Jacob Rees-Mogg threatens to remove wellness and diversity training

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the government's efficiency minister wants to ban some civil service training courses which he has labelled "ridiculous".

In an interview with The Telegraph, he said that courses which he believes are "subject to mockery", in particular diversity and wellness, will be banned and "intelligent, sensible courses" will be available.

Whilst he does not have the power to cancel any training run by individual departments, he said he would write to secretaries of state asking them to review the available courses. He has also called on the government's learning and development hub, the Government Skills and Curriculum unit to remove "fancy" training programmes in favour of those useful to the job. He said that some courses “damage the whole ethos of the civil service”.

The training available to the civil service was updated in January 2021. Civil servants can sign up to courses on the cabinet-run learning and development platform and are entitled to five days worth of learning and development a year.

In his criticism, Rees-Mogg mentioned a course run by the Cabinet Office, called “Check Yo’ Privilege”. The course aims to teach civil servants to be aware of their privilege when making claims about society, but he called it "politicised".

He also suggested that civil servants are taking courses at lunch time and then taking an extra hour for lunch, without providing any evidence.

He said: “Work is a serious place of business to deliver things for taxpayers, who are paying politicians and civil servants for their time. We’ve got to be very careful when this time is used to do fancy courses, or not working at the office.”

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