A new Care Quality Commission report into mental health care in England has found a doubling of crisis referrals in a year. The report also raises concerns about the overrepresentation of black people being detained under the Mental Health Act act, finding they are 3.5 times more likely to be detained than white people.

This article tells the stories of Devon and Tiwa who both believe their race influenced the shortcomings in the care they received, in Devon's case 40 years ago. He said: “Nothing has changed. Everything is still the same – only it’s more covered up now by clauses in the Mental Health Act that make it look fair but the equality and justice are not there.”

The chief executive of Mind, Dr Sarah Hughes, said: “The common threads between Devon and Tiwa’s stories, which span several decades and transcend generations and genders, show how far we still have to go on stamping out racism in mental health care.”
While Hughes welcomes the CQC report, saying it shows some positive early progress on implementing the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework, “it is ultimately more damning evidence of the barriers that people from racialised communities face while trying to get help and recover”.

​Read more here.

London's Metropolitan Police has published a “charter” for stop and search, two years after it was severely criticised in an independent review for “over-policing and under-protecting” Black Londoners. The report by Baroness Casey demanded a “fundamental reset” of stop and search, which has long been considered to be used in a discriminatory way against members of ethnic minorities.

The charter follows 18 months of engagement with overan 8,500 Londoners of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds. It includes commitments that officers should use respectful communication and tone when carrying out stop and search, that they will be given improved training and supervision, and that complaints will be handled more effectively.

Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, said the charter was not about reducing the use of stop and search, but about “doing it better by improving the quality of encounters, informed by the views of the public it is intended to protect”.

The power to stop and search was introduced as part of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 following the Brixton riots in 1981, if the police had “reasonable grounds” for doing so. The Macpherson report of 1999, which found that the Met was “institutionally racist”, accepted that stop and search was necessary but called for all stops to be recorded and monitored.

Researchers have commented that evidence of stop and search's effectiveness is "mixed" with little to suggest if provides an "effective deterrent to offending". Stop and search is "more effective at detection", but still most searches result in officers finding nothing.

​Read more here.

New research by pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb and charity Shine Cancer Support shows that people from minority ethnic backgrounds face an average of a year’s delay between first noticing symptoms and receiving a diagnosis of cancer – twice as long as white people. Ceinwen Giles, co-CEO of Shine Cancer Support said: “In a year that’s revealed that the UK’s cancer survival lags behind comparable countries, I am saddened but unsurprised that people from minority ethnic groups face additional hurdles that delay their diagnosis.”

The data showed that people from ethnic groups were more likely to attribute their symptoms to other conditions (51% compared to 31%) and not take their symptoms seriously (34% against 21%), compared with white people and were more concerned about wasting NHS time and resources (52% compared to 42%) or their GP's time (32% against 18%).

For some an added complication was being caught up in the Windrush scandal. Simon Greene's compromised eligibility to live and receive free treatment in the UK meant he had to find £42,000 to pay for his cancer treatment. He is still awaiting compensation from the Home Office.

Read more in this article from The Independent. Read the research report '1,000 voices, not 1: A report highlighting differences in cancer care in the UK' here.

The biggest and most comprehensive survey of race inequality in the UK for more than a quarter of a century has found that more than a third of people from ethnic and religious minorities have experienced racially motivated physical or verbal abuse. The two-year research project declares that “Britain is not close to being a racially just society.” Its detailed evidence of discrimination and unfairness directly challenges the findings of the government-commissioned Sewell report on racial disparities of 2021, agreeing with many at the time who argued it downplayed the existence and impact of structural and institutional racism in the UK.

The study was led by Nissa Finney, professor of human geography at the University of St Andrews, who said it showed racism was “part of the daily lives” of people from ethnic minorities. Halima Begum, chief executive of the race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust, said:  “Sadly, few ethnic minority Britons will be surprised by the findings."

Commenting on the report on Channel 4 News, Professor Jason Ardey, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, said: "There are no immediate shocks or surprises. In some respects it's more of the same. It reflects the glacial change that's transpired in the last twenty or thirty years in relation to race, equality and mobilising greater race equality in the UK. What we are seeing is that racism is a systemic and institutional problem. It's ability to re-invent itself and pivot to the prevailing inequalities that exist is in some respects quite impressive in a strange way."

The research, produced by the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity at Manchester University, will be published this week in a book Racism and Ethnic Inequality in a Time of Crisis. It claims to be the most extensive survey of racial inequalities since 1997. Read more here.

A new NHS report is set to reveal that a third of Black and ethnic minority health staff have suffered racism or bullying as the NHS fails to address “systemic” levels of discrimination. Levels have not improved in the last five years at almost 30%, compared to 20% of white staff. The report will also reveal that despite being one-quarter of the workforce, minority ethnic staff make up just 10% of the most senior positions.

Equality for Black Nurses has launched 200 cases of alleged racism against a number of NHS trusts since it was set up by Neomi Bennett in 2020. Ms Bennett said: “The bullying of Black nurses has reached pandemic levels and goes unchallenged. However, there is a clear difference in experiences when comparing Black nurses’ difficulties to white nurses.”

This year's NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard report will show that the number of minority staff in the NHS has increased by 100,000 since 2018 – largely driven by increased international and overseas recruitment. But just two-fifths of staff reporting that their hospital provides equal opportunities. Internal NHS survey figures show that race was the most commonly reported type of discrimination across all staff, with female workers of colour experiencing the highest level of discrimination in 2022. Other causes of discrimination, however, have reduced since 2016.

Read more here.

The Bristol screening of After The Flood on July 22nd took place in John Wesley's New Room – the world's first Methodist Church. A most appropriate location given Wesley's strong stance against slavery. 92 people attended an enjoyable and stimulating evening enhanced with a generous supply of tasty Caribbean food and drinks. Special thanks to our organiser and host, Carmen Carrol of Keyboard Trust Ministry who worked very hard preparing for this special evening.

On the Q&A panel, MJR was represented by Professor Dr. Robert Beckford and our Chair Revd. Alton Bell. It also included a strong contingent from the Church of England with the Dean of Bristol Cathedral Canon Dr. Mandy Ford, Revd. Dr. Catherine Okoronkwo who is the Advisor on Racial Justice to the Bishop of Bristol (the Rt. Revd Vivienne Faull), Rev Mary Hotchkiss Curate in the Bristol Diocese and Revd. Chris Dobson who is the Ecumenical Advisor and Partnership Officer to the Diocese of Bristol.
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A lively Q&A session followed the film with chair Alton Bell deftly handling questions covering a wide range of topics from the cost of reparations, the need to take action now and what happens next. Comments included:

• "Highly recommended to my Bristol church family, will be uncomfortable but important viewing." Rev Philip Nott.
• "A most stimulating and worthwhile film, very good." Pastor Eric Aidoo Chair CTE Bristol.
• "We have learnt from the recent past and we are listening." Canon Dr. Mandy Ford.
  
• "Thank you for a challenging film and discussion last night" Twitter.  

The evening concluded with a vote of thanks by MJR Trustee Keith Cottrell who observed that this film is sowing seeds for change across our country.

We are pleased to announce Ven. Karen Lund, the Archdeacon of Manchester as the fifth member of our Q&A panel for the Manchester screening of ‘After the Flood: the church, slavery and reconciliation' on July 12 (a.k.a. the 'Northern Premiere'). Tickets are available here.  The timing of this and the other July screenings coincides neatly with the release yesterday of the first of six reports from the Church of England’s Archbishops’ Commission for Racial Justice (“ACRJ”). The report can be read here.

A Home Office commissioned paper that officials have repeatedly tried to suppress since it came out in 2021 concludes that the origins of the Windrush scandal lay in 30 years of racist immigration legislation designed to reduce the UK’s non-white population. The 52-page paper, which has been leaked to The Guardian states that “during the period 1950-1981, every single piece of immigration or citizenship legislation was designed at least in part to reduce the number of people with black or brown skin who were permitted to live and work in the UK”. 

​The report, named 'The Historical Roots of the Windrush Scandal', was commissioned by the Home Office as part of a commitment to educating civil servants about the causes of the Windrush scandal, which saw thousands of people wrongly classified as illegal immigrants by the department. Stating that “the British Empire depended on racist ideology in order to function” the report asserts that in the 1950s, British officials shared a “basic assumption that ‘coloured immigrants’, as they were referred to, were not good for British society.”

While circulated internally, a year on the report remains unpublished and a Freedom of Information request by The Guardian was turned down by the Home Office; a refusal described as "shameful" by Simon Woolley, the former CEO of Operation Black Vote and chair of the No 10 race disparity unit. “The government is hellbent in its denial of the systemic nature of racial inequality and in this climate historical facts have become uncomfortable truths that need to be hidden.” Read the full Guardian article here.

​Image by Steve Eason.

New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that unemployment rates among Black, Asian and minority ethnic workers are now more than double those of their white counterparts: 7.7% versus 3.5% The gap has widened considerably since the start of the pandemic. These disparities show that the post-pandemic employment rate for ethnic minority workers is recovering at a slower rate than that of white workers.

It has also been revealed by The Independent that Black households face being disproportionately impacted by the cost of living crisis with the majority having less than £1,500 in savings and being more likely to go hungry. And it has recently emerged that Black, Asian and minority ethnic women are twice as likely to be on zero-hours contracts as white men.

Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), said: "The pandemic held up a mirror to discrimination in our labour market". and is calling on the government to “challenge” structural racism that is resulting in job inequality. “BME workers bore the brunt of the economic impact of the pandemic – in every industry where jobs were lost to the impact of Covid, BME workers were more likely to have been made unemployed.”

Read more here. Download the ONS report here.

According to a new report by racial equality think-tank the Runnymede Trust, racism is still "systemic" in England and legislation, institutional practices and customs are harming ethnic minority groups as they still face inequalities across health, the criminal justice system, education, employment, immigration and politics. The authors write that they believe the government’s new approach to equalities will fail to improve these outcomes “and may in fact worsen them”.

The report provides the independent civil society perspective to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) by examining the situation of race and racism in England. Describing the Government's recent Sewell Report as: "divisive and dishonest", the report says government practice  "stands in clear breach" of the UN International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). UN's human rights experts had previously criticised the Sewell Report, stating: "In 2021, it is stunning to read a report on race and ethnicity that repackages racist tropes and stereotypes into fact, twisting data and misapplying statistics and studies into conclusory findings and ad hominem attacks on people of African descent."

Read more here and here. Download the Runnymede Trust report here,