To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of officials in his Department were hired via positive action schemes in the last financial year.
Answered on
8 January 2025
All Civil Service departments work within the Recruitment Principles, as regulated by the Civil Service Commission, to recruit using a fair and open process and appoint on merit. Departments will only limit a campaign to a specific group as a form of positive action as a proportionate response to achieve a legitimate aim, as defined in section 159 of the Equality Act 2010.
The Civil Service is committed to a diverse workforce and a culture of openness and inclusivity, not as ends in themselves, but as means of delivering better outcomes to the citizens we serve.
The Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy: 2022 to 2025, published in February 2022, is positioned as an essential lever to deliver a modern Civil Service, where our values are to serve with integrity, honesty, objectivity, and impartiality, driving our vision to be a skilled, innovative, and ambitious Civil Service equipped for the future. This strategy sets out a broader definition of diversity, to include geographical, social, and career backgrounds alongside the protected groups. This strategy is available at the following link:
As set out in the Civil Service People Plan 2024-2027, we are committed to ensuring we attract, develop, and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds, to create a modern Civil Service, now and for the future. Further information on this plan is available at the following link:
The Department has made hires from wider Civil Service schemes. The schemes supported by the Department for external hires in the last financial year 2023/2024 were the Civil Service Care Leaver Internship Scheme and Going Forward into Employment. Details on these schemes are available at the following link:
https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/gfie-schemes/
Six such appointments were made from these schemes, representing 2% of the total new hires to the Department made in that financial year.