In June, Guido reported on HMRC’s latest cash splurge: three diversity officer roles on salaries up to £50,000. At the time, hiring just three seemed excessive for a department whose main responsibility is to take money from people’s pockets. It turns out that’s the tip of the iceberg.

A new Freedom of Information response reveals the taxman actually has 16 full time diversity tsars on the payroll, at an astonishing cost of £1,019,534 a year. Since 2019, the total bill comes to over £3 million. The Equality Act never meant it was impossible to stop 16 people hoovering up millions in taxpayers’ cash over the last three years. This wasn’t inevitable. 

That £3 million sum is just for the dedicated diversity brigade; the FoI makes clear there are others on the public payroll who occasionally take on these responsibilities in addition to their “regular duties”. Regular duties in this case meaning the actual work taxpayers expect them to do, such as – for instance – trying to claw back the billions lost to COVID fraud…

Of the 16, one is on a Grade 6 salary, which reaches up to £80,384 in London. Five more are on Grade 7, which tops out at £66,712. Then there’s the ‘Race Delivery Programme’, which somehow has “16.87 full-time equivalent staff”, and a total budget of £1.5 million for 2022-23. How is any of this reasonable or justified? Hand over your pay cheques, HMRC have got rainbows to paint and pronouns to wear…