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https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/20/the-diversity-industry-is-bad-for-your-health/

First up was news, reported in The Times last week, that the NHS is still actively recruiting ‘equality and diversity staff’. What’s more, these woke hires are in line to be paid double the salary of junior doctors. NHS England is currently looking to fill an EDI secondment position for south-west England. With a salary of £122,000 pro rata per year, I’m guessing this opportunity will not remain unfilled for long. Elsewhere, a London trust is advertising a head of EDI position with a £91,300 salary. With junior doctors earning between £36,600 and £70,400 and consultants being paid between £105,500 to £139,900 per year, why bother attending medical school?

Unsurprisingly, the NHS Confederation, which represents managers across the health service, is keen to contextualise these costs. ‘Current estimates put NHS annual spending on dedicated EDI roles in the range of £40million’, a defensive webpage claims. ‘This accounts for less than 0.03 per cent of the NHS’s annual resource budget for 2023-2024.’ In other words, when your annual budget is more than the entire GDP of many countries, £40million on EDI officers is just loose change. But patients who have suffered the indignity of being treated in a hospital corridor, or have spent days failing to secure an appointment with a doctor, may be forgiven for thinking that £40million could be better spent on medical staff.

The harm caused to patients by the NHS’s diversity obsession is not just in wasted money. When clinicians attend lengthy EDI training sessions, time that could be spent in hospital is instead spent watching PowerPoint presentations. The Times highlights an 18-hour long NHS leadership academy course, which takes place over six weeks and helps senior managers ‘lead with inclusion and allyship’ by reflecting on their privilege, and studying ‘the history of British slavery and colonialism’. Elsewhere, staff can engage with a 49-slide ‘microaggressions toolkit’, a 24-slide toolkit on how to be ‘an ally’ or spend up to 60 hours taking a course on ‘inclusive workplaces’. Next time you can’t get to see a doctor, rest assured she is probably busy learning that slavery was bad and that calling people ‘ladies and gentlemen’ is evil.