Liz Truss thinks cutting civil service diversity jobs is the best way to save the UK money
British foreign secretary Liz Truss during the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 final. (Thor Wegner/Getty)
PM hopeful Liz Truss has said she would scrap diversity and inclusion jobs in a set of pledges about the civil service.
The Tory leadership frontrunner made a set of promises she said will cut approximately £11 billion a year in civil service expenditure, in what she called a “war on Whitehall waste”.
If elected as Conservative leader, Truss says she would “tackle left-wing groupthink in government”, including scrapping diversity jobs that she claims “distract from delivering on the British people’s priorities”.
According to Truss’ campaign, there are at least 326 diversity and inclusion roles in government departments right now, the removal of which would reportedly save around £12 million a year.
“As prime minister, I will run a leaner, more efficient, more focused Whitehall that prioritises the things that really matter to people and is laser-focused on frontline services,” she said. “There is too much bureaucracy and stale groupthink in Whitehall.
“I will put an end to that and run a government that focuses relentlessly on delivering for the British public, and offer value to hard-working taxpayers. I have shown in my time in government that I’m prepared to take on the Whitehall orthodoxy and get things done.”
The pledge to “offer value” to the public by cutting civil service staff came as BP announced it had tripled its profits, as the public grapple with soaring energy prices.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss speaks during the second Conservative party membership hustings on 1 August, 2022 in Exeter. (Finnbarr Webster/Getty)
Several trade unions have not taken the promises lightly, condemning the pledges as “ludicrous” and unworkable, while also saying Truss had exaggerated the yearly savings.
In an interview with The Guardian, Alex Thomas, programme director at think tank Institute for Government, said: “It doesn’t add up at all. The whole [annual] civil service pay bill is around £9 billion.”
Truss had also vowed to introduce regional pay boards, which would result in paying civil service staff based outside of London less than those in the capital. After swift backlash, she U-turned on the plan, saying that cutting pay had never been the desired result.
However, Truss’ claim that she had been misrepresented was swiftly shot down.
Former chief whip Mark Harper retweeted a section of a press release, making clear that lowering out-of-London pay was exactly what was being proposed.
Stop blaming journalists – reporting what a press release says isn’t “wilful misrepresentation”
So this u-turn has wiped out £8.8bn in savings. Where are these going to come from now?
An economic policy that can’t be paid for isn’t very Conservative. Mrs Thatcher would be livid https://t.co/MPMFRUrZJP
— Mark Harper (@Mark_J_Harper) August 2, 2022
Labour’s Emily Thornberry said it was evidence Truss was out of her league.
Having spent 18 months shadowing Liz Truss, the idea of her not realising what she’s signed up to is not exactly novel: the freeports fiasco, the shipbuilding blunder, the list goes on. After all, this is the minister who writes TL;DR with dead eye emojis on policy submissions….— Emily Thornberry (@EmilyThornberry) August 2, 2022
“After all, this is the minister who writes TL;DR with dead eye emojis on policy submissions,” she tweeted.
