The central Cabinet Office team responsible for monitoring and “assuring” the Civil Service achieves its diversity and inclusion targets has costs of over £1 million per year. Should have been sacked years ago…
The Civil Service Inclusive Practice Team is part of the Government People Group (HR) and has 11 full-time equivalent staff whose job is described in the latest “diversity and inclusion strategy” as to “monitor progress made, assure activity and report into the CS People Board to promulgate inclusive practice.” The personnel also maintain “a network of individuals and teams working to progress equality, diversity and inclusion from across all government departments, Devolved Administrations, Non-Ministerial Departments, Agencies and Non-Ministerial Public Bodies.“ Whatever that means…
A parliamentary question to the Cabinet Office has revealed the team has “annual operating cost including non-pay costs” of a whopping £1,092,548.37. For that you could:
The Labour government has repeatedly pledged to cut civil service numbers despite them increasing. It will have to find even more internal efficiency savings after successive spending U-turns. UK DOGE recommends starting with this team…
Speaking on Times Radio, former Home Secretary David Blunkett spoke about overdiagnosis of mental problems:
“Let’s distinguish those who are really severely mentally ill, diagnosed with things that require prolonged medical and diagnostic treatment. My wife and I talk about this a lot, because she’s a retired GP, about the fact that you can be sad without being ill. You can be momentarily depressed because your boyfriend or girlfriend’s just thrown you and you’re not mentally ill. You can even have mild issues, which can be dealt with with the right kind of support, but it doesn’t make you mentally ill. So we’ve got a real task, I think, to get the psychology, if you like, of this over. But there are things where you definitely need medical intervention, and there are other things where you need good friends, you need good connectivity, and you need a job.”