NHS Trust Boss Body Says It Will Put Anti-Racism on the Agenda Like ‘Never Before’

A NHS (National Health Service) sign is pictured outside St Thomas' Hospital, near the Houses of Parliament, in central London on March 8, 2017. Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

A major organsation that represents trusts in England said that is using its “unique position” to influence and implement anti-racism policies in the National Health Service (NHS).

Ahead of its conference on Thursday, NHS Providers published its ambition to become an anti-racist organisation.

NHS Providers represents every NHS hospital, mental health, community, and ambulance service in England. It has all trusts ie NHS organisational units in England in voluntary membership, collectively accounting for £104 billion of annual expenditure and employing 1.2 million staff.

Some of its statements include that it “will recognise that structural racism exists and is harmful” and that it “will use our unique position to influence the NHS and the wider community.”

Anti-racism is one teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT), which is a Marxist ideology. It defines class struggle between “oppressors” (white people) and the “oppressed” (everybody else), as was done with Marxism’s reduction of human history to a struggle between the “bourgeoisie” and the “proletariat.”

“We have stepped up our work on anti-racism since the summer of 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, and the renewed sense of injustice that followed, combined with the racial health disparities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said NHS Providers’ interim chief executive, Saffron Cordery.

“We know that there are wide disparities in health outcomes and life expectancy between different ethnic groups, and there is strong evidence of their differential access to and experience of services,” she added.

In 2020, a landmark report (pdf) was commissioned by the government to look at race and ethnic disparities in education, employment, crime and policing, and health.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities found “no evidence of systemic or institutional racism” in the UK. It concluded that ethnic minority groups have better outcomes than the white population.

Some of NHS Providers’ actions include introducing annual mandatory training for all, relevant to each role, and building “race equality into policy development process.”

According to its statement, NHS Providers is “disproportionately led by white people.”

It added that it “is therefore incumbent upon white people in leadership positions at NHS Providers to be effective allies: to understand how they have benefitted from structural racism, to own the problem and to use the advantages, opportunities, and resources they hold to tackle it.”

“We will use our position to influence national health policy from an anti-racist standpoint, this will include offering constructive challenge when necessary,” it wrote.