as there is nothing in the practice of society or biology that automatically manifests equality.
Prime Minister Theresa May is today launching an unprecedented audit of public services to reveal racial disparities and help end the burning injustices many people experience across Britain.
The Prime Minister has ordered Whitehall departments to identify and publish information showing how outcomes differ for people of different backgrounds, in a range of areas including health, education and employment.
Not only will it give every person the ability to check how their race affects the way they are treated by public services, the transparent information will help government and the public to force poor-performing services to improve.
The Prime Minister said:
“When I stood on the steps of Downing Street on my first day, I made clear that I believe in a United Kingdom by every definition – and that means the government I lead will stand up for you and your family against injustice and inequality.
“Today, I am launching an audit to look into racial disparities in our public services that stretches right across government. It will highlight the differences in outcomes for people of different backgrounds, in every area from health to education, childcare to welfare, employment, skills and criminal justice.
“This audit will reveal difficult truths, but we should not be apologetic about shining a light on injustices as never before. It is only by doing so we can make this country work for everyone, not just a privileged few.”
Latest figures from the Equality and Human Rights Commission show large disparities between how people are treated depending on their race:
•if you are from a Black Caribbean background, you are 3 times more likely to be permanently excluded from school than your peers
•if you are a black woman, you are 7 times more likely to be detained under mental health legislation than a white woman
•the employment rate for ethnic minorities is 10 percentage points lower than the national average
•people in ethnic minority households are almost twice as likely to live in relative poverty as white people – but it is not just those from minority backgrounds who are affected, with white working class boys less likely to go to university than any other group
Yet this type of information is not systematically captured by public services or published transparently for the benefit of the public or the government. Only in a few areas has government collected such information specifically for the purpose of revealing racial disparity, and very rarely is it published in an open and accessible way.
This audit will also help understand where there are geographical inequalities in services that affect people of some races more than others, such as the white working class who tend to live in coastal towns or black and minority ethnic (BME) communities who tend to live in inner cities.
As Home Secretary, the Prime Minister published stop and search data that revealed people from black and ethnic minority communities were 7 times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white counterparts. The publication helped hold forces to account and the ratio has now reduced to 4times more likely, with the aim for a continued fall.
The audit will be led by a new dedicated Whitehall unit situated in the Cabinet Office, reporting jointly to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Sajid Javid, and the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Ben Gummer. The first data is expected to be published before the summer 2017 and will be updated annually to ensure the public can track improvement and better hold services to account.
As an example, the Police are more likely to treat the black victim of a crime as a suspect than a white victim of a crime by probably an order of magnitude of X10 as countless examples illustrate. A recent example is of armed police dragging a couple of muslim women off an easy jet flight for looking muslim as this channel 4 news story illustrates.
This is typical rather than atypical, that the police stereo type on the basis of ethnicity, where victims are treated as criminals, which is why if your black or asian you CANNOT trust the police! As a witness to a crime your more likely to be treated as a suspect than a helpful member of the public which the vast majority of the ethnic minorities well understand to be true!
The experience of being treated worse because of ones ethnicity is institutionised right across the public sector.
For instance if your asian and you visit your GP surgery for the first time in a while and see a GP that you have not seen before then after having had a blood test, the results come back as being abnormal on several counts for instance liver function and red blood cell counts then the GP more than likely will tell you to ignore the results, not because that is the right course of action to take but because being asian your automatically deemed as being perhaps a taxi driver or similar and thus not worthy of NHS referral expenditure due to the GP's own ingrained institutionalised prejudices.
Now go and see a GP that you have known for a while, and you are more likely to be referred to a hospital to get to the bottom of why your bloods are out. At the end of the day this ends up costing the NHS MORE MONEY because there is no early diagnoses or treatment for a vast sway of the patient population.
And this is the real world experience for many who use the NHS and all other public sector services, because unlike the private sector there is no mechanism for NHS GP's to provide the same quality of health care for all patients hence the huge disparity in quality of service that Theresa May is flagging in her racial disparities speech. This is nothing new for I have covered this topic numerous times over the past decade as well as offering a solution towards which nothing yet has come to pass.
24 Dec 2010 - UK Worst Cancer Survival Rates Due to NHS GP's Ignoring Symptoms and Delaying Diagnoses
The NHS Health Insurance / Credit Card
The NHS post code lottery which excludes millions from the best health care on offer can only be ended if there is real patient choice, not only for GP's but also hospitals and other health institutions right across the country where treatment is sought which requires real reform of the whole NHS health care system from diagnosis to treatment of all patients .
An important element would be to place the power to purchase healthcare in the hands of the patients by means of an NHS Health Card system, that enables patients to purchase health services from any GP practice or hospital regardless of whether it falls under the NHS umbrella or is fully private, with personal medical records encrypted onto the cards smart chips. Both patients and health practitioners would be fully aware of the financial transaction involved in the purchase of the health service, which is set against the current system where patients can be made to feel that they are an inconvenience so are easily put off by the practiced dismissive attitude of most GP's during the initial consultations, which means the medical condition of patients reaches a far more serious state and thus proves far more costly for the NHS to eventually treat.
The mechanism for the operation of the health cards could be by means of either an insurance or a credit based system.
As to whether Theresa May's speech will actually amount to any change, then history suggests that it will be soon forgotten as prejudices will continue to rule the public sector until the financial power is passed from the public servant to the recipient of the service as is the case with the private sector where the customer is king.
By Nadeem Walayat
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Nadeem Walayat has over 25 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis focuses on UK inflation, economy, interest rates and housing market. He is the author of five ebook's in the The Inflation Mega-Trend and Stocks Stealth Bull Market series that can be downloaded for Free.
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