Civil Service diversity jobs will be scrapped - Esther McVey, the Cabinet Office minister

[IwantToRetire]

Civil Service diversity jobs will be banned in a new crackdown on Whitehall “woke” spending, The Telegraph can reveal.

In a radical overhaul aimed at ending the “back-door politicisation” of the Civil Service, mandarins will be ordered not to hire any new staff dedicated to <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/fuxUY/www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/20/crackdown-on-activists-in-the-civil-service/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">boosting diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI).

Under the plans, there will no longer be any jobs in Whitehall devoted solely to diversity.

Managers will be forbidden from hiring third-party DEI contractors, and officials whose jobs are currently focussed solely on diversity will be transferred into human resources teams and given broader remits.

Esther McVey, the Cabinet Office minister, is concerned that Whitehall managers are becoming <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/fuxUY/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/09/top-civil-servants-urged-to-push-diversity-to-get-more-mone/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">distracted by “woke hobby horses” rather than delivering their core functions.

In an announcement this week, she will warn that the public sector must not become a “pointless job creation scheme for the politically correct”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/11/civil-service-diversity-jobs-will-be-scrapped/

Can also be read at https://archive.ph/fuxUY

(I think this might backfire on them in terms of public perception, and no doubt exploited by Labour.)

They aren’t phasing out DEI as a concept they are just making it part of the HR role. There is an argument that if you need special diversity initiatives all the time then diversity is not really embedded into your organisation. You should be operating policies and procedures that balance rights in accordance with the law.

When government departments have paid tens of millions and still got the law wrong, it’s not a good use of tax payers money.

I had to challenge two big public departments who both stated gender was a protected characteristic and missed out sex. In the case of the Home Office it was their website that was wrong and I had to ask a member of the HoL to raise the issue to get it corrected.

Hope they boot Stonewall out for good. The resistance from staff will be extreme but it really does need a reset.

This is an excellent start, I really hope McVey is prepared for the fight it will take to change the culture

The scrutiny of the role of third party consultants is the biggest win here, I think

Well, quite. But of course in a year's time, it won't be McVey in charge.

Great more jobs for white public school educated men!

I agree - D&I should be business as usual and should be integrated and should sit in HR to be done properly with reference to the law. It's not going anywhere.

And I think this amalgamation of responsibilities is not going to be limited to D&I jobs either. CS needs to save money & there are just too many employees.

But advertising this particular element of the amalgamation is a vote winner because a lot of people think D&I is a waste of time & will see it as a sensible move.

I worked in the civil service, everyone had to have a "diversity objective". Getting rid of that would allow people to focus on their actual jobs .

I actually think this can be very useful. It forces senior white middle class men to consider, at least once a year, helping others up the ladder (not just their mini-me mates) for example.

They don't tend to work for local councils where many civil service jobs are

Councils are public sector but not civil service.

The public service here in Canada is awash with stuff. I have a close family member (a dreaded "white male"!!!) who has a scientific role in the public service. At the same time that they are shutting down more and more real science due to the cost, he is spending hours every month on different training and diversity initiatives. With little evidence it makes any differernce. Crazily, his work is related to climate, supposedly a priority of the Trudeau government.

Reminded of the Scottish Greens there.

@JassyRadlett oh what on earth made me think that was the case. Sorry and thanks for correcting me to save me from any future embarrassment I honestly thought they were

I know organisations that are part civil service and part public service, the whole setup can be quite arcane!

Esther McVey is not the answer to any of the UK's problems.

My last job (now retired) was to lead a team of 8 or so people in a large government department.

I always thought our job was to keep the Department legal, as far as diversity was concerned. So, to comply with all the legal requirement that the government had passed into law.

My and my teams job wasn't to be the behaviour police, it was to help out massive network of local, district and regional offices comply with current law.

is the current government saying they don't think any help in compiling with the law is needed, or are they saying they don't care if laws passed aren't adhered to?

I read the article as saying in a not very coded way jobs called DEI are always politically motivated and taken up by entryists who are just using the job to continue their political campaign on behalf of some groups.

So moving them to be integrated into human resources supposedly would stop this. Unless of course Human Resources are then captured.

What is so sad, or even angry making, that whatever methods have been imployed for the past few decades, it is clear that women in the work place do not have equality.

Maybe if the could work out how that happened, they would then be better placed to say they know how to improve equality within the work place.

Ugh that women is the most slimy and untrustworthy of all. She (and the Tory party) have forgotten what woke actually is and have fed in to a media storm

There is absolutely a place for making sure staff are being treated fairly and that service users are also being treated fairly

In my part of the public sector there are huge numbers of people in roles that are purely DEI, but little has changed for the better. These roles are ineffective and largely pointless IME. Countless emails, network groups but nothing of substance or meaningful change.

Ripping this up and starting again might not be a bad thing

I wonder how the Civil Service will react to that? Some may be going on strike

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13410167/Civil-servants-strike-government-policies-claim-transphobic-main-trade-union-Whitehall-staff-consider-calls-industrial-legal-action-new-anti-trans-guidance.html

Civil servants could go on strike over government policies they claim are 'transphobic' - as main trade union for Whitehall staff is to consider calls for 'industrial and legal action' over 'any new anti-trans guidance'

The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, which represents Whitehall staff, is set to consider calls for ‘industrial and legal action’ over ‘any new anti-trans guidance’. A motion over the issue has been tabled by two of the union’s branches for the PCS’s conference later this month. It cites the Department for Education’s draft guidance which warns teachers against letting pupils identify as the opposite sex without parental consent as an example. The motion says this ‘would make life harder for trans and non-binary school students’.

Incredibly depressing that so many of you are so embedded in the anti trans rhetoric that you’re willing to throw out the rest of equality and diversity initiatives with it. Who give a crap about having proper representation in the workplace as long as no one makes you out pronouns on your email signatures ey? All hail the hard right. Yes they’ll take away all your rights, but you’ll take trans people down with you! Well done everyone.

How does embedding D&I into HR roles "take away our rights"? Risk down the hyperbole. No one's buying it.

*dial down

As usual a large part of the story has been missed by the government

EDI isn’t only inward looking, it also ensures that users or beneficiaries of services are reached

I work for a department that funds things. Almost all of our EDI activity is focussed on making sure all those hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money reaches those less able to access funds for whatever reason