Town halls will be told to cut back on diversity training and expensive office away days if they want to put up council tax, Esther McVey the ‘Common Sense Minister’ has said. The Telegraph has more.
Esther McVey said councils should reduce spending on controversial “equality, diversity and inclusion” initiatives in return for asking taxpayers for more money.
It comes as the vast majority of councils are expected to put up their bills by the maximum 5% allowed in April.
Some councils which have declared themselves effectively bankrupt, such as Birmingham, are set to increase their bills by up to 10%.
Ms McVey, whose official title is Cabinet Office Minister, told GB News: “The taxpayers are saying, and I absolutely agree with them, we don’t want to be paying for these ballooning away days and these spurious courses.
“What we want to do is to make sure you are doing the job at hand. We want to have value for money and we want to make sure there isn’t any waste.”
A study two years ago found that across 397 councils there are 794 equality, diversity and inclusion members of staff.
Conservative Way Forward found that the average cost per council was £67,000 – totalling £30 million a year across the country.
The Minister said: “I’m looking at what [councils] are doing, what their Equality, Diversity and Inclusion spend is, and how many people they’ve got as Equality, Diversity and Inclusion champions.
“If they’re asking the Government for more money, if they’re looking to put council tax up, I’m now working with Michael Gove to say there must be conditions applied to that money that is going to them and one of them is they’ve got to cut back on waste, EDI spend and days away from the office…
“You can’t put up taxpayers’ bills, you can’t be asking the Government for more money and yet not getting rid of wasteful spending yourself. I think that is essential.
“We are handing over extra support, as is the public. Therefore, in return, what we’d expect is any form of waste… needs to go.
“Because at the end of the day, you should be serving. I call that common sense, and I’m quite happy to wear the mantle of common sense.”
Okay, now what about the civil service? It’s commendable that the Government wants to tell local councils to stop the wasteful wokery. But there’s still far too much going on on its own doorstep, under its own nose. Will it do more to put an end to that as well?
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Councils will politely tell the Minister to foxtrot oscar and carry on regardless. Nobody but the most gullible are fooled by these statements.
Agreed. They know they need only wait a few months for sir-kneeler to become PM. Then they’ll feel empowered to hire twice as many political commissars and hang the expense.
What an unpleasant prospect.
Quite, just another word salad straight out of the Rishi Sunak book of “words speak louder than action”. Or, as my mother would have put it: “Fine words butter no parsnips.”
It has been her party that has institutionalised wokery into every workplace in the country.
Don’t believe one word she utters, nor any of the Braverman, Patel, Mogg, Redwood, Davies, Anderson gang – they are all peeing in the same pot.
Too little too late. Tories failed for decades on all the big issues.
“Tories failed for decades on all the big issues.”
Now, now tof what Ms McVey is talking about is hardly a big issue, it’s pissing in the wind stuff. And knowing how councils work I can guarantee that away days for the “directors” will not disappear because Ms McVey has directed it to be so. This sort of expense will simply be filed under something reasonable and innocuous like ‘staff training.’ Now who could argue against staff training?
The real waste in council expenditure is Directors pensions which in the case of our local council is costing millions. If Ms McVey really wanted to achieve something useful for residents she would take a chainsaw to that largesse along with the numbers employed as ‘Directors.’
Quite frankly I believe McVey has insulted the electorate with this paltry nonsense. The cost saving apparently amounts to £67,000 per council – so what?
McVey needs to keep her head down because conning the public with faux cost-cutting measures will get her nowhere. The Tories are toast now anyway at the next election – if we have one – although it is difficult not to believe that their destruction is not being deliberately orchestrated.
Indeed just a sop to try and fool voters into thinking they are conservative. And McVey is one of the less bad ones.
“And McVey is one of the less bad ones.”
Aye, and she’s nice on the eye.
Redwood, Patel, Braverman, Davies, Anderson, Mogg, Anderson et al are all out the same fake mould. They all take the whip at the end of the day.
This may be true. But when each council, on average, employs 2 EDI people at an average salary of £33500/ year, these posts should certainly just DIE.
If we want to truly cut waste in all area’s of government and public sector this would be an extremely long response, and I’d still be typing on Monday.
But, just for starters, cut out all the BS related to Net Zero and Green energy, scrap the pointless Covid enquiry and commission a “proper” one, using a few notables from here for starters.
I have a life, so I’ll leave it at that for now!
I’m intrigued to read this report about local government spending.
https://www.tussell.com/regional-spending-report
I’m torn. Will it be a whitewash or a greenwash?
Apparently you can download it for free (which always makes me suspicious). If anyone gets the time, do share its contents.
Or the Government could just scrap (or amend) the Equality Act and make the whole nonsense stop completely.
But they’d rather posture.
Have Tory MPs been asleep for 14 years or are they desperate to save themselves from oblivion.
Both.