Call your Christmas parties ‘festive celebrations’, civil servants told
Civil servants have been told they must refer to their Christmas parties as “festive celebrations” and cannot drink alcohol if members of their team are sober in an attempt to promote diversity and inclusion.
The Telegraph has spoken to government officials who say they have been told end-of-year events should not be explicitly linked to Christmas in an attempt to avoid excluding people of different faiths.
It is understood a government-wide policy on Christmas has not been issued, but that individual managers have interpreted diversity and inclusion advice to mean that the traditional office party should not take place.
One civil servant at a major Government department said the team had been told to find a restaurant that did not serve alcohol in an attempt to avoid “excluding” a member of staff who does not drink.
“We’re in a situation where, in the name of inclusivity, one member of staff is being allowed to dictate what other members of staff can or cannot drink,” the civil servant said.
“Of course, no one should be expected to drink alcohol at work events and there should always be the option of non-alcoholic drinks for those who don’t want to or can’t. But it just feels a step too far to say that nobody is allowed to drink alcohol because of the beliefs of one member of staff.”
‘Not everyone consumes alcohol’
A second senior civil servant said they had been banned from drinking alcohol at their Christmas party “because of Boris” and the enduring memory of the “partygate scandal”. Their department’s festive quiz this week was held without alcohol amid concerns about misbehaving officials.
The official Civil Service “faith and belief toolkit” states that Christmas parties are permitted but managers should “think about the venue and bear in mind that not everyone consumes alcohol”.
“Quite often, people worry about whether it’s still OK to have a work Christmas party if someone in the team doesn’t celebrate Christmas – or whether it’s OK to suggest drinks after work,” it says.
“The answer is usually just to think things through based on the preferences of the individuals in your team, and try to offer a range of choices and activities over the year so that no-one feels excluded. Your aim should be to make sure that feeling part of the team doesn’t depend on people taking part in activities they’re not comfortable with.”
‘Joyless nonsense’
Ministers have attempted to crack down on “unconscious bias” training in the civil service, which Julia Lopez, then a Cabinet Office minister, said “does not achieve its intended aims”.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, who scrapped several of the courses during his time as a Cabinet Office minister, said: “The idea that civil servants need something called a ‘faith and belief toolkit’ to celebrate Christmas at all is joyless nonsense, let alone one that suggests that people might worry about whether they can have a Christmas party.”
In one course that has since been scrapped, civil servants were confronted with a scenario where a manager told a member of staff to remove a Christmas tree in case it offended Jewish or Muslim colleagues.
Staff were told: “Don’t assume that everyone from a particular religious background practises their religion in exactly the same way.”
In 2014, staff at the former Department for Energy and Climate Change were told to avoid using the phrase “Merry Christmas” in festive missives to colleagues to avoid causing offence.
