Yesterday Sajid Javid told an NHS conference in Liverpool that no more taxpayers’ cash will be poured into the NHS as this would be “unfair on younger generations”, emphasising “the answer can’t always be more money” as he rejected demands from NHS bosses to increase NHS spending beyond 44%* of public spending. Saj told them
“I don’t want my children or anyone’s children to grow up in a country where more than half of public spending is taken up by healthcare, at the expense of everything else from education to housing. That’s not a fair deal for the British people, particularly young people.”
A much needed and welcome reality check. The restraint most urgently needs to be applied to the burgeoning band of staff who are non-patient focused. Last week Sajid announced a new war on NHS woke waste, with DHSC publishing a report into NHS leadership featuring new promises to reduce the proliferation of woke diversity and inclusion managers. Guido’s been campaigning against the overpaid woke bureaucrats for months; in April he found four jobs going for race and equality leads, some set to be paid as much as £90,387 a year; in March he found three more ads all to be paid over £50,000 a year; in December there were 12 ads running, with one salary reaching £108,075 – the total bill was £618,612 of annual wages; at the start of 2021, eight diversity managers were hired on £50,000 salaries. Indefensible during a cost-of-living crisis…
With plans set to be announced in the next couple of months, the department is hard at work thinking about how to respond to the NHS’s approach to spending taxpayers’ cash on non-patient focused staff. As well as hoping to reduce the number of equality roles in the service, Guido was told by one department source considerations may also be given towards trying to dictate what pay band equality roles fall under, preventing the woke warriors from being paid almost as much as the Prime Minister. This is in addition to issuing guidance that diversity and inclusion should be part of the responsibilities of the existing human resources departments. Guido looks forward to seeing the forthcoming plans…
*Figure excluding pensions and welfare payments.
This afternoon the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) published Sir Gordon Messenger and Dame Linda Pollard’s full report into NHS leadership, as ordered by Sajid back in October. The full report calls for major reforms across management and hiring, the part that caught Guido’s eye is the call to reduce the proliferation of diversity and inclusion managers – some on six figure salaries – that have cropped up over the last few years. Something Guido has been campaign against for months…
While the report itself generously refers to these well-remunerated staff as “dedicated experts“, and recommends that they be phased out as existing managers develop their own expertise and wisdom on diversity, Saj himself was far more damning. Ahead of the review, the Health Secretary called for “urgent” action to improve NHS leadership – and that started by cutting back on “waste and wokery”:
“In my view, there are already too many working in roles focused solely on diversity and inclusion, and at a time when our constituents are facing real pressures around cost of living, we must spend every penny on patients priorities. As this report sets out it should be the responsibility of everyone to encourage fairness and equality of opportunity which is why we must reduce the number of these roles.”
He later appeared at the despatch box after PMQs to reiterate the point, with Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting inevitably claiming the announcement is designed to “throw red meat” to Tory backbenchers. “Red meat” in this case obviously meaning ‘save the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds’.
A DHSC ally tells Guido:
“We will cut waste and wokery where we find it. We have a responsibility to the taxpayer to make sure their money is being spent on their priorities. Today’s landmark report sets out how we are going to improve leadership because the best leaders will save money in the long run by increasing productivity and efficiency.”
Better late than never, although we’re still waiting on the action plan. How long until all this is implemented? The Saj is pragamatically seeking to shift diversity and inclusion responsibilites onto HR managers and away from militant social justice warriors. There is plenty to do; there are currently 9 diversity manager vacancies up for grabs on the NHS job board at the time of going to pixel…
Forget committing the cardinal sin of questioning the NHS’s budget, it now seems followers of the UK’s largest religion are intent on prying into Tory MPs’ medical affairs. Browsing WhatDoTheyKnow – a database of public FoI requests and answers – Guido spots ‘Save Our NHS in Kent’ have developed a concern that Thanet MP Craig Mackinlay might be daring to not use our National Health Service. Surely a resigning matter…
Mackinlay says he is more than aware of the Carly Jeffrey in question, who was the agent for his Labour opponent in 2019, and whose local party branch have become obsessed with this conspiracy. The Thanet MP tells Guido that he’s surprised by Jeffrey’s claims of his medical arrangements given she’d only know with access to the records of the accountancy firm in question; he is willing to “save her the trouble” of any further investigating into the theory, specifying “this is categorically not the case”. God forbid any Tories dare have private health arrangements outside the scope of our beloved NHS…
It’s now a running series on Guido to point out how much taxpayer money the NHS splurges on pointless diversity and inclusion managers. Since the last story just over three weeks ago, four more of these roles have popped up on the NHS job board. Whoever grabs the top gig, the new ‘Head of Equalities’, will rake in up to £90,387 a year…
Every time one of these stories is published, someone in the comments below inevitably claims the Equality Act 2010 necessitates the appointments – as though the government is powerless to stop more and more well remunerated diversity tsars spawning all over England for the rest of time. Those who make this argument typically cite the public sector equality duty (PSED), which says public bodies must
“have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between different people when carrying out their activities.”
It doesn’t say this requires whole teams of dedicated diversity and inclusion staff collecting top salaries courtesy of the taxpayer. Practically all the responsibilities legally required in the Equality Act could – and should – be absorbed into an existing HR department’s remit…
Two weeks ago, Rishi announced he would chair a new “Efficiency and Value for Money Committee” that plans to cut £5.5 billion worth of waste across the public sector, with a specific promise to double the NHS’s efficiency commitment to 2.2% a year. Guido hears there’s some enthusiasm in Whitehall to take aim at these ridiculous positions, although there’s still nothing concrete as of yet. Time to get to work. This does not require legislation, it simply requires the bureaucracy to be directed to do so by ministers with political will…
Scrolling through the government’s civil service job listings this afternoon, Guido was less-than-reassured to see a new job advert put up for a “DNO Warhead Nuclear Threat Reduction Programme Manager” over at the MoD. In light of the heated tensions on European soil, defence chiefs are looking for someone to step up to the plate and help “mitigate threats across the nuclear spectrum”:
“Lead on the programme management of the Nuclear Threat Reduction programme delivered through [Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE)], to a variety of customers across Government. Establish and maintain requirements for the Nuclear Threat Reduction programme to deliver to Dep Hd NTR, tracking and managing AWE’s programme performance to time, cost, and quality, escalating issues as appropriate. Interface closely with DNO enabling functions for financial, commercial, and PMO support.”
Perhaps more shocking than the advertising of the role itself, however, is the comparatively meagre salary offered for such a stressful and essential public sector job: just £40,000. The double blow being that you may also have to work in Reading…
In December Guido revealed the NHS had moved on to hiring diversity managers with salaries now up to £108,000 – 2.7x that being offered to the people now being asked to avert nuclear armageddon. If we’re all soon to be vaporised underneath a mushroom cloud, hopefully it’ll be an equitable extermination…
Every few months the NHS runs into a serious logistical problem. Not that there’s now an unprecedented waiting list. Not that its budget is the same size as the entire GDP of Greece. No, the problem is it doesn’t have enough ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’ managers, collecting £60,000+ salaries at the taxpayer’s expense. Yes, they’re hiring… again.
Budding pen-pushers in Manchester, York, Scarborough and London are in luck: three more equality lead positions have opened in those areas this week. If “shaping and delivering the improvement of equality, diversity and inclusion” sounds good to you, look no further. The job ad for the Head of Equality in York/Scarborough seems to have made a mistake, though – it describes the role as a “rare opportunity“. Given this is now the 23rd diversity manager role to appear on the NHS job board in the last 12 months, losing candidates shouldn’t worry too much. Just wait a few weeks and try again. Sometimes the salary offer is even higher.
An extra £117,441 to the NHS’s annual budget well-spent. For some reason, these heroes didn’t get a mention in Saj’s ‘radical’ NHS reform speech earlier this week…
