Londoners 'dodge office attendance after experiencing racism on commute'

Londoners are regularly dodging office attendance after telling bosses they experienced racism on their commute, a whistleblower told GB News.

The purpose of Whitehall's spending watchdog, the National Audit Office (NAO), is to ensure value for money, all the while allowing their workers to log on from home.

Like a number of Government departments, including Ed Miliband's Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the NAO only demands office or on-site attendance two days per week.

The remainder of the week can be worked remotely, while fully at-home contracts are handed out to those in exceptional circumstances.

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But an insider, who wished to remain unnamed due to mistrust of the NAO, revealed to the People's Channel employees belonging to an ethnic minority were able to avoid showing up to work by claiming they had experienced racism on public transport.

They flagged to their bosses it impacted their safety and well-being and, as the organisation was so "captured and obsessed" with diversity and inclusion policies, senior staff would feel obliged to approve such requests.

She explained: "Following the pandemic, some staff at the London office were pushing back on returning to the office."

"It was mostly down to the fact that they realised that when you're working from home, they were saving a lot of money, and they were really sort of quite enjoying it," she added.

"It's one of those things that I don't know if they would genuinely have those experiences of racism, or were they just because they were so captured by the DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion)...

"People were playing the race card, because they knew it would probably go in their favour. It did seem quite coincidental."

Alex Burghart, Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, told the People's Channel: "Employment policies should be applied equally regardless of race or background.

"The growth of identity-based decision-making has undermined common sense, fairness and accountability in public institutions.

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"The country’s spending watchdog should be setting a better example on getting civil servants back into the workplace and increasing public sector productivity.

"Taxpayers deserve value for money, with clear and consistent standards applied across the workforce. Only the Conservatives will restore common sense governance and value for taxpayers."

At the organisation, the insider source told GB News that HR would send around emails tallying up the number of staff hired according to gender, race, sexuality and ethnic origin, the source said.

"It was all these elements they were crowing about, nothing like 'we've got this wonderful new person who's coming from this background, and they've worked here and there, and they're going to be an asset'.

"It was all about what quotas, what percentages they were meeting with regard to DEI."

They also started to have lunchtime sessions for staff to create "safe spaces" where employees could discuss their experience of racism in their lives, including promotion of literature.

As part of the bid to be more inclusive, the staff's shared online portal promoted different cultures' food, tradition and religious holidays, including Ramadan and Eid, without any mention of Christmas.

Employees were also instructed to attend unconscious bias training, which warned them against falling into implicit stereotypes feeding snap judgements.

"They were just captured by DEI, and all the things that they were doing, it was very strange," the employee said.

An NAO spokesman told GB News: "We do not recognise this account. The details of our Diversity and Inclusion strategy are available on our website."

Since 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, the NAO rolled out its diversity and inclusion strategy by seeking to boost representation of those with protected characteristics in senior roles.

They claim the leap towards inclusion was necessary to "achieve their business objectives and build their culture".

As a result, employees are urged to contribute to an "inclusive workplaces" both as an individual and as part of their wider team.

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