The Health Secretary has urged the NHS to assess its memberships with groups such as Stonewall.
In a letter to ten national health bodies, including NHS England and the Care Quality Commission, Steve Barclay MP said that with “wider societal concern about these issues” they should consider “whether your organisation is getting value for money from your diversity and inclusion memberships”.
He highlighted the Department of Health and Social Care’s example, which ditched Stonewall’s controversial ‘Diversity Champions’ scheme in 2021 because it “did not represent sufficiently good value for money”.
Controversy
The scheme, which has been mired in controversy, costs organisations around £2,500 a year, rewarding them for promoting LGBT ideology inside and outside of the workplace.
Several public sector organisations, including the Crown Prosecution Service, the Government Equalities Office and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, have joined the Department of Health in quitting Stonewall schemes in recent years.
Barclay also told the health bodies that rather than hiring new diversity officers, their duties could be carried out by existing managers. He asked the organisations to reply to him by May.
‘Ideological capture’
Earlier this year, NHS England U-turned on plans for its latest ‘inclusive’ maternity programme after healthcare professionals accused it of “ideological capture”.
The proposed ‘Maternity Gender Inclusion Programme’ was withdrawn two days after the maternity care advocacy group With Woman flagged concerns.
The experts said the £100,000 programme was based on ‘bogus research’ from the taxpayer-funded LGBT Foundation and lacked solid evidence.
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