Former NHS director sues Jeremy Hunt for religious discrimination

A former director of an NHS trust is suing Jeremy Hunt for religious discrimination after he was effectively barred from applying for positions following his public opposition to gay adoption.

Richard Page has lodged a claim at the employment tribunal, saying his televised comments in 2015 that it was in the best interests of a child to have a mother and father stemmed from his Christian faith.

His remarks led to him being sacked as a magistrate in March for serious misconduct, after 15 years on the bench. Two years earlier, the lord chancellor and lord chief justice reprimanded Page after finding his religious beliefs, rather than evidence, had influenced his decisions during a family court hearing.

Page, 70, was also a non-executive director at the Kent and Medway NHS and social care partnership trust. In March, following a complaint by the trust’s LGBT staff network, Page was suspended for the final three months of his four-year term in office.

In August, the NHS Termination of Appointments Panel told Page “it was not in the interests of the health service for you to serve as a non-executive director in the NHS”, in effect barring him from applying for directorships in the future.

Page, a former NHS manager from Headcorn, Kent, is bringing a claim against the health secretary and NHS Improvement, which has the power to appoint non-executive directors. He is pursuing a similar case against the lord chancellor over his sacking as a magistrate.

In a TV debate on Christians in public life in March 2015, Page said: “My responsibility as a magistrate, as I saw it, was to do what I considered best for the child, and my feeling was therefore that it would be better if it was a man and woman who were the adopted parents.”

In a video on the website of Christian Concern, which is backing his case, Page denied he was homophobic and claimed that more than 6,500 emails had been sent to the Kent NHS trust in his support against one complaint “from the LGBT people”.

He said: “This is the second public sector organisation that has got rid of me. This, I feel, is completely wrong because it’s discriminatory against my opinions and the fact I was doing what I considered to be right.

“The political correctness makes people be frightened, or makes them think they’re the only ones that believe this way, and yet they obviously are the majority … There are people standing up against the so-called politically correct views.”

Andrea Minichiello Williams, of Christian Concern, said freedoms in the UK were being “catastrophically eroded by political correctness and fear”.

“The comment that a child needs a mother and a father is a belief held by Christians, and many others around the world. Everything that Richard Page does, his whole belief system is rooted in his Christian faith. Beliefs arising from the Christian faith continue to be lawful beliefs in our country.”

She said government assurances that equality legislation would not lead to the removal of people who expressed Christian views while holding public positions had turned out to be baseless.

“If it is possible to suffer the detriment of losing your position at work for expressing lawful Christian views, the situation is crucial. There is, in effect, a religious bar to office for Christians solely; those politically correct institutions would not do the same to other faiths.”

A spokesperson for NHS Improvement said: “We are unable to comment on ongoing court cases.”

Former NHS director sues Jeremy Hunt for religious discrimination

Danish childminder"s discrimination case may possibly redefine weight problems as disability

In the United kingdom, 64% of grownups are classified as getting overweight or obese. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Photos

An overweight Danish childminder, mentioned to be unable to bend down to tie up shoelaces, could make legal history this week by calling for employers across Europe to treat weight problems as a disability.

The discrimination situation brought by Karsten Kaltoft against his regional authority will be heard by the European court of justice in Luxembourg on Thursday and could set a far-reaching precedent across all EU states.

Kaltoft, who weighed far more than 158kg (25st) at the time, was sacked by the council, Billund Kommune, since it deemed that he could not perform his duties due to his dimension, citing the truth that he needed help from a colleague to tie up children’s shoelaces. The Danish courts referred the concern to the ECJ.

If effective in redefining obesity as a disability, Kaltoft’s attorneys could force widespread adjustments in the way employers deal with employees and what assistance – for illustration, reserved parking – they may be necessary to supply.

The court, whose rulings are binding during the EU, will have to determine whether it is respectable to discriminate on the grounds of weight problems and regardless of whether the burden of proof in any future situations ought to be on the employer or worker. The ECJ will also consider whether, if there is a duty to avoid discrimination against individuals struggling from weight problems, it applies just to the public sector or across the entire labour industry.

Audrey Williams, head of discrimination at the London law company Eversheds, explained: “The influence could demonstrate important for employers, notably those in the Uk which continues to reveal the highest percentages of weight problems in Europe.” In the United kingdom, 64% of adults are classified as currently being obese or obese.

“Discrimination law in the United kingdom, the Equality Act 2010, has been interpreted as protecting physical and psychological situations which result from obesity, to the extent they meet specified criteria in terms of their nature, effect and duration,” stated Williams. “Weight problems itself has been rejected by the United kingdom courts as a disability in its personal right. If the European court reaches a contrary conclusion, the Equality Act would want to be utilized quite in a different way.

“Obesity, even so it will come to be defined, would need to be approached just like any other physical or psychological impairment, preventing an employer from treating an worker less favourably because of their bodyweight, not due to the fact of consequential health care troubles. This would incorporate the capacity to dismiss.

“The primary change, however, would practically surely come up in the context of the employer’s duties to make realistic adjustments to the workplace or functioning arrangements. For example, entry to the office could be an problem, requiring overview of where the employee is found and their seating arrangements. May well obese employees require to get preferential access to automobile parking, for instance?”

In the USA, several latest cases have resulted in dismissed employees successfully claiming they were discriminated towards for being obese. In 1 case, a employee in Texas who weighed much more than 305kg (48st) received $ 55,000 (£32,800) in compensation for losing his work.

Danish childminder"s discrimination case may possibly redefine weight problems as disability

Psychological wellness and race the blight of dual discrimination

Time to Change pop-up village at Leicester Caribbean carnival, the place members of the public can speak to volunteer workers who have mental well being issues. Proof suggests contact is one of the most efficient approaches to break down stigma and boost attitudes. Photograph: Time to Change

An mind-boggling bulk of folks from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds in the Uk living with mental health difficulties encounter typical discrimination because of their sickness in accordance to a new report from the anti-stigma organisation, Time to Change. In the 1st survey the organisation has conducted, exclusively of men and women from BME groups, 93% stated they had knowledgeable discrimination in everyday life due to their psychological well being troubles.

Respondents also reported high amounts of racial discrimination (73% had faced it at some point and 28% in the preceding twelve months), top the study’s authors to warn about the critical issue of “dual discrimination” blighting people’s lives. The investigation surveyed 740 individuals in 2013 from a mixture of African, Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds in England with mental health issues. Most alarmingly, it found that nearly half (49%) had faced discriminatory behaviour from psychological wellness workers.

“Discrimination as a result of psychological sick health is reported across a wide variety of each and every day activities,” the researchers identified. “There are some slight variations across ethnic groups but the general picture is continuous: discrimination is all over the place.”

Locations of life the place discrimination was frequent integrated employment, in communities, within households and for the duration of speak to with psychological wellness services. Only a fifth of folks from BME communities explained they felt able to communicate to people about their mental health. “This suggests that most are functioning in social circles where a single of the most critical elements of their lives is left unspoken,” the report concluded.

There have been ongoing concerns about mental wellness care and discrimination for individuals from BME backgrounds. Some groups, such as younger black men, are considerably more probably than the wider population to be subject to sectioning beneath the Mental Well being Act, to be held in seclusion on mental health units, to be physically restrained (in a lot of situations causing death) and to encounter discrimination due to what campaigners have argued are misguided perceptions of “dangerousness” or propensity to violence. Campaigners have regularly argued that there is institutional racism inside mental well being companies, top to poorer outcomes for quite a few BME individuals.

Raphael Shervington from Birmingham, recalls becoming treated “like some sort of criminal” on psychological overall health wards. “Primarily based on my personal personalized expertise I’d say attitudes to men and women with psychological well being issues can be really undesirable. I would like to see a better comprehending inside of the program of men and women from distinct cultural backgrounds,” he says.

He argues that knowing the degree of discrimination, and its different forms, is crucial and attitudes each inside services and in wider society want to adjust.

Shervington, 25, who has a diagnosis of schizophrenia, has has been volunteering with some of Time to Change’s grassroots projects that operate to reduce stigma and discrimination in statutory psychological wellness settings and within the police in direction of young African and Caribbean men.

He says he has selected to talk out since of the scale of the issue. “I want to support bring about a good modify all round,” he says.

The Count me in 2010 “census” on the experiences of inpatients amongst 2005 and 2010, exposed surprising levels of mental overall health discrimination experienced by BME populations and showed progress was not currently being produced in the NHS.

The most recent survey was commissioned to offer a “baseline knowing” of the degree of stigma and discrimination faced across a variety of ethnic minority groups – both in wider society and when in speak to with providers, says Time to Change director, Sue Baker. “We need this baseline to accurately assess the influence of what we do [subsequently],” she says. “It appears at a wider selection of experiences than preceding research and [so far] suggests there is widespread discrimination.”

But campaign group Black Psychological Health Uk (BMHUK), says the Time to Adjust findings follow a extended line of research, reviews and initiatives aimed at charting and tackling the difficulty, which are just not performing enough. It argues that BME programmes are frequently regarded as “include-ons”, launched when tranches of funding are made accessible, but at some point disappearing, leaving people still suffering.

“Just before Time to Alter launched these troubles were raised and ignored,” says BMHUK spokeswoman, Matilda McCatrum. “Abruptly they are back on the agenda. We need not make this an afterthought. Money should be offered to the grassroots [BME] companies that have been working in communities all along.”

Marcel Vige, interim chief executive, of the Afiya Believe in, which given that 1997 has been focused on overall health and social care problems for BME communities, says grassroots organisations urgently want higher help. “Companies tailored to minority ethnic groups tend to emerge from inside of communities, addressing demands not met by more substantial providers. These organisations face a continuous struggle to safe funding, leaving them notably vulnerable when funding is curtailed, this kind of as in the present period of austerity. Without having option funding to draw on, this kind of organisations are typically the 1st to shut. Unless of course measures are taken to deal with this, the consequence is elevated unmet demands amid some of the most vulnerable in society.”

Time to Adjust has allotted much more than £730,000 in grant funding (from a total pot of just above £2.5m) to tasks inside of BME communities over the previous two years. “This is a prolonged-term investment to track attitudes and levels of discrimination,” says Baker. “We need to have to know exactly where the discrimination is coming from if we are to layout a strategy to challenge it effectively.”

Psychological wellness and race the blight of dual discrimination