ASIANS ‘BRITAIN’S BIGGEST MINORITY’
Leaders warn of ‘disparities time bomb’ as census data reveals...
COMMUNITY leaders, MPs, senior doctors and experts have warned that the UK is sitting on a “ticking time bomb of disparities” among Asian and black communities.
They told Eastern Eye the 2021 census figures should raise concerns in government and urged ministers to put more money into non-white communities.
Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Tuesday (29) showed that in England and Wales, just over 18 per cent od people are non-white, a rise of four per cent on 10 years ago.
Asians make up almost 10 per cent of the population in England and nearly three per cent of Wales, making them the country’s largest minority group.
Leicester becomes the first city in the UK to have a majority ethnic minority population. Almost 41 per cent described themselves as white.
“The Covid pandemic has just highlighted the extent to which there are very real health disparities and outcomes that are undoubtedly adversely affected by people’s ethnicity,” said Sir Peter Soulsby, the elected Labour mayor of the city.
“That message needs to continue to be made to a central government – that the city needs the resources necessary to cope with trying to redress the disadvantages.
“Above all else, we need the money to provide public services. In our case, we’ve
lost well over £100 million of services every year as a result of so-called austerity.
“Of course, the messages from the government are that austerity is going to get worse over the years ahead, not better.
“The impact on local government services is very real, but it’s equally the case that our health services are under pressure as well.”
The pandemic revealed that south Asian and black people were disproportionately affected by the virus.
The Leicester East Independent MP, Claudia Webbe, urged the government to consider what the census figures means for her constituents.
“Our population in Leicester is ageing, with an increase of 17 per cent in the number of people over the age of 65,” Webbe told Eastern Eye.
“Our largest age group is aged between 50 and 54 years – compared to 30 and 34 years as an average across England, and Leicester East has the highest population density in our region.
“At the same time, the 11 per cent increase in our young population of under15s is well ahead of the England average, highlighting the need for proper investment in schools and services for children and young people.
“None of this has been reflected in the level of financial support for Leicester.
“Both the city and county council have seen massive cuts in funding since the Conservatives came to power, with no sign of any slowing of that trend for the foreseeable future.
“Cuts to services need to be reversed and backdated across all age groups and communities [so we are] adequately resourced going forward to properly cater for the diversity of Leicester East.”
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) analysed the census data.
“The largest increases were seen in the number of people who identified their ethnic group within the ‘Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh’ category (9.3 per cent, 5.5 million in 2021, up 7.5 per cent from 4.2 million in 2011) and within ‘Other ethnic group’ (2.1 per cent, 1.3 million people in 2021, up from one per cent, 564,000 in 2011),” it said on its website.
“There are many factors that may be contributing to the changing ethnic composition of England and Wales, such as differing patterns of ageing, fertility, mortality, and migration.
“Changes may also be caused by differences in the way individuals chose to self-identify between censuses.”
Doctors’ leaders, such as Chaand Nagpaul, a former British Medical Association (BMA) chair, warned that the growth in south Asian numbers meant that the government could not adopt a one-sizefits-all approach to healthcare.
“By actually not providing culturally tailored and sensitive care to the diverse population, it will only backfire on the health service in terms of excessive demand on its limited resources,” said the chair of the BMA’s Racial and Ethnic Equality Forum.
“In terms of that, we’ve already known about the health disparities for decades now, and we saw that particularly through the pandemic.
“So, the policies at local and national government must change to be culturally specific, culturally competent, and the understanding that not one size fits all, and it has to be implemented from training through to the delivery.”
Nagpaul told Eastern Eye the census figures showed that doctors needed to be aware of the differences in treating non-white patients from the moment that they started their training.
“We know that certain ethnic groups are less likely to visit their GP for issues, such as mental health.
“Some findings show that south Asian women will actually wait till they go back to their home country for a health check, rather than see a doctor here, and that means their health is not being cared for.
“We have examples that ethnic minorities have delayed cancer diagnoses because of their reluctance to present. That’s also true for dementia.”
The former doctors’ union leader also explained that the pandemic demonstrated how the profession needed to change the equipment which diagnoses diseases. “As Britain becomes more
and more diverse, that’s going to be really, really important. For example, when we teach medical students different skin diseases in dermatology, the pictures shown are on white skin. In fact, many of these conditions are very different on dark skin.
“Even when it comes to the use of technology, the pulse oximeters that were very prevalent during Covid – and they have always been an important part of measuring oxygenation of the blood – don’t measure as accurately the oxygen levels in dark-skinned individuals because they were designed for white people’s fingers,” he said.
“They underestimate hypoxia [low oxygen levels] for non-white patients.”
Professor Sabu Padmadas is an expert in demographics and associate dean international at the University of Southampton. “It will have definitely have resource implications on education and health primarily,” he explained.
“We see that as a country we’re trying to address the inequality gap, and there are certain elements of poverty, for instance, energy poverty. so those are the sectors that will be affected.” Padmadas suggested that the government needed to do a deep dive into the data and make policies accordingly. “Whatever growth we are going to see in the next couple of years will be driven more by migration than by fertility, for instance,” he told Eastern Eye.
“Therefore, in terms of preparing for the future, the government will need to really pay attention to the data very carefully, have debates about these data.
“There might be reporting biases, there might be estimation biases, and so on, so we’ll have to tread with caution.
“In the wake of Covid, we have seen considerable structural inequalities affecting people, and ethnic communities, particularly. So, this is the right moment for the UK government to consider making kind of some radical reflections and changes on policies.”
For Leicester’s mayor, the new figures argue his case for more resources.
“An underfunded hospital system in Leicester, for example, has recently found itself downgraded from being satisfactory to requiring improvements,” Sir Peter said.
“They are under tremendous, and in many cases, intolerable pressure that undoubtedly hits those who need the help most. There are also real pressures in our in our schools education system as well.
“My message to the government is that we need the funding in order to provide services that are required by our very diverse communities.
“Over the last decade or more, we’ve seen those services facing further cuts, and the government continues to tighten the screws.”
THE census results offer a once-adecade statistical snapshot of the society that we all live in.
So it should be little surprise that they confirm this is an increasing ethnically diverse and more secular society.
The census has run for two centuries, and the 2021 edition is only the fourth to report ethnicity data. What was not yet a footnote in the statistical national portrait before 1991 has moved from the margins to the mainstream.
The Asian population in England and Wales has grown to 5.5 million from 4.2 million a decade ago. More than five million people are plural in every way – including 1.8 million born in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, and their British-born children and grandchildren’s confidence in this country.
The non-white ethnic minority population has risen to 18 per cent from 14 per cent in the past decade. The population is 82 per cent white, compared to 86 per cent a decade ago. Almost three-quarters of people (74 per cent) are white British, from 80.5 per cent in 2011. The other white group grew fastest over the last decade, particularly through migration from Europe.
These census details capture several long-term stories of British integration. Britain’s ethnic diversity is spreading out geographically – the pace of ethnic change is now slower in inner London, as house prices and rents rise, and faster in the suburbs, home counties and beyond. Trevor Phillips calls this pattern of ethnic desegration ‘the reversal of white flight’. One in 10 households contain people from different ethnic groups.
The census records a mixed-race population of 1.8 million (three per cent) up from 1.2 million in 2011 and trebling from the 600,000 in 2001. The data underestimates this phenomenon. Research finds twice as many people are of mixed ethnic heritage as those who tick the mixed race census box, while others of mixed parentage can identify as black, Asian or white British.
A changing census form gives a misleadingly dramatic swing in national identity data. British was listed above English this time in England. Half of respondents just ticked the top label on the list – English in 2011, British in 2021. What the two censuses together show is how much those identities overlap for most people.
That 46 per cent of people now say their religion as Christian is a historic change. Every faith in Britain is a minority one now. More than a third (37 per cent) declare they have no religion, while seven per cent are Muslim and two per cent are Hindu, with significant Sikh and Jewish minorities too. The headlines may declare we are a post-Christian society, but when 27 million people identify as Christian, six million with other faiths and 22 million as having no religion, arguments over the labels matter less than getting the right boundaries to live together well in a society of many faiths and none.
Next year’s coronation will see King Charles III speak about his sense of duty to protect Britain’s diversity. As London mayor Sadiq Khan told last week’s Asian Business Awards, the shared efforts of a Christian king, a Hindu British prime minister and a Muslim London mayor tell a story about modern Britain that transcends party politics.
Yet, an increasingly diverse Britain has never had a proactive agenda for integration. Conservatives Michael Gove and Rishi Sunak, and their Labour rivals Lisa Nandy and Sir Keir Starmer, should compete to change that. Some cities and towns have shown more local commitment than others. The pilot integration action areas saw positive effects during the pandemic.
The Leicester disturbances illustrated why places of good relations need to keep doing that work in every generation.
One in six 2021 census respondents – 10 million people – were born abroad. Net migration has spiked again for exceptional reasons, with a quarter of a million refugees welcomed from Ukraine this year. Politicians will keep debating those numbers and who gets a visa to study and work. What is missing is enough focus on what happens next – to welcome incomers, manage local impacts fairly, promote contact, and encourage those who settle to become citizens.
Out of five million people for whom English or Welsh is not their main language, the new census data show that a million people can’t speak English well or at all. Ministers should have a strategy for universal English fluency within this decade.
What the 2021 census data shows is the question has long ceased to be whether Britain will be a multi-ethnic society or not. The 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush next year marks the fourth generation of this modern, diverse Britain. Our question in the 2020s is how to talk and act to unlock the potential of our growing diversity for the common good, in ways that feel fair to minorities and majorities alike. We should find confidence – but not complacency – in how we handle this changing Britain if we make that our common goal.