How much is the Civil Service spending on diversity recruitment?
Part 3 of Woke Waste: At least £250,000 of taxpayers' money - and it gets worse...
Did you know that the Civil Service uses a diversity recruitment service?
I only found out a few weeks ago when a contact forwarded me a newsletter sent out by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), accompanied with the name “Vercida” (below):
What was Vercida, I wondered? Especially as it was tied to a DCMS piece claiming that the Napoleonic Wars were part of “queer history”.
I didn’t think much of it initially, but eventually I discovered Vercida has a a £20,000 contract to “meet [the] strategic objective of increasing the representation of under-represented groups at DCMS.”
I wrote about this for The Telegraph over the weekend (below):
DCMS content on Vercida’s website below:
11 Vercida contracts in total
The Civil Service has a total of 11 active or expired contracts with Vercida, worth over £250,000 taken together.
I thought I’d go into a bit more detail into what these contracts are.
The woke landscape
Rightly, taxpayers are worried about the state of the economy and want their money to be spent wisely, hence why I started my “Woke Waste” feature.
While researching news pieces, I stumbled on numerous examples of government funding for organisations/ causes that the majority would find antithetical to their beliefs - and wanted to highlight these as much as possible.
Public awareness of woke spending does seem to be growing. Yesterday the Taxpayers’ Alliance findings that “local authorities have spent a total of almost £52 million on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion roles in the last three financial years” made the front page of The Daily Mail.
… but back to Vercida
Vercida is a company that specialises in DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) areas, describing itself as a “tech platform aimed at jobseekers looking to work for employers that place diversity, inclusion and well-being at the top of the agenda”.
It has numerous articles on its website on issues such as:
Celebrating Queer History with the British Library's LGBTQ+ Network
TransPennine Express (TPE) introduces Neurodiversity Network in Inclusion Week
Government function
Vercida has a Jobs in Government section on its website, where it lists its partners as the Home Office; DCMS; Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy; Intellectual Property Office; and Disclosure & Barring Service, adding that “We also work with a wide range of other Government departments and public bodies to list government vacancies that keep diversity and equality at their core.”
Vercida’s government section is filled with ultra-progressive articles such as “Creating safe and supportive spaces at the DWP”, where one employee describes how he tried to “spice things up in the office” by putting “pictures around the office of different people from LGBT+ history with information that I’d researched about them.”
He adds: “The pictures were posted in places where everyone would definitely see them, so it brought everyone into the conversation.”
Elsewhere the employee talks about the importance of “intersectionality”.
The problem?
Aside from these pieces being deeply ideological, showing a complete lack of secularism in state workplaces, Vercida’s material is completely at odds with Government aims. One Vercida article recently boasted that “Stonewall’s recently named the Ministry of Defence as one of the top employers for LGBT staff”, and here’s another on its site:
Successive equalities ministers (Kemi Badenoch and Liz Truss before her) have explicitly told departments to withdraw from Stonewall schemes. The advice was so clear that three days ago The Times treated the fact that eight quangos have kept their membership with Stonewall’s diversity schemes, in contravention of the edict, as a scoop.
Badenoch has also said “We need to stop getting distracted by pronouns, critical race theory, and measuring people’s skin colours.” Yet you could argue these form the raison 'd’être of Vercida.
In general, there are many instances of the Government saying one thing and funding the opposite. In January, for instance, it was reported that Civil Service managers would be disciplined for failing to get employees to return staff to the office, as part of a Government crackdown.
But Vercida has a whole section about Home & Flexible working in the Civil Service, sending a contradictory message about expectations for staff:
It’s not obvious whether Civil Servants are doing their own thing and ignoring ministers. But either way, the Government clearly doesn’t have a grip on the Civil Service, nor is it ensuring that taxpayer money is being spent sensibly.
More Civil Service branding on Vercida below:
A strange interlude
Initially when I researched the DCMS’s newsletter on “queer history”, I wanted to make sure that Vercida was definitely connected to the Government/ Civil Service. Bits of its website seemed so brazenly woke that I almost couldn’t believe a Conservative government would fund it.
I emailed the DCMS, asking what I thought was quite a straightforward question: “I wanted to confirm that VERCIDA works with the DCMS? Also, could you tell me how much government funding it receives?”
But the DCMS repeatedly refused to give me a straight answer, replying with statements like this:
“Sorry for the delay.
On background:
Vercida is an independent jobs board service used by many employers to reach prospective applicants from diverse audiences.
Profiles are hosted by Vercida to attract future applicants that reflect the wider general public.”
After asking multiple times for an exact answer, the DCMS eventually replied:
“Charlotte - apologies for the delay in coming back to you.
In answer to your questions, on background:
Vercida does not proactively recruit for DCMS. It is a jobs board service where employers can list available vacancies and share information for prospective applicants.
Details of the contract with Vercida is published here: https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/b3e2d4cf-048f-4677-a042-569c8bf85dcd?origin=SearchResults&p=1"
While still avoiding the question, the Civil Service had at least sent me a link to answer it, showing that Vercida does work with the DCMS, and receives £20,000 in funding. Here’s its contract below:
From this link I was able to find 11 contracts in total awarded to Vercida by the Civil Service. Here’s a list of what they are:
Current contracts:
Past contracts:
All of these added up together = £260,446.
One last thing
It’s worth pointing out that £260,446 is the taxpayer funding I have found so far for Vercida’s services.
Other publicly-funded listed on its websites, under the Employers section include:
Arts Council England
The BBC
Camden Council
Care Quality Commission
City of Westminster
Equality and Human Rights Commission
HS2
NHS Supply Chain
Office for National Statistics
More here.
As always with woke funding, one rabbit hole produces several more.
Until next time, you can find more articles on Woke Waste here:
Soho Theatre's Identity Politics Extravaganza
Why is Arts Council England so woke?
As a published author on the Napoleonic Wars, I can confirm that Vercida’s claims are a lie. There are a few cases of women disguising themselves as men, but that was to fight in the wars, not for sexual purposes. I have asked my MP to ask the DCMS about why they are employing this kind of organisation.
I read some of those-I’m going to say…job descriptions? And without being intentionally confused, I can genuinely say I couldn’t understand what jobs were being advertised. It’s just layers and layers of intersectional language, latticed together. It’s like a whole other world. A weird and expensive one.