Cabinet Office minister Esther McVey has revealed that she will be demanding that councils cut back on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion spending and office away days when asking for more money.
She told GB News: “The taxpayers are saying, and I absolutely agree with them, we don't want to be paying for these ballooning away-days and these spurious courses.
“What we want to do is to make sure you are doing the job at hand. We want to have value for money and we want to make sure there isn't any waste.
“I'll give you an example: 308 arm's length bodies. By the very name of them they’re arm's length, but I've written to all of them to say ‘How are you looking after your customer? What are you doing? How quick is it to respond to something, how long do you take to actually reply to an issue and get a case sorted?
“When I get that information back I'll be dealing with it.
“Are they doing the job at hand? Have they slipped in their service from 2018? And bit by bit I will scrutinise it, work with it and get them to do some work.
“At the same time councils, I’m looking at what they're doing, what their Equality, Diversity and Inclusion spend is, and how many people they've got as Equality, Diversity and Inclusion champions.
“If they're asking the Government for more money, if they're looking to put council tax up, I'm now working with Michael Gove to say there must be conditions applied to that money that is going to them and one of them is they've got to cut back on waste, EDI spend and days away from the office.
“So those are some of the implementations that will go with the money going there.
“You can't put up taxpayers’ bills, you can't be asking the Government for more money and yet not getting rid of wasteful spending yourself. I think that is essential.
“We are handing over extra support, as is the public. Therefore, in return, what we'd expect is any form of waste, not doing your job at hand needs to go. Because at the end of the day you should be serving.
“I call that common sense, and I'm quite happy to wear the mantle of common sense.”
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