Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what proportion of managers within his Department and its arms-length bodies have completed equalities training within the last (a) 12 months, (b) 24 months and (c) 36 months.

As with other Government departments, Cabinet Office (CO) utilises the Civil Service Learning (CSL) offer for all of its mandatory learning. This includes the training package, ‘Inclusion in the Civil Service’, which all Cabinet Office staff are expected to complete on an annual basis.

In early 2021, ‘Inclusion in the Civil Service’ replaced the CSL’s previous package, ‘Diversity and Inclusion 2019’, following the Chief People Officer Rupert McNeil’s instructions in late 2020 for all Civil Service departments to withdraw any learning that included reference to unconscious bias training. As such, we can advise that around 25% of CO colleagues completed ‘Inclusion in the Civil Service’ in the year 2021.

It is worth noting that as part of the CO’s move to continue to improve and enhance the department’s L&D offer across 2022/2023, we will be working closely with colleagues in Government Skills and Curriculum Unit (GSCU) to review all CO mandatory learning, as well as introducing a new process to help capture completion rates of mandatory learning, as the current CSL system does not allow for this.