NHS staff experiencing 'rising tide of 70s and 80s-style racism' as Wes Streeting condemns 'shocking' abuse
The Health Secertary said this form of racism has "apparently become permissible again in this country".
NHS staff are in the firing line amid a “shocking” return to the ugly racism of the 70s and 80s, Wes Streeting has warned.
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The Health Secretary said incidents of verbal and physical abuse based on people’s skin colour is now such a common occurrence that it has almost become “socially acceptable to be racist”.
He said has been “really shocked” to hear how NHS staff, particularly those working in A&E, have faced increased levels of harassment, aggression and violence amid delays in patients being seen.
“Even if you’ve got a long wait, which I know is frustrating, or you feel like you’ve been sent from pillar to post, which sadly does happen, there’s no excuse for taking that out on staff,” he said.
"But the thing that has shocked me most of all is that the rising tide of racism and the way in which kind of 1970s, 1980s-style racism has apparently become permissible again in this country.
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“I’m really shocked at the way this is now impacting on NHS staff,” he added in an interview with the Guardian.
The Health Secretary also warned a tripled whammy of Covid, flu, and doctors’ strikes is piling extra pressure on the health service this winter. The British Medical Association (BMA), the main doctor’s union, said resident doctors will strike on five consecutive days from 7am on November 14 to 7am on November 19.
Resident doctors, previously named junior doctors, make up around half of all doctors in the NHS.
Mr Streeting urged the BMA to call off next week’s strikes, saying they are unjustified as resident doctors’ salaries have risen by nearly 29 percent over the last three years.
Last month, NHS bosses called for an urgent cash injection of at least £3billion to cover unexpected costs as they warned ministers patients face longer waits for treatment, with hospitals expected to ration care unless they receive the emergency funding.
The NHS recently said many more patients were coming forward for treatment, while a doctors' strike in July left 50,000 appointments cancelled.
Acording to the latest figures for England, some 75% of patients were seen within four hours in A&Es in September.
But the number of people waiting more than 12 hours in A&E departments in England from a decision to admit to actually being admitted - so-called "corridor care" - stood at 44,765 in September, up from 35,909 in August.
Corridor care has been described as a "crisis in plain sight”, with elderly people often waiting days on end for care.
Heartbreaking testimonies of those who have witnessed the crisis detail staggering incidents of poor care, including patients hearing or seeing others dying as they waited for their own care.
Mr Streeting has vowed to “do everything I can to get NHS patients treated faster, free at the point of use."
Meanwhile, month-long waits to see a GP hit the highest level on record last month.