Now Jacob Rees-Mogg scraps 'woke' Civil Service training courses

Now Jacob Rees-Mogg scraps ‘woke’ Civil Service training courses: Minister axes more than 250 ‘motivational sessions’ including ‘Find Your Mojo’ and ‘Buddy to Boss’ dubbing them a waste of time and taxpayers’ money

• Jacob Rees-Mogg has been highly critical of the civil service and staff who WFH
• He has now ditched 60 percent of ‘wellness, inclusion and diversity’ courses
• He hit out at the ‘indoctrination’ of staff with ‘divisive ideological agendas’

More than 250 training courses that have been distracting civil servants from work with ‘wokery’ will be axed in a new crackdown by Jacob Rees-Mogg, it was revealed today.

The Cabinet Office minister claims to have got rid of 60 per cent of ‘wellness, inclusion and diversity’ courses and has written to Tory colleagues in charge of departments urging them to do the same.

Mr Rees-Mogg has been clear that that ‘wokery’ in the Civil Service is wasting employees’ time when departments such as the Passport Office and DVLA face a backlog of work.

His bonfire of events and meetings include sessions called ‘Find Your Mojo’, ‘Give Me Strength’, ‘Buddy to Boss’, ‘Tricky People’, ‘Wood for the Trees’ and ‘De-biasing Decision-making’.

Mr Rees-Mogg has also taken a hammer to course he believes were ‘indoctrinating’ civil servants with ‘divisive ideological agendas’ having led a crusade to get taxpayer-funded staff back in the office.

The crackdown spearheaded by Jacob Rees-Mogg (pictured) affects 265 civil service courses

Mr Rees-Mogg said the courses would be scrapped ‘so that civil servants can develop genuinely useful skills instead of being indoctrinated in the divisive ideological agendas that have permeated some of these courses’

He told The Daily Telegraph: ‘We cannot make taxpayers pay for civil servants to take courses with names like “Find Your Mojo”, “Buddy to Boss” or “Knowing Me, Knowing You”.

‘Courses like this are being scrapped so that civil servants can develop genuinely useful skills instead of being indoctrinated in the divisive ideological agendas that have permeated some of these courses.’

The Telegraph reports that 265 of 441 Cabinet Office ‘wellness, inclusion and diversity’ training have gone.

The ‘woke’ courses axed at the Cabinet Office 

Leading Without Authority

Behavioural Insights

Barrels to Apples

Buddy to Boss

Conscious Inclusion

Find Your Mojo

Give Me Strength

Knowing Me, Knowing You

Micro-aggressions

Micro-behaviours

Tricky People

Wood for the Trees

De-biasing Decision-making

Conversational Intelligence

The Psychology of Play and Performance

Courses on essentials such as first aid remain.

‘De-biasing Decision-making’ has gone, however. The online description said it ‘enables participants to use behavioural insights to counter cognitive biases in government and make better calibrated decisions and judgments, ultimately resulting in better project planning, delivery and policy outcomes’. 

Also axed is ‘Conscious Inclusion’, which promises to ensure staff must ‘understand bias and seek to make our more unconscious biases conscious, so that we can reflect upon them, challenge them when we need to and reduce their potential to skew our decision-making’.

Last night it emerged that Ms Truss is set to appoint Mr Rees-Mogg as Business Secretary if she wins the Tory leadership contest next week.

Allies of the Foreign Secretary said Mr Rees-Mogg is being lined up to take over the key economic portfolio and given a mandate to slash regulation and turbo-charge Britain’s domestic energy production.

Mr Rees-Mogg, currently the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiencies, has been tipped for a senior economic role in Miss Truss’s government after he became one of the first senior figures to endorse her bid to succeed Boris Johnson.

But earlier speculation that he would be made Levelling Up Secretary is said to be ‘wide of the mark’.

Mr Rees-Mogg’s impending arrival is said to be an ‘open secret’ at the Department for Businesses, Energy and Industrial Strategy, where he has been joining current Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng for talks with energy bosses in recent days.

Mr Kwarteng, a close ally of Miss Truss, is set to be appointed as Chancellor.

A friend of Mr Rees-Mogg said he wanted to see ‘Conservative solutions’ to the energy crisis, including a big push for new oil and gas in the North Sea and an end to the moratorium on fracking.

‘His very firm view is that we need to get every form of available energy going,’ the source said.

‘You have already seen that, with a 26 per cent increase in oil and gas production in the first half of this year, but he wants to go much further, including on fracking.’

Mr Rees-Mogg has also championed the case for removing all remaining EU regulation from the statute book by the end of next year.

The plan was watered down earlier this year following a Cabinet row, but Miss Truss has since embraced the scheme as part of wider plans to cut red tape and exploit the benefits of Brexit.

This will include a review of EU financial rules which currently make it difficult for pension funds and insurance companies to invest in British infrastructure rules. Sources on the Truss campaign believe the move could free up tens of billions of pounds for investment in the UK economy.

Mr Rees-Mogg’s arrival at the Business Department is also likely to put the brakes on previous government efforts to encourage flexible working.

Ministers had planned to introduce a default right to flexible working, including the right to work from home.

Mr Rees-Mogg has already launched a review of flexitime in the civil service. And he has spoken out strongly against Whitehall’s working from home culture.

Sources stressed that Miss Truss is still finalising her Cabinet appointments.

She has spent much of the last week hunkered down at her official residence at Chevening, operating what one aide described as ‘a government in waiting’.

Mr Kwarteng, another committed free marketer, is said to be ‘nailed on’ to be appointed as Chancellor.

Attorney General Suella Braverman is widely expected to win promotion to Home Secretary after backing Miss Truss as soon as her own leadership campaign had stalled.

Foreign Office minister James Cleverly is expected to succeed Miss Truss as Foreign Secretary.

Other allies are also tipped for senior rules, with Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey lined up to run the Cabinet Office at the heart of government and Treasury minister Simon Clarke being considered for the Levelling Up department previously run by Michael Gove.

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