A ‘mindfulness lead’ to help staff meditate – on more than £40,000 a year. A ‘lived experience training lead’ – with yoga and Pilates sessions thrown in. And an ‘associate director of equality, diversity and inclusion’ earning just shy of £97,000.
A Daily Mail investigation reveals how Britain’s supposedly cash-strapped NHS is still finding millions to spend on the well-paid bureaucrats of the ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’ (EDI) racket.
These new roles have little to do with patient care and everything to do with politics: especially the modish obsessions of gender, sexuality and race.
This is not about the promotion of equal opportunities. It is a radical social justice programme rooted in identity politics.
A Daily Mail investigation reveals how Britain’s supposedly cash-strapped NHS is still finding millions to spend on the well-paid bureaucrats of the ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’ (EDI) racket
The health service has long been in a state of crisis, but in recent weeks it has slid towards meltdown.
Union militants have sought to blame the lethal mess on years of ‘underfunding’. But during the past 12 years of Conservative governments, the budget for the NHS and social care (at current prices) has risen by 39 per cent in real terms, from £129.7 billion in 2010 to £180.2 billion. There are record numbers of doctors, nurses, paramedics and ancillary staff.
As our investigation shows, much of that extra NHS cash is being wasted on the near-demented fixation with the woke agenda.
Only last week, one NHS trust was attacked over a job advert for a £115,000-a-year ‘Director of Lived Experience’ capable of ‘creating brave spaces’. Earlier this year, another study found that the NHS is spending more than £40 million a year on 812 equality, diversity and inclusion managers. That would be enough to pay for an extra 1,200 nurses – or 1.3 million GP appointments.
But the NHS is far from unique. The fixation with identity politics now runs right through the public sector, often at the expense of frontline services.
According to one recent estimate, there are almost 8,000 taxpayer-funded officials whose jobs are focused entirely on equality, diversity and inclusion. The bill for them has been calculated at £427 million a year.
Only last week, one NHS trust was attacked over a job advert for a £115,000-a-year ‘Director of Lived Experience’ capable of ‘creating brave spaces’. Earlier this year, another study found that the NHS is spending more than £40 million a year on 812 equality, diversity and inclusion managers. That would be enough to pay for an extra 1,200 nurses – or 1.3 million GP appointments
As clear-up rates for crime continue to fall, the police are estimated to be spending £10 million a year on staff whose sole purpose is to promote EDI dogma.
Another £3.6 million from police budgets is swallowed by ‘equality training programmes’, involving 24,100 staff days. One typical example of an EDI role is the current vacancy for a £49,000 ‘Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’ at Derbyshire Constabulary.
Elsewhere in the public sector, the London Borough of Redbridge has just advertised for a ‘Head of Policy, Equalities and Communities’ on a salary of up to £70,572, to deliver ‘engagement activities that lead to positive outcomes’.
The Ministry of Justice cannot cope without a new £38,000 ‘Diversity and Inclusion Manager’. Nor can the Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service manage without a £33,000 ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Partner’. The pattern is similarly prevalent in our universities. Oxford University alone is reported to have 40 employees focused on EDI work.
Nigel Lawson, the 1980s Tory Chancellor, may once have claimed the NHS was the religion of the British people. But diversity has become the creed of the ruling elite
The Office for Students, the independent higher education regulator, is seeking a £41,829 ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Specialist’. Kingston University wants a £54,000 ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Partner’, while Cardiff University feels it needs a £51,800 Programme Officer to help it ‘become an anti-racist organisation’.
The pattern is clear.
Nigel Lawson, the 1980s Tory Chancellor, may once have claimed the NHS was the religion of the British people. But diversity has become the creed of the ruling elite.
In effect, the EDI managers form a new priesthood, spreading a perverse gospel. And like the Spanish Inquisitors of the Middle Ages, they punish heresy wherever they find it, browbeating staff for holding the wrong doctrinal beliefs and attacking them for failing to adhere to the precepts of the cult, from ‘white privilege’ to ‘unconscious bias’.
Not only does this bloated industry inflict a terrible cost on the public purse: it also has a negative impact on services.
Almost every arm of the State has become increasingly inward-looking in recent years, consumed by ever more extensive exercises in staff monitoring, data collection and ethnic classifications – instead of doing the work we pay them to do.
The Home Office has been woeful in the fight against crime and in protecting our borders – its two most important duties – yet it recently won a string of diversity ‘awards’ and can boast that a quarter of its workers are from ethnic minorities and more than half are women.
Needless to say, there is no mandate for any of this. But as the strikes cause huge inconvenience to millions, how much longer are the British public expected to put up with an NHS that thinks an ‘Associate Director of EDI’ is worth the same as three nurses?