ABSTRACT
Debates about equal opportunities, and more generally those about the nature of equality, have a long history, embracing a range of complex philosophical, political and moral issues, to which it is not possible to do justice here. The dominant emphasis in Britain has been on equality of opportunity with the proceduralist focus characteristic of what has become known as the 'liberal' model of equal opportunities. Despite the dominance of generic approaches to policy, however, it is by no means the case that, in practice, such policies have pursued the needs of all groups with equal vigour. The use of pragmatic, or utilitarian, arguments for policy implementation has been a central characteristic of the 'political economy' of equal opportunities in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s. The implication would appear to be that the ideal care scenario is one that offered the potential for ethnic matching of carers and patients.
