Ministry of Defence: Equality

(asked on 16th January 2024) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the Answer of 12 January 2024 to Question 7482 on Ministry of Defence: Equality, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of employing diversity and inclusion (a) advisers and (b) practitioners on a full time basis.


Answered by
Andrew Murrison Portrait
Andrew Murrison
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
This question was answered on 24th January 2024

The Diversity and Inclusion Adviser and Practitioner roles are not full-time staffed positions, rather they are people who have completed a Defence training course and are available to provide advice to our staff on an ad-hoc basis. It is not possible to estimate how many hours our staff dedicate to these voluntary roles as some advisers and practitioners are utilised more often than others.

We do not employ diversity and inclusion advisers on a full-time basis. Defence has dedicated diversity and inclusion policy staffs that provide advice and guidance to staff undertaking adviser and practitioner work in addition to their primary role. Training is available to anyone across the organisation who wishes to become an adviser or practitioner, regardless of their profession. We are therefore able to ensure that all parts of the MOD can utilise the valuable resource that these volunteers provide.

We do not centrally record the number of diversity and inclusion advisers and practitioners in the Department. This is because they are not full-time roles, rather they are voluntary duties undertaken by colleagues who want to learn more about diversity and inclusion and bring that knowledge and advice back to their teams once they have completed a skills-based training course.

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