Ministers spent £400k on ‘woke’ antibias training

Courses to educate in attitudes towards equality are a waste of taxpayers’ money, some MPs believe

MINISTERS have spent more than £400,000 on “unconscious bias” training, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal, including from a consultancy that has previously used Disney characters to highlight issues.

Civil servants usually take compulsory courses every year that cover similar issues, but an extra £416,644 has been spent on further face-to-face courses in the last two financial years.

The Department for Education allocated £92,500 for such lectures in the 2018-19 year, while the Department for Work and Pensions has paid £112,500 to the professional services firm KPMG for 720 staff to be trained.

The Home Office spent £54,080 on training 164 staff as part of two courses run by Civil Service Learning entitled “Unconscious Bias” and “Unconscious Bias for Senior Civil Servants”, a Freedom of Information request by the TaxPayers’ Alliance disclosed.

Equality firm Challenge Consultancy received £38,000 from the Ministry of Justice for two of its advocacy courses.

The Departments of Health, Business, Transport, and Digital, Culture Media and Sport spent a further combined total of £119,564.

A presentation previously used by Challenge in its workshops condemned the portrayal of Peter Pan character Captain Hook, who has a severed hand, as “sinister” in its “messages on disability”. Another slide referred to Arlene Phillips’ departure from Strictly Come Dancing in 2009, at the age of 66, as sending damaging “messages on age”.

It is unclear if these slides were used in the training for MPs or civil servants.

Challenge uses the slogan “If you have a brain, you have a bias” in its resources, and founder Femi Otitoju said in a 2019 interview that she “only worked in order to be an activist”. The company has previously used a blue puppet – “UB”, short for “unconscious bias”– in workshops.

Korn Ferry Hay, which advised Department of Health staff, has said that “reducing bias and barriers to development significantly expands any employee’s productivity”.

Training across Government departments was intensified after the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, it is understood, with top Cabinet ministers as well as civil servants attending recent events.

The spending has caused discontent among Conservative backbenchers, with one claiming that there was no scientific basis for the activities. “Ministers will be furious about how much officials are wasting on courses, which the scientific evidence suggests do not work and may be harmful,” he said.

“The whole agenda behind these courses is highly divisive and sets people against each other rather than bringing people together. They are a terrible

‘The whole agenda behind these courses is highly divisive and sets people against each other’

waste of poorer taxpayers’ hard-earned money.”

A second Tory MP, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said of the classes: “I haven’t been to any and I am probably not going to be attending,” he said. The MP went on to claim the “woke training” was “a little bit stupid”.

James Roberts, political director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers’ money should be focused on high quality services, not wasted on woke causes. There are extensive laws in place to prevent discrimination in the workplace, and mega training programmes like this should not be required.

“When ministers start the hard work of getting the public finances under control, they should start with stripping back on these controversial courses.”

The Sunday Telegraph contacted Challenge Consultancy for comment.