Jobs in Whitehall devoted solely to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) training and initiatives will be scrapped under plans to stop “the back door politicisation of the Civil Service” by the ‘minister for common sense’, Esther McVey (Mail, Telegraph, Times).
McVey, whose formal title is the Cabinet Officer minister without portfolio said in an article for the Sunday Telegraph that too much taxpayers’ money is currently being wasted on the “woke hobby horses” of activist employees – or “desk-bound revolutionaries”, as Leo McKinstry refers to them in the Express – and the public sector must not become a “pointless job creation scheme for the politically correct”.
“There will be no more dedicated (or standalone) EDI jobs in the Civil Service outside of HR,” she continued, adding that “all EDI roles within the Civil Service will be consolidated into their department’s HR teams, and Ministers and their Permanent Secretaries will ensure that these teams are focused on their statutory obligations around EDI – the things we are legally required to do which have a proven benefit, not unproven diversity work which has no basis in law.”
The Cabinet Office declined to reveal the number of non-HR staff in the civil service who are currently working solely on EDI.
In October, the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt launched a review on public sector spending on EDI, auditing how many staff are actively working on EDI schemes around decolonisation, microaggressions, unconscious bias and so on, and giving departments and executive agencies the unenviable task of accounting for how this work supports the government’s priorities.
The review, which identified £27 million worth of spending across Whitehall in just over six months, concluded earlier this year and its findings were passed on to the Cabinet Office.
McVey said the new prohibition on staff outside of human resources undertaking EDI activities as their primary role is necessary not because of the cost to the public purse per se, but because “most of these kinds of EDI programmes – especially when delivered by private companies of campaigning organisations – are not transparent, and their benefits unproven”.
Addressing the issue of third-party provision, the Cabinet Office minister said she will schedule a series of meetings with the “top outliers of external EDI spend across our Arms-Length Bodies” in which they will be asked to account for this outlay and “how it is actually supporting their service to the customers: the public.
“If we can’t prove their worth, then they don’t pass the public interest test,” she added.
McVey’s plans are the latest in a series of initiatives prompted by concern within government circles at the apparent correlation between the recent rise of Critical Race Theory and gender ideology inspired EDI training in Whitehall, and increased levels of politicisation amongst supposedly impartial civil servants.
In 2021, the then women and equalities minister Liz Truss urged Whitehall departments to withdraw from a controversial “diversity champions” scheme run by the charity Stonewall following warnings that its workplace EDI guidance and training may not be aligned with UK equalities legislation.
Last year, the Cabinet Secretary was warned by senior civil servants of a “woke takeover of Whitehall” that is “distorting” the operation of government and could “improperly influence government policy”.
In a letter signed by 42 staff from 16 departments, Simon Case was told that gender ideology promoted by trans activists has become embedded in the Civil Service in a “significant breach of impartiality”. What has emerged as a result, they said, is a pervasive culture of fear, in which staff who dare to air gender critical views suffer “serious harassment”.
Earlier this year, the Cabinet Office minister John Glen ordered a separate review of Whitehall diversity networks and a “refresh” of civil service impartiality guidance to stop officials “using their jobs as a vehicle for political activism”. Taxpayers were “very sceptical” of the activism of identity politics, which can “slip into” EDI training, he said.
Under plans subsequently discussed with Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister, and McVey, diversity meetings would have to be held before work, during lunch breaks or in the evenings.
Speaking to People Management back in October about the EDI-focus of Jeremy Hunt’s public sector spending review, Suki Sandhu, CEO of diversity and inclusion consultancy INvolve, said EDI initiatives were “integral to a business’s success”.
“It’s critical that businesses push forward and remain focused on EDI initiatives in this time, to create both happier and more successful workers,” he added.
But is that necessarily true?
Contrary to the idea that expenditure on EDI roles and training schemes is ‘just good business’, the FSU’s latest research report reveals that it operates, in effect, as an ‘EDI Tax’.
According to a survey of a representative sample of UK workers undertaken on behalf of the FSU, many ambitious employees and senior managers are now leaving companies because of the excessive time they’re expected to spend on these courses. Ironically, they prove most irksome to those they purport to benefit, i.e., members of the LGBTQ+ community and ethnic minorities.
Given the extent of self-censorship revealed by our research report, The EDI Tax, many UK employees are also thinking twice before contributing to workplace conversations. Genuine diversity of thought is of course required for any organisation to succeed – but in the NHS, where patients’ health is at stake, encouraging a culture of silence to creep-in risks materially affecting the quality of care and treatment on offer.
These research findings are consistent with the report of the Inclusion at Work panel commissioned by the UK’s Minister for Women and Equalities, Kemi Badenoch. Following interviews with 100 people representing 55 organisations, the report noted a “lack of accessible, plain-language, robust data on the efficacy of D&I [Diversity & Inclusion] interventions”, as well as a lack of evidence that these interventions were effective in achieving their purported objectives.
In December 2020, the government’s Behavioural Insights Team came to a similar conclusion in its review of unconscious bias training. The Written Ministerial Statement accompanying that study noted that, “Despite a growing diversity training industry and increased adoption of unconscious bias programmes, a strong body of evidence has emerged that shows that such training has no sustained impact on behaviour and may even be counterproductive”.
