NHS staff bearing brunt as ‘ugly’ racism of 70s and 80s returns, says Streeting

Wes Streeting said it was time to put racism ‘back in its box’ in the UK. Photograph: Lucy North/PA

An “ugly” racism reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s has become worryingly commonplace again in modern Britain and NHS staff are bearing the brunt of it, Wes Streeting has warned.

Incidents of verbal and physical abuse based on people’s skin colour now happen so often that it has become “socially acceptable to be racist”, the health secretary said.