To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether they have made an estimate of the potential impact of abolishing diversity, equity and inclusion roles in their Department on annual staffing costs.
Answered on
28 March 2025
Defra group is committed to enabling an inclusive and respectful culture with thriving workplaces where all colleagues are valued and treated fairly. This maximises our potential to innovate, collaborate and deliver first-class outcomes for our citizens. We work hard to ensure EDI is mainstreamed in the way we develop and deliver our work and in making sure Defra group has a diverse workforce that is fully enabled to deliver.
The delivery of EDI activity and staffing requirements is decided by Departments as the employer. To support mainstreaming EDI, we continue to have a small number of dedicated EDI roles and have no plans to abolish those and therefore there is no estimate to provide on abolition of these roles.
The department's EDI roles continue the Civil Service Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Expenditure guidance, published in May 2024, including that all EDI roles are appropriately situated within HR functions.