NHS hospitals have advertised over £450,000 worth of woke equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) jobs in April alone, MailOnline can reveal.
It comes as waiting lists soar and medics walk off the job over pay.
Campaigners claimed taxpayers are sick of seeing vital public money that should be going to frontline services being squandered on ‘non-jobs’.
The continued spend on EDI positions within the NHS comes after Health Secretary Steve Barclay called for a hiring ban on diversity officers in parts of the ailing health service.
MailOnline can reveal a total of 11 NHS EDI roles have been posted on job websites in April alone, with a collective salary value of £465,553.
MailOnline found 11 EDI jobs with a collective salary of £465,553 being advertised in April alone
The splurge is the equivalent of hiring hire four GPs, 12 nurses, or 13 paramedics, all of which the health service desperately needs.
The South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust advertised the highest paid position, offering up to £62,000 for an ‘Equalities Manager’.
The job description reads candidates should have ‘experience of leading Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) improvements’ and will need to ‘ensure equality, diversity and inclusion are integral to the delivery of the Trust’s services and strategies’.
Responding to this website’s investigation, Elliot Keck, investigations campaign manager of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Taxpayers are sick of seeing vital funds squandered on non-jobs.
‘With waiting lists soaring, trusts should be focusing resources on providing care and bolstering the frontline.
‘It’s time for health bosses to crack down on these right-on roles and put patients’ priorities first.’
A spokesperson for South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust said: ‘ These types of roles help us capture data and take action to ensure we fully understand how we can best support our diverse communities within south east London to access our services and deliver care in a way that properly meets the needs of those that rely on us.’
Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust was another big spender on EDI roles in April, posting two jobs, on April 11 and 12, offering a combined £56,111.
The trust is looking to hire two positions, EDI Project Officer, paying up to £32,934, and an EDI Team Administrator which pays up £23,177.
In addition to their salaries, both roles also offer flexible and remote working.
First Community Health and Care, an NHS organisation which provides community healthcare in east Surrey and West Sussex, is also offering a high paying EDI role in an ad posted on April 20.
It offered an up to £54,619 salary for an EDI Lead on April 20 for an individual with a passion for ‘equality and inclusion’.
University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust also offered a generous £51,000 salary for a combined Clinical Fellow in Health Equalities and Inclusion and Emergency Medicine.
The job ad, posted on April 17, describes the roll as a 50/50 split between working in the emergency department and working with the Trust’s EDI team.
Similar roles were on offer at NHS sites in Leeds, Chesterfield, Birmingham and Solihull, Manchester, Croydon, and Bradford.
A spokesperson for Croydon Health Services NHS Trust said: ‘This junior role is a small cost to support our clinical staff to ensure our care for patients, and our Trust as a place to work, is open and inclusive of all.’
But the overall spend comes at a time when the £150billion-a-year NHS is grappling with bursting waiting lists for both routine ops and cancer diagnosis.
Official data shows the number of people waiting for routine hospital treatment in England jumped to 7.22million in February, a new record.
And just this week a fresh analysis revealed some suspected cancer patients face an agonising wait of up to two years for a diagnosis and can wait a year to start treatment.
It also comes as the NHS struggles to recruit frontline staff with the health service in England missing almost 45,000 nurses and 9,000 medics as of December, the latest figures available.
Roles such as diversity and inclusion officers have the aim of promoting quality and reduce inequality in healthcare settings, both in treatments and medical expertise.
Salaries for these positions average around £55,000 per year and the NHS spends around £40million a year on 800 roles, according to research by the TaxPayers’ Alliance.
The spend is just latest is a serious of massive splurges of taxpayer cash on NHS EDI roles.
Data from NHS England shows that the number of people waiting for routine hospital treatment jumped by 10,000 in January to 7.22million, a new record
NHS figures show just 58 per cent of cancer patients started treatment within two months of an urgent GP referral. The NHS’s own rulebook sets out that at least 85 per cent of cancer patients should be seen within this timeframe but this figure has not been met since December 2015
HM Treasury data shows the NHS received £100.4billion in 2010/11 and its budget had grown steadily until 2019. In 2020, the NHS was given £129.7billion of core funding for its usual services, which was topped up with an extra £18billion to help with the pressures from the pandemic. For 2021/22 the Treasury said the health service is set to receive £136.1billion pounds of core funding, as well as £3billion to help with the Covid recovery
The NHS spends around £150billion-a-year, of which just under 43 per cent is spent on staff wages. Graphic shows: A pie chart of Department of Health and Social Care revenue spending on the NHS (left) in 2019/20 and areas where expenditure is seen to have been wasted (right)
In November last year, the health service advertised £700,000’s worth of the jobs that month.
Numerous ministers have vowed a crackdown on EDI roles, arguing their duties should be picked by existing senior staff and the spend directed to frontline NHS services instead.
The latest is Mr Barclay, who last month wrote to the heads of the NHS quangos demanding they ban diversity officers.
While this only applies to organisations like Care Quality Commission, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the UK Health Security Agency, it is the first concrete action he has taken on the issue.
In his letter, Mr Barclay 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’.
Mr Barclay is believed to have been motivated to send the letter after new guidelines were issued to NHS staff to treat all patients as gender-neutral.
One of his predecessors, Sajid Javid, also vowed to stamp out ‘waste or wokery’ in the health service before he resigned.
An NHS England spokesperson said: ‘The NHS is one of the most efficient health services in the world, spending a far lower proportion on administration costs than comparable countries to deliver maximum benefit to the 1.3 million patients who come into contact with the health service every day, for every pound of taxpayer funding.’
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