The FSU has written to the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, to express concern about its ‘Trans Inclusion’ diversity training, which describes expressing the belief in the biological reality of sex as a “microaggression”. The Telegraph has the story.
One of our members, a Bank of England employee, notified us that on 3rd July 2024 a live webinar training course entitled ‘Trans Inclusion’ was delivered to staff by the external provider Inclusive Employers.
Having reviewed the content of this course, we were shocked that such politically contentious material has been promoted by a public body like the Bank of England which, through the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), is responsible for supervising the whole of the UK’s financial sector.
While fostering a sense of inclusion among employees is, of course, a worthwhile objective, training courses of this kind are ideologically driven. As a result, they may have the unintended effect of fostering an intolerant workplace culture in which some employees feel they cannot express certain, perfectly legitimate points of view.
It is telling, for instance, that the Bank of England employee who came to us said: “I see the biased treatment of different groups and I have lost trust in our leadership.”
Our primary concern is that the ‘Trans Inclusion’ course appears to promote gender identity ideology while stigmatising gender critical beliefs, which are protected under the Equality Act 2010.
Specifically, the course draws on ill-defined concepts rooted in critical social justice theory to portray gender critical views as discriminatory and ‘transphobic’.
For example, it states that “using the wrong pronouns” or saying, “everyone is born a man or a woman, its [sic] science” constitute ‘microaggressions’.
Elsewhere the training mandates the following “inclusive” behaviour:
- “Educate colleagues”.
- “Share pronouns in your email signature, at the start of meetings”.
- “Challenge your own transphobic biases”.
Staff are also encouraged to use terminology that affirms your belief in gender identity ideology, such as “queer” and “cisgender”.
An organisational ‘scale’ is also outlined in the ‘Trans Inclusive’ course, according to which the endpoint all employees should be working towards is “trans inclusion is fully embedded into [the] workplace culture”.
If this means embedding beliefs and concepts such as those above within the Bank of England’s workforce, then the practical result will be a hostile and non-inclusive environment for any employees who believe that biological sex is binary and immutable.
In other words, employees who believe in the biological reality of sex will be required to hide their true beliefs and compelled to do things that affirm an ideology they do not believe in, such as sharing their pronouns.
Then there’s the fact that the training took place a day before the General Election. This suggests a political agenda behind it, rather than just a concern for inclusion.
Inclusive Employers own website contains an ‘Inclusion Manifesto’ for the new Labour Government.
Sub-titled, “The tipping point in business accountability” on page three it states: “This new era brings with it incredible opportunities for businesses able to get ahead of the curve.”
The “new era” in question is of course a Labour Government, something Inclusive Employers clearly welcomes, not least because Labour said in its manifesto it intends to bring forward a “full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices”, which is rooted in the same ideology as the ‘Trans Inclusive’ course.
We conclude our letter by respectfully asking the Bank of England to demonstrate its commitment to protecting its employees’ right to freedom of speech by:
- Retracting those elements of the training course that promote gender identity ideology.
- Affirming its employees’ right to express gender critical views without being punished.
- Ensuring that any future diversity training courses are genuinely inclusive and make clear that views that some regard as discriminatory are, in fact, protected by the Equality Act and for an employer to punish employees for expressing them, or for refusing to affirm gender identity ideology, would itself be an unlawful act of discrimination.
Speaking to The Telegraph about the Bank of England’s externally provided diversity training, FSU General Secretary Toby Young said: “The Bank of England, like so many other pillars of the British establishment, has been infected by the woke mind virus.”
He added: “This kind of training creates the impression that believing in the biological reality of sex is discriminatory, when in fact it’s a belief that’s protected by the Equality Act and the reality is that any employer punishing an employee for expressing such a view would themselves be guilty of discrimination.”
Sadly, this isn’t the first time in recent months that agencies involved in regulating the UK’s financial services industry have stumbled towards pursuing a dogmatic and potentially censorious approach to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) training.
Back in January, the FSU responded to two separate ‘diversity and inclusion’ consultations, one run by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which is responsible for the conduct of around 45,000 businesses in the UK, the other run by the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) – the bank regulator arm of the Bank of England – which regulates around 1,500 banks, building societies, credit unions and insurers.
Our response to the FCA consultation has been submitted via its online portal, but you can read the letter we sent to the PRA by clicking here.
The FCA was proposing that large firms should treat a “lack of diversity and inclusion” as a “non-financial risk” which must be “treated appropriately within the firm’s governance structures”.
We’re concerned that one of the most obvious ways for regulated firms to comply with this new requirement – should it come into force – would be to embed politically contentious diversity and inclusion policies deeper into their businesses, which will have a chilling effect on the free speech of those who disagree with the ideology underpinning those policies.
Approximately one-in-20 of the 2,700+ cases the FSU has taken on since it was set up in 2020 relate to inclusion and diversity training schemes in the workplace.
What we’ve found is that these schemes are often delivered by unregulated external providers that tell staff the only reason minorities are under-represented in senior staff positions and don’t earn as much as their heterosexual white male colleagues is because of ‘racism’, ‘sexism’, ‘homophobia’, ‘transphobia’, ‘unconscious bias’, etc., as if this was an uncontested fact rather than a controversial analysis rooted in critical social justice ideology.
Of the 100+ such cases we’ve been involved with that have reached a conclusion, we’ve prevailed 73% of the time, which underlines just how problematic these policies are, often based on a misunderstanding of what the firm’s legal duties are under equalities law.
We made this point in our response to the PRA’s consultation.
While we agree with the regulator that “a combination of demographic diversity and diversity of experience are likely to foster greater diversity of thought in firms and help reduce groupthink”, we don’t share its confidence that ‘anti-racism training’ and ‘unconscious bias training’ are likely to tackle the problem of groupthink.
As our own research reveals (here, here and here), rather than promoting and celebrating diversity of thought, these schemes appear to form part of a disturbing trend towards forcing employees (and, increasingly, customers) into silence if they dare to go against what has become a progressive monoculture in the financial services sector.
We concluded both submissions by pointing out that there are less divisive approaches to diversity and inclusion available in the wider marketplace, and indicate our willingness to work with the FCA and the PRA in any future audit of the diversity and inclusion industry.
