NHS trust 'gives competing companies higher marks for adopting Stonewall ideology'

[ChristinaXYZ]

"Official tender documents from Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust have been leaked to The Telegraph detailing the questions that firms are asked when applying to deliver stoma services at the London trust’s hospitals.
A stoma is the opening made in the stomach during a colostomy or ileostomy operation, a vital procedure for some cancer patients.

The taxpayer contract, understood to run into millions of pounds and from the internal NHS tender website, marks bidders on a scale of zero to four on their responses to 35 questions.

Five of these are titled “Stonewall UK Workplace Equality Index”, asking about the “diversity and inclusion strategies” supported by the controversial lobby group, which the Department of Health and Social Care cut ties with last year amid a storm of criticism from ministers."

That's FIVE questions out of 35 on Stonewall stuff to win contract to deliver stoma services! Five!

more here

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/06/11/nhs-trust-gives-competing-companies-higher-marks-use-stonewall/

Sajid Javid talks the talk but WHEN is he going to act?

So, relatively small suppliers are substantially disadvantaged as they'd be too small to consider being part of such SW's WEI.

This is feeling increasingly unreal and divorced from any notion of competitive business practices or the best interests of patients and the public.

Yes because clearly that's the most important issue in choosing which company to provide stoma services.
I'd be inclined to mark them down if I was in charge as they would be wasting time and money on Stonewall that could be far better spent on, you know, stoma services for patients.

On the assumption that all the questions about fit for purpose, safe, levels of quality etc are already there, I assume that there are questions ensuring that suppliers have an ethnically diverse workforce, appropriate policies to ensure that pregnant women are treated according to the law, that the sex pay gap is not an issue and that all the relevant protected characteristics are identified and treated proportionately and in line with good practice and the law?

The NHS is fast becoming a national embarrassment with this rainbow washing obsession dominating what they ought to be doing. How about tackling the appalling death and injury rates in maternity care, especially for Black women?

The NHS is fast becoming a national embarrassment with this rainbow washing obsession dominating what they ought to be doing. How about tackling the appalling death and injury rates in maternity care, especially for Black women?

Yes. And tackling their known issues within their own workforce.

We have a wealth of data demonstrating that the 250,000 Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) NHS staff are disadvantaged in recruitment and career progression, disciplinary action, bullying and harassment, and if they raise concerns. Such discrimination has serious consequences for patient care and safety.
…
NHS BME staff are more likely than White staff to be disciplined. BME doctors, nurses and midwives are all more likely to be reported to their professional regulator by their employer, though interestingly, not by the public (1). Such treatment, exacerbated by the risk of racial bias in investigations, means that mistakes we all make are more likely to be seen through the lens of blame not learning for BME staff, especially given the difficulty some White managers have in having honest conversations with BME staff when mistakes do happen.

28% of NHS BME staff were bullied by managers and colleagues last year (23% of White staff were) and are 2.5 times more likely to report being discriminated against than White colleagues according to the most recent NHS staff survey. Bullying affects both physical and mental health (2) and adversely impacts performance, career progression, engagement, retention and team effectiveness with a cost conservatively estimated at 2.3 billions a year to the NHS in England (3). Bullied staff are less likely to admit mistakes, raise concerns or work effectively in teams – all with consequences for patient care and safety (4).

blogs.bmj.com/bmjleader/2022/05/31/workforce-race-discrimination-adversely-impacts-patient-care-too-by-roger-kline/

That's FIVE questions out of 35 on Stonewall stuff to win contract to deliver stoma services! Five!

1 in 7 questions about Stonewall. What about other diversity questions if that's an issue? 1 in 2 should be about sex. For a start. If you covered every group in the same detail zero questions would actually be about stomas and stoma service delivery.

I tend to think that there may be a bigger problem with this kind of ranking of companies. The idea of course is to give preference to comanies that show in some ways what are meant to be the values of the state or the government. Which seems nice.

But it is very easy to get problems like this one with SW which when you get down to brass tacks is, who decides what the government's values are? An NGO? A lobby group? A particular political party?

The other question is how effective this kind of ranking can really be, whether it can really account for diffeneces in company culture in a way that's fair or accurate, and how they decide how a company shows they are compliant, and who might be advantaged by the application of certain metrics.

It's a form of corruption. A deliberate and open misuse of public funds. Public funds meant for cancer sufferers.

According to the article, 'A spokesman for Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust said: “Under national guidance, NHS trusts are required to apply 10 per cent social value weighting for tenders.

"This includes environmental, economic and social issues and is one of a number of things we consider when procuring services." ' That would be fair enough, perhaps, but in this case we're talking about 20% on a single narrow issue with nothing about the other social values mentioned by the Trust. This country and its institutions seriously needs de-Stonewalling!

My company bids for many public sector tenders. I've not come across this yet, although there are often questions on "diversity and inclusion" policies. My opinion is that it's all about the scores - the whole ridiculous public procurement process is "quality blind". It's cost and box ticking. There have been several cases where a bidder has come in, with little knowledge of what's required, but ticked a lot of boxes and come in at the lowest prices. They win the business, only to pull out when they find they can't deliver make money from it . That actually works well for companies like us because we step in and not bound by contractual rates. But what a waste of public sector money.

This kind of question would be a huge challenge for me. Do I risk 24 jobs in what's an increasingly competitive market, or do I play the game? I'm just waiting on one of our bid team telling me we have to sign up to Stonewall to get more points.....

D'oh, didn't sanity check my maths - I somehow managed to get the 7 from 5/35 into my head when thinking about the percentage. It's 14%, not 20%. But my main concern remains unaltered.

I'm sure the fact that there is an easy certification scheme makes it an appealing option to concentrate on.

So all other things being equal, if you're a company that has changed your women's toilets to mixed sex, you'll get the gig?

Yep.

Never mind patient care, experience, commitment to improvement etc. Rainbow logo, you're in!

Yes. And genuine diversity takes effort - structural alterations for people with disabilities, translators, reaching out to different communities and economic groups. Stonewall 'diversity' means you can go on employing the same middle class white heterosexual men you always do but rebranded with a different flag.

This must be what Fair Cop were tweeting about last week.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4564254-nhs-tender-document-stonewall-criteria?reply=117733258

God, I am so sick of this shit.

I was going to write a long post about social value and what you have to include but I think the sentence above sums up my feelings!

This sort of stuff really gets my goat. Even if by some miracle my employer starts to see sense and dials back on the genderbread and pronoun stuff, the requirements of its large customers like the NHS will mean we can’t actually escape it. Our D&I has felt very box-ticky of late, and this might be a reason why.

Good on the Telegraph for reporting this. One day, in my dreams, the left or liberal press will deign to take notice of these issues.

What a disgrace. The founders of the NHS would be sick to see how their magnificent work has been corrupted.

Even if SW weren't a homophobic and misogynist organisation offering questionable value for money, this kind of thing doesn't work. It's all virtue signalling with little substance. A homosexual friend of mine featured heavily in a corporate video about the wonderful diversity of their workplace. Mere weeks later they were made redundant. But I'm sure their old firm clocked up lots of SW points.

And in the meantime we'll be castigated for celebrating the coverage that does appear in the Mail, Telegraph, Fox, etc. etc.