NHS can't get over some people being gay - and can't evidence any LGB equality

For some years now, people who identify as lesbian, gay or bi-sexual [LGB] have been able to claim the same legal protection from discrimination in the workplace as has been available for a longer time to people from the BME community, disabled people, and women.

Not that many years after, the NHS in Scotland created a dedicated central directorate, with a budget of around £1 million a year, to support the rest of the NHS in Scotland deliver equality for people identifying as LGB, along with all the other communities of people who regularly face discrimination.  This directorate's role is in delivering the elimination of discrimination against people from the equality communities, both as service users and as employees in the NHS.  

Another part of the NHS collects data on the equality profile of people employed in the NHS. You can read page 35 of the report they have published on the equality profile of all NHS employees at March 2012.

It is not enough, in law or in any other context, to simply claim that there is no discrimination in the workplace.  Evidence is required.  This evidence needs two core elements.  Firstly, you need data which profiles the workforce according to those criteria which identify communities of people who are known to face discrimination, with people who identify as LGB being just one such community.  secondly and with that data, employers should then set it alongside other data - such as who got promoted, who was funded to attend training, which people were disciplined, pay rates for everyone, and who has been bullied - and through analysis of both data sets discover if discrimination is taking place and resulting in, say, LGB and other people being barred from promotion, not getting access to training, being disciplined more often than other people, being paid less than others, or being bullied more than others.  That provides you with evidence of whether or not equality thrives in your workforce, or if you have a redneck bigoted culture where only 'people like us' [White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant] can get in and develop a career all the way past minimum wage.

Easy.  Doesn't require a degree in quantum physics.  Nor do you need to fiddle either the Libor rate or the waiting lists.

And yet.  In our NHS, which employs 154,366 people [that number excludes GPs], we don't have the first crucial element.  

As at March 2012, 56.7% [over 87,000 people] of staff working across NHS Scotland are unable, unwilling or perhaps just too afraid to identify their sexual orientation.  

At NHS Scottish Ambulance Service, the data gap is 75.1%, at NHS 24 it is 86.1%, and at NHS Dumfries & Galloway, it is 83.9%.  

Out of the 22 health boards which make up the NHS in Scotland, 13 are unable to persuade more than half their workforce to safely and positively identify their sexual orientation.  

Stonewall recently campaigned around the slogan, 'Some People are Gay, Get Over It'.  It would appear the NHS In Scotland just can't get over the fact that some people who work in our health service are indeed gay, or lesbian, or bi-sexual.