Civil Service accused of lack of value to tax-payer because of its focus on diversity

Being someone who has worked in credit management for nearly two decades, I would say I would describe myself as a frugal man. That meaning that the shift towards an online-subscription model for being able to access the UK's most well-known newspapers in the last 10-15 years did not do much to entice me into parting ways with my hard-earned cash....until this week, that is.

An article that appeared in The Telegraph this week caught my attention as it popped up briefly on my news reel on my phone concerning the Civil Service and its focus on diversity. Intrigued enough to click on the article to learn more about it, I was bemused to find that my access to it was restricted behind a paywall. After many vein attempts to try and find a way of viewing it for free, I eventually caved in and paid ￡25 for a years subscription.

And what a wonderful decision that turned out to be too. Amidst the very tangible backdrop of social, economical and political challenges that seem to be pervading the lives of the majority of citizens across the country at the moment, I was curious to learn what The Telegraph could have to say about the Civil Service and its commitment to diversity since I have a vested interest as someone that wants to eventually become a Chartered Occupational Psychologist, and also a citizen of a country for whom the Civil Service is supposed to exist.

No prizes for reading between the lines of the headline, but it did not exactly cover the service or its leadership team in glory.

"Indeed, we have some employees in the public sector whose only role is to ensure that departments are meeting diversity targets,"

According to Cabinet Office minister Esther McVey, most of the programmes which are centred on the services' diversity and inclusion strategy cannot provide any evidence of their benefits to tax-payers "to say the least". It is a stark realisation which has led to plans to halt recruitment for roles which purely focus on boosting diversity in the Civil Service and also ban the use of tax-payers money for external EDI consultants and campaign groups. In her most brutal of remarks she stated:

"Diversity in the Civil Service should never just be measured in terms of race and sex; it should also be about background and differences of opinion and perspective which has not always been the case. Above all it should be about merit. “However, some managers feel that this doesn’t reflect their reality; and spend millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on advice from so-called equality professionals.”

The implication from the Cabinet Office minister that recruitment and selection decisions have been being made on anything other than merit might call into question the extent to which they have been complying with the Equality Act 2010's Public sector Equality Duty which requires public bodies to consider all individuals in relation to their own employees, as well as to eliminate discrimination. Worryingly, this is not the first time the ethics of the Civil Service's selection decisions have been called into question after an enquiry last year found that the RAF was discriminating against white men. A cynic might suggest they have a hard time learning their lesson.

But learning, you would have thought, would have been something that the Civil Service excels at above all else. According to the (now somewhat tainted) The British Psychological Society 's website, The Civil Service is one of the largest single employers of occupational psychologists in the country. And for those of you who do not know, according to the same section of their website, occupational psychology is

"concerned with the performance of people at work and with how individuals, small groups and organisations behave and function."

The Occupational Psychologist is also protected title by the Healthcare and Professionals Council who have their own standards of conduct, performance and ethics that those who are registered with them must meet in order to maintain their registration as a Practitioner Psychologist.

So given all of the above, it would be logical to assume that the vast amount of resources which have been ploughed into this scientific discipline which is focused on performance of people at work that all of the constituent departments which make up the Civil Service have been offering unrivalled value for money to its service users. But what did I find?

• Ministry of Defence - At a time when geopolitical tensions have been as high as they have been since the cold war, several people, including military leaders from the British Army, and politicians have issued warnings that the UK's armed forced are insufficiently resourced. Not to mention their strategy on global affairs is currently resulting in quite a few tents popping up around university campuses at the moment
• Ministry of Justice - According to the Institute for Government, recent and rapid rises in the UK prison population have let to it getting to the point where it is compromising prisoner safety. Violence in prisons is rising and so are instances of self-harm. The proportion of prison staff with less than 5 years experience has doubled since 2009/10 suggesting they have a significant staff turnover problem
• Department for Work and Pensions - A record 2.8 million people are now economically inactive because they are too ill to work. The number has jumped since lockdown, with the increase now the longest sustained rise on record. Yet the DWP has just led a recruitment drive for a team of Occupational Psychologists to train the Work Coaches who are supposed to be getting people into work and off benefits
• Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency - I have personally been through getting my licence renewed with the DVLA for medical reasons and it took 9 months. Several reports in the media have shone a light on a the severity of the dissatisfaction by people working there to the point that they have felt it necessary to go on strike and some have gone as far as vowing to "cripple the service" such is the level of discontent in the department and one politician has accused the department of discriminating against disabled people
• Department for Education - Following a string of strikes by Teachers and University staff over the last couple of years citing issues with work conditions and pay, it is no wonder that the NASUWT have claimed that the education sector is experiencing a "behaviour crisis" at the moment. This has led to record levels of teachers leaving the profession and a huge, but obviously ineffective, government-backed drive to get more teachers trained up and into the profession

So, plenty of records being set, but all the wrong one's it seems. But as long as those diversity targets were being met, everything else was secondary apparently. Until now at least.

Hold on.....what's this....???

The Civil Service still posting vacancies for jobs specifically related to boosting diversity? Perhaps these are vacancies that were created before Ms McVey decided that employing people into the civil purely on their skin colour or gender was no longer going to be permitted. Ironically though despite all the investment, it does not seem that all minority groups within the Civil Service are created equally. The latest figures published by them suggest that the population of people they have employed that have a disability is a mere 15.8%. This seems to fall some way short of representing the overall population of the UK, of which 24% have a disability according to government figures. Diversity leaders at the Civil Service only have a penchant for some of the characteristics protected under the Equality Act 2010 it seems (Ms McVey kind of told us which one's in her quote above).

It should be an interesting few months, particularly now I have my The Telegraph subscription and they have promised me daily emails with all the most important news bulletins on, especially now I know this is the kind of news they like to talk about. Who knows, you may even get another link-laden article out of it from me too!