Blame Tory Ministers for the NHS's Woke-ification

I have written before on the Daily Sceptic about the extraordinary amounts of our money NHS organisations are spending on hiring DIE (Diversity, Inclusion and Equality) directors, managers, assistants and other such personnel. According to one source, the NHS employed around 800 DIE staff. The direct salary cost is estimated at about £40 million a year. But when you take account of other employment costs – pension contributions, offices, computers, plus all the frontline staff’s time spent on various ultra-woke indoctrination sessions, the real costs of the NHS’s DIE colossus is easily over £100 million a year. Moreover, despite pledges to reduce DIE staff, the NHS keeps on recruiting ever more.

But a key question is – why are so many of these people being given well-paid, well-pensioned jobs at a time when the NHS waiting lists are at record levels, when patients are dying because they are unable to get treatment and when the NHS claims to be in crisis due to a supposed lack of funding. Several Conservative Health Secretaries have proclaimed that they were clamping down on DIE. For example, in October 2013 Health Secretary Steve Barclay told NHS chiefs to stop “promoting woke ideology”. At the time the Taxpayers’ Alliance revealed that Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust was spending £464,101 on DIE staff and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust had 10 roles costing £428,127. Other NHS trusts that spent more than £200,000 on equality and diversity roles included Barts Health NHS Trust, which spent £376,645 on seven roles, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, which spent £352,930 on eight roles and Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, which spends £307,181 on 4.4 roles.

More recently the Sunday Times reported (April 14th 2024) that Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust announced that it was running a deficit of about £84 million. Yet Guy’s had recently appointed a Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. I don’t know how much this important individual is paid. But there was also an Associate Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion on a salary of £78,163 to £88,884 a year. So, I imagine that the Associate Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’s boss – the Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion – must be getting somewhere in the region of £100,000 a year.

The job specification for the Associate Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion stated: “The Associate Director will also be responsible for advising the Director for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion regarding equality and diversity issues, including changes to legislation, publication of relevant Government and Department of Health documents, good practice.” Forgive my ignorance, but I would have thought that, if the Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion is pocketing around £100,000 a year of our money, then this Director shouldn’t need someone on a salary of £78,163 to £88,884 a year to advise him or her “regarding equality and diversity issues, including changes to legislation, publication of relevant Government and Department of Health documents, good practice”.

Perhaps we can find the answer for the seemingly unstoppable growth of woke in the NHS by looking at the requirements put on NHS trusts and other NHS organisations by the Health Secretary’s own Department of Health? From the little I understand, each NHS body is expected to produce the following:

an “Anti-racism statement and commitment”
an “LGBT+ inclusion statement”
an “Equality, diversity and inclusion vision”
an “Equality Impact Assessment”
“Workforce Race Equality Standards” annual reports along with action plans
“Workforce Disability Standards” annual reports along with action plans
“Gender Pay Gap” reports along with action plans

Various NHS websites explain the purpose of some of these requirements:

Equality impact assessments (EIA) help to make sure policies, functions and services are not discriminatory. NHS organisations have a legal duty to assess whether an EIA is needed and to publish the report and action plan on their website.
The aim of the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) is to improve the experience of Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) staff in the workplace. This includes items such as employment, promotion and training opportunities as well as analysis of levels of discrimination against the main ethnic groups.
NHS England launched the Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) in 2019. The aim of the Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) is to improve the experience of staff with disabilities in the workplace The implementation of the WDES will allow NHS trusts to better understand the experiences of their staff. It will support positive change for existing employees and create a more inclusive environment for people with disabilities working in the NHS. It will also support the sharing of good practice and compare performance regionally and by type of trust.

Given the massive amount of woke bureaucracy imposed on NHS organisations by the Health Secretary’s own Department of Health, it’s hardly surprising that the hiring of DIE staff has been one of the fastest growing areas in our failing NHS. So, next time you hear a politician claiming to be clamping down on NHS administrative spending in order to focus resources on frontline patient care, you should perhaps take his or her sound-bite commitments with a rather large pinch of salt.

David Craig is the author of There is No Climate Crisis, available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.