Scottish NHS Board to Apologise and Offer Reparations Over Historic Slavery Links

A general view of staff on a NHS hospital ward on Jan. 18, 2023. Jeff Moore/PA

A major Scottish hospital is planning to make reparations to Jamaica and Africa to acknowledge its historic 18th century links to slavery.

NHS Lothian, which provides health care services in Edinburgh, East Lothian, Mid Lothian, and West Lothian is planning the reparations to make amends for its 300-year-old slave trade links.

A report, based on over two years of research and funded by the NHS Lothian Charity, claimed that the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE) directly profited from the slave trade in Africa and the Caribbean in the 18th and 19th centuries.

A spokeswoman for NHS Lothian confirmed to The Epoch Times that the findings of the report and its proposals were handed over on Wednesday to be considered.

Atlantic Slavery

The report said that from 1729 to 1850, the RIE received at least £28,080 from 43 individuals with ties to Atlantic slavery.

These donors included physicians, surgeons, politicians, colonial officials, bankers, and a range of merchants, both in Britain and its colonies, who were connected to the enslavement of African people in the British West Indies and America.

Today, RIE is a major acute teaching hospital, with a 24-hour accident and emergency department.

The report added the findings will help NHS Lothian to “take action to help root out modern-day racism, inequality, and discrimination.”

“Tackling racial inequality and racism is a core part of what NHS Lothian does,” it wrote.

“This helps us contribute to a health and care system where everyone in Lothian lives longer, healthier lives, with better outcomes from the care and treatment we provide and where everyone who works with and for us has better experiences,” it added.

The Telegraph reported that some proposals include NHS Lothian and its charity making a formal apology to people of African descent, commissioning artwork dedicated to victims of slavery, and signing an agreement aimed at improving health in modern Jamaica.

‘Luxury Beliefs’

The plans were criticised by political groups and campaigners.

Richard Lucas, leader of the socially conservative Scottish Family Party told the Epoch Times that he believes the measure is “madness.”

Mr. Lucas said it is “madness” for the NHS in Scotland to give away taxpayers’ money and resources “to other countries on the basis of a fashionable ideology.”

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, director of Don’t Divide Us, an organisation set up to take a stand against the UK’s “divisive obsession with people’s racial identity,” told The Epoch Times that the chief executive of NHS Lothian “is wrong.”

“It is not part of any NHS hospital’s core mission to be playing politics, or for well-paid executives to indulge their luxury beliefs that will exacerbate division and resentment,” she said.

“If he doesn’t know what the core mission is, he could look at the name—National Health Service, not National Fight Systemic Racism Service, which is a contested assertion. Nor should he performatively self-flagellate for a past where the dead do not have to wait on trolleys for 48 hours before dying in the here and now,” she added.

Dying After Waiting More Than 4 Hours

Ms. Sehgal Cuthbert pointed to a report by STV News alleging that the number of people dying after waiting more than four hours to be seen in Scotland’s A&E departments soared between 2018 and 2022.

Data obtained by the Scottish Conservatives under freedom of information laws showed the number increased by 164 percent across the four-year period.

The figures from the 10 health boards in Scotland that responded showed that a total of 1,965 people died after waiting more than four hours in A&E.

More than half of the deaths occurred at hospitals operated by NHS Lothian.

The Epoch Times contacted NHS Lothian for comment.

PA Media contributed to this report.