The Grenfell fire and Covid-19 inquiries make UK inequalities all too clear

Karim Khalloufi, whose sister Khadija died in the Grenfell Tower fire, speaks at a press conference alongside other relatives of victims. PA Wire

Everyone deserves a fair shot at life. Whatever the circumstances of birth, there are a few universal aspirations that most people collectively rally around, such as equality and for everyone to have the best chance at a good life.

In the UK, contrary to those aspirations, it’s been a week of seeing the scale and ubiquity of inequalities. The country is in the middle of a Covid-19 inquiry into how the pandemic was handled. It's clear that it was disproportionately worse for people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.

This week alone the inquiry heard that minority ethnic pregnant women were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Not only were there "structural failures" during the pandemic to prioritise and provide sufficient resources towards the safety of pregnant women and their babies but it disproportionately affected black and Asian minority women in an already under-resourced system, where women and minority voices were routinely dismissed.

The findings have come at the same time as a report into the Grenfell Tower fire, which claimed 72 lives, including children. While the Covid-19 inquiry shines a light on the inequality of health care, the Grenfell Tower report was alarming, with regard to the very basic right to live somewhere safe.

Eighty five per cent of the victims were from minority ethnic groups. Earlier investigations showed that their concerns were dismissed. If they’d been listened to, maybe they’d be alive today. The families of the Grenfell Tower residents who died have criticised the final report for failing to fully address the disproportionate impact of the tragedy.

One resident who lost his mother, sister, her husband and three daughters said: “Most of the people that were affected or died were of black, Asian and minority ethnic origin. They were never listened to or their problems dealt with... We were fighting to get [the inquiry] to look at [racism] and they didn’t. You have to look at how… the families were being treated differently."

And a third whammy in this same period was a study that put the focus on the workplace and holiday compensation. Minority groups are already disproportionately affected in the health space, in their own homes. Now according to the UK’s Trades Union Congress, 1.1 million employees were not receiving their entitlement of 28 days of paid leave for a five-day week.

To see how depressing and unjust this is, we need to join the dots. These aren’t one-offs. The studies might be happening in silos, but what connects them is the people living these lives. This week it’s three spheres of living. There is very likely to be data that affects other parts of life. And those are just the studies from this week.

The way we talk about these issues is itself an issue: all the data points make it sound like the problem is with and for people from minority ethnic backgrounds – something "over there" and not really a societal problem. It’s possibly one of the reasons why such inequalities are so hard to tackle. What if we flipped the way we describe them? It’s difficult to articulate because it can be hard to use the word "white" as an ethnicity. But here is the problem because many people consider white as the baseline, the norm and measure everything against it, so the impression one can be left with in the UK is that white is acceptable and everything else is a problem or an aberration.

But what if we measured at the poorest standards – in this example, that of minority ethnic groups, and then talked about how much better or worse it is for white groups? That would immediately shift the heaviness and also spotlight where societal and institutional changes need to be made.

Take the example of cancer. One in five people in the UK, on average, need at least three therapy and treatment interactions – but for ethnic minorities this figure rises to one in three, according to Cancer Research UK. Deprivation and health inequalities already cause an extra 33,000 cancer deaths across the UK, while black and Asian people on average wait longer for a cancer diagnosis than their white counterparts.

What if we said that if you belong to a white ethnic group your cancer is likely to be diagnosed with a third fewer visits than if you belong to a minority ethnic group? What if we said that if you're white you'll get your cancer diagnosis faster than if you're from an ethnic minority?

What if we joined the dots about the multiple inequalities facing people from minority ethnic groups? What if we reaffirmed the belief we all hold that there should be equality for everyone to have the best chance for a life well lived? And what if we did something to turn that belief into reality?