Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many full-time equivalent roles there are in her Department relating to equality, diversity and inclusion; and how many of those roles are unfilled but budgeted for.

In 2023, the previous government commissioned an audit of spending in this area, which provided a figure of 16.6 FTE Home Office staff working in central Human Resources roles relating to implementation of statutory functions arising from the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED).

On 22 May 2024, as part of the response to that audit, the previous government required all departments to consolidate any standalone PSED-related roles from individual work areas into their wider Human Resources functions, which increased the number of central PSED roles to 21.35 FTE.

Those numbers have not increased since the current Government came to office, and there are no plans to increase them.