| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
5.47 pm
Mr. Gareth Thomas (Clwyd, West): I shall make a very brief contribution from my perspective as a Member whose constituency is not metropolitan, but largely rural. It has a small ethnic minority community and the issue of racism does not assume as much salience as perhaps it should.
It would be wrong to assume that the Bill was not of the utmost relevance to everyone in the United Kingdom, because it has to do with the nature and values of the wider society to which we belong. It would also be wrong to assume that people from all over the country were not profoundly troubled by the death of Stephen Lawrence and the failure of the subsequent police investigation--matters that have spurred on this legislation.
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that the Bill represents a step change in race relations and that society would have to pay a very heavy price if we did not legislate--a moral cost and a cost of greater disaffection and higher crime rates. Those are matters that affect us all and we have a common interest in ensuring that we have a fair and tolerant society.
I pay tribute to the eloquent comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Witney (Mr. Woodward) and for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh), who bore testimony to the issues that we should tackle to create a fairer and more tolerant society. It is high time the Race Relations Act 1976 was updated. I agree entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Twigg) that, as Lord Callaghan said recently, with the benefit of hindsight, not including the police within the ambit of that Act was a serious omission. I welcome the fact that the Bill will extend the provisions of that Act to the police and all public authorities that are not currently covered.
The Government are entirely right to acknowledge the recommendations of the Macpherson report and to recognise the existence of institutional racism. As a society, we have learned much since 1976. There has been a process of education here and in the wider society about the nature of institutional racism.
I am pleased that the Government are committed to tabling an amendment to outlaw indirect discrimination. I am pleased that the Government are taking such a robust approach. I am also pleased that they are prepared to table an amendment to place a duty on public bodies to promote social equality.
Mr. Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Clwyd, West (Mr. Thomas) on his speech, which was a model of the bipartisan support for the Bill. I may speak for slightly longer than he did, but I shall attempt not to try the patience of the House, particularly as I have not been able to listen to all the speeches that have been made this afternoon. However, I have heard some good speeches from hon. Members on both sides of the House.
My speech is based partly on my own experience and partly on that of a doctor. I shall relate the doctor's story in the first person as it is better than saying that he or she is Indian. Let us imagine that I came to Britain in the late 1970s with a British passport. I spoke the language fluently, played Bob Dylan rather well on my guitar and had qualifications. I could not have been better equipped, but it has not all been plain sailing. The story does not end in total misery, as I became a consultant. However racism is not behind me--it does not stop when one finally attains a senior position.
I should say in passing that I do not relate this story because the national health service has not been trying to put things right; when my wife was Minister for Health and then Secretary of State for Health, she worked very hard to get the NHS to overcome some of the difficulties that I am about to describe.
I now return to the doctor's story. No one taught me, but criticism was rife when I failed. This is the one characteristic of racism that I find most distressing. My white friends received gentle instruction, but I was largely excluded unless I asked. At every stage in my career I have had to outperform white doctors in order to get a job.
In my senior house officer post there was no in-house teaching of any sort. When I told my boss that I was leaving, he was aghast. He took me aside and, in the presence of his clinical assistant, said, "Do you realise you are resigning from a white job?" I apologised profusely, but left.
I was delighted when I got my first general surgical rotational job. I had a boss who liked me, but a ward sister who did not. No matter how hard I tried, she reported me and took pleasure in disliking me. How can one tell that dislike is racist? Because it is instant and intractable.
The most racist job that I did was as a rotating registrar in surgery in the east midlands. The consultant ignored me from the outset and spoke only to my senior house officer, a white doctor. He taught me nothing. If I could not negotiate the rectosigmoid junction at colonoscopy it was, "tut tut". If the senior house officer could not do it, it was all encouragement and teaching.
I went to the fellowship examinations in London with a white fellow registrar in general surgery. He was asked to describe a cholecystectomy. I was asked rather aggressively to describe a hemilaminectomy, but only after the examiner had determined that I had no experience in the procedure. I failed, he passed. I got antidepressant pills from my general practitioner; he was given a research post.
After four years as a rotating senior house officer and registrar, I received my first summons from the higher surgical training committee. "Do you really think that you will become a general surgeon?", they asked. I was 28, had two fellowships, had written two papers and was completing a recognised registrar rotation in surgery in a teaching hospital. I had encountered no problems with my attitude or capability. "Yes," I replied.
It was at that point that someone else appeared. He sat down and all eyes turned to him. He did not beat about the bush, although I had never worked for him. He told me I was being quite unrealistic. He went on to remind me that I was Indian and he took me through the fate of
all the previous Indian registrars in the city I was working in. "So you see, not one has made it," he said. The six other consultants present just sat there studying their pens. The committee had found me unsuitable for further training because I was Indian. I decided to move but to give my love for surgery one last go.
The story continues with an application for a research fellowship and I congratulate the editor of the British Medical Journal on putting it into last week's issue--volume 320, 4 March 2000, for anybody who wishes to read the rest of that personal view.
That story was published in this millennium but it is not so different from what I found when I was a junior Minister in the Department of Employment and I talked to the unions in ACAS--the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. I do not think that they will mind my saying this, because things have moved on since 1985. At that time, I asked the unions why there were no black or Asian field officers in ACAS. I was asked in return, "How do you know that they would be acceptable to all employers?" That attitude has changed.
I listened to the 24 members of the race relations employment advisory service, and I congratulate Sir Michael Quinlan, then the Permanent Secretary at the Department, for agreeing to let two of the people from that service come into the Department. That Department had, in effect, responsibility for equal opportunities on grounds of sex and disability, as well as race, and Sir Michael produced a report to which--I hope--people in Departments still occasionally refer. It showed that even when a Department tried to do the right things as well as advocate them, it can fail, directly and indirectly.
The Bill will make a difference, but not the biggest difference. Law at its best is obeyed, clear and fair. There are plenty of examples of areas in which race relations legislation already bites, but is not always obeyed. I shall not give the details of one example, but I helped a police officer and the Metropolitan police to come to an agreement and settle an employment case for probably a third of the cost of fighting the issue out. Both those who have reason to complain, and those against whom they complain, can often get together to resolve issues and learn from that.
The people who really have to learn are top and middle management. In some parts of the public service, people are determined to make things better, but some are willing to sit at a higher level without ensuring that a regular routine improves matters at a lower level. I shall give an illustrative example. When I asked a slightly complicated question of the Home Office about at what stage and at what cost each claim by a Metropolitan police officer for discrimination on the grounds of race came in, the answer was that it was too expensive to provide the information. I suspect that it was too expensive--or at least would have cost more than £200. However, if there were so many cases that providing the answer would have been too expensive, I would have welcomed an answer that added that more extensive information could be made available reasonably easily.
In my view, the Metropolitan police service is doing much more than it has done before, and in five years it will be able to look back and say that its progress since 2000 has been marked. I also acknowledge the presence of the ethnic teams from the armed forces, at the party given in the Locarno rooms of the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office yesterday. The people there talked about their work in trying to overcome perceptions of racial inequality in the services. Things are not yet completely right, but I welcome the existence of those teams which can provide the positive action needed to make progress.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |