IN A letter to the heads of the NHS bodies, Health Secretary Steve Barclay has demanded that they reconsider their Stonewall membership and remove diversity officers.
He insisted that organisations such as NHS England report on the cost-effectiveness of inclusion programmes.
He added that they should assign these responsibilities to current managers rather than hiring new diversity and inclusion officers.
The letter was sent to the heads of ten NHS independent organisations, including the UK Health Security Agency, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, and the Care Quality Commission.
In it, Barclay also made note of the fact that the Department of Health and Social Services had decided to not renew its membership to Stonewall in February 2021 since it did not represent value for money.
He wrote: ‘In these times of financial pressures, and wider societal concern about these issues, I would ask that you, as a member of the wider health family, now review whether your organisation is getting value for money from your diversity and inclusion memberships and, if not, consider any steps that you could take to address that, such as following the Department’s example and allowing any association/subscriptions that you have to lapse or be cancelled.’
In his letter, he also said he believed that diversity and inclusion was ‘everyone’s responsibility and should be picked up through normal management processes and as a part of everyone’s role rather than through the use of external providers or discrete dedicated roles within organisations’.
He set a deadline for the bodies to report back by May 1.
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