Scrap woke diversity schemes to save money, councils will be told

TOWN halls will be ordered to ditch woke diversity schemes as part of Budget plans to save taxpayers’ money.

Councils are expected to be told by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt tomorrow that they must draw up new plans to improve services while also cutting waste.

They will be told to stop spending ratepayers’ money on expensive consultants and on controversial equality, diversity and inclusion schemes.

It comes after Mr Hunt declared in an interview this weekend that ‘public sector waste is immoral’.

He told the Sunday Telegraph that there is ‘too much waste across many parts of the public sector’ and singled out diversity schemes as an example.

Mr Hunt said: ‘I find some of those initiatives very hard to defend. I’m a big believer in smashing glass ceilings, but the people who smash glass ceilings,

or who can make sure the glass ceilings are smashed, are the people who run companies and who run organisations.

‘It is not something you should subcontract to a kind of a unit of people who are paid a lot of money.’

Last year the Chancellor commissioned an audit of all EDI spending and activity across the Civil Service, which has been carried out by the Cabinet Office and is expected to report back soon.

Michael Gove, whose department is responsible for local government spending, has also told councils to ditch equality schemes.

The Levelling- Up Secretary approved a £600million bailout for struggling town halls in January.

Mr Gove told Parliament at the time: ‘We are asking local authorities to produce productivity plans setting out how they will improve service performance and reduce wasteful expenditure to ensure

every area is making best use of taxpayers’ money.

‘I encourage local authorities to consider whether expenditure on discredited equality, diversity and inclusion programmes meets this objective.’

He has also criticised councils for ‘spending money on unconscious bias training and a variety of politically correct exercises instead of devoting money to the frontline’.