David Craig, on November 13th, 2024Wednesday-Thursday blog
I have written several blogs about the huge number of DIE (Diversity, Inclusion and Equality) managers being hired by ‘our’ NHS. Latest estimates based on Freedom of Information requests by the Taxpayers Alliance suggest that there are more than 800 DIE staff in ‘our’ NHS costing us about £40m in direct salaries. Then when you add in social security costs, pensions office costs and so on, you can probably reckon on the real cost being nearer £100m a year. Then you’ve got the costs of all the time front-line medical staff spend filling in useless questionnaires and surveys and attending pointless DIE training sessions, you must be over £200m a year.
But the utter absurdity of this nonsense is that the NHS workforce is already more diverse than the UK population.
So why on earth are we spending over £200m a year worrying about making ‘our’ NHS more diverse?
Here are just two simple charts showing how the NHS is already more diverse than the country.
The first chart shows the percentage of NHS staff of each ethnicity compared to their percentage in the working population:
The light blue lines represent the percent of NHS staff of that ethnicity and the dark blue lines the percent of that ethnicity in the working age population. As you’ll see, there are a greater percent of Asian and Black employees in ‘our’ NHS than there are in the working age population. But White British are under-represented in ‘our’ NHS.
But wait, you might say, perhaps the ethnic minorities are doing the menial jobs while white people are dominating the higher-level positions. Well, if you thought that, you’d be wrong.
Let’s look at the percent of the main ethnicities by type of job to see if ethnic minorities are sufficiently represented in ‘professionally qualified clinical staff’ (the light blue line on the chart below):
An impressive 15.9% of professionally qualified clinical staff are Asian compared to just 10.1% of the working age population. 8% of professionally qualified clinical staff are Black compared to just 4.4% of the working age population. But only 68.7% of professionally qualified clinical staff are White compared to 80.7% of the working age population.
Of course, I realise that the above two charts only look at ethnicity. So they don’t tell us anything about other minorities. For example, we don’t know whether there are sufficient blind heart surgeons in ‘our’ NHS or whether there are sufficient heavily-bearded trannies working as nurses.
Nevertheless, given the official NHS staffing figures shown in the above two charts, one might be forgiven for wondering whether ‘our’ NHS, which as we all know is the envy of the world, really needs any DIE staff at all. Or could they all be fired saving ‘our’ NHS several hundred million pounds a year?
Over to you, Mr ‘I’ll-reform-the-NHS’ Streeting.
Category: 
I question whether this really matters. It is the quality of service we should be concerned about. What none of us know is how much any of our treatments cost. The NHS should cost everything and provide us with a statement of cost. The government also should allow us to opt out of the NHS and the costs are essential in making this decision. After my recent experiences I don’t want to go near the NHS. I’m thinking of having a tattoo on my chest saying “NHS keep away”.
But I have paid for some private care. I saw one consultant who examined me. It cost about £600 and he told me I needed to see another consultant. He carried out the same examination and charged about £550. He doesn’t know what is wrong and needs to do a biopsy under general anaesthetic. That will cost me about £3,500, or more if I need to stay in longer than a day. I had already spent £1,000 before the latest consultations. I don’t know what is wrong although I can make a good guess and the cost of treatment will be far more than I have already paid. If it is what I think I doubt that I will have the treatment and I will not try to get it done by the NHS.
It seems to me that it is impossible to get rid of the NHS because most people cannot afford the private costs. The welfare state will continue to increase in size until it bankrupts the entire country, and then it will be forced to close down. This is what is at the end of the socialist road and we are approaching the end.
I’ve been saying for years that the NHS is extremely diverse so why does it need 800 (and counting) DIE managers? It’s absolutely ridiculous. Sack the lot of them and get Stonewall out of there too. Time to get back to your core business!!
I hope you filled in the nhs public consultation – suggestions on how to improve the NHS!
You’ll find it at change.nhs.uk, you can make as many suggestions as you like. I gavr them 7 off the top of my head.
Ps I’ve been down the private route too A Thorpe, all 3 of my consultants were pretty useless, none of them had any idea what the problem was and would have been the same people I would have seen on the NHS if I was prepared to wait long enough for an NHS appointment. In the end my problem went away of its own accord.
Definition of a doctor? Someone to talk to while nature takes its course.
And, in fact, I think the lengthy waiting time for a GP appointment is based on the premise you’ll either be better or dead by the time the appointment comes round.