As doctors down stethoscopes and walk out of hospitals in their ongoing strike for better pay and working conditions, the public might reasonably conclude that the NHS is underfunded. How, then, do we make sense of this week’s revelation that NHS England is set to open three new departments focusing on equality and diversity? Either there are insufficient funds to pay doctors and nurses a decent wage or there is money to splash out on rainbow lanyards and unconscious bias training. Both cannot be true at the same time.
The three new NHS England departments, set to open in April 2024, will be called ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’, ‘People and Culture’ and ‘People and Communities’. I am no highly-paid inclusivity expert, but it strikes me there is potentially some overlap here. Are the ‘communities’ and ‘culture’ staff not also concerned with equality, diversity and inclusion? And what about all the existing human resource officers? Are we to believe they are unconcerned about the employment rights of transgender nurses?
The phrase ‘jobs for the boys’ comes to mind, but it is no doubt outlawed as transphobic
None of this potential duplication seems likely to prevent the new centres from employing 244 people at a cost, the Daily
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