‘Common Sense’ minister Esther McVey has announced a ban on civil service jobs dedicated to ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’ (EDI). The Times has more.
In a speech on Monday, McVey will claim that public money is being wasted on “woke hobby horses” across Whitehall. She wants to stop any more officials devoted to EDI outside of human resources, with no more staff doing it as their primary role.
New guidance is being worked on that would stop all external EDI spending across the civil service unless it is authorised by ministers.
Arms-length bodies that spend the most on external EDI will also be called in for meetings with McVey to account for how doing so benefits taxpayers. McVey, a Cabinet Office minister without portfolio, said in an article for the Sunday Telegraph that the public sector must not become a “pointless job creation scheme for the politically correct”.
The amount of staff time taken up by diversity programmes was “a major concern”, she said. “Time and money which should be spent on the core purpose of the public sector – delivering for the public – is being wasted on woke hobby horses.
“Most of these kinds of EDI programmes – especially when delivered by private companies or campaigning organisations – are not transparent, and their benefits unproven. If we can’t prove their worth, then they don’t pass the public interest test. So I’m determined to stop it.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: In her speech yesterday morning announcing her war on woke, Esther McVey revealed she will ban rainbow lanyards in the Civil Service. The Times has more.
Stop Press 2: Civil service diversity jobs are superficial, patronising and a waste of taxpayers’ money, says Celia Walden in the Telegraph, applauding Esther McVey’s crusade.
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Common Sense was looking out the window in March 2020 and seeing no pandemic.
What did the lovely Esther say then, I wonder?!
Don’t know be she gave the health fascist Hunt a second chance, so I don’t trust her judgement.
It’s all in the word ‘unless’.
Ms McVey might as well be a minister for gardening. She is pruning the woke undergrowth; raising the canopy of the woke forest; culling the surfeit of strange beasts that scurry in the woke wilderness. As long as whatever is woke ‘delivers’ ‘value’, floreat florebit.
As all gardeners will know, pruning makes a tree or shrub grow better; have a more attractive shape; produce more or fuller fruit.
When there has to be a minister for common sense it can be certain that all common sense has been lost. If you have freedom of speech, there’s no necessity for a minister of freedom of speech.
Has she got enough time to even start the job before Labour sweep back in a reinstate all the woke rubbish in spades.
This strikes me as more election window dressing.
The only way of cutting the state is with the blunt tool of spending cuts, e.g. 30% reduction in headcount. The minute you start trying to micromanage, the civil service starts running circles around you. Any serious conservative minister needs to view the civil service as the enemy and take actions to directly harm their interests.
I was hoping the headline read “‘Common Sense’ Minister to Scrap Civil Service”
30% reduction in headcount will mean the HR and EDI types will arrange for everyone doing anything actually productive to be fired to “cut costs”. McVey’s approach – to which degree it’ll work out remains to be seen – of identifying and than attacking actual problems is much more sensible.
won’t work. too slow
Mcvey, Mogg, Davis, Davies, Baker, Patel, Braverman, Davies, Badenoch, Jenrick, Redwood and others who position themselves on the Right of the a party have no influence whatsoever in the fake Tory party. But they have carved themselves a comfortable niche in the Party in playing to, and keeping onside the centre right vote. Hopefully this year the general public will see these actors for what they really are and they too are rejected in the GE.
The Conservative party has a serious credibility problem. Even if they go to the general election with a manifesto that takes an ultra hard line on immigration and wokery, they simply can’t be trusted.
They won’t even leave the ECHR – I mean, what is the benefit of being a member? The MPs just don’t want to upset their leftists friends. Leaving the ECHR should be the easiest decision in the world and they might even be able to get it without a vote.
At this stage, even Rishi personally machine gunning down the small boats won’t rescue the Tories.
As I watched the McVey Speech on GB news I switched over to SKY and BBC for a minute to see if they were showing it ——As I expected …No chance.
Lip service.
If they meant business they’d cut the funding for every DEI post in the public sector.
All they want is a few headlines.
Also what are they doing about Debanking, not a lot!
“Lip service”. Spot on!
Isn’t it amazing how the Fake Conservative Party is suddenly changing direction to please the voters before an election?
First we have Sunak the Smarmy raising the spectre of Nuclear War that he says only he is capable of preventing (???), so don’t vote for Kneeler.
Then we have Irish Maryolater McVey suddenly popping up to take action against the hated diversity, equality, inclusion rubbish in the civil service, after half a year in her post.
What next, I wonder? As Jon Mors said above, not even Sunak machine-gunning the dinghies will save the Tories now.
Another said,
“Representative democracy has failed in the UK.. Neither main party represent anything like the majority views in the UK.. Time for direct democracy through referendums held regularly on all matters.. Politicians should be just administrators of what the people decided. The most democratic country in the world has to be the Swiss and they have this as their system. Works very well and they never get involved in other countries wars.”
I think that is why Tommy Robinson is treated so harshly, because large swathes of British citizens agree with him.
I call it political poker ——-“I will go 50 million on stopping the boats” —–“I will see your 50 million and raise you another 40 million on tackling human traffickers”. ———“I will tackle the human traffickers and send the migrants back where they came from”——–“No you won’t because it is illegal”———“Well if it is illegal I will get rid of the court”——–and on and on and on