Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Jobs Costing UK Taxpayers £557 Million a Year: Report

Jeremy Hunt leaves 10 Downing Street in London after he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer on Oct. 14, 2022. Victoria Jones/PA Media

The chancellor of the Exchequer is being urged to curb billions in spending that is “dividing us into warring factions and holding our country back,” according to a Conservative think tank.

On Monday, 40 Conservative MPs who are part of the think tank Conservative Way Forward (CWF), called on Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to consider the over £7 billion ($8.6 billion) worth of savings if the government “stops funding the politically motivated campaigns.”

The MPs include Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Sir Jake Berry, David Davis, and Esther McVey.

The research was based on an audit of government accounts and Freedom of Information requests to 6,000 public bodies, including local councils and the armed forces, and shows spending on equality, diversity, and inclusion initiatives by government, arms-length organisations, and contractors.

EDI

The think tanks said that 10,000 equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) jobs are costing the UK taxpayer £557 million ($683 million) a year, as well as a million working days lost.

It added that EDI-related public procurement contracts and the millions spent on race, sexuality, unconscious bias, and EDI training were costing the taxpayer £212 million ($260 million) every year.

It also proposed savings of £5.49 billion ($6.74 billion) from quangos that they say have “divisive schemes which sow discord in the public sphere.”

Some of the examples include imposing “anti-British” diversity schemes and “decolonisation” on students, with the Arts Council spending money on “unlearning whiteness.”

“African Drumming Sessions” have been provided to staff at Warwickshire County Council, and the report claimed that the staff at the Intellectual Property Office spent 24 days a year on a “respect at work boardgame.”

CWF noted that UK taxpayers are facing the highest tax burden since the Second World War and are currently paying the salaries of 10,000 staff that focus predominantly on issues of EDI, or spend a significant proportion of their time on such matters.

Furthermore, public procurement contracts on “politically contentious issues” have run into the millions.

It added that the government’s £203 million ($249 million) funding of charities that have opposed attempts to stop illegal immigration should be stopped immediately.

It said that under plans set out by Hunt, government revenue as a share of GDP will now reach a “staggering” 37.1 percent.

“This has naturally reignited the age-old debate about Britain’s taxable limit and the right level of public spending,” wrote CWF.

“But one thing nobody seems to be talking about is the waste that’s not just leading to our economic decline, but which is also causing us to become a more divided society,” it added.

A man working in a factory in the United Kingdom, in an undated file photo. Rui Vieira/PA

‘Too Little Too Late’

Don’t Divide Us (DDU) is an organisation set up to counterbalance and take a stand against the UK’s “divisive obsession with people’s racial identity.”

DDU Director Alka Sehgal Cuthbert told The Epoch Times by email: “So much money [is] being spent on EDI officers whose job is to tell us how to speak and behave with our colleagues from different ethnicities as if most of us haven’t been getting along just fine before.”

“Could we just have more, and better, public services?” she added.

Free speech advocate Nick Buckley, founder of the Go Woke Go Broke organisation, told The Epoch Times that “it is all too little too late.”

In June 2020, Buckley was sacked from the charity he founded for critiquing Black Lives Matter, though he was reinstated after intervention from the Free Speech Union. His new organisation aims to take on companies that promulgate progressive issues.

He had spent 20 years working with young homeless people, dealing with the inner workings of local government, authorities, and the police.

Buckley called EDI a “complete waste of time and money.”

“We have equality laws. We do not need anything else. EDI is an ideology that negates merit based on achievement and competence. It does not appreciate that people are different and therefore will make different choices when available. Women do not go into STEM so it must be prejudice, instead of understanding that most women do not find it appealing, so pick careers they do find interesting,” he added.

The Equality Act

However, EDI can also be seen as an HR role that can stop organisations from being sued for violating the Equality Act 2010.

This legislation provides legal protection for nine protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

Making the “social justice case” for EDI, the UK professional body for HR professionals, the CIPD, states that this “is based on the belief that everyone should have a right to equal access to employment, training and development based solely on merit.”

“Everyone should have the right to be free of any direct or indirect discrimination and harassment or bullying. This can be described as the right to be treated fairly and the UK law, principally in the Equality Act 2010, sets minimum standards,” it added.

There are also extra pressures within the act that promote EDI.

Part 11 of the act contains clause Section 149, which introduced a “public sector equality duty.”

This obliges public bodies to “encourage persons who share a relevant protected characteristic to participate in public life or in any other activity in which participation by such persons is disproportionately low.”

Furthermore, Section 149 (pdf) requires publishing measurable “equity objectives,” meaning that every public body has diversity duties when hiring staff.

This created a situation where the UK now has twice as many diversity and inclusion workers per capita as any other country.

The Epoch Times contacted Chancellor Jeremy Hunt for comment.