Public sector bodies’ Stonewall exodus continues

Public sector organisations continue to exit Stonewall’s controversial pro-trans programme.

In recent months, Sport England, the Scottish Parliament and Arts Council England have all decided to cancel their membership of the lobby group’s flagship ‘diversity scheme’, which rewards employers for promoting LGBT ideology inside and outside of the workplace.

A number of other tax-funded organisations – including the Crown Prosecution Service, the Government Equalities Office, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission– have also ended their relationship with Stonewall.

Public money

Welcoming Sport England’s decision, Sex Matters’ Director of Campaigns Fiona McAnena said: “Sport England gets millions of pounds of public money, and it has a duty to make sport work for everyone.

“That duty is not compatible with taking advice from Stonewall, whose approach on sport pushes for men with transgender identities to be included in women’s sport.”

A spokesperson for the Scottish Parliament confirmed that it would not be renewing its annual £3,090 year ‘Diversity Champions’ membership.

Arts Council England had been a member of the ideological driven workplace scheme since 2008.

‘Groupthink’

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Suzanne Moore observed: “Many people I know cannot be ‘out’ about their gender critical beliefs in their workplaces because those in charge still do not know the difference between what Stonewall says is the way to do things and the actual law.

“It is an act of gross negligence and groupthink that the leaders of our institutions do not care to inform themselves of the difference between the two.”

She blamed Stonewall’s diversity training scheme for creating an “horrendous culture of snitching on colleagues for wrongthink” and warned that it is not the role of HR “to mindlessly reward the banal McCarthyism of someone reporting Facebook posts”.

The columnist added: “what we are now seeing is that when all those private conversations come out in the open, the wheels come off the gender identity bus really rather quickly.”

Backlash

In November, Minister for Women and Equalities Kemi Badenoch said that the Government must never again let “activist groups” such as Stonewall dictate policy.

Speaking at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship 2023 conference, Kemi Badenoch said ministers proceeded on the “wrong track on gender ideology”, because it pandered to trans activist organisations such as Stonewall which were “pretending to be neutral”.

Health Minister Will Quince also cautioned NHS England trusts against succumbing to Stonewall capture, after a Daily Mail investigation uncovered the involvement of the LGBT lobby group in writing gender policies for dozens of NHS trusts in England.