My new analysis has revealed that EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) roles paying up to £91,336 have been advertised on average every week since Labour came to power. Taking into account the generous NHS pension scheme, these are estimated to cost over £2.2 million a year. 35 recent roles have been advertised on the NHS’s jobs website, including a Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion for NHS North East London on £91,336 a year, an Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Lead for NHS England on £81,138, and a Deputy Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion for Sussex Integrated Care Board on £72,293. Wider estimates suggest that the total cost of all dedicated ED&I roles in the health service is in the region of £40 million.
As the former Health Secretary, having previously taken action to try and cut wasteful DE&I spending when in office. I ensured that the Department for Health and Social Care had no standalone diversity roles and instructed the department’s arms-length bodies as well as local NHS organisations to cease recruitment to DE&I roles. However, this was met with a fierce backlash, with senior NHS bureaucrats bizarrely claiming that the NHS ‘will simply not survive’ without EDI staff and that a focus on EDI was a ‘key strategic function’ of the NHS. It would appear they used my move to a different cabinet role as an excuse to ignore my direction.
There is a renewed focus on DE&I programmes after new US president Donald Trump issued an executive order bringing such programmes to an end in the US federal government earlier this month. I’ve long tried to bring an end to dedicated DE&I roles in the health service. They don’t represent value for money for taxpayers, divert resources from frontline needs, and seem more interested in pushing highly politicised ideology than actually improving care. Bureaucrats did everything they could to frustrate my DE&I crackdown, and now under Labour, they seem free to recruit even more on eye-watering salaries, whilst at the same time experts have called the emergency care on offer to patients degrading, dehumanising, and dangerous.
