Fiona Bruce – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Fiona Bruce on 2016-06-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will take steps to ensure that NHS staff receive religious literacy training.

Ben Gummer

Religion or belief (or lack thereof) is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. Public authorities, including all National Health Service organisations, must have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and other conduct prohibited under that Act towards people sharing that protected characteristic in discharging their public functions. Employers have a responsibility to ensure that their employees do not behave unlawfully and should take all reasonable steps to prevent unlawful acts from happening. Employees can also be personally liable for any unlawful conduct.

NHS organisations are subject to duties under the Equality Act in their own right. They are also directly subject to regulation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. To help them meet their statutory equality duties, NHS England published an Equality Delivery System for the NHS (https://www.england.nhs.uk/about/gov/equality-hub/eds/) which became part of the NHS Standard Contract from 2015.

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