Following Guido’s report that taxpayers coughed up over £1.2 million to Stonewall in 2021/22, including a whopping £700,000 for the “Diversity Champions Scheme”, Guido can now reveal that BEIS civil servants spent 5 weeks of staff time just to figure out how to leave it. A full 185 hours… only for the government to hand over £1.2 million anyway.
According to new FOI data from the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the department held 16 meetings in total, lasting over 8 hours, with a total of 362 staff in attendance across the discussions. Yes, 362 staff spending weeks scratching their heads over this impossible task. A task which, judging by the million-pound hole in the taxpayer’s wallet, they failed anyway…
Last year, Guido reported on the panicked “crisis meetings” the Department for Levelling Up and the Department for Health held to solve the same problem. FOI requests were also sent to BEIS at the same time. Back then, they simply ignored the request entirely. Wonder why…
Such was Stonewall’s iron grip on Whitehall that even BEIS Permanent Secretary, Sarah Munby, had to get involved. Clearly the top 362 civil servants working on this weren’t up to the job. Munby had to hold a town hall meeting, lasting 30 minutes, to figure out how to stop burning cash on turning staff into “diversity champions”. That meeting was attended by 275 people, and during working hours. Obviously.
