The latest Stonewall Workplace Equality Index has been published.

The FCO is delighted with its rating (53rd place, above the Ministry of Justice but below HM Revenue and Customs):

Commenting on the achievement Sir Mark Lyall Grant, FCO Board Diversity Champion for Sexual Orientation, said:

“I am delighted that the FCO has made it into the Stonewall’s top 100 LGBT-friendly employers. This is the third consecutive year that we have made the top 100 and a fitting way to mark the year that FLAGG, the FCO Staff Network for LGBT staff, celebrated its 10th anniversary.  It is hard to believe that it is less than 20 years since the blanket ban on openly gay and lesbian people being granted positive vetting clearance was lifted across all government departments.
 
“Our consistently strong showing in the Stonewall Index is an example of the FCO’s fundamental underlying commitment not just to LGBT issues, but to business case diversity and inclusion generally.”

Memo to next Government: abolish embarrassing/silly titles.

This Index has been published since 2005 (then first appearing as a Corporate Equality Index with not quite the same focus). Sir Mark is unnecessarily modest or poorly briefed: the FCO has made it into the Top 100 of this list in its various forms every year.

It is not easy to spot trends in the lists, as Stonewall themselves do not appear to list previous Top 100s in an easy-to-access way. Plus the number of organisations taking part each year moves upwards, so competition for the Top 100 is more intense.

But the taxpayer needs to know what the great Ministries of State are up to. So I dutifully have looked at the performance of the FCO, British Council and HM Treasury over time.

Thus:

2005:   FCO14th     British Council Ist      HMT 31st

2006:   FCO 58th    British Council 30th   HMT 85th

2007:   FCO 92nd   British Council 42nd   HMT nowhere

2008:   FCO 26th    British Council 59th  HMT nowhere

2009:   FCO 53rd    British Council nowhere   HMT nowhere 

Thus the FCO is a solid mid-table performer in the Stonewall diversity indices.

The British Council started with a flourish back in 2005, leading the field:

Sir David Green, Director-General of the British Council, named top employer for gay people in Britain in 2005, said “I’m thrilled. This recognises the work the British Council has undertaken to promote equality and diversity in our employment practices both in the UK and around the world.”

But after that bright start it sank away and has now been relegated. Are the British Council now publicly unthrilled by their performance? Stonewall’s view on this dramatic fall from grace?

Meanwhile HMT under then Chancellor Gordon Brown made an effort at the start, but latterly has vanished too.

Here’s something curious too.

Type FCO stonewall into Google and all sorts of links pop up to British Embassy websites round the world under the Newsroom heading reporting Sir Mark’s delight. See eg the first one, UK in Korea.

But if you go directly to that website as if via Google (as a casual or regular visitor might) and click on Newsroom, the item is not there. A time-lag of some sort when a page is posted by FCO web team HQ for the whole network and it takes a while for it to appear on each Embassy site?

All in all, these annual lists are a grand way for Stonewall to publicise itself and its pro-gay agenda, and thereby a vehicle for putting pressure on different bodies to adopt it ("they have taken part – are you showing that you don’t care about diversity by not doing so too?").

But maybe too some organisations are concluding that the whole exercise is not really much more than an ingenious publicity stunt and quietly withdrawing from it? Albeit unwilling publicly to say so?