UK Edition
The NHS is creating hundreds of diversity and inclusion roles despite being told to crack down on “waste and wokery”.
Officials at NHS England have drawn up plans for three new departments called “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion”, “People and Culture” and “People and Communities”, with 244 posts across the teams.
The Health Secretary is understood to be “frustrated” by the move and intends to summon health officials to demand explanations for the creation of large departments enforcing “woke doctrines”.
Ministers have repeatedly promised to crack down on bureaucracy, with NHS England ordered to cut its total workforce by up to 40 per cent.
Earlier this year, Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, ordered NHS England to get rid of specific diversity and inclusion roles, as part of efforts to “ensure good value for money”.
The latest move has emerged ahead of the first joint strikes by junior doctors and consultants which NHS bosses have warned will cancel almost all appointments.
NHS waiting lists in England are also at a record high, with 7.7 million people – around one in seven of the population – waiting for treatment.
Plans seen by The Telegraph show the units have a staffing budget of almost £14 million, including 18 senior officials on six-figure salaries.
The departments fall under the auspices of workforce chief Dr Navina Evans, who is on a salary of more than £200,000.
In March, Mr Barclay wrote to the heads of 10 arms-length bodies, saying he believed that diversity and inclusion was “everyone’s responsibility and should be picked up through normal management processes and as a part of everyone’s role rather than through the use of external providers or discrete dedicated roles within organisations”.
It followed promises from predecessor Sajid Javid to stamp out “waste and wokery” in the health service.
However, proposals for the NHS’s new structure, to take effect from April 2024, show that it is seeking to create new directorates covering diversity, communities and culture.
Between them, the three departments will employ 244 people, including 177 staff earning at least £50,000 each.
Despite Mr Barclay’s instructions to get rid of specific roles for diversity and inclusion, the units include a dedicated Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) department, with 50 employees, and staffing costs of £3 million.
The plans say the national EDI team will focus on establishing “policy, knowledge and expertise in areas other than race and disability”.
The other new departments, “People and Culture” and “People and Communities”, are set to include scores more roles dedicated to inclusion, voice and culture and LGBT health and inequalities.
The £13.8 million in total salaries across the three units does not include on-call, overtime and London-weighting allowances, which could significantly inflate salaries.
Backroom bureaucracy
A source close to Mr Barclay said: “Taxpayers will be deeply concerned that NHS time and money is once again being wasted on rejigging backroom bureaucracy rather than frontline patient care.
“The Health Secretary has been clear that equality and diversity should be dealt with through normal management processes and by all staff recognising their responsibility for these matters rather than for dedicated teams enforcing woke doctrines.”
On Sunday night Mr Javid said: “The NHS should be focused on the urgent need to tackle the backlogs and deliver long term fundamental reform, not creating roles solely focused on diversity and inclusion.
“Patients want delivery on their priorities. That means using taxpayers’ money to drive improvements in care through ambitious reform. I’m sceptical these dedicated roles will do anything like that.”
Mr Barclay has cut one in six civil servant roles from the Department of Health since October, reducing the workforce by around 600 employees, and plans to shut 10 of its 21 offices.
NHS England is undergoing a restructure following its merger with NHS Digital and Health Education England, which will cut the total number of staff by around 40 per cent, to around 15,000.
In 2022/23 NHS England’s running costs came to £3.2 billion. The NHS’s overall budget is £153 billion.
It previously had an “Equality and Inclusion” department which had 72 staff and a budget of £5 million.
Frank Young, research and communications director at the Civitas think tank, said: “Most ordinary people will be aghast to yet again see money being spent on equalities advisers that could be spent treating sick people in hospitals.
“We’re constantly told that the NHS is underfunded while budgets are then made available for NHS managers fretting over diversity targets instead of medical care.”
He added: “Given the sizeable budgets being proposed, it is likely to come at the expense of genuine delivery of healthcare to patients. The NHS is creating a rod for its own back in misdirecting resources away from where they are best needed.
“NHS managers need to get a grip and push this money to hospitals to help make sick people better, not on re-organising the HR department to meet diversity targets.”
Dr Sean Phillips, head of health and social care at Policy Exchange, urged ministers to make good on previous commitments to get rid of dedicated diversity and inclusion roles.
He said: “The Health Secretary should demand an immediate moratorium on recruitment, including internal transfer, into Equality, Diversity and Inclusion roles and direct that NHS England carry out a sharp review into how to dramatically reduce expenditure in this area. Who’s in charge here: elected ministers, or NHS managers?”
Joint strike action
Consultants in England will walk out for 48 hours from Tuesday, and will be joined by their junior colleagues on Wednesday. Junior doctors, who are demanding a 35 per cent pay rise, will then continue their strike on Thursday and Friday.
Both consultants and junior doctors will then strike together on October 2, 3 and 4 – coinciding with the Conservative Party annual conference in Manchester.
Prof Sir Stephen Powis, the NHS’s national medical director, warned that the health service had “never seen this kind of industrial action in its history”.
He added: “This week’s first ever joint action means almost all planned care will come to a stop and hundreds of thousands of appointments will be postponed, which is incredibly difficult for patients and their families, and poses an enormous challenge for colleagues across the NHS.”
An NHS spokesman said: “While there are legal duties on equality the NHS has to meet, and they have an important contribution to make in retaining and recruiting the hundreds of thousands of NHS staff needed to care for patients now and in the future, the number of EDI roles in NHS England has actually reduced by more than a third over the last year as part of our efforts to ensure an even greater proportion of NHS funding reaches the front line.”