[Taf]

Consultations with non-English speakers tend to be twice as long because everything has to be spelt out slowly or repeated through others. As a result, there is less time available for other patients.

This is now a major issue in our increasingly multi-cultural society, especially in urban areas where migrant communities have been encouraged — in the name of celebrating diversity — to hang on to the tongue of their native lands.

On the patient list at my own practice in the heart of Lancashire, I would estimate that close to three-quarters of people live in a household in which English is not the first language.

Of these, around a quarter — most of them older Asian women — don’t speak any English.

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