Britain's NHS pays Nigerian and black doctors about £10,000 less than their white colleagues

NIGERIAN and other black doctors working for Britain's National health Service (NHS) are getting paid about £10,000 less than their white counterparts while nurses are earning almost £3,000 less than their Caucasian colleagues.

 

According to the findings of a shocking survey, based on the analysis of 750,000 staff salaries in the NHS in England, racial discrimination is a daily reality. Black female doctors earn £9,612 a year less and black male doctors £9,492 a year less than white ones, according to the research findings of NHS Digital, the service’s statistical arm.

 

Black female nurses and midwives earn £2,700 a year less and black male nurses and midwives £1,872 a year less. It was revealed that black men working in the NHS across all job types earn £5,796 less than white peers and £7,272 less than the average male pay, while the equivalent gaps for black women is much smaller but still visible at £1,980 and £2,172 respectively.

 

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the chair of the British Medical Association, the doctors’ union, said: “Black and minority ethnic (BME) doctors make up more than a third of the medical workforce and play a vital role, day in day out, delivering care to patients across the country. Yet these figures confirm that they, alongside wider NHS staff, continue to face unacceptable barriers, penalties and discrimination in the health service.

 

“It cannot be right that in 21st-century Britain there are such wide gaps in pay between white and BME doctors when, irrespective of their background, they hold positions to deliver the same care to patients.”

 

In the survey, the 750,000 staff whom NHS Digital examined ranged from porters to neurosurgeons. It broke down the findings only for doctors, nurses/midwives and managers and not for each of the 300 or so job roles within the NHS.

 

Donna Kinnair, the Royal College of Nursing's (RCN) acting chief executive, said: “As a black woman who spent a career in NHS nursing, nobody feels stronger about this than me. For the first time these figures show the shocking scale of the challenge we face to ensure BME staff are represented at every level of our healthcare system.

 

“The enormous pay gaps highlighted here reflect the appalling lack of diversity at senior levels in the NHS. BME staff make up 25% of NHS workforce, yet this dwindles to just 7% of senior managers and this lack of diversity means the NHS leadership fails to reflect the population it serves.”

 

This is the second recent study to identify a substantial pay gap between white and minority ethnic doctors. According to the findings of Professor John Appleby, of the Nuffield Trust think-tank published in the British Medical Journal, white consultants are paid on average £4,664 a year more than those from any sort of BME background, not just of black origin.

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