Hundreds of millions in climate funding and millions for schemes such as ‘diversity and inclusion in the Congo’ have led to calls for Elon Musk-style slashing.
Calls have grown for the British government to introduce the equivalent of the United States’ Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), after the extent of so-called “woke waste” spending on projects abroad which fall under the umbrella of diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) was revealed.
Successive Conservative and Labour governments have signed off on projects such as £9,550,000 awarded in December 2024 to Cowater International to support “Accountability and Inclusion” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The bulk of the funding under scrutiny has come through the foreign aid budget administered by the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO), although spending at home for academic and arts projects that appear to push the DEI agenda have also come under fire.
‘Gender Mainstreaming Strategy’
More than half a million pounds (£575,000) was granted to the Ark Group to deliver advice to the Jordanian Armed Forces’ “Gender Mainstreaming Strategy,” also by the FCDO but under the previous Conservative government in March 2024.
Projects around the world aiming to address the “climate crisis” are also major recipients of vast sums of UK money, with more than £101 million given to “Climate and Ocean Adaptation and Sustainable Transition” in Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Mozambique, with this contract awarded to DAI Global in November 2024.
The UK has also allocated a further £12 million for a “Taskforce on Access to Climate Finance“ in Mauritius, with the contract still out for tender until December this year, the database shows.
While many drivers in the UK have been hit by congestion, ULEZ, and parking charges, almost half a million pounds (£499,649.60) was awarded by the FCDO in 2023 for 15 electric vehicles to be “donated to Albanian prisons” by the British Embassy in Tirana.
Since winning the general election last July, Labour has repeatedly claimed there is a “£22 billion black hole” in the public spending purse, which Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said necessitates sweeping cuts, such as the loss of winter fuel allowance for the majority of pensioners.
‘A Question of Priorities’
A group operating under the handle The Procurement Files since December 2024 has trawled the publicly available government accounts database to expose some of the more contentious spending, working with journalist Charlotte Gill, who runs a blog and uses the handle @wokewaste.
Also under scrutiny has been the hundreds of millions awarded to diplomatic spending, such as the refurbishment of embassies and high commissioners’ offices.
A spokesperson for The Procurement Files told The Epoch Times: “The UK spends over £100 billion a year on interest. Our aim is to help to find ways to reduce wasteful spend and to save the UK taxpayer money.
“For us, it is a question of priorities. Why would the UK taxpayer fund a project for ‘Green Urban Growth in Somalia’ or a ‘Maldives Shark Diving Code of Conduct’ when people here are struggling to pay sky-high energy bills?
“Politicans from the Conservatives and Reform, including Nigel Farage, have been in touch and follow our work.”
They added, “We will follow the blueprint laid out by Elon Musk and the U.S. DOGE team, and are cheering them on from the sidelines!”
Reform MP Richard Tice told The Epoch Times: “I believe I speak for the majority of logical, common-sense Britons when I say we need an equivalent of DOGE in the UK.
“As has been proven in America, the only people who oppose such an agency are the incompetent or corrupt bureaucrats.
“Let’s expose the levels of government waste, sleaze, and neglect of taxpayers’ money.
“Full transparency is what the people want—let’s give it to them.”
Sam Bidwell, director of The Next Generation, part of the Adam Smith Institute, said on social media platform X: “The benefits of a British DOGE would be in long-term growth rather than short-term savings.
“We have several hundred regulators, quangos, and [Arms Length Bodies], which churn out reams of absurd anti-growth regulation.
“Defunding and reforming these bodies would be an enormous net positive.”
Some Conservatives have backed the calls for a UK DOGE, including Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay, who pledged in a speech on Tuesday to set up a Scottish Agency of Value and Efficiency in the event of him becoming first minister.
Findlay said such a department would be tasked with “cutting waste, identifying savings, and delivering better value for taxpayers.”
‘Green Growth’ and ‘Shrimp Health’
But there has been no talk from the British government of slashing such projects as the £22,490,382 awarded by the FCDO to PwC for “Green Growth” in Nepal shortly after Labour took office in July 2024.
Under the previous government, £220 million was granted to Palladium for “UK Partnering for Accelerated Climate Transitions” in developing countries, with an option to more than double this amount. The same company was separately awarded £15.5 million to deliver a “climate smart jobs programme” in Uganda.
The FCDO is not the only department to come under scrutiny, with the Home Office also coming in for criticism on social media for awarding Alcis Holdings £133,000 to monitor the “Afghanistan Taliban’s Narcotics Ban.”
Generous spending for high-level diplomacy is a recurring theme of the contracts under scrutiny, with £179,931 granted to “replace air-conditioning condensers” at the British High Commission in Barbados, and a £14.4 million contract for a whole-building refurbishment of the High Commission in Kenya.
Smaller amounts of funding have also come under fire over the usefulness of the project, with an academic study of “Shrimp Health in Bangladesh” awarded £50,000 in May 2023 through the Department for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs.
‘Glitching Transgenderism’
Arts Council funding which promotes DEI themes has also been criticised by commentators and social media users, such as the £185,627 awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (ACHR) for a trans-identified academic to research “Trans Performance Now: Glitching Transgenderism” at Northumbria University.
Gill has highlighted a number of AHRC-sponsored studies in her work, writing that “the taxpayer is funding their own demise” by unwittingly stumping up for projects such as “The Europe that Gay Porn Built,” awarded £841,627 over four years at Birmingham City University.
ACHR funding for academic projects abroad has included £318,510 for a study that claims that water has experienced trauma, and aims to “address current water and mental health issues affecting Indiginous communities” in Peru and the United States.
Since taking control of the White House for the second time, President Donald Trump has begun a wide-ranging and rapid programme to cut what he regards as unnecessary and sometimes corrupt government expenditure, appointing SpaceX CEO Elon Musk as head of DOGE, named after the internet meme.
DOGE’s first radical move was to announce the slashing of USAID’s workforce from 14,000 to 294 after an audit revealed it was funding projects such as $1.5 million to “advance DEI in Serbia’s workplaces,” as well as $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala, and $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru.
USAID Protests
USAID was set up in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy to administer humanitarian aid on behalf of the U.S. government, but much of its work is now contracted out to external agencies.
Musk claims to have already saved the U.S government more than $3.4 billion by halting DEI contracts, using his platform X to highlight what he has labelled widespread “fraud” as well as “waste.”
The Trump team has suggested as much as a trillion dollars could be saved by DOGE, although there is pushback from the Democrats and many NGOs and others who work within the foreign aid field.
The billionaire entrepreneur said earlier this month on X: “The corrupt politicians ‘protesting’ outside the USAID building are the ones getting money from USAID.
That’s why they’re there – they want your stolen tax dollars!”
The United States is the world’s largest provider of money for foreign aid, by a considerable margin. The UK is the world’s fourth largest spender, giving approximately £15.4 billion in 2023, compared to around £71.9 billion from the United States.
The FCDO has been contacted for comment.