Home Office officials have found themselves the centre of fresh backlash after it was revealed time spent by staff on diversity and inclusion schemes was the equivalent to 19 full-time employees each year.
The department is facing demands to ban “network groups” from operating within working hours.
The call for action came after it was revealed that “network chairs” who head individual diversity and inclusion groups are dedicating as much as 50 per cent of their working hours towards the voluntary role rather than on their paid responsibilities.
Other Whitehall departments have strict caps in place which prevent those involved in the networks from spending more than 10 per cent of their time on the groups.
The Home Office has found itself the centre of a backlash over time spent on its diversity networksPAHome Office Minister Lord Hanson confirmed the data after being pressed for answers by Conservative peer and GB News investor Lord Farmer.
In a written answer to a parliamentary question, Lord Hanson admitted: “the total amount of time allocated to network activity by relevant officials is currently equivalent to 19 FTE (full time equivalent) staff per year.”
Reacting with frustration to the revelation, the TaxPayers’ Alliance’s Elliot Keck said Britons across the country were fed up with diversity and inclusion networks wasting public money.
He said: “Taxpayers are sick of these talking shops taking up time and money.
“The Home Office is beset by crises, yet there are dozens of pen pushers with seemingly nothing to do.
“Whitehall mandarins should ban these groups from using working hours or taxpayer cash to operate.”
A Home Office source told The Sun: “This is exactly the same as it was under the Tory government, 0.03 per cent of the workforce are network chairs.”
Prior to the general election, the Conservative Government’s common sense” minister, Esther McVey, vowed to put an end to public money being wasted “on woke hobby horses”.
She vowed a crackdown on diversity and inclusion spending and to put an end to “politically-correct woke warriors” influencing the work of public bodies.
McVey also announced a ban on rainbow and other “random lanyards” in the civil service.
Esther McVey said there would be no more devoted EDI jobs in Whitehall when the Tories were still in power
PA
“These Left-wing, politically-correct woke warriors have made a concerted effort to get themselves into positions of influence within the public sector,” she said in May.
“They did not stand for election on these views because if they had they would not have won.
“So instead some have got themselves in academia and the civil service, local government, charities and arms length bodies and we need to make a similarly concerted effort to ensure they cannot use their positions in these public bodies to hijack them to impose their own political ideology.”
During the election campaign, Sir Keir Starmer vowed a different approach to diversity and inclusion.
He said a Labour Government would end “divisive culture war” politics and restore a “sense of bringing people together”.